SNG files from Voyetra SPG...

Hello,

It might be a help if you attached a small example of the type of file you have. I suspect verious different systems use the .SNG filename, but the actual data in them could be quite different.

I assume you no longer have access to the original software. That system might have an option to 'export' as .SMF or .MID.

Initial investigation suggests that Voyetra SPG is DOS software. Also the indication is that it CAN export to a .MID file.

I have just downloaded a version of the Voyetra system, version 4 point something. I have a number of pure DOS computers here, incl the one I use for most of my midi bits, so installing and running the system would be no problem. I'd just need to confirm that the version I've got WIL load your .SNG, and WILL export to .MID. I'd expect that the default SAVE process would still be .SNG, but the export to .MID would be an option. Both the DOS type sequencer systems I have already normally save as their own format, but CAN save as midi as an alternatinve

Geoff

Hey Geoff! Thank you for your response.
I actually still have SPG running on a dos system. Unfortunately I have hundreds of files to be converted. I was hoping for an easier way. Lol. But I probably am going to have to accept that there’s no other way... God knows I have plenty of time on my hands these days. ?

Ah - so what you really wanted was a utility prog that could do something like SNG2MID *.SNG *.MID.

Well, maybe there is, but need to check some things out first.

My earlier question is answered, I've installed the prog, and it's working. I've not selected any drivers, but the PC I've used is the one with my ROLAND LAPC-I card in, and that card is on the list of drivers, so I could do something with that, but I've no interest in recording or playing via V-SPG. Anyway, the installation includes some *.sng files.

I don't immed see any option to export to midi, but there are references to midi, and a midi analyser, and in that there's an option to save a .MDI file - maybe that is a variant of midi file?

I've got v 4.10 of the system - which version do you have, and does that have an export option (or SAVE to midi), and where is it (hidden in a sub-menu?).

In the meantime, if you could pick a file, not too big, and send me the .SNG and the converted .MID?

Geoff

Joe,

Well, don't mind me!

I am fascinated by this sort of thing, I've spent FAR too many hours trying to make sense of data files, mostly work related involving data files from accounting systems, etc.

I've been looking in some detail at the .SNG files provided with the installed system, specifically MINUETG and the Joplin one.

The data at the beginnng of the file looks like nothing sensible, but much further through I come to large blocks of data, each block headed with what must be a track name, and these blocks start looking a bit (and only a bit) like midi data. BUT, there does look like there could be some structure to the data, a bit like midi. It would certainly help to have a midi file, and a .SNG file, of the same thing (supposedly).

I've downloaded a manual for version 4 of Voyetra - OK, it's the manual for (I think) the Atari version, so the screen pictures don't all tie up, but the commands etc seem to be the same and the manual should be useful. Found one thing, the MODE command refers to swapping between SNG mode and MID mode etc, and supposedly the system saves using the current mode, so does that mean that if you LOAD a .SNG while in SNG mode, then swap mode and then save while in MID mode you save a midi file? Not found any sign of a better way, and you cannot (it seems) change the file extension, this is totally dependant on the mode you're in!

By the way, the system does seem to perform fine on my Pentium 75 running DOS 5.0. I've now loaded the driver for my Roland LAPC-I card, but I've not tried playing anything.so I might trouble to see what midi actually does.

I've not seen any sign of any utility progs to convert SNG to MID, but I have seen reference to different varieties of SNG, incl some that are essentially digital audio (were these to do with Korg systems ?) so you'd need to be careful. I've had the same problem looking for info about .MUS files, there are different versions of that as well.

Geoff

Joe,

Right, if you're interested...

My installation of Voyetra is now playing through the Roland card, so the driver is OK and things are complete. The LAPC-I is NOT GM, although I do have some banks of sounds that will make it GM if needed.

