Music Sound

This table provides summary of comparison of various MIDI enhancement standards by various parameters.

	MT-32	GM	GS	XG level 1	XG level 2	XG level 3	GM level 2
Entry date	1987	1991	1991	1994	1997	1998	1999
Organization	Roland	MMA	Roland	Yamaha			MMA
Minimum equipment requirements
Simultaneous voices	8 or more (up to 32 partials)	24	24	32	64	128	32
Simultaneous melodic voices	N/A	16	16	N/A XG synths have no separate limits on melodic / percussion sounds			16
Simultaneous percussion voices		8	8				16
MIDI channels allocation	8 channels, 1 rhythm channel	16 channels, #10 is fixed for percussion	16 channels, one channel can be set to play drum kits	16 channels, every channel can play drum kits with bank set to 16256	32 channels, 2 ports, drums as in XG level 1	64 channels, 4 ports, drums as in XG level 1	16 channels, #10 and #11 are used for percussion
Channel recommendations				#1: melody; #2: melody (duet); #3: bass; #4: pad; #5: riff; #10: drums [1]
Sounds/effects available
Melodic instruments	128	128	226	480			256
Drum kits	1	1	8 + 1 SFX kit	9 + 2 SFX kits			9
Drum sounds per kit	30	47	61	72			61
Controllers		11	26 (GM+11)				23
RPNs		4					5
SysEx messages		2					14

External links

• http://www.yamaha.co.uk/eurohome/library/midi/xgformat.pdf
• XG Specification
• Roland Sound Cards, an extensive guide to various models and their capabilities
• GM modules for the masses, a comparison article