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[Oliwerko]

Today I realized some interesting thing. I own a SoundBlaster X-fi, and in the audio devices settings in the control panel, in the MIDI device selector, I have the default Microsft GS Wavetable SW synth and two other options: X-Fi Synth A and B.
In comparison - the default one gives some weird sounds while the others (A and B sound equally) have some nice output. Does this mean that the card has its own wavetable?

[Saga Musix]

I'm not sure, but I think it's emulated (at least it was on other new soundblasters). The soundblaster midi is still superiour to the directmusic variant, though.

[Oliwerko]

It's hard to find any advanced details about the card, quite surprisingly.

Anyway, I've found some cool AdLib stuff while searching through the web yesterday, maybe some of you don't know it yet:

AdLib tracker II, which seems pretty good: http://stano.korex.sk/ (Anyone have any esperience?)

AdPlug, which can play tons of AdLib formats even in winamp (but haven't worked for majority of my MIDIs though): http://adplug.sourceforge.net/

And probably the most valuable one, the AdLib Visual Composer along with the Instrument Editor can be found on this site: http://darrinsweirdworld.blogspot.com/2007/10/excuse-me-while-i-ad-lib-this.html (Not sure if it's legal, I take no responsibility)

[Saga Musix]

adlib tracker II is maybe the most widespread adlib tracker, but i myself am not composing adlib tunes anymore, so i never used it (i just made a few tools with a qbasic adlib tracker).

i also use AdPlug in xmplay, but it certainly has not the best adlib emulation. i still prefer recording the tunes from my AWE-64 in this case.

[Oliwerko]

When I first saw Adlib Tracker II and especially GoatTracker, I finally understood what does "user-friendly" mean.

There are so many different interesting genres ranging from amiga and SID to AdLib and MT-32. One would like to do all of them, which is, sadly, not possible.

[raina]

Adlib Tracker II is a good and powerful adlib editor. The inteface has some Scream Tracker 3 influence, so I agree it's a bit of a bitch. But to me, so is almost every other tracker apart from Fasttracker, MilkyTracker and Renoise (which has also become worse since v1.5).

[Oliwerko]

In which way worse? I've begun with the 1.90, haven't experienced the older ones.

[raina]

Before, the keyboard layout used to be fully configurable but they've gone the way of hardcoding some keyboard functions since then, which is not a deal breaker but certainly an annoyance when you're using multiple trackers. It's a weird step back when the rest of the development seems to be going forward at a nice pace.

Oh, forgot to mention: There's an ADT2 based player plugin as well as other neat stuff at Da!Nyl's Workspace.

[Oliwerko]

AdLib seems to be popular as hell even nowadays. At least compared to the MT-32, for which I have not seen any editing software yet (except the first google result when searching for "MT-32 tracker", haven't tried it yet)

[raina]

Adlib is popular now, because it was dominant then. You have to realize how much more common the OPL was. Roland MIDI modules can fetch high prices on online auctions today while the common old sound cards with an OPL chip are thrown away as garbage. The contrast in price grows higher, which means you can get OPL hardware for pennies/free. Also, the emulation is much further than with MT-32.

Also, MT-32 is more pro => musicians => MIDI
while OPL is more common => hobbyists => trackers