LGR 486 Upgrade! Building a MIDI Mountain 

Due to the requests for such a thing, I've uploaded a mixdown of all these MIDI devices playing canyon.mid _simultaneously._ Enjoy! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cMSdaPTuV8E.html

"This is not completely necessary, but I like it! " -99% of the enthusiast market

This just proves that LGR went from being a nerdy little kid to being a nerdy little kid in a man-suit with the ability to get all the things he wanted as a kid. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

wood grains, a smooth jazz piano in the background, and the finest legacy hardware. yes sir, it's a beautiful LGR day in the neighborhood.

The bootup of all those devices when you flipped on the power is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen

Seeing them all stacked up and hearing them back to back at the end was honestly one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I don't have anything that supports those, nor do I have room for them, but I kinda want my own MIDI mountain.

LGR and the Monstrous MIDI Mountain: A Quest for Sound ...this sounds like a great title for 80's adventure game.

You're making your dos machine into the ultimate machine of it's day

I love the Technics equalizer, the bright blue bars and the little red spotlights on each control are spectacular.

7:25 sums it up perfectly - it's completely unnecessary, *but I like it!* :D

Buys a crazy amount of MIDI devices, a switch and an Equalizer for his 486 PC gets mediocre speakers Authentic 80s/90s PC experience 10/10. Man I miss having big ass speakers and huge plastic/metal doodads that have tons of buttons and nobs, most of which didn't do anything

Watching the woodgrain 486 slowly evolve over time and have features added to it is utterly fascinating.

Quite literally a Sound Blaster.

Damn dude the closeups of the units straight on are so perfect they look like a promotional rendering in an advertisement rather than the real deal. Incredible.

i could play with the Korg's wheel all day.

You inspired me. I have an MT-32 and an MU-80 and decided it was finally time to pull them out of the closet and hook them up. I went a different route setting them up though. I'm going to be using them with ScummVM and DOSBox so I decided to go with the following accessories: A midiplus Tbox2X2 USB MIDI Interface. This box is a USB to midi adapter that provides 2 unique MIDI interfaces. One for the MT-32 and one for the MU-80. It is also USB powered, so no external power is required. A Rolls MX42 Stereo Mini Mixer. This is simple 4 channel stereo passive mixer. No power required. 2 Dual 1/4 Inch To Dual RCA Audio Cables. Connects the tone generators to the Mini Mixer.

"LGR" :) "486 Upgrade!" :) :) "MIDI Mountain" :D :D :D :D :D clint, your channel is probably the only one where i upvote every video, your enthusiasm and positivity always make my day. keep up the great work

even though i know nothing about this kind of stuff, i still love watching your videos! :)

The woodGrain makes me so happy inside

i liked the Roland SoundCanvas 55MKII sounded the best to me. thanks for the video

I call dibs on being the first pioneer to scale Mount MIDI.

This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, that canyon.mid mix at the end sounds incredible

That was MIDI-tastic! Quite interesting to compare devices like that by switching between them. To my ears, the sound canvas seemed to have the most bite, the Yamaha sounded very sweet and had the best drums, and the Korg was surprisingly very rich sounding. Hard to pick a favorite, but I guess it depends on the music being thrown at it. So heck, why not just use them all. Hmm, wonder if you daisy chain them if you can get them to all play at once.

I was born in 1997, so I don't have personal experience with this stuff. However, my uncle did a lot of music composition throughout the '90s, and I wouldn't be surprised if he used this equipment or something similar. So at 16:10, I got a major rush of nostalgia not only cause of my uncle, but also due to all the educational VHS tapes I had that were made in the '90s, always with music similar to what is played here. I'm also very upset, cause before my uncle's car was sold after he passed, I found a few tapes in his glove box with a lot of the music he composed, but I didn't think to keep them on me, so they're gone now. Anyways, loved the video, and I really hope to see more of your new MIDI Mountain in action. Thanks so much for this!!

Sweet! The ultimate midi setup for the ultimate woodgrain 486.

This is probably my favorite LGR video... keep coming back to watch again. You could bring back Your MIDI mountain to play with the MiSTer, that would be epic!

