wallaby wrote:That makes a lot of sense. I had no idea good midi music was even a thing. I never liked the sound of midi, and even later when recording music, I only slowly warmed up to it. I always thought midi music in Windows was just terrible. Very surprised to learn about the MT-32 and Sound Canvas.
Yes, I guess MIDI mainly got a bad rap from people playing generic MIDI songs over generic OPL2/OPL3 cards.
MT-32/Sound Canvas were semi-professional solutions, and actually sounded quite good (like a budget Roland synthesizer from the 80s, which essentially is what they were... a cheap knockoff of the technology of the legendary D-50 synthesizer). They were among the first serious audio solutions for PCs, and certainly better than the AdLib in terms of sound quality. But due to the high price they never became mainstream.
There's even the Roland LAPC-1, which is basically an MPU-401 midi interface and MT-32 on a single card. That was the cheapest option.
To get an idea, this magazine lists a Roland setup for $995 (MPU-401 card, MT-32 and software): https://books.google.nl/books?id=fHghpJa3va4C … 20price&f=false
wallaby wrote:The ultimate question. If DOSBOX does a better job more reliably than a real Gravis then why bother with the real thing other than general curiosity?
I think it depends on the software used. The GUS uses hardware mixing, so all GUS software will use the same mixing routine.
For SB16, a software mixer is built into the software. Some have good mixers, others, not so good. In theory an SB16 could sound better than a GUS, if you throw a good enough mixing algorithm and enough CPU at it. In practice, most software of the GUS/SB16 era was aimed at a 386 or 486, so corners had to be cut with mixing.
I think in the case of DOSBox, sometimes SB16 may be a better option, because the GUS emulation isn't that great.
