{"id":2972,"date":"2026-09-10T06:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T06:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/?page_id=2972"},"modified":"2026-09-11T06:48:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T06:48:29","slug":"vintage-emulator-studio-%f0%9f%a7%bb%f0%9f%a7%bb","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/vintage-emulator-studio-%f0%9f%a7%bb%f0%9f%a7%bb\/","title":{"rendered":"Vintage Emulator Studio \ud83e\uddfb\ud83e\uddfb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) project is a long standing community effort to preserve electronic hardware in software form – at first with arcade machines, spreading out into general computing and recently branching into music production hardware. To quote from the manifesto: MAME\u2019s purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology continues to rush forward, MAME prevents this important “vintage” software from being lost and forgotten. This is achieved by documenting the hardware and how it functions.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course ‘documenting the hardware’ requires that the original software pass ‘testing’ (playing) of the virtual machine. To their credit the MAME community keep a firm distance between the machines and the present – they do not emulate that which is still in production. But the audience is obviously there for the Space Invaders<\/em> – and more recently – there for the DX100<\/em>, AKAI 3000<\/em> et al. These machines are also no longer built or sold by their developers, their emulation is covered by the manifesto. Fair enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Autodafe has created a software interface<\/a> for (nearly all?) the synthesisers and samplers currently in development by the MAME project. There’s a 5 pound donation asked for the time spent (which I paid) but not required. Some instruments are usable – not all are fully working, others are just sketches, and all are CPU hungry. It’s a different model to the Usual Suspects, who operate in secret and only release when their emulation is usable. MAME is open – TUS is closed – although you can be a sponsor and help check the beta versions (again – I pay for this as well).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Journalism versus Reality<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The online press are promoting the MAME interface as if production ready – for example Tom’s Hardware cries Musicians and synth-heads in the audience, rejoice. A new vintage synthesizer plugin has arrived that has the potential to blow many commercial offerings out of the water \u2014 and it’s completely free, to boot.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s if it boots at all. If you don’t find the exact ROM file you get nothing. If you do get the right ROM file you’ll find it’s a bit of a mess trying to get it in the right spot for the software to see it. If your musical practice involves twiddling and navigating folders then you are well sorted. But if you actually want to make music<\/em> then it’s hard to see any advantage of an emulated 90’s sampler that eats up your CPU making hissy noises. I tried the DX100 and TX81z<\/a> – they both seem OK to my memory – but can more easily be remade with recent VSTs. The CZ101<\/a> was familiar … and horrible. Arturia already make an improved one of those if you need it.<\/a> For the TX81z why not try this: https:\/\/www.sonicbits.com\/plugins\/exakt-lite<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the Autodafe project will improve greatly over time, and follow MAME’s purpose as set out by their manifesto. But everybody else needs to take a chill pill, step back a bit and realise that there’s many other tools that can create these sounds.
YOU WILL SPEND MORE TIME TRYING TO GET THIS WORKING THAN MAKING MUSIC.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe this will kick Yamaha into making some virtual instruments like KORG – but I very much doubt it. It’s more likely that Yamaha will come out guns blazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) project is a long standing community effort to preserve electronic hardware in software form – at first with arcade machines, spreading out into general computing and recently branching into music production hardware. To quote from the manifesto: MAME\u2019s purpose is to preserve decades of software history. As electronic technology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2972","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2972"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2986,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2972\/revisions\/2986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/mancave21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}