What do I mean "again" some of you may ask? Well if you had a Yamaha DB50XG or Roland MT-32 or some such midi module back in the day, they sounded really good. How good, you may ask? Well just listen to this comparison:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApX60Y8djPI

Now, many didn't have those modules, and many lost them somewhere along upgrade road, and now many of us are even stuck with a newer version of Windows that doesn't even have a midi configuration option... but uses Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth! Oh, what a terrible fate!

Fear not! since we all love old games, and many old games use midi music, I am here to save you guys.

First, get the bassmidi driver/controller here: http://www.mudlord.info/bassmididrv/

Then you can get the WeedsGM3 soundfont from there, but it's not the best. I would recommend two alternatives depending on what kind of game you are playing. , which is best overall and outstanding for more symphonic or melodious soundtracks, or [url=http://www.un4seen.com/download.php?extra/ChoriumRevA]ChoriumRevA, which is fantastic for thumping or intense soundtracks.

Just start the Bassmidi configuration, add the soundfonts to the list (the ones at the bottom override the ones at the top) and then go to the advanced tab and set it to use Bassmidi instead of Microsoft. And don't worry, I have provided direct links but these are all legit, being given freely by their creators. There are some other free soundfonts to find online but I really think these are the best by far. To get something better you'd either have to get a high quality midi module and do some registry hacking to make Windows recognize it or buy a midi composition suite.

Lately I've been playing Dark Forces and Hexen with SGM-V2.01 then Doom 1&2 and Descent 1&2 with ChoriumRevA. If you're using GZDoom remember to change from Fmod to Bassmidi in the sound options. I highly recommend Descent 2 with ChoriumRevA. It's amazing! And just for kicks I would also recommend checking out the Eternal Doom soundtrack even if you don't play Doom.

Any special config needed for DOSBox or does the driver kick in if you setup the game with MT-32?

Read my mind! Your first sentence was my first thought, Dicetrain!

In that case your first pick should be MUNT - latest build (from the end of 2011) sounds just great.
Sound Fonts will not do any good for pre-GM games.

Uhhh... good question? I can't believe I didn't try this with dosbox yet. From what I'm reading, it should work if you set it to device=win32 and config=0 but that isn't changing anything for me. I've tried all sorts of different things and I can't get it to work. I even set it to "none" and the midi didn't turn off. What the...

Anyone know? I've been playing upgraded engines like GZDoom, DarkXL, dx2rebirth, etc. and they all just use windows midi instead of emulating one.

As far as I knew, MIDIs never sounded good. So I watched that video, and the difference in quality between the Sound Blaster (which I remember well) and that expensive MIDI widget is astounding. Until today, I didn't know that MIDI was truly capable of producing sound that was worth anything.

Though I have to agree with the comment on that video, why did Sierra write all of its music for a 600 dollar widget? Sure, it sounds great compared to the Sound Blaster, but 600 bucks back in the 90s?!!

Google search finds me an Ultima VIII thread where RafaelLopez insists that DOSbox doesn't properly capture midi, but he seemed to have fixed it so I'm going to PM him.A lot of music you hear on the radio is midi or at least contains a significant amount of midi. Same reason they make games with advanced DirectX 11 graphics or 5.1 DTS for $600 video cards or sound systems today, but even more so since most games were still being sold on floppies so they couldn't store redbook audio tracks. Midi was *it* so if you wanted your game to sound better you made it for better hardware.

DirectX 11 games look pretty good on sub-$200 dollar video cards. MIDI sounded like crap on the non-600 dollar widget. I hardly think that's a fair comparison.

OKAY! My friend helped me figure it out.

I had no idea you had to run each individual game's setup through dosbox to configure this stuff. So, that's all you have to do. Just make sure you're using general midi, Port 330, IRQ 2. Once you do that you can just leave the midi settings in the .conf file as they are since you just set it to use the default windows midi port.

Also, as a happy affirmation for Smannesman and correction for tburger, yes I tested this with Master of Orion 1 which is pre-GM and all I did was set it to MT-32, Port 330, IRQ 2 and it worked wonderfully. I guess midi protocol is midi protocol so it doesn't matter if it's a GM game or not.

Obviously you'll only sound as genuine to a real MT-32 as the soundfont you use, and Munt has a much better chance of coming close to the custom sound profiles in Sierra games, but this is still a MASSIVE improvement over SB16 emulation and for MoO1 I think it's better than the MT-32 video I saw on Youtube.

Sound quality. The only reason why they weren't using MIDI during the early parts of the '90s was that there wasn't a consistent result when they used it. The implemenations would vary widely. I remember hooking up a Disney Soundsource to my computer's parallel port to play Wolf 3D and it was a revelation. File sizes were a lot smaller as well.

You did have to give some things to make it happen, but it wasn't until later on when the SB really took over that those things became important.

I also found some additional soundfonts.

There is Magic Sound Font v2.0, which I have found to work best for rock stuff like Doom 1, but pretty weird once it deviates from rock. Still, good to have around for those kind of soundtracks. It can be found here:
http://www.personalcopy.com/sfarkfonts1.htm

And I'm downloading RealFont 2.1 from there to see how it works for the music genres he mentions. Also, my friend recommends airfontGM a340.

Now I'm tempted to get some old Sierra games...

