Midi gets passed through to your systems midi which is crappy on OS X unless you provide an advanced soundfont.

Also install the SB16 drivers as per the windows 3.x guide.
And then add adlib through the drivers control panel (similar to installing the joystick drivers in the guide).

Thank you but that did not work. It still gives me the crappy midi and it won't recognize ad-lib.

I might have time to take a look later.
You can make Dosbox use a soundfont for better midi than the default OS X one. Again, will need to take a look later so I'm not telling you wrong stuff 😉

dandu386 wrote:

Thank you but that did not work. It still gives me the crappy midi and it won't recognize ad-lib.

What won't recognize Adlib? AFAIK the program or game will need to support Adlib music. Adlib is not a replacement for your midi device, it is a seperate option in games.

As for making Midi in OS X sound better, you can indeed change the soundfont OS X uses to playback midi music:
in dosbox preference file change this in the [midi] section
mididevice=coreaudio
midiconfig=path-to-your-soundfont

Note that you might need an SVN snapshot, I have no idea whether this was already in the 0.74 release. Also I know that sf2 soundfonts work, I have no idea whether others do.

Here is how I get Adlib MIDI music working with an installed copy of Windows 3.x running under DOSBox. Refer to the attached pic for the various Windows settings and installed Adlib driver, and here are the pertinent sound settings in my "DOSBox.conf" file:

1[mixer]
2#   nosound: Enable silent mode, sound is still emulated though.
3#      rate: Mixer sample rate, setting any device's rate higher than this will probably lower their sound quality.
4#            Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000, 49716.
5# blocksize: Mixer block size, larger blocks might help sound stuttering but sound will also be more lagged.
6#            Possible values: 2048, 4096, 8192, 1024, 512, 256.
7# prebuffer: How many milliseconds of data to keep on top of the blocksize.
8
9nosound=false
10rate=44100
11blocksize=2048
12prebuffer=10
13
14[midi]
15#     mpu401: Type of MPU-401 to emulate.
16#             Possible values: intelligent, uart, none.
17# mididevice: Device that will receive the MIDI data from MPU-401.
18#             Possible values: default, win32, alsa, oss, coreaudio, coremidi, none.
19# midiconfig: Special configuration options for the device driver. This is usually the id of the device you want to use. See README for details.
20
21mpu401=intelligent
22mididevice=default
23midiconfig=
24
25[sblaster]
26#  sbtype: Type of sblaster to emulate.
27#          Possible values: sb1, sb2, sbpro1, sbpro2, sb16, none.
28#  sbbase: The IO address of the soundblaster.
29#          Possible values: 220, 240, 260, 280, 2a0, 2c0, 2e0, 300.
30#     irq: The IRQ number of the soundblaster.
31#          Possible values: 7, 5, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12.
32#     dma: The DMA number of the soundblaster.
33#          Possible values: 1, 5, 0, 3, 6, 7.
34#    hdma: The High DMA number of the soundblaster.
35#          Possible values: 1, 5, 0, 3, 6, 7.
36# sbmixer: Allow the soundblaster mixer to modify the DOSBox mixer.
37# oplmode: Type of OPL emulation. On 'auto' the mode is determined by sblaster type. All OPL modes are Adlib-compatible, except for 'cms'.
38#          Possible values: auto, cms, opl2, dualopl2, opl3, none.
39#  oplemu: Provider for the OPL emulation. compat or old might provide better quality (see oplrate as well).
40#          Possible values: default, compat, fast, old.
41# oplrate: Sample rate of OPL music emulation. Use 49716 for highest quality (set the mixer rate accordingly).
42#          Possible values: 22050, 49716, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000.
43
44sbtype=sb16
45sbbase=220
46irq=5
47dma=1
48hdma=5
49sbmixer=true
50oplmode=auto
51oplemu=default
52oplrate=44100
53
54[gus]
55#      gus: Enable the Gravis Ultrasound emulation.
56#  gusrate: Sample rate of Ultrasound emulation.
57#           Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000, 49716.
58#  gusbase: The IO base address of the Gravis Ultrasound.
59#           Possible values: 240, 220, 260, 280, 2a0, 2c0, 2e0, 300.
60#   gusirq: The IRQ number of the Gravis Ultrasound.

61#           Possible values: 5, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12.
62#   gusdma: The DMA channel of the Gravis Ultrasound.
63#           Possible values: 3, 0, 1, 5, 6, 7.
64# ultradir: Path to Ultrasound directory. In this directory
65#           there should be a MIDI directory that contains
66#           the patch files for GUS playback. Patch sets used
67#           with Timidity should work fine.
68
69gus=false
70gusrate=44100
71gusbase=240
72gusirq=7
73gusdma=3
74ultradir=C:\ULTRASND
75
76[speaker]
77# pcspeaker: Enable PC-Speaker emulation.
78#    pcrate: Sample rate of the PC-Speaker sound generation.
79#            Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000, 49716.
80#     tandy: Enable Tandy Sound System emulation. For 'auto', emulation is present only if machine is set to 'tandy'.
81#            Possible values: auto, on, off.
82# tandyrate: Sample rate of the Tandy 3-Voice generation.
83#            Possible values: 22050, 44100, 48000, 32000, 16000, 11025, 8000, 49716.
84#    disney: Enable Disney Sound Source emulation. (Covox Voice Master and Speech Thing compatible).
85
86pcspeaker=true
87pcrate=44100
88tandy=off
89tandyrate=44100
90disney=false

Lastly, also attached is an MP3 file with a small snippet of the Windows 3.11 Media Player playing "CANYON.MID" with all of the above 😀

I am having trouble getting Adlib to show up as a possible midi device. I installed the stock Adlib driver from the Windows 3.1 disks and restarted, and reconfigured SB16 as IRQ 5, but the only midi devices I see in Windows are Creative music synthesizer and SB16 midi out. Is there another Adlib driver I should be using that has midi capability?

chickenpee wrote:

I am having trouble getting Adlib to show up as a possible midi device. I installed the stock Adlib driver from the Windows 3.1 disks and restarted, and reconfigured SB16 as IRQ 5, but the only midi devices I see in Windows are Creative music synthesizer and SB16 midi out. Is there another Adlib driver I should be using that has midi capability?

The Creative Music Synthesizer is Creative's "AdLib" (OPL3) driver.
Another one I know of is the Voyetra Synthesizer (opl3.drv).
It shipped with the PAS16, but I think it works with any OPL3-equipped audio card also.

And last but, not least, there's a third one named FM Midi Synth driver.
It is Freeware, as far as I do understand the readme file.

Anyway, these drivers do translate MIDI commands in OPL register writes.
If you're only interested in an AdLib MIDI- player, check out SEAL.
That's a graphical shell for DOS, with an internal audio player (MIDI, MOD, WAVE).
http://sealsystem.sourceforge.net/

PS: DOSBox defaults to IRQ7 for maximum compatibility.

Note that DOSBox questions should be asked in the DOSBox forum.

Moved to DOSBox forum.

Why do you want to use Adlib for General MIDI anyway? There are much more convienent ways to make General MIDI work easier and sound better, for example with a soundfont.