You have to select MT-32 for your audio with the INSTALL.EXE.

collector wrote:

You have to select MT-32 for your audio with the INSTALL.EXE.

no kidding.

No, the problem was that, ensoniq pci 128 has a cheap imitation of a mpu-401 interface.

I used a sblive! 5.1 card instead and my mt-32 plays just like the old days. thanks though.

Hi mamodt.

It looks like you've a setup very similar to mine. I have been able to get my (actual) Roland working with SQ3, too, but the sound is quite muted. I'm wondering if we could compare notes. (And, no, the muting is not a physical connection or mixer problem -- everything's jacked to the max and is quite loud when any other app runs it.)

The changelog for DosBox 0.65 says that there was work done on fixing muted sound. I wonder if my problem was missed or caused by said fixing -- or just plain unrelated altogether.

Anyway, here's my setup:

I. Hardware

P3 1.11 GHz 320 MB of RAM, SB Live! PCI, Windows XP SP2.
Roland MT-32

II. Drivers

My SB Live! Driver is listed in Device Manager as:

Driver Provider: Creative
Driver Date: 7/24/2002
Driver Version: 5.12.2.252
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Publ

III. Physical Connections.

I have my SB's MIDI/Game port connected to my MT-32 by way of a MIDI Adaptor. The MT-32's output goes into my SB's Line-In (and, yes, it really is the Line-In).

IV. DOSBOX (v0.65) Setup

My MIDI section of DOSBOX.CONF is as follows. The rest is pretty much default.
===========================================
[midi]
# mpu401 -- Type of MPU-401 to emulate: none, uart or intelligent.
# device -- Device that will receive the MIDI data from MPU-401.
# This can be default,alsa,oss,win32,coreaudio,none.
# config -- Special configuration options for the device. In Windows put
# the id of the device you want to use. See README for details.

mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=3
===========================================

Note that a "config=3" setting corresponds to "SB Live! MIDI Port [FF80]" as listed in DOSBOX using the command "mixer /listmidi"

V. Space Quest III Setup

I cannot imagine there to be too much missing, but, for the sake of completeness, here are the contents of my RESOURCE.CFG:

===========================================
videoDrv = EGA320.DRV
soundDrv = MT32.DRV
joyDrv = NO
kbdDrv = IBMKBD.DRV
mouseDrv = STDMOUSE.DRV
memoryDrv = ARM.DRV
===========================================

Well, that's it. Again, the sound is fine (the SysEx works, too) -- only it's quite muffled. Any advise you can throw my way would be appreciated.

Much thanks

well that looks quite allright.
In the other windows of DOSBox do there popup interrresting information bits ?
Like unhandled or unknown events ?

mr_btw,

my SB live! driver is from microsoft, not the creative labs one. And because of that, in my control panel->sound and media->audio->midi, I'm setting the midi to: "SB live UART chip".

my hunch is, try to get the microsoft driver, that's the only thing that's different between our setups.

good luck.

here's my setup:

I. Hardware

P3 1 GHz 520 MB of RAM, SB Live! PCI 5.1, Windows XP SP2.
Roland MT-32

II. Drivers

Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Date: 7/1/2001
Driver Version: 5.1.2535.0
Digital Signer: Not digitally signed

III. Physical Connections.

same

IV. DOSBOX (v0.65) Setup

[midi]

mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=

V. Space Quest III Setup

videoDrv=EGA320.DRV
soundDrv=MT32SB.DRV
kbdDrv=IBMKBD.DRV
mouseDrv= YES

if it is muted make sure that your line-in is set to full volume in the windows mixer. It shouldn't be a dosbox problem.

Also, don't forget that the knob on MT-32 is a soft control -- games can and often do overwrite volume settings on MT-32. Try adjusting it after the game starts.
I am not sure about this, but looks like there are versions of MT-32 with and without the headphone jack (mine is without). If you have that jack it does not produce line level.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

- It's not the mixer panel. I've got the Line-In cranked. I can hear the volume change when I play with the Line-In playback, but it's still only a whisper when set to max.

- It's not the volume control on the Roland itself. Yes, it does bounce to 72, at which point I set it back to 100. Again, the volume does decrease, but still only a whisper when maxed.

- Don't think it's the driver either. I "updated" my SB Live! driver, which now reads as follows:

Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Date: 7/01/2001
Driver Version: 5.1.2535.0
Digital Signer: Microsoft Windows Publisher

This did change my MIDI port listing to UART (config=0), but it still plays the same.

As for any weird STDERR/STDOUT output from the DOSBox status window, there is none. The only thing it says is:

CONFIG:Loading settings from config file C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.65\dosbox.conf
MIDI:win32 selected SB Live! MIDI UART
MIDI:Opened device:win32

The only thing I noticed out of the ordinary is that, when I start up SQ3, the Roland displays the following message:

Exc. Buffer Overflow

This happens after the "Insert Buckazoid" message and before the intro sound starts. It also looks like it only happens the first time for each DOSBox session (though the sound continues to be muted).

This Buffer Overflow (and muted sound) seems to happen in other games as well -- LSL3, Civilization, and Colonization (the only ones I tried).

Thanks for your help thus far.

what's your cpu cycle rate in dosbox? if it's too high the SysEx messages are sent too fast causing buffer overflow. I set mine to 3,000 cycles per second, maybe that'll change anything?

oh and btw, are you positive your sound is perfect, only muffled? i.e., compare it to www.queststudios.com sq3's theme in mp3/ogg format?

My CPU is set at 3000. Tried lowering it some and nothing changed.

I'm sure the sound content is correct -- only too low.

Well, there is a happy ending to this. If you're interested, read on.

I thought I'd check to make sure the Line-In / sound card weren't the problem, so I plugged in the nearest thing I could find to the Line-In -- my GameBoy. The sound was just fine.

So, after taking another look at my list, I wondered what I could check next.

I. Hardware -- seemed fine. Not too much I can (or, at least, want) to do about that.

II. Drivers -- after downgrading my drivers to Microsoft's with no change, I figured that I had ruled these out. (I rolled back my drivers to Creative's newer ones, BTW).

III. Physical Connections.

Hmmmm. Well, since my GameBoy worked, I "knew" it wasn't the sound card. And I was feeling pretty confident now about my dosbox.conf file. Hmmm, I did have to use different wires to connect my GBA to my sound card. Could it be the wires? Well, I wasn't exactly using one wire to connect my Roland directly to my sound card. I was using:

- 1/4" male mono plug to RCA male (x2), connecting L/R channels of Roland to...
- a cable of two RCA female plugs to a 1/8" male stereo plug, connecting to the Line-In

Only there was something funny about the 1/8" -> RCA L/R cable -- it had an Apple symbol on it. I wonder if there was some sort of conditioning/muting going on in there. Well, I swapped it out for a different splitter, and...

BINGO!

It was the wires! ( Didn't one of the first puzzles in SQ3 involve getting wires? 😉 )

Well, it's all working good now. Thanks for the patience and assistance. Sorry the problem was so trivial, but, I guess if I had other PC apps with which I used my MT-32, I would have discovered the "bad" wire before.

Again, thanks.

Oh, and BTW, I should also say thank-you for DOSBox. Reliving this stuff is simply great!

That's funny. Congrats, have fun with sq3!