Posted November 25, 2014
Question for more technical users:
I was under the impression that all MIDI in DosBox was simply pass-through to the top level OS (i.e. Windows). However, from what I can tell this only occurs when a given game is setup to use General MIDI. It appears that when Adlib or SoundBlaster is used as the music device, you get internal DosBox emulation.
Is this correct? I may be grossly misunderstanding things.
Here's why I ask. I was messing around with Descent (I know there are source ports which are the better way to play the game, this was just for fun/education). I wanted to see how it sounded with different SoundFonts. So I installed VirtualMidiSynth and a bunch of libraries. However, it always sounded the same...until I ran the config tool and re-configured it to use "General MIDI" as the music device. At which point the MIDI was then being output to Windows and my different SoundFonts took effect.
Set the music device back to SoundBlaster as a test and got the same terrible sounding music. So is SoundBlaster MIDI internally emulated by DosBox? Does a game have to support General MIDI for the MIDI to be passed through to the OS or is there a way to for the SoundBlaster emulation use the OS MIDI as well?
I was under the impression that all MIDI in DosBox was simply pass-through to the top level OS (i.e. Windows). However, from what I can tell this only occurs when a given game is setup to use General MIDI. It appears that when Adlib or SoundBlaster is used as the music device, you get internal DosBox emulation.
Is this correct? I may be grossly misunderstanding things.
Here's why I ask. I was messing around with Descent (I know there are source ports which are the better way to play the game, this was just for fun/education). I wanted to see how it sounded with different SoundFonts. So I installed VirtualMidiSynth and a bunch of libraries. However, it always sounded the same...until I ran the config tool and re-configured it to use "General MIDI" as the music device. At which point the MIDI was then being output to Windows and my different SoundFonts took effect.
Set the music device back to SoundBlaster as a test and got the same terrible sounding music. So is SoundBlaster MIDI internally emulated by DosBox? Does a game have to support General MIDI for the MIDI to be passed through to the OS or is there a way to for the SoundBlaster emulation use the OS MIDI as well?