I wonder if discord mutes audio from all but one application. Maybe there is a way to share your whole desktop instead of just DOSBox or something?

I am using Falcosoft midi with DOSBox and they are configured for the same audio output (well... default). I am pretty sure if I were to use a desktop recording software that both midi and the emulator would be picked up.

It does have an option to share the whole screen, but unfortunately this doesn't pick up any sound. You have to choose a specific application and, as you said, it'll only pick up the sound from that. But it's odd, unless I'm mistaking how the midi sound is output with DOSBox; if it's configured to use the default midi device, isn't the music coming from my system midi output and not DOSBox itself? In that case, it should always pick up only the sound effects from whatever game in DOSBox, shouldn't it? But that still doesn't explain why changing the sample rate inverses that at all.

mgman wrote on 2021-02-22, 16:50:

It does have an option to share the whole screen, but unfortunately this doesn't pick up any sound. You have to choose a specific application and, as you said, it'll only pick up the sound from that. But it's odd, unless I'm mistaking how the midi sound is output with DOSBox; if it's configured to use the default midi device, isn't the music coming from my system midi output and not DOSBox itself? In that case, it should always pick up only the sound effects from whatever game in DOSBox, shouldn't it? But that still doesn't explain why changing the sample rate inverses that at all.

There is software out there that can pipe sound from multiple applications into one source, but getting that to work the way you want in discord... I have no idea how much trouble that would be.

Maybe FM synth is the way to go.

Yeah.
And hopefully there is a reasoning behind why changing the sample rate inverses the sound capturing issue. And just why in general, midi music is being captured when it's external to the application selected for streaming and why that prevents sound from the application itself from being captured; this only happens when trying to stream DOSBox. No other game or app has this issue when streamed.

I can only guess here, but DOSbox does not come with its own midi synthesizer. It uses the first midi output on your system, which is MSGS on most systems. This software runs in its own process and context separate from DOSBox. I think DOSBox ECE and the SVN builds are the same way. Implementing a built in midi synth is beyond the scope of those projects.

If you were to use PCem with an emulated AWE 32, which has a built in midi, I think that would work. SB16 midi/FM synth would also work, because they are emulated by host software instead of off loaded to another piece of software. Just my educated guess.

That's true, yeah, looks like it would have to be with an alternative app to DOSBox and forks (most?) to get built-in midi.

You're probably right about DOSBox not coming with its own midi synth, it's what I'm sure I read somewhere (not savvy or familiar on this aspect, so). I need to do more messing around with screen sharing on DOSBox and try to get different results.

Did you bring this up with the Discord people? I find it unlikely no Discord user has ever had this issue before with MIDI.
Can you provide a step-by-step even before you open discord all the way until you encounter the issue?
It probably is the fact that MIDI is passed to the host. I wonder if something like VAC could be used?

DosFreak wrote on 2021-02-22, 20:49:

Did you bring this up with the Discord people?
Can you provide a step-by-step even before you open discord all the way until you encounter the issue?

They're just saying if every other app doesn't have this issue, then it's the app. TBF, that's really misunderstanding what the specific issue is that I'm facing (more on that below).

So what I do is just directly after the start-up, I first open Discord, log in, etc.
I then open an instance of DOSBox (0.74, but it happens with forks, too).
Back on Discord, I start a voice chat with whoever.
From there, there is an option in Discord to share your screen with the participants. This feature can either share the whole screen or a specific app; the former doesn't capture audio, while the latter only streams the audio specific to the selected app (also will be brought up a bit later).
Screen is shared, I switch back to DOSBox and fire up the game (Blood, Doom, Duke 3D, etc.). I can hear both music and sound, while viewers only hear music.
The Mixer sample rate is at 44100 when this happens. If I set it to 48000 (with closing and reopening the stream between), now only sound effects are heard and no music.

So what makes this odd is that midi playback is done external to DOSBox, so that part of the audio isn't coming from DOSBox; also, the stream feature of Discord only captures the audio from the selected app. From this, by default only sound effects should be heard by viewers, and not the midi music. But yeah, the opposite is happening by default.

I don't use discord but I've had similar issues using OBS. But I found out what I have to do is make sure I have OBS listening to the What I Hear volume setting from my sound blaster mixer in order to get everything. I can also selectively tell it which audio streams to record from but that tends to change around sometimes depending on if I'm using a LINE IN device, Digital In...etc. So leaving it on What I hear always works in that case. I'm not sure how it work using a built in realtek chip though.

There are also options in Windows sound setup to make sure you have the option turned on to Listen to this device etc. Sometimes I forget to do this because I can sometimes get echo/delays in the audio where it is recording two layers and sometimes I forget to turn it back on when needed.

Odd that changing that the mix rate kills one or the other though? Unless discord doesn't support audio streams in excess of 44.1 ?

Actually yeah, I got a bad echo effect when I tried the Listen to this Device from the Recording settings.

There's the feature Stereo Mix on my system, which is an alternative for the Input, instead of mics; this captures sound output in general from the speakers. While it resolves the no music, but sound (and inverse), I can't commentate or do voice over with it selected.