Fantastic! It's really cool hearing the differences in MIDI instrumentation on these devices. All have very cool and distinct sounds. As a musician I would have loved something like this back in the day. Albeit, a little out of reach for my wallet when I was a teenager. Learning about stuff like this today is still relevant and fun for anyone interested in MIDI and synths. Thanks Clint!

With you discussing about midi, the relaxing piano in the background, and me watching RU-vid in my bed. I almost fell asleep.

I friggin love your audio related videos, specifically the hardware; that tower is just pure bliss

How in the world has this video not reached 1M yet. This is awesome!!! What a delightful pleasure to watch and listen - ahhhh what a wet dream of my childhood! :)

"then you're dealing with latency and... not having a cool switch box" I think we all know which is the more important issue here.

I looked away for 30 sec and was completely lost with what was happening........what a beast of a setup, congrats on taking the term "Audiophile" to the next level.

Dude I'm loving these comparisons!! Awesome stuff! I'm a musician and I as such I very much appreciate this!!

Something about midi sounds of the time always brings me back to Pretty Hate Machine. As a child I didn't fully grasp the lyrics or appreciate the songs as I do today, but god damn I love that sound from that era. I had a decent collection of old computer hardware that I loved to mess around with. Sadly my mother threw it out when I moved out of the house with my ex. Don't miss her anymore but I do miss all the cool old hardware I had. Probably in a scrap heap now :( I even had the Seagate ST-506 which I stole from being destroyed. I'm in my late 20s so alot of the hardware I possessed was before my time but my desire for knowledge had drawn me to these artifacts out of curiosity. Thanks as always LGR. You do a hell of a job.

Love it! That Roland Sound Canvas is the sound of my many of my favourite childhood films - must've been a hit!

I had a Roland D-10 keyboard that could be configured so that the computer saw it as an MT-32. It was definitely very cool for games back in the day - I remember playing one of the Wing Commander games with it...

I love this. Canyon is the best. It's so optimistically... computers.

In less than one year this pc will turn into Skynet

So cool!!

just having the MT-32 was a dream back in the day, now you have them all! It reminded me I'm supposed to be in the lookout for any vintage MIDI module. Thanks for feeding my gear addiction! lol

I wish I could hear some Touhou music with this setup. It's a pretty amazing setup and was fun to watch you put together.

The Woodgrain 486 is a character in LGR's show at this point.

You're a madman LGR lol And thank you. After this video I reconfigured my Duke3d on DosBox music card from soundblaster to midi. Wow what a difference.

A sound canvas is my xmas gift for myself this year.

Those fucking seamless transitions. 16:10

Oh my goodness. I hadn't thought about CANYON.MID since being a bored kiddo poking around the directories of Win3.1. Thank you so much for the blast from the past. This is just a thing of beauty. I am nearly crying.

You should do a special episode on the Gravis Ultrasound, one of the most underrated soundcards of all time.

When it was not working, it must have been some relief to find out the problem was a simple driver setup and not your actual hardware or cable layout. As usual love your videos. They are nostalgic, informational, and oddly relaxing. I like how they play as a refined episode rather the a blog. Good pacing, setup, and simple yet confident and stable camera work. Just wanted to give some user feed back. Would like to see more videos like your tech tales, or kind of maybe fact hunt like. LGR is a review channel so I understand its not your focus, but I think you do it rather well and they are some of my favorite videos you have made.

But what does it sound like when all 4 devices are layered together?

That Roland Sound Canvas brings me back. That’s a fantastic Midi box. Fun setup! Good times

This is so awesome man!!!! I have been following this build and because of you i just got a 486 computer myself :D I also found my dads old monitor from the early 90`s in my parents attic along with a VERY dirty IBM model M keyboard :) To my surprise my better half ( she is not a gamer at all unfortunately) tried Tyrian (with soundblaster 16 ) and she loved it :D I think we have converted a nongamer :D

Nice. I see a lot of people do all these PC builds and never show what monitor they have or even sound setup to say the least. I really enjoyed this video. Having that mountain of audio equipment on your desk is not just a cool sight to see, but you can easily switch it when you want. Very functional. Keep up the good work. Your videos are very well done. I wish RU-vid had an auto like button for certain subscriptions. Your channel would be one!

