I see there was a similar question already a year ago, but it wasn't solved:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/little_big_adventure_series/music_quality_in_cinematics

So, by default the GOG version appears to use tinny Soundblaster OPL FM-synthesis sounds for the MIDI music, e.g. which is played in LBA1 during the flight/volcano intro video, or in the background during the gameplay.

I tried it with the original LBA (CD-version), and if you change the music sound card configuration to e.g. "Wave Blaster on Sound Blaster 16 (MIDI)", it gives superior General MIDI music in that intro and ingame music. (There's also a Roland MT-32 music option in the sound setup that you could use with Munt MT-32 emulator, but it sounds quite crappy, apparently just playing General MIDI music through MT-32 which is always a bad idea).

I checked what is the relevant option in LBA.CFG, and it should be this:

MidiDriver: A32MT32.DLL

However, if I change that manually to the LBA.CFG of the GOG version, the GOG version doesn't start at all, the DOSBox is aborted. I think there is some error message in the DOSBox windor, but it flashes away too fast to read it.

If I change the MidiDriver value back to the default A32SP2FM.DLL, the GOG version works again, with the crappier SB FM music.

Any ideas how to fix this?

I see though that the SETUP.EXE is there also with the GOG version. I didn't try it yet if I run that from DOSBox...

I kinda fixed this, by just copying the LBA.CFG from my retail installation to the GOG LBA game installation directory. Now also the GOG version works with General MIDI music. I don't know why simply editing the existing CFG didn't work.

I've attached the needed CFG file in this message, named LBA.png. Download it to your computer into the GOG LBA1 game directory and rename it to LBA.CFG. Before that you could rename your original LBA.CFG to something like LBA_OLD.CFG, just in case you want to use it again later.

Possibly also running the GOG-version's setup.exe in DOSBox works, I didn't try it. If you want to use it instead, select the Waveblaster option as your music card, "save parameters" and "quit to DOS".

By this way, you get to use the default "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" that your Windows XP/7 comes with. It sound passable, but it can also be enhanced considerably by using some third-party General MIDI soundfonts. It would make all your General MIDI music games sound better, not only LBA. In Win7 this involves installing BASSMIDI utility. Some instructions in these older discussions:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/general_midi_for_gog_games

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

Also, just to make sure your GOG LBA sounds as good as possible, be reminded of this earlier discussion about the glitchy GOG LBA1 CD audio files:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/little_big_adventure_series/music_has_aweful_compression_the_origional_was_pure_cd_audio/post19

EDIT: Removed the earlier suggestion. The replacement ogg files are not needed anymore with the latest GOG version as it uses music directly from a CD image (uncompressed). But in order to get the missing 2 seconds from the start of the CD music, you need to edit LBA.DAT with Notepad, and replace all the text in it with this: I'll mark this discussion solved if someone is able to solve how to edit the LBA.CFG successfully. :)

Ack! Of course! Marked as solution.

The MIDI volume is ok, but as I am using a 3rd party General MIDI soundfont with BASSMIDI utility (to supersede the mediocre default Microsoft GS soundfont), I can set the MIDI volume to lower value from the BASSMIDI volume slider. Without it, I'm unsure where I'd be able to control it.

EDIT: So these seem to be the values that should be set in LBA.CFG:

MidiDriver: A32MT32.DLL

MidiBase: 330h

MidiType: Midi

Then you get proper General MIDI music. I tried it on a Win7 PC which has no BASSMIDI installed, and yes it sounds a bit too loud compared to other sound source volumes in the game, but is bearable to me. I'm unsure if there is a way to change the MIDI volume inside Win7 normally, without 3rd party utilities like BASSMIDI.

I do also have the issue with MIDI music being far (far) too loud. That the music slider does nothing is normal, it should only work for OPL FM synthesis. MIDI is just control information passed as-is to a synthesizer. It used to be that you had a separate MIDI slider in your OS or sound card driver volume mixer to control the volume of this synthesis. I don't know what kind of synthesizer you have in OS X or where it is controlled from, but like timppu I failed to find a way to control the volume of the Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth within Windows anywhere. (We used to have this)

Personally I am using QSynth, which is a frontend for the FluidSynth synthesizer. I'm sure there are similar solutions for Mac.

