You don't mention the OS--Win98? Is the Live! your only sound card?

Yes. It's my only sound card and I am running Windows 98 SE. I've also tried running MS-DOS mode with Duke 3D as well. Still no dice.

In Device Manager do you have SB16 Emulation enabled and working? Make sure there are no device conflicts.

Yes. Everything's working. No hardware conflicts either.

I wish I had my Win98SE rig hooked up. It's got a Live! and Duke on there and I'm pretty sure it was playing Midi okay in the game. If I get a chance, I'll hook it up and see if it can give me anything else to suggest to you.

Okay, I got it hooked up and verified midi music plays in Duke. In Device Manager under Creative Miscellaneous Devices->Creative SB16 Emulation, I've got 220, 330, 388, 5, 1, 5 respectively. My IRQ is 5 compared to your 7. In Duke's setup.exe, I've got Sound FX set to SB16, IRQ 5, DMA 1 and 5. Music set to General MIDI port 330.

In Control Panel->Multimedia on the MIDI tab, I have Single Instrument set to A:SBLive! MIDI Synth.

In Device Manager->Sound, Video and Game Controllers, get into the Live! Properties and Synth Options tab and set the Synth Voices to 1024.

Anyhow, hopefully one of those settings helps you out. Keep us posted.

Tried what you suggested. Nothing works.

I actually have the MIDI port of the Sound Blaster Live! set at 300 and it does work just fine when I select it under Duke 3D. What I was trying to get working was the built-in MIDI on the motherboard, which is set at 330 with an IRQ of 7. I couldn't get that to work under Duke 3D no matter what. I could set the IRQ to 5, but it would complain about a hardware conflict otherwise.

Oh! I thought you were trying to get it working with the Live! I'd never heard of a motherboard with MIDI onboard. Hopefully someone else can help you out.

Alright. I changed the settings a little bit (changed the IRQ to 9 under Windows) and this time under Windows, it said that the MPU-401 device is in use by another application when trying to set it up in the Duke 3D setup program. Otherwise, still the same old "Could not detect MPU-401" error.

Remove the live and see if the onboard MIDI works. Disable onboard MIDI in BIOS and see if the live works?

I was actually able to solve this problem. I wasn't able to fix the issue with the onboard MIDI, but here's what I did.

I've completely uninstalled the SB Live! drivers that I had on my computer (LiveWare 3.0 presumably) and installed the WDM drivers (Version 4.12.01.0905). From what I understand, this allows you to use the default MIDI device that is set in Windows under a DOS box, and sure enough I plugged in my external MIDI into the SB Live!'s gameport and low and behold I was able to get the pure MIDI I wanted. As for the onboard game port, I've decided to use it for my Force Feedback Pro joystick and kept the MIDI enabled, but changed the address to 300, and enabled joystick support in the BIOS.

Although, the digital sound effects stutter when playing DOS games, but it's better than nothing. Hopefully, there's a solution to this.

DoomGuy II wrote:

and sure enough I plugged in my external MIDI into the SB Live!'s gameport and low and behold I was able to get the pure MIDI I wanted.

I didn't realize you had an external MIDI device. Which one are you using?

It's a Casio WK-1630, which is an electronic keyboard. In addition to playing it as an instrument, it also serves as a MIDI device for games.