UltraMID is not a GM emulator that captures port 330h, but it is a driver that provides an application interface (API) to games that use the audio interface library (AIL). Thus, after loading UltraMID the new API is present.

The basic idea of UltraMID is to split the GUS hardware resources for Music and Sound Effects.

Some Games audio drives support UltraMID out of the box (e.g. Tyrian). For other games the way is to replace audio drives of a sound card you don't own, lets say Pro Audio Spectrum with the GUS drivers. The replacement is done by replacing the files for the PAS with the files for the GUS and selecting PAS in the games audio setup. This will actually use the GUS drivers then.
There are replacement drivers for standard audio driver libraries as well as for a lot of games available.

Loading MegaEM also provides the UltraMID API. So if you have QEMM386/EMM386 loaded, you can use MegaEM to get UltraMID functionality. If you have just HIMEM.SYS load UltraMID.exe.

elianda wrote on 2023-06-22, 15:21:

UltraMID is not a GM emulator that captures port 330h, but it is a driver that provides an application interface (API) to games […]
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UltraMID is not a GM emulator that captures port 330h, but it is a driver that provides an application interface (API) to games that use the audio interface library (AIL). Thus, after loading UltraMID the new API is present.

The basic idea of UltraMID is to split the GUS hardware resources for Music and Sound Effects.

Some Games audio drives support UltraMID out of the box (e.g. Tyrian). For other games the way is to replace audio drives of a sound card you don't own, lets say Pro Audio Spectrum with the GUS drivers. The replacement is done by replacing the files for the PAS with the files for the GUS and selecting PAS in the games audio setup. This will actually use the GUS drivers then.
There are replacement drivers for standard audio driver libraries as well as for a lot of games available.

Loading MegaEM also provides the UltraMID API. So if you have QEMM386/EMM386 loaded, you can use MegaEM to get UltraMID functionality. If you have just HIMEM.SYS load UltraMID.exe.

Ah, great explanation Elianda, I really appreciate!! I got confused by the information that MegaEM and Ultramid had the "same" functionality, the GUS world is fascinating but at the same time way different than any other sound cards from the old times.

Any way to use MegaEM GM mode with a different bank other than the 1MB onboard ROM ? On one of your YT videos you mentioned using a MegaEM with a 4MB bank.

Thanks again

That was probably wrong. I think MegaEM always defaults to the 1 MB bank. However, if you want to have a RAM loaded sound bank as GM device you can run the DOS game from within a Win9x DOS box.