grommit2007 wrote on 2025-05-04, 22:47:

Do these cards have the ability to select any Windows MIDI device listed in the Win9x multimedia options (e.g. YAMAHA SXG Driver) as a selection in the card control panel's "DOS Box MIDI Out" section?

If this is true, softsynths that were indicated as being for Win9x apps only can now be used for DOS apps, accessed via standard MPU ports.

these synths dont work for dos games in win9x, ive heard someone on here mention they have various softsynths working in dos games under 98 using VDMsound, i have no idea how to actually get it working though.

to use the windows midi mapper for dos sessions vdmsound works stably for me under win98se with everything disabled in the config file except mpu-401 emulation. switching between gm & mt-32 instrument maps works fine too. tip of the day can be disabled with some registry hacks. i installed all 3 available vdmsound win9x alpha files/updates, but the final update may have all the previous fixes incorporated.

I probably was the one people were thinking about it being mentioned before. I haven't tried with a softsynth, but my Win98 build has an Audigy and Vortex 2 in it.

In the DOS Windows MIDI settings I could choose the Vortex 2 MIDI, Audigy Synth, or Audigy External MIDI Port.

I'll have to find some time and install the Yamaha MIDI driver off FFVIII and see what's listed.

Edit: I should add that SoundFonts worked fine with DOS games with the Audigy.

Here is a screenshot of the Vortex 2 control panel Midi selector dialog:
Seriously dumb MIDI question

I look forward seeing if this works for you, since the DLS format the Aureal cards support is a common one that yet not many General MIDI sets have been written specifically for...but that problem, from what I gather, is solved with any decent program able to convert any of the abundant SF2 sets out there to DLS, which is of particular interest to me because since retiring my AWE64 I no longer have a SF2-supporting device installed (unless I go with a softsynth player entirely in software, but that may be too much for my Win98 build).

I found some time, and discovered FFVIII had just the update. So I had to also break out FFVII to install the original version and then the update.

But it does appear in the Aureal control panel, the only issue I found was the dropbox won't scroll with a scroll wheel. It also doesn't show a scrollbar, I just had to use the keyboard to scroll the the much longer list that just the four items it displays at a time. The Yamaha Softsynth is shown and works just fine in DOS.

I found if you can run the DOS game windowed, you can switch the MIDI device on the fly. MIDI only plays while the DOS window has focus. But I tested the Yamaha Softsynth vs the SB Audigy Softwavetable vs the Vortex Wavetable in the Duke3D setup and all three sounded different so the selector was doing its job.