And yes, the music is far too loud for me as well. I certainly wouldn't call it bearable in my case. When the QSynth master gain is at 100%, there even is a lot of very audible clipping. I played around a bit and found that a volume of 8% (!) makes the MIDI music about as loud as the CD audio music. I never had to reduce QSynth's volume before so this seems to be a problem with LBA specifically. I don't know anything about MIDI internals, but I suppose it is possible to get this insane volume through regular messages. Maybe there was a reason for doing that back in the day of DOS-based MIDI drivers and audio cards.

A bit late to the party but to get general midi you do select the MT-32 option in the setup. Apparently they have it erroneously labelled as MT-32 but it is general midi.

I'm thinking of getting this game but this sound problem would be a game breaker for me. Has this been fixed by the devs or Gog yet? I really dont want to have to do the fiddling around with sound files myself

Not sure if you have bought the game already: Depends what you mean by the "sound problem".

1. Being a bit complicated to change to sound source from Adlib/Soundblaster FM-music to better General MIDI music:

GOG seems to have added a link "Launch Settings" to the game, which runs the game's setup program for you in DOSBox, and there you can change the sound source. So this is fixed from my point of view.

2. General MIDI music being too loud compared to the digitized sound effects in LBA:

This is more like a limitation in current Windows versions (Windows Vista and up), as they don't seem to let one change the MIDI volume anymore. As far as I can tell, DOSBox doesn't offer means to change the MIDI volume either, and maybe there's no sensible way it could, as it doesn't play General MIDI music itself, but simply passes the MIDI messages to Windows. It should be up to Windows to let one control the MIDI volume, which it doesn't.

One workaround that sort of seems to work for this (I think) is to tell DOSBox to increase the loudness of other sound sources, to get more to the same level. I tried e.g. adding this line to in C:\GOG Games\Little Big Adventure\dosboxLBA_single.conf, just before RELENT.EXE:

mixer master 300:300

So the whole file looks like this: You might want to experiment with different values, and it might be that "mixer sb" works just as well as "mixer master", as it is the digital sound effects that you want to make louder. It may be GOG hasn't "fixed" this because different people would need to use different values anyway, to get a pleasant volume.

Note: If the config file is unreadable on Notepad due to missing Windows-style linefeeds (everything appears in one line), edit it with Wordpad instead.

Another option would be to use some 3rd party software that lets one change the MIDI volume. I think BASSMIDI allowed that, but I am unsure if BASSMIDI works in e.g. Windows 8 (as Microsoft removed MIDI Mapper from Windows 8, if I understood right). I am currently using VirtualMIDISynth, but it doesn't seem to offer an option to change the MIDI volume.

3. LBA CD audio being "poor quality" (too compressed?).

I am unsure if GOG has done anything about this. The CD music in e.g. the main menu sounds pretty good to me, but it does seem to start a bit abruptly, as if a few seconds are missing from the beginning of the music? So it might be one still wants to replace the .ogg music files with better ones, as suggested elsewhere.

thank you for the info

The abrupt start, or missing first 2 seconds from each track, can be solved by changing the lba.dat file as per this post:
http://www.gog.com/forum/little_big_adventure_series/music_has_aweful_compression_the_origional_was_pure_cd_audio/post17

Other than that, if you download the latest gog downloader, and use General MIDI (e.g. "Wave Blaster on Sound Blaster 16 (MIDI)" as explained above) in the game music configuration, you'll get the best music possible.

But part of the music is those audio CD tracks (.ogg files? E.g. the main menu music.), while most of the gameplay music is computer generated (Adlib/Soundblaster, or General MIDI). I don't recall where else, besides the menu, CD music is used. I understood some people were not happy with the GOG version compression; is that still an issue?

I promised someone to check whether I have those replacement .ogg files and .dat files available, as the earlier link to them (http://fluffylynx.net/stuff/lba_gog_160kbps_ogg.zip (26mb)) is apparently dead. I should have them around somewhere. No idea where I could upload them though. Maybe I'll share them in emule and just provide an ed2k link to them. :)

EDIT: Wait a minute... is "LBA.GOG" the image of the original game? Shouldn't it then have the original audio CD tracks included, ie. there shouldn't be an issue with the compression? So maybe it is indeed enough just to edit the LBA.DAT file, to get the good audio CD music? And those replacement .ogg files are completely unnecessary?

Yes, that appears to be so.

The better ogg files are of use only to those using the old installer.

If you use the new one, the only issue is the late 2 second start, which should be fixed by editing the lba.dat.

Ok thanks, only the DAT file needs to be edited or replaced then.