waveblaster sound identical to GM on magic carpet. not sure what other games I have handy that support it. I suspect it'll always sound like GM using dosbox?

for LBA i meant like... it's simply labelled wrong or something? Like it says MT-32, but the game just straight up is coded to do GM?

I think the game must be controlling the MIDI volume by changing the events when an old SB is configured, because it doesn't write to the mixer ports in that configuration; but when an SB16 is configured it tries to use the mixer to control the MIDI volume, and DOSBox doesn't have a way to control MIDI volume on the host. I assume changing MIDI volume on the host is problematic because of SDL limitations and/or cross-platform issues.

Waveblaster identical to GM on Hexen as well...

I believe I mentioned before that the Wave Blaster is basically a GM device, but there are some differences.

you did, and I understand the hardware is different, but in terms of using one or the other choice for a game on dosbox, is it possible for there to be a difference in practice? dosbox doesn't emulate a Waveblaster, so what's it doing when I tell a game to use one?

aren't both just using (in the exact same way) whatever GM synth set I have?

I don't think you'll notice a difference in DOSBox. Wave Blasters are connected to a header on the SB, so the SB might be able to control it (like controlling its volume via the mixer) in ways that it can't with an external GM synth.

Edit: On the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Creative gave game developers incentive to put a Wave Blaster option in their setups, even though the game treats it like a generic GM device.

I have this game in both cd/floppy versions:

- the floppy version has full midi support, but no speech and static cutscenes
- the CD version has a couple of midi tracks (the smaller ones, everything else is CDA) and it also has speech and normal movie cutscenes...

I have tried to patch/hack the floppy version to use speech+movies, but no dice....