For General MIDI games, as long as you'd find a good Sound Canvas (or XG) compliant soundfont, you should be set, because most if not almost all PC General MIDI games seemed to be tuned with Roland Sound Canvas in mind, or so I'd like to believe. From my experience, SGM is a pretty good almost Sound Canvas compliant soundset, but even it seems to get some things wrong every now and then. Like that silly helicopter sound in Dune 2 intro (it should be some kind of space ship sound), or some other off-sounding instruments in Dune 2 music.

Synergi8 soundfont sounds closer to real Sound Canvas in that particular game IMHO, but if you are looking only for one General Midi replacement soundfont, I propose SGM. But, it is quite easy to change different soundfonts with BASSMIDI, just a couple of clicks.

For General MIDI, if you want as hassle-free as possible, you don't necessarily need to do anything, just use the default Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth that your Windows already has enabled. It is passable, just not that great.

But for Roland MT-32 games, you should really use Munt, if at all possible.

Thanks for the OP for the Chorium soundfont, it actually sounds quite good. :)

But I don't get it, it also has that odd helicopter sound in the Dune 2 intro, just like SGM? Why? I don't recall Sound Canvas giving the same, but maybe I just don't remember good... EDIT: Maybe I just remember it wrong. The sound effect is different with Roland MT-32.

My search has apparently ended. I finally found a Sound Canvas (Roland SC-55) sound font. I just put it to a real test (Dune 2 and Privateer), and it sounds pretty much how I remember Roland SCC-1 sounding. Mind you, I haven't heard my SCC-1 in action for years, being an ISA card and all.

And now that the latest Munt (MT-32 emulator) is so close to the real thing as well... man, this is almost as big thing to me as when DOSBox or WinUAE were released.


I still think that judging by the quality of individual instruments, many other sound fonts may be superior to Sound Canvas, especially the ChoriumRevA, but in many cases the SC-55 soundfont will probably sound closer to what the original composer was thinking of because Sound Canvas was widely used for composing General MIDI support for PC games. So the balance of instruments is the same as the composer intended etc.

I think I'll use only this Sound Canvas and Chorium soundfonts (in this order of preference) for General MIDI games from now on.

I'm a happy camper! :)

What is the name of SC-55 sound font and where to find it?

Sorry for necro-ing this topic, but I do actually have something to add.
For lazy people, like me, there are DOSBox builds out there with Munt incorporated.
Such as Ykhwong's build for example.
When using a build like that all you need to do is add two ROM files (MT32_Control.ROM and MT32_PCM.ROM) to the DOSBox directory and select MT-32 as the MIDI device in DOSBox and the game.
This is IMO easier than installing all those drivers and sound fonts and such, although of course more limited.
Also, I noticed that GOG had not included the configuration utilities with Space Quest I-III so I had to edit resource.cfg and change the sound driver to MT32.DRV.

Maybe everybody already knew all this, but if even one person finds this post interesting and/or helpful that's enough for me.

Thats useful thanks for bringing it up

A small clarification: the different soundfonts were meant for General MIDI (ie. how to replace the flat sounding default Windows General MIDI soundfonts with better ones), not the MT-32 emulator. This discussion was getting a bit muddy because both General MIDI and MT-32 was discussed at the same time. Some DOS games require General MIDI, some MT-32 (and some support both).

I'm unsure which will be easier in the end, since you probably have to swap between General MIDI and MT-32 output with different DOS games. Also, if you use the special DOSBox build, do you have to replace the ones GOG games use with it, one by one? With Munt and BASSMIDI, your MIDI output changes are universal, no matter whether you are using a standalone DOSBox installation, or GOG games, or even Windows games/apps. So I guess it depends which will be easier.

By the way, where can you download the "Ykhwong's build"?

http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ => DOSBox SVN builds

There they list "clean SVN builds" which redirects to somewhere else (EmuCR) with various files, "official DOSBox builds", and other DOSBox variants. Below them there are "older releases" like DOSBox SVN Daum" etc.

I'm at loss, where is the "Ykhwong's build"?

His builds are the 'older' builds, which are still newer than what GOG uses for a lot of games.
And yes you would have to either replace it on GOG releases or use a frontend like DBGL.
The thing about general midi, I did not know because as you mentioned this (and 95% of all topics) are a muddled mess.
Hence why I mentioned a DOSBox build with Munt integrated (I just picked Ykhwong because that's the one I tried). I still think it's easier than installing virtual MT-32 devices, especially on 64-bit Windows 7.
Of course I'm coming from a place where I couldn't make sense of this messy topic and I just wanted a relatively simple post to make certain games sound better.. something with 1. Do this 2. do that would've been great.
Instead we got a topic where audiophiles were discussing general midi, MT-32 emulation and so on.

I tried to give some kind of instruction in message #14, but maybe I was a bit too verbose because I wanted the instructions to be detailed for those who are not familiar with DOS game sound settings, or what is the difference between General MIDI and Roland MT-32 in PC games (I think the OP also got them mixed up), etc.

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/how_to_make_midis_sound_good_again/post14


I think the shortened instructions for getting MT-32 emulation to work with Munt is:

1. If you are using Vista or Win7, install BASSMIDI. If you are using XP, you can skip this step.

2. Install Munt according to its instructions (readme file).

3. Whenever you want to use MT-32 emulation, select it in BASSMIDI, or if using XP, MIDI sound settings (Control Panel).

Something I've noticed since playing around with his.. GOG seems to have removed the configuration utility from some of the games (for example Space Quest III and The Pandora Directive).
Not insurmountable, but annoying.

Also, installing the 32-bit Munt driver on 64-bit WIndows 7 doesn't seem to work.

Edit: Found this topic, will have to try that.

Edit 2: I now seem to have a MT-32 Synth Emulator device. I haven't tried it, but I'm assuming that works.
So I think that we might now have a relatively simple way to install it on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. I will test it tomorrow though, cuz I'm very very tired and going to bed.

Edit 3: I can confirm it works, so this page of this topic contains a pretty easy way of getting better music quality for GOGs.

Bumping to avoid the archiving process. There's some good info in this thread.

Wow, how great could stuff sound with a good synthesizer, I never knew :(

Bumping to add some random data

1.- Not all soundfonts for BassMidi (or Coolsoft VirtualMidiSynth, the one I use) are good. I usually take the 65.8mg music man gm gs, as a pretty good sounding General Midi/Standard that, thanks god, plays everything in tune and obeys most or all the midi commands (if not, glissandos can be pretty painful).

2.- As stated before, not always MT32 or Midi were the better solutions. For games like Reunion or Dungeon Master 2, the one to choose is actually Gravis Ultrasound (which isn't exactly midi, but...). For games like Dune or Nicky Boom, you better stick to Adlib. For later Sierra games, General Midi. For earlier Sierra games, MT32. And you will have to keep the dosbox config file open, and change the midi device for what you are going to use. And you will be a really happy retro gamer.

3.- ALWAYS tweak the sound settings of the games you get from GOG or Steam and have a Dosbox layer. Locate the sound config exe, change the dosbox conf where the executable is called and change it for the sound config, setup the sound. and revert the executable being called.

4.- And there are even games that were badly translated into Midi, into ALL kind of midi, as The 7th Guest, where an octave became a semitone and that sounds like crap.

Good luck everyone.

EDIT: and 5.-, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get into any kind of Dos games info and not getting technical. Because back then you were demanded to be technical. I remember when I got any upgrade, like a Sound Blaster Pro, and then ran EVERYTHING to see the changes. Game per game.