Just listen to both and choose which one you personally like best? For Doom my personal favorite is the Akai SG01k, which is a module from 1996. It didn't exist when Doom's music was written, so is it the the "proper" way to listen to Doom? Absolutely not. Do I care? Absolutely not. 🤣. Just listen to your ears and have fun. What makes MIDI interesting to me is the huge amount of variation and weird things to play with.

For an extreme example, Choujin here supports 7 different music options. I'd say the FM only version sounds the most balanced, but my favorite is the FM+CM-64+SN-U110-07 version. Your ears may not agree though, and that is perfectly natural.

https://youtu.be/Z4jq3ql8etY

This is not by any means definitive, but a good rule of thumb is if the game was made in 1992 or earlier, than MT-32 will be the preferred device. General Midi became pretty popular in 1993 and pretty much took over by 1994 through 1996. There was some overlap, but typically, the GM tracks will sound better than the MT-32 version. One exception is Strike Commander, where the MT-32 track was given some TLC by the music developer and sounds better than the GM version. Then there's personal preference, where someone may have fond memories of the MT-32 version, even if the GM version objectively sounds better. 😀

Mortal Kombat II amazingly has 5 different soundtracks: Sound Blaster (FM), Sound Blaster AWE32, Gravis Ultrasound, Roland LAPC-I (MT-32) and Roland SCC-1 (General Midi).

clueless1 wrote:

This is not by any means definitive, but a good rule of thumb is if the game was made in 1992 or earlier, than MT-32 will be the preferred device. General Midi became pretty popular in 1993 and pretty much took over by 1994 through 1996. There was some overlap, but typically, the GM tracks will sound better than the MT-32 version. One exception is Strike Commander, where the MT-32 track was given some TLC by the music developer and sounds better than the GM version. Then there's personal preference, where someone may have fond memories of the MT-32 version, even if the GM version objectively sounds better. 😀

It's a bold claim so say that music can sound objectively better one one device over another. Sure, it can be more complex from a technical point of view, or have higher sound fidelity (higher bitrate, sample frequency, higher polyphony etc.), but it's not really possible to say that it sounds objectively better, as what sounds good is an inherently subjective thing. It's probably best to just stick to trying to ascertain which device the soundtrack was composed on/for, rather than focusing on which device it sounds better on, as that will always be subjective.

LunarG wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

This is not by any means definitive, but a good rule of thumb is if the game was made in 1992 or earlier, than MT-32 will be the preferred device. General Midi became pretty popular in 1993 and pretty much took over by 1994 through 1996. There was some overlap, but typically, the GM tracks will sound better than the MT-32 version. One exception is Strike Commander, where the MT-32 track was given some TLC by the music developer and sounds better than the GM version. Then there's personal preference, where someone may have fond memories of the MT-32 version, even if the GM version objectively sounds better. 😀

It's a bold claim so say that music can sound objectively better one one device over another. Sure, it can be more complex from a technical point of view, or have higher sound fidelity (higher bitrate, sample frequency, higher polyphony etc.), but it's not really possible to say that it sounds objectively better, as what sounds good is an inherently subjective thing. It's probably best to just stick to trying to ascertain which device the soundtrack was composed on/for, rather than focusing on which device it sounds better on, as that will always be subjective.

Sweet, I now have a reputation for making bold claims! 😁