OMG, I love this. All the hardware I wish I had the money to buy back in the day. Thanks for this. :)

Oh my god. This was so much better than Shane's offering today.. Watching a LGR vid is like sitting in a 90's Maxis lounge.. With lounges and lounge music. Nowadays watching a Shane vid is like being inside a fireworks factory when it's exploding

This video was very well edited. Best wishes.

I had that exact EQ. My set up was ..... Pioneer 1280-SX The same Technics EQ Pushing the black Cerwin Vega RE-25 Three Way Speakers... It was all a perfect match in my book! If I remember right, each speaker weighed 98 pounds! IT ROCKED! Man I miss that stereo!

Breakfast with LGR!

As a kid, i never knew these things even existed, i had an AWE32 and i was as happy as i can be, wish i knew about these, having one of them would have made me filled with joy, nice to see this video, man, those days were so amazing...

Haha! Mix em all together, all at once! My favorite is the older Korg 05R/W; I find the sound more nostalgic than the newer NS5R (Which I also own).

Awww man, this setup is so sick that it makes even i, someone who has a literal studio in their house, extremely jealous! what a classic sound that stuff produces!

"I've got synths of steel."

35 years of seeing all those different Sound options, and finally in 2017, age 50, I see and understand all that voodoo magic...without the voodoo of course..! (LOL) Thanks LGR. Time to dig out my 486-66 from the loft.

I've got to say that the Sound Canvas is my favorite, though the Korg is a close second based on your testing.

That was awesome, LGR. As someone who also was constrained to Soundblaster/Adlib sound back in the day and wonder what all those other sound cards were, this just makes my inner little kid happy. Thanks for another fun video!

*I ❤LGR 486*

Dude - discovered you out here in SF but from NC. Four months after the 486 build video first seen, i now watch ALLLLLLL of your stuff. Nostalgia greatness, great research, and above all you seem like a good dude, haha. Keep this up forever cuz i am in full support. Thank you for countless hours of dork-dom and side note I just got my first wood grained appliance. It looks super old, but LGR. You effing rock man!!!! #Patreon !!!

This is relevant to my interests, thanks Cllint!

I don't know why I always watch these upgrade vids since I know basically nothing about audio or any of the cards you install, but I always find it so interesting.

this pleases me immensly

Yup. Sound Canvas still my favorite sound.

I miss all theese old cd-roms and midi-audio

The struggle for perfect 90s sound. Fantastic.

13:00 My favorite line X3

Every time you release an update on this thing I think it can't get any more awesome, and every time you prove me wrong.

After seeing this i really want to make on myself.

I was never elite enough to have dedicated MIDI of any kind back in the day but to have a setup like this, man that would have been so incredible. Awesome project to see man!

Mt. Midi has been discovered today! 😁😁😁😁😁😁

I've enjoyed your collection for many years Clint. The games, the hardware, the oddware... It's all cool and I thank you for sharing them with us all. Today for the first time though I am really really really jealous! My eyes are green, man! So much MIDI magnificence! I wish it was mine! Keep up the good work :)

Its not absurd if you enjoy it.

Hearing Doom blasted from those speakers was super satisfying. Awesome setup!

I like the sound of the Sc55 the most, at least in this rendition of canyon.mid. The Yamaha and the Korg sound a bit tinny to me, and the MT32 is in a separate class. I don't have a MU80 or a Korg, but I do have a MT32 (an early one like yours) and a SC88VL; the latter sounds essentially identical to the 55. I missed my chance of getting a MPU401 when prices were still decent, but I do have a MusicQuest clone card made by keropi on Vogons which I use with the above. Not such a tall mountain as yours (more of a molehill) but works well for me. I also have a Roland RAP10 card which is great sounding but for which title support is abysmally small; and a CM-32P which is useless for games (interesting to play with a keyboard though).