Wow. I never knew MIDI could sound any better than it did back in the early 90s. Didn't even know about the external gizmos like the Roland MT-32.....

Currently listening to a demo of Tyrian 2000 set to use MIDI 330h, which, according to the instructions, is where the BASSMIDI driver/controller are set....Using the ChoriumRevA with it....

Even in the Jukebox of the Setup.exe, wow. Just wowies. Seriously.....

You could get the same (extended MT-32 = CM-32L) on an ISA sound card as well, namely LAPC-1. But it also cost arm and leg.

I bought a LAPC-1 back then new, and I didn't regret it one minute. I later sold it to a friend of mine (he hesitated first due to my asking price, but as soon as he heard it in action, he bought it no questions asked) and I bought an external second-hand CM-32L, because then I could use both a Roland SCC-1 sound card (for General MIDI) and the CM-32L (connected to MIDI OUT in the SCC-1) on the same PC.

As Tburger said, luckily Munt is nowadays quite close to the real thing, so you don't necessarily need the real thing anymore to hear the old PC games as they were intended to sound.

While Microprose did support Roland MT-32, their games never really sounded that good with it, at least those MPS games I've heard. Ok Subwar 2050 intro had quite good Roland music, but that's an exception.

Master of Orion supported both General MIDI and MT-32, and as with all such games that supported both, usually you should select General MIDI. That's because those games were usually optimized for General MIDI, so the MT-32 music in them would be merely an afterthought usually, kind of cut-down version of the General MIDI music.

With pre-General MIDI games, the music was optimized for MT-32 so they sound better than later MT-32 games.

If you use General MIDI for listening to MT-32 music, the results will be hit and miss at best. I personally wouldn't do it, but instead select even Soundblaster/Adlib. Many General MIDI cards had a special "MT-32 mode" which IIRC simply meant that the General MIDI instruments were rearranged so that they would be in the same order and places as default MT-32 instruments. So if the MT-32 game would play a piano sound, you'd get also the piano sound on that General MIDI card, and not e.g. a violin sound.

But that worked far from 100% either. The better sounding MT-32 games that changed the sounds would sound wrong even on the emulated "MT-32 mode". That's when you get the piano footstep sounds in Ultima Underworld, or silly sounding laser and whoosh sound effects in Wing Commander 1 (even though the game music itself would sound pretty good in those two games).


Taking all that into account, I'd add extra steps to your original instructions:

- After you have installed BASSMIDI and any GM/GS/XG soundfonts for your General MIDI/Sound Canvas games, install also Munt according to instructions (Google for it). For them you also need Roland MT-32 or CM-32L ROMs somewhere. I personally use CM-32L because that's what I always used. They are pretty much the same, but may yield a bit different results with some games (my understanding is that some earliest Roland games actually used some undocumented quirks of MT-32 to their advantage, while some later games used the extended sounds of CM-32L/LAPC-1 that didn't exist on MT-32).

- After the installation, you'll have the third "Default MIDI Synth" option in your BASSMIDI Advanced page for MT-32 music. So, I have e.g. these three currently:

a. BASSMIDI Driver (to be used with all General MIDI and Sound Canvas MIDI enabled games, uses the GM/GS/XG soundfont that you are using with BASSMIDI)

b. Microsoft GS Wavetable synth (the basic General MIDI soundfont that comes with Windows by default; passable with General MIDI/Sound Canvas games, but with BASSMIDI you'll get better soundfonts, and also extended Sound Canvas support with games that support them (and if your soundfonts support them)

c. MT-32 Synth Emulator (for MT-32 games, duh)


You don't need any special DOSBox build, nor change any DOSBox settings. So when you want to run some DOS game which supports either General MIDI or MT-32:

1. Run BASSMIDI and select either BASSMIDI (General MIDI) or MT-32 driver, depending which kind of game you will be playing. Note! I think you'll have to do this before you start DOSBox at all, so if you exit a MT-32 game and want to run a General MIDI game, you'll have to exit DOSBox completely before re-running BASSMIDI.

2. Run DOSBox. If you have not set the music output for your game yet, go to the game directory inside DOSBox, and look for something like INSTALL.EXE, SETUP.EXE, SETUP.COM or SETSOUND.EXE, and run it. Select General MIDI or MT-32 or whatever.

Some DOS games tried to detect the best option for you, so if it detected the presence of MPU-401 MIDI device, it'd select Roland MT-32 for sound output automatically, otherwise Adlib or Soundblaster. This could be usually overrided by some -options when you run the game executable. Such games like Monkey Island 2, Ski or Die, Lethal Weapon (which has one of the greatest MT-32 tunes in the intro) etc.

3. Then run the game (some .BAT or .EXE file).

Note: With GOG DOSBox games you'll need some extra steps in order to be able to run the game's sound setup, because GOG links usually run the game executable right away I think. The instructions above are generic DOSBox instructions to be run manually.

Thanks for checking it out, I'd like the general best sounding setup for my old games.
Although it's great that there are tons of ways to make different games sounds better, I'd like to use the one method that makes (for example) 90% of my games sound better with just one installation on my computer, instead of dozens of different installations and trying them all out.
I'm definitely not an audiophile, so just the majority of my games sounding above average is fine for me.