Hi there as with all Dosbox games on GOG for some reason the midi defaults to sound blaster. However if you change it to general midi I feel that you get much better results. To do this simply open the INSTALL.EXE in the "SCREAM" folder with the DOSbox.exe in the "DOSBOX" folder to access the settings. Select general midi is the music settings for a better result.

This, and for even better results get a tool like CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth and use a nice Soundfont like Fluid R3.

I'll have to check that out. Thanks man

A while back I created a playlist with some General MIDI music played back via the Fluid R3 soundfont (only music from three games thus far). Feel free to check it out if you want to get a rough idea what results you can get by using a soundfont. Especially the Ultima III main theme and Abuse soundtrack sound just epic IMO.

Note that if you're on Windows 8 or later VirtualMIDISynth is not able to manage the default MIDI device of Windows and you have to change the MIDI device ID in the DOSBox config to target VirtualMIDISynth.

Ahhh that sounds annoying. Does it sound much better then general midi?

Well, you be the judge, I think the playlist above should give you a good idea. In my opinion it absolutely is worth the effort, depending on the game it can really change the experience.

Okay I just played some of those tunes through my awesome pare of speakers. Do you have a link to an easy to follow tutorial that shows how to get this working. preferably with GOG games.

Damn, I had once written a decent tutorial myself but sadly my website is down. Anyway, it's really not hard:

1. Download and install Coolsoft's VirtualMIDISynth
2. Download at least one Soundfont
3. If necessary unpack via sfArk by loading the soundfont into the program and clicking "start" (the unpacked file should appear in the source directory)
4. Mount the Soundfont in VirtualMIDISynth via the plus sign and make sure it's checked
5.a In Windows XP to 7: Choose VirtualMIDISynth as the default MIDI device in the VirtualMIDISynth setup program
5.b In Windows 8 to 10: open the game's DOSBox configuration file (in case of GOG games usually found in the game's installation folder and titled "dosbox<gametitle>.conf") and set midiconfig to 1 (possibly a higher value if you have other MIDI devices installed on your system)

I'm writing this from memory so I can't guarantee it's correct but it should be. Feel free to write back if something's wrong / not clear.

Can you use this thing and have it fully in the background at all times?

Yes. The configuration program is literally only used for configuring the thing. The program changes Windows' default MIDI device and (nearly) all MIDI playback on your system will go through the custom synth.

But it only works this way up to Windows 7. Starting with Windows 8 Microsoft has made it impossible to change the system's default MIDI device and you need to manually set DOSBox to use VirtualMIDISynth (as explained in my post above).

It's just that I remember using some program like that and whenever I fired up Dosbox I had this window pop up with some equalizer stuff which was super annoying so I ended up deleting it.

It may have been an early version of Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth but it does not do that anymore.

Best combination is Coolsoft VMS & changing the game's internal output to General Midi, imo! I do this routinely for every game in which it is possible...;)

You have to remember to set the mididevice setting under the midi heading in the .conf file to mididevice=Win32 , as well. And make sure the Coolsoft VMS Windows configurator is set to "Coolsoft VMS" as the midi device to use for the "Windows Media Player" setting--on the midimapper tab.

No, what happened is that he checked the box inside the Coolsoft Windows configuration program to load the mixer every time the program runs. All he has to do is uncheck that box in the configurator options...! It's the first box at the top of the "options" tab. From then on the program operates transparently--you never see it.

I gave this a try MIDISelector 4 and seems to work well:

http://openmidiproject.osdn.jp/MIDISelector_en.html

But I didn't really need it. I was just trying to find something to replace the disabled coolsoft midiselector.
Like you explaind I've always just edited the games config file to point to midi device.

Anyway the midiselector linked above might be useful to someone.