Forgot this earlier, but it's useful to have an midi sample to test with.

Bump.

Anyone else think this should be a sticky?

HI all thought I should let you know. Timbres of Heaven 3.0 has been released! Lots of improvements all around. Be sure to check it out!

http://www.mediafire.com/download/6u6x2j6iw0azqet/Timbres+Of+Heaven+GM_GS_XG_SFX+V+3.0+Final+!!!.7z

For everyone thinking it's not worth the time, I've made a video with multi audio. You can get it here :
http://ovh.kabalo.org/media/full_intro.mkv
EDIT : Link is broken atm. I will look into it when I remember (12/2018)

The default audio is the default GOG install. I advise to open it with VLC, as it will show you what is each track. In order, it is :
1) Default install
2) MIDI with Microsoft GS
3) MIDI with TimGM6mb
4) MIDI with ChoriumRevA
5) MIDI with Timbres of heaven 3.0
6) Roland with Munt and CM32 roms

Audio is not synced, some tracks worse than others. Note that ToH is much louder than other tracks. Be carefull when you switch to it.

Personnally, I don't like Roland, it sounds muffled and electronic. I prefer Chorium or ToH.

And imo, X-Wing default is not that bad. I tried with adventure games, S&M, indie, simon, and GM blows out the default. It is also awesome in Duke Nukem. This post should be cleaned up a little and posted on the general forum.

Or we could make a thorough tutorial on gogwiki or pcgamingwiki.

Why not put it on Youtube?

Because YouTube doesn't support multiple audio tracks?

Well you can do what others have done and string them one after another, with time links in the info portion to each setting.

Well, it's off-topic, but I don't see why I should have put it on Youtube. It felt much easier as a ddl with everything in it.

Feel free to post it on youtube with your idea.

If you want to pull the post over the wiki I don't mind, it's supposed to be helpful for all. :)

I should also say, great work on the video, I love being able to switch back and forth to hear the difference between the banks.

I didn't even know about YT multitracks! Great work! +1

By the way, for me ChoriumRevA is the most faithful to the original GM here.

Still, with some games I can hear the difference between my SoundBlaster and that soundfont (most noticeable in Descent 1 level 1, where the strong drums become weird sounds)

My take on General MIDI Sound Fonts is not to try to find one that sounds "as close as possible" to an original Sound Canvas. Try to find one that sounds "better and beyond".

If you want original Roland Sound Canvas, buy a SC-55 unit and connect it with a USB to MIDI cable. Done.

What these modern Sound Fonts offer however, is music that is beyond what Sound Canvas is capable of. IMO that's the real magic here.

For purists, I made recordings on real vintage gear a while ago. This is the X-Wing 1993 version:

Roland CM-32L: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/2/3/37231621/roland_cm-32l.ogg

Roland SC-55: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/uploads/3/7/2/3/37231621/roland_sc-55.ogg

I installed CoolSoft VirtualMIDIsynth and loaded the Timbres of Heaven soundfont. It works when I play a MIDI file in Windows Media Player, but doesn't seem to make any difference to the music that plays in X-Wing CD (1994).

If I alt-tab out of the game while music is playing and open VMS' MIDI Mixer, the master volume bar doesn't show any activity, like it does when I play a file in WMP.

It seems like DOSbox isn't loading the VMS device driver (which I have set as the default in both Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices and the Configure VMS utility under "MIDI Mapper." Anyone know how to force it to do that? Here's what the MIDI section in my dosbox_xwingcd.conf file looks like:

----------
[midi]
# mpu401: Type of MPU-401 to emulate.
# Possible values: intelligent, uart, none.
# mididevice: Device that will receive the MIDI data from MPU-401.
# Possible values: default, win32, alsa, oss, coreaudio, coremidi, none.
# midiconfig: Special configuration options for the device driver. This is usually the id of the device you want to use.
# See the README/Manual for more details.

mpu401=intelligent
mididevice=default
midiconfig=
----------

I've also tried mididevice=win32, midiconfig=0 (someone on another website said that '0' means VirtualMIDIsynth), and also with a bunch of mt32.* settings. I'm running Windows XP SP3.

Any ideas?

Nice :D

Enjoy the General MIDI music, it's really cool.

That Roland SC-55 track sounds great. (except for the lasers which sound weird) Although I'm not sure I'd pay the 99+ euros that a unit appears to cost.

Thanks for sharing those files.