I've tried what seemed like 'the way', and this works. I LOADed a .SNG, swapped MODE to MID and then SAVEd and it asked me the questions indicated in the manual for saving to midi and I went with all the defaults (is that best ?) and yes, it saved the file as .MID. I moved the resultant file to my normal midi playing directory, went into my normal playing system, and it played fine, so the mifi file is OK.

So, I've got a matching pair of .SNG and .MID!

In spite of the warnings in the manual about midi files being slow, the convertion seemed instant - maybe that's due to the machine being a Pentium 75 with a load of RAM?

Anyway, if it would help you, I could convert a pile of the files, receive and return files via .zip using email?

As I understand it, Voyetra is capable of doing some things in a sort of batch mode, within a .BAT file, but I'm not sure it can do this sort of thing. I think I saw a reference to midi being excluded? I'll check that further.

Geoff

Hello!

I hope you'll excuse the intrusion in the thread. This is my first post to midi.org and i joined specifically to add my interest about this topic. Glad to see your success in the thread above on translating a .sng file to a .mid. I was an avid Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold user in the 90s but i no longer have a DOS setup. I also have been wanting a way to convert a large amount of .sng files to MIDI using a non-manual process. I've been periodically searching the web for many years when i stumbled onto this one recently. My question specifically is if anyone out there has specifications on the .sng format. I'm a software engineer and would be willing to write code to parse .sng into a format that would allow people to make tools for this type of translation. I don't know the legality involved but ideally someone from Voyetra/Turtle Beach would open source the .sng format so as to allow this. In any case i'm willing to help with any technical tasks to this end.

Thanks!
-Vasil

Hello,

Regarding your question to this thread, the problem is that there are a number of variants of .SNG format, as this seems to be a populat extension. None of the ones I found seem to be the format required, i.e. for Voyetra.

If the VS software can, in effect, do this conversion, then there must be some logic to the process, as in data in the .SNG file that CAN be changed into a midi file, it'll be a matter of trying to work this out.

Maybe there's a little DOS utility somewhere that will sit in memory and receive keystrokes from a file and push them into the keyboard buffer, that can be inside a loop to step through each file required? I'm not sure it would be worthwhile creating a program from square one when, in effect, Voyetra CAN do it for you??

Geoff

Hi Geoff - After a long search, I found your back and forth about converting SNG files to Midi or MID files. I have two small SNG files that were created using MidiSoft years ago. Looking at your forum entries, it looks like I'll need DOS, which I don't have. Was there an alternative? My search for an online converter was a bust, and my attempts at recovering MidiSoft haven't worked. Thanks, Mac

Hello Mac,

The system that I downloaded is a DOS program. However, the answer to your question will depend.

If you merely want to use the system to load a .SNG and the re-export as a .MID I would expect that you could use the software under something like XP, or even a later system if you use DOS-BOX an W7 onwards will not run a pure DOS program.

If you wanted to use Voyetra to actually play, this might require you to go beyond what even XP might accept, but I don't know.

However, if you want to convert just the two files, then I could happily do that for you. Just attach them to a message here (you'd need to put the two files into a .zip file and attach that as if I remember the forum software does not accept .mid as a valid filename extention for attachments (I complained about this one, someone changed something so that .mid did work, but then this change got 'lost'?).

I've still got the old Pentium with Voyetra here, would not take long to do.

Geoff

Hey - Great! Thanks for the quick response. I'll attach the files, D1.SNG (150 KB) and D2.SNG (527 KB). I think I've got both in D2.zip. Thanks for your help.

As a backup, I bought a copy of the original MidiSoft Studio 4.0 on eBay. I can install Windows 95 on this PC as a dual-boot and maybe get MidiSoft to load (I have other files to convert).

All I need is a .MID (preferably Midi 1 format) file which I can then load with my current composition software.

Appreciate the help! - Mac

Hello Mac,

Got your files OK.

First of all, they looked rather large. Odd.

