I recall once I installed VirtualMIDISynth on my laptop, I got much better sound on all DOSBox games. I recently reinstalled it, but when playing Rise of the Dragon, the music simply sounded like the standard Windows General MIDI, much lower quality. Is there a trick to getting games like Rise running with VirtualMIDISynth?

I tried to play the game with ScummVM, but Rise is too buggy right now on the current version of that system. It works much better on DOSBox, except that I can't get the better quality music.

The point is: I should be getting the same quality of music with VirtualMIDISynth installed on DOSBox as on ScummVM, but I'm not.

VirutalMIDISynth works great with games that use the General MIDI format.
However, Rise of the Dragon predates that format.

If you want the absolute best quality sound for Rise of the Dragon, you'll need to emulate an MT-32 instead. (Google is your friend if you want to learn more about this)

As I'm not sure on your knowledge of DOS, I'll also mention that you'll need to run the included INSTALL.COM to select the MT-32 in the sound options. This is as easy as editing dosbox_dragon_single.conf and switching out the line DRAGON.EXE for INSTALL.

Search out some youtube videos for sound comparison of MT-32 vs Soundblaster or Adlib if you feel like it. There is quite a noticeable difference! The video comparing the Space Quest 3 music modes is a good one if you can find it.

You mentioned that Rise of the Dragon sounded better on ScummVM. I've not checked that out myself, but to my understanding they basically create their own internal engine that plays the game files, so I suppose they could have changed things. However, It's more likely that ScummVM is sending the MT-32 music data out and VirutalMIDISynth is interpreting it as General MIDI, but that won't sound completely right in some circumstances due to the MT-32's ability to load custom instruments.

In the original release, MT-32 is the best option.

The issue with Dynamix games is that you can only choose between MT-32 or Sound Blaster, but you can't choose both. If you choose MT-32 for the better music, you'll lose the voices.

Now, someone did come out with a modded driver to allow both, but even then, it only selects one at a time. Thus, you get the voices during the intro, but you'll lose the music while the voices are playing. Fortunately, Rise of the Dragon only has voices during the intro.