Any chance we could get the MM5 original soundtrack as a bonus similar to the MM4 and MM6 soundtracks? It would compliment the MM4 soundtrack nicely. In some ways I like the darkside of xeen music more then clouds of xeen because the darkside of xeen seems to have some more of a sci-fi sound to it. I just feel like with only the MM4 soundtrack I'm not getting the full XEEN experience.

I strongly second this.
The 5th game's soundtrack is overall better, I'd say.

Thirded. I'd also like the soundtrack for MM3.

And fourthed

I want it tooooo :O....

I haven't seen the soundtrack available for direct download. However, there is some good information about extracting music on the [url=http://xeen.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:M_File_Format]Xeen Wiki[/url].....

well I found the midis... but it sounds different than ingame, because I guess... dosbox emulates the sound differently while winamp plays midi with general midi

It's the difference between FM and MIDI music. If you choose adlib or sound blaster as your sound card, it'll play the FM synth versions of the music, otherwise it'll play the MIDI versions. The MIDI rips are, obviously, just the MIDI versions. They sound different.

Doesn't the MIDI also sound different depending on your particular soundcard? Since the audio itself is not encoded, but rather just says "play these notes with these instruments at these times", the actual sound can vary based on the synth hardware (or software) used to actually play the MIDI track, I would think.

Through DOSBox this is complicated even more because the program is specifically emulating legacy MIDI devices.

Of course, these differences are likely much more subtle than the difference between MIDI and FM.

I seem to recall that while DosBox emulates subtleties between sound cards, ultimately all it does is pump midi commands back to your systems midi system, so if you select a midi device, the music should sound the same as if you played the midi file directly.
You are right about differences in sound cards, however, or more specifically differences in software midi synthesizers these days as I don't think sound cards have midi samples built into them any more. If you boot up win95 and play some midi music on that and then boot up Win7 and play the same midi file, you'll really notice the difference 15 years can make.
Timidity is a midi emulator that allows you to plug in different sound fonts very easily. The default sound font is about 20MB and makes music sound alright. I found a more complete font file, over 200MB in size (something the sound cards of the 90s could never hope to have) and my computer became a freakin' orchestra! It was unbelievable. If you want a good experience, I highly recommend installing and making Timidity your default midi engine. Follow the instructions here and run "install" in the xeen directory to set the music and effects to Roland Canvas. It's a lot of work, but you will definitely not be disappointed.

edit: Correction: when it gets to the part about downloading the a340, download Shan's Soundfont instead. Way way better!

Thanks for that advice WizardStan... I'd heard about sound fonts and how they can make MIDI sound amazing on modern systems but I'd never tried it myself. So far I've only played through MM1 and MM2, so soon I'll be starting the games with MIDI music and I'll give this a shot. I suppose I'll have to start with the default settings first so I can hear the difference once I've applied the new sound fonts.

Unfortunately, your instructions link isn't working for me. Also, am I correct that the MM4 soundtrack provided by GOG actually contains mp3 files of the MIDI music, so it won't be affected by setting up the sound font?

Oh, and you say to set the effects to Roland Canvas too... I would think these are separate and would not involve the sound font at all. Does it somehow improve sound effects as well as music?

Is there any way to get Dosbox & Timidity to work together in Mac OS X?

Correct. The MM4 soundtrack is MP3s, but it's actually of the FM synth versions of the music, not the Midi versions. Strange that the link doesn't work for you. Works for me. Here it is again, pasted without fancy url tags: http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=5346

Setting it to Roland Canvas makes it use the extended midi music. If you choose Adlib or Sound Blaster for the music (choosing SB for speech is fine) then it will use the FM synch version of the music which is alright and was probably worlds better than the midi of the 90s, but midi has come a shockingly long way. Someone did an extract of the midi music a while back. If someone can find that (I'm pretty sure it's been posted to this forum a few times) you should be able to load the MID and the MP3 of the same song into Winamp (for example) and play them back to back and really hear the difference between them.

As far as getting timidity to work in MacOSX, I haven't a clue. It should be possible but I'm only familiar with Linux and Windows. Ask on the Dosbox forums, or search through it first at least. I'm sure someone will be glad to help you.

Well, after posting my question last night I got my hands dirty and compiled my own version of Timidity. I loaded up a midi from M&M4 and WOW, you are right, it sounds much different and far better.

It appears that on Linux Timidity can be run as a daemon that handles the ALSA midi sequencing. However, OS X does not use ALSA, it uses Mac's CoreAudio framework. I did a bit of searching but I could not find any way to redirect MIDI sequencing with CoreAudio.

Now, earlier versions of OS X (10.2, I believe) allowed you to specify your own soundfont, which would basically do what I'm looking for here, but it seems that Snow Leopard no longer allows you to do that.

Just as I was about to give up and go to bed, though, I found this little nugget: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3161987&group_id=52551&atid=467234

Apparently someone has made a patch to modify DOSBox for Mac and allow you to use one the fields for a different purpose: to indicate a specific soundfont to use. At heart, it's still using CoreAudio to do this, though, so perhaps there really is a way to get CoreAudio to use a different soundfont permanently. In either case, the patch may allow me to get the enhanced midi experience you've now made me aware of.

I think this is what I was getting at... my memory of the DOS-era sound setup programs was that you pick one device for sound effects and a separate device for MIDI music. Clearly one would pick the Roland Canvas for the MIDI, but I would imagine that SoundBlaster would be better for the sound effects. Since you say it's fine to pick it for speech, I think we are probably thinking the same thing.

Also, the link works now, thanks! I will definitely try this out when I (eventually) get to playing MM3.