I looked at the binary data, and thought that they didn't look right. The .SNG files I'd checked before had some hints of midi type data visible, incl big blocks of data that was 'almost' midi. Your files had no hint of anything like.

Turned on the old computer and transferred your files over, went into Voyetra, and tried to load D1. System immed said Cannot Load as not a valid Song.

.SNG files are used by various systems, as I noted in a previous post in this thread. BUT these other variants are probably totally different systems, and the data is quite incompatible. Maybe your files ARE for Voyetra, but for a much later version than I have, maybe for a WinDoze version and might be more digital than midi type (i.e. data representing indiv notes and on/off instructions, etc).

Are your files created by Voyetra, and if so, do you know which version? If they might have been created by something else, any idea what?

Geoff

Mac,

I don't know what's going on here.

This thread is about Voyetra files. Always has been.

I've never heard of MidiSoft, but now I check up on this it seems that this is a quite different system. It appears to support midi type files, and maybe it's own format files, but I see no sign of it supporting anything called .SNG - maybe it does support a format of that name but it's nothing to do with the format used by Voyetra.

If you've found a copy of MidiSoft that you can use, you'd be far better to try to load that, and load your files in and then maybe export them as MIDI.

The system called MidiSoft would appear to be a WinDoze system, not DOS - but maybe you had a very old version that WAS DOS? A later WinDoze version may still support the files used by an earlier version?

Geoff

Thanks for checking out the files. I'm sorry to have barged into the Voyetra thread, but it was the closest I could find. I've not used Threads before, and realize now I probably should have opened a new request. I have moved through various composition programs over the years and was sure the SNG files originated with MidiSoft. My next stop will be an early version of QuickScore. QuickScore changed owners at some point and that may have been when SNG files were not longer supported. Thanks again for your help! Since my questions aren't relevant to Voyetra, is there a way I can withdraw them from the thread? - Mac

Mac,

It doesn't matter about removing the posts, they are fully relevant to MIDI and MIDI files, and the comments about SNG files being maybe relevane to various different systems is important enough to stay visible. If you do determine which system the files posted come from, it could be a big help to update this thread. However, if you would rather delete then, then this can be done easily.

The files you sent seem to me to be far too large to be anything other than quite recent. At least part of the data in the files could be digital, rather than midi type.

I understand that files for Korg systems like i3 and x3 used a .SNG file, however you NEED the relevant Korg device to read this data in, and only then might it be re-saved as midi. And note that the data format for - say - an i3 is different from that for an x3. Also for those systems the stored files seem NOT to include any information about patches/sounds set, so if you load music data, you need to manually set the patch data.

You mentioned QuickScore - I had a system called that LONG ago, and your files are certainly NOT from that. This system used .QSD for it's own format, or .MID for midi files.

Additional note here. The version of QuickScore I have is fully named as QuickScore DeLuxe, and was published 1992 by Dr T's. This is DOS software, and it presents empty scores on the screen and notes can be entered via midi , or mouse. Multiple staves are available to allow multi part composition. Work can be saved as .QSD or .MID, and with a soundcard you can play back files directly. The package came with a pretty useful manual.

Geoff

I exchanged emails with Chris Sion re: QuickScore. QuickScore had gone through a couple of owners, I think, and you are correct - their unique file format is QSD. I had thought that, maybe in an earlier incarnation, QuickScore had had SNG files as well. Based on what I've been able to figure out, SNG was a MidiSoft file format. I found an "unopened" original version of MidiSoft Studio 4.0 on eBay and will try to install it. I have access to original disks for Windows xP and 98, if I have to reload the OS in order to get MidiSoft to work. Thanks again for all your help - sorry for the breaches in Thread "etiquette". I'll drop you a note if I can "prove" that there was an SNG version that was unique to MidiSoft.

Mac

Don't worry, Mac, I've got you covered. I downloaded MidiSoft Studio 4 and installed it in a virtual Win98. Here are the resulting MIDI files.

