However, I can't get it through to the speakers. I'm using a cable like this one, with a dual RCA male to the left and a 3.5mm stereo plug on the right. With adapters on the RCA plugs I can connect the MT-32 to the Line in, but I only get digital sound effects from the speakers even though the synth seems to be playing as before.

I'd say the correct cable is this one http://www.drumza.com/product/Live-Wire-35mm- … ble-3-Foot.html it might be that you are loosing something from adapting to RCA and back to the 14mm. My MT32 is connected by a 3.5mm y cable that splits the 3.5 to two 3.5mm (left and right) on which I put the adapter to the big one (in German it's called "Klinke").

On the laptop I use a MIDI-to-USB cable and the same RCA cable+adapters as above. I have to use the mic socket though, since the cheap laptop soundcard doesn't have a line in, and I get massive distortion even at the lowest possible input volume.

Laptop's sound drivers often have a volume boost or something like that for the mic-in, try to disable this, maybe that adds distortion. And again the cable might be wrong.

Dominus wrote:

I'd say the correct cable is this one http://www.drumza.com/product/Live-Wire-35mm- … ble-3-Foot.html it might be that you are loosing something from adapting to RCA and back to the 14mm. My MT32 is connected by a 3.5mm y cable that splits the 3.5 to two 3.5mm (left and right) on which I put the adapter to the big one (in German it's called "Klinke").

I was afraid of something like this; the reason I used this complicated setup was that I already had the cable. 😊 I'll try to get my hands on one like yours tomorrow and report back. Weird that it "works" on the laptop, though.

Dominus wrote:

Laptop's sound drivers often have a volume boost or something like that for the mic-in, try to disable this, maybe that adds distortion. And again the cable might be wrong.

I've already done some tinkering in order to get the sound through. There's a checkbox in the microphone settings that says "Listen to this device" or something. If that's not checked, I don't get any music. I also decreased the recording volume from 50 to 1 but it's still distorted. I couldn't find anything about volume boost. Any suggestions on how to find that setting?

Thanks a lot for helping out!

Hmm, another idea on the dos/win311 box:
When I switched to a mac last year I discovered that even though the mt32 played fine and I could see that something is playing on the line in, I couldn't hear anything since the line-in wasn't passed through to the line-out. Just maybe something like that applies to your box as well and maybe the drivers have something like "pass through" or so... You wrote you could record your cd-rom but you didn't write if you were able to hear something on playback (that made me think about this).

As for your laptop, make sure the latest driver AND software for the audio hardware is installed. Generic drivers that come with w7 might not have the required settings.

Dominus wrote:

Hmm, another idea on the dos/win311 box:
When I switched to a mac last year I discovered that even though the mt32 played fine and I could see that something is playing on the line in, I couldn't hear anything since the line-in wasn't passed through to the line-out. Just maybe something like that applies to your box as well and maybe the drivers have something like "pass through" or so... You wrote you could record your cd-rom but you didn't write if you were able to hear something on playback (that made me think about this).

Of course! I didn't hear anything during recording, only when I played the recorded sound. Didn't realise that was the problem. Anyway, the Line Out checkbox in the mixer was all that was needed to make everything work. I assumed it would control the "Line Out" jack on the card, that's why I never tried it.

Dominus wrote:

As for your laptop, make sure the latest driver AND software for the audio hardware is installed. Generic drivers that come with w7 might not have the required settings.

These are definitely generic drivers. I scouted the web for a bit to try and find better ones, but could only find Vista drivers. I decided to try them regardless, and started by uninstalling the old ones (through Device Manager). After restarting the computer, drivers installed themselves (the old ones? The new ones? I have no idea) and all of a sudden, I have a "Microphone Boost" slider in the settings! DOSBox now works just as well as the older computer. Admittedly, I didn't really know what I was doing, nor what exactly happened, so I suppose I must have lucked out.

Thanks a lot for your help Dominus, I really appreciate it! Now to enjoy some magic MT-32 music. I never thought I'd see this day.

I'm glad it is working now and you didn't have to get different cables. These were all educated guesses but guesses nethertheless 😀