I still remember learning to install a CD-Rom and Sound Blaster kit when I was about four or five. We went to a computer show in downtown St. Louis to get it and my mom and I installed it. First game I played on it... Kid CAD, I was young ^_^. Love these hardware setup videos!!

Boy, that MIDI interface card has some chunky traces on it. Wonder why...?

The overwhelming satisfaction of reaching a goal that yields almost nothing anyone in the world would care about. This is AMAZING lol. When this was all timely, I had nobody around me who understood anything at all about MIDI so though I suspected this is what was going on, I was blind to it. Seeing this, I'm kind of glad I didn't understand what it all meant back then. What an incredible rabbit hole.

This set-up cured my erectile dysfunction.

Really LOVED this Clint! I've been very curious about midi stuff lately (both as a musician and as a gamer) and have been emulating sound fonts and what not with DOS games (Warcraft 2 with Soundblaster vs General MIDI, on any number of different sound fonts...holy cow....) and as such, I found this WILDLY entertaining. THANKS *edit* I don't normally comment on videos, but also wanted to say that the LGR stuff has introduced me to a world (retro PC/DOS gaming) that I was only slightly familiar with. My first PC was an Apple II C, but my family got that in the 90's as a hand me down from my Uncle. I grew up on console gaming (NES specifically, which is still my favorite gaming platform) but this PC stuff lately has been drawing me in, and I've been discovering so much neat stuff I missed out on in my formative years. That being said, your videos, and to a similar degree, Philscomputerlab's videos, have intrigued me with building retro DOS boxes, and may end up doing just that when I have a little more space! Thanks LGR!

Is there a midi splitter such that you can use all at the same time, then use a mixer to mix all of them back together and adjust levels accordingly?? Might be useless or not how that technology works... but Mick Gordon did something similar with guitar amps for the new Doom soundtrack; he called it the Doom matrix. You could call this one the MIDI Matrix!!

One of my favorite videos you've done so far! You're awesome dawg

Since more and more of the old MIDI synths now have extremely accurate emulators (by the companies that made the synths) it might me worth using making a "virtual" stack of midi devices.

I have a friend who collects Roland equipment. Can't wait to show this to him. BTW, I think I'm going to have a new mission to find a Sound Canvas of my own now. This video and the dedicated review showed just how amazing the drum kit is on it! I still compose MIDIs for fun using an old Mac and this is the perfect complement.

Man I thought I was crazy combining a Gravis Ultrasound, AWE64 and MT32 :D Anyway I ALWAYS hooked up my PCs/Amigas to a proper amplifier, never those shoddy pc audio speakers.

Awesome video. Thanks so much LGR. Ohh the late 80's... What a wonderful place to go back to... Playing Price of Persia on my father's 286 green screen monitor. Lovely!

the mu-80 sounds the best, hands down

Now THIS takes me back. Of course, I had the Roland SC88... So many patches.

what kinda world would it be without ROLAND???

Glad your having fun. Thanks for all that you do to entertain us. How you knew what to use and how it all connected is hard for me to believe, but there it is. Sounds amazing.

You see that MIDI Mountain? You can climb it!

As a live musician I bought ns5r instead of soundcanvas. I recorded quite a lot of backing tracks with it. The result was people constantly asking me what gear I used, because at that time everyone used sc88 or compatible. The ns5r was very dirty, very programmable but most important very bassy and had nice revebs. It was build like a tank, which made it a stable device for taking it on the road. Unfortunatly the piano was really bad and it had some buffer-quirk that made it slow/sloggy at heavy MIDI-load. Happy to see it a LGR!

This isn't a video, this is pornography. Sweet woodgrain covered pornography. mmmm...

Wow, I wondered how well some kind of setup like this for Old-School PC Gaming would work, this is just fantastic! And, bonus points, I love ANY audio equipment with back-lit LCD displays...the more information dense, the better! Seriously though, for a "Foolin' around" setup...a 486 with flash card in place of the tradition Hard Drive, with all the killer MIDI out-boards for the best sound for just about any classic game...it's starting to become a Drool-Worthy setup.