If you don't want to use DosBox then you have to make the MT-32 your default MIDI device and Windows' emulation will use that. Or use VDMSound (you can tell VDMSound to use specific MIDI devices installed on your system).

V.

ah, okay... I see those now.

Now, what do I do to tell the sierra game to use the MT-32?

Charles wrote:

Now, what do I do to tell the sierra game to use the MT-32?

Depends... What can you specify wrt. sound in the game setup?

Roland MT-32 with Sound Blaster
Roland MT-32, MT-100, LAPC-1, CM32-L, or CM-64
SoundBlaster/Adlib
IBM or COmpatible Internal Speaker.

Now of course, the obvious choise is one of two there, but in some of the games there is also a General MIDI option. Would I set it to Roland MT-32 still? Even though, I’m setting the MIDI on my computer to be MT-32.

And what sounds best, too? Assuming original hardware, does MT-32 with Sound Blaster sound better than just MT-32 on it’s own?

Charles, I am (as you can see from the 35 posts I have made) also a newcomer wrt. VDMSound, so plese take a pinch of salt before proceeding, okay?

If you configure your game to use General MIDI + a base port address (0x330), then all the MIDI instructions will be passsed to the emulated MIDI device in VDMSound. The task then is to tell VDMSound which real MIDI device (as used by your host O/S), to use.

With VDSMSound 2.1.0 beta, and the LaunchPad, I can choose between "Microsoft MIDI Mapper (MIDI)", "NVIDIA(R) DLS Synthesizer (MIDI)", and "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth (MIDI)".

If you have installed an MT-32 MIDI device, I assume it will show up as well as an option?

Once you have done that, the MIDI flow should be: Game => General MIDI => 0x330 => VDMSound => MT-32 device.

I don't know which "game MIDI" will give the best sound quality - you just have to test! But start with General MIDI and get the sound routed all the way through the system, before you try the more exotic stuff like MT-100 or LAPC-1.
--
MiniMax

If you have a real MT-32 choose the "MT32+SoundBlaster" combination. Also choose "GM" (!) in VDMSound LaunchPad, because choosing "MT-32" in LaunchPad will try to convert your game's MT-32 MIDI to... MT-32 (one conversion too many!), wgereas "GM" in LaunchPad means no conversion is performed. This was one of those "lowest common denominator" decisions, where most people don't have an MT-32 and the descriptions in launchPad make sense (whereas they are counter-intuitive to ppls. with MT-32s.)

And yes, the MT-32/SB combination will sound better than pure MT-32 because of digital samples!

V.

Ah, thanks MiniMax, and vladr. That was my biggest concern. Would VDMSound try to remap the MT-32 samples for a common GM if I selected MT-32 from VDMS.

So to sum up, I choose “MT32+SoundBlaster” in the game installation, and tell either Windows or VDMSound to use the MT32 Synth Emulator as the MIDI driver, then tell VDMSound to use the GeneralMIDI port (meaning no instrument remapping.)

Does that sound about right? (Assuming I want to use the not-quite-perfect current Windows Driver version of the MT32 emulator.)

Yep, you got it.
V.