Midisoft Studio uses the SNG format to store the MIDI info along with many other things that it allows you to do (from what I was reading, you can work with up to 64 "tracks/channels" at a time). It did note that some information might be lost when saving as a MIDI, but I gave it a quick listen and they sound the same to me.

(As an aside, the "Create New Post" button is currently missing from the forum, so even if you had wanted to create your own thread for this, you would have had to know which hoops to jump through to create the post...)

Well, certainly, on the basis of what Jason has done, these files MUST have been MidiSoft, as they seem to have converted fine.

I've taken the liberty of having a listen to the .MID versions. D1 seems to be a partial version of a version of the same piece. D2 seems to be slightly different, slightly re the instrumentation, and slightly again re some of the variations, but D2 I'd say is complete as there's a start, a middle and an end. Musically, D1 seemed slightly nicer, but D2 is still fine and has the extra benefit of being complete.

Very nice work, really.

Given the respective size of the files (.SNG and .MID), yes, there is a LOT of data that has been lost, but clearly there is a LOT of data in the .SNG that has nothing to do with MIDI. No idea what it might be?

The midi files clearly included instrument settings, and I looked in the raw midi files and saw that, for example, 'Flute' and 'Bass' were there as text. So I did a search of the data in the .SNG file and found the same text, but well through the file, widely spaced out (Flute is at &H7528 and Bass is at &H11A04). Each is followed closely by data, some of which MIGHT be midi data. But it's FAR from obvious.

Keep up the great work!

Geoff

So the info I read was for the first version of the software on... Amiga maybe? I had a quick look through v4 and it seemed to have an "unlimited" amount of tracks available (I stopped scrolling around 365 or so).

Along with saving as a SNG (Song file) and MID, it can also save a MNF (Music notation Format). I'm attaching the MNF for D2, in case you wish to dig through that info as well.

From the "Help" under the Save As option

With Studio for Windows, you can save your new musical creations, modifications, and recordings using one of two file formats: Song, (.SNG) or MIDI Type 1 (.MID). Song files are Midisoft sequencer files and can be opened and read by other Midisoft sequencers. MIDI File Type 1 is a general standard multi-track MIDI file.

Note that the help does not mention the MNF.

It can also record and edit WAV files as part of the project, so it appears to be similar to a lot of the multi-track editors available today in that respect.

Thanks to Jason and Geoff! In the meantime, I found a way to run Windows 3.1 on my current Windows 10 PC (used DosBOX and a downloaded version of 3.1). Then installed MidiSoft Studio 4 (like Jason) and was off and running, easily opening and resaving files in MIDI format. Thanks to you both. There are a LOT of SNG formats...

Hello Mac,

Thanks for the update.

Interesting to hear that you've got your system up and running, and are set to create some MORE great pieces?

I played your D2 piece previously through my 'digital' setup, which comprises SynthFont using the 'Timbres of Heaven' SF2 file for the sound sources, and it sounded pretty good.

I've just gone back to my old 'analog' (vintage) setup, where the midi playback is sent from the all DOS system via the Roland LAPC-I card (acting merely as the interface) to my Yamaha MU90r. Output via a Fostex MC102 Keyboard Mixer. Transferred the midi file to the old setup, and set it playing.

Sounds EVEN BETTER - the MU90r sounds seem to suit it, I don't know what you used when you were composing/creating the piece? The Yamaha box supports some nice reverb too, which was not available via the digital playback. I could try it through the Korg NS5r as well?

I've got a number of GREAT pieces composed/created specifically for the Yamaha box, and some of these are GREAt and others are VERY GREAT and your piece is almost as good, all wonderful for demonstrating what can be achieved with midi - although obviously the composition and the performing helps too!

I could send you some of the Xscape pieces, but you do need an XG Yamaha MU50 or better. They don't sound right with the SynthFont setup even though that has substantial XG support.

Best wishes for your future work.

Geoff