Hello all,

I'm relatively new to DosBox, but I think it's the best thing invented since.. well, since the games that were designed for Dos back in the day- in fact, probably even better, since they're much easier to run with it now.

Anyways, DosBox has revealed to me exactly what I was missing out on back in the day when I used to play games on my ol'486 with only a SoundBlaster 16 card- Roland MT-32! I had dug up my old Sierra games, and to my astonishment while playing around with the audio settings, I heard music entirely different (and better) than what I was so familiar with!

Now, don't get me wrong, the MT-32 music is fantastic and superior to the SoundBlaster, but I do notice that some of the notes seem a little bit off. And in games like Space Quest 3, I get problems at certain segments where it sounds like the audio buffer doesn't clear (ie. some sound effects get stuck playing until I close DosBox). I did some quick searches on Google on MT-32, which eventually led me to this link:

http://crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en … undcards&page=7

which has an audio clip of how Space Quest 3 is supposed to sound with the Roland LAPC-I sound card, and I was even further blown away! The music from SQ3 on my DosBox sounds similar, but some sound effects are off.

Now, I have done searches on both the DosBox forum as well as the MT-32 Emulation forums, and the amount of information is tremendous. Here is a few threads I went through:

The Essential Sound Cards
Essential Sound Cards

Sound cards - from best to worst
Sound Cards from best to worst

DosBox v0.70 MIDI handling for the rev00 MT-32 Roland synth
DosBox v0.70 MIDI handling for the rev00 MT-32 Roland synth

which sound card setting to use (Roland MT32 or GS or SB16)?
MT-32 vs Adlib/Soundblaster

Question about LAPC-I and windows MIDI playback...
Question about LAPC-I and windows MIDI playback

The headache of DOS soundcards
The headache of DOS soundcards

So to put it simply for a newb such as myself; what options are available when it comes to playing DosBos with MT-32 music? From various readings on the web it seems like these are the choices:

1. Stick with MT-32 emulated music on DosBox which approximates the audio, but will not be exactly the same. I believe this emulation was developed in the Munt project which is still on-going, no?

2. Go to eBay and try to get a real Roland LAPC sound card and synthesizer module to capture the true essence.

I'm a little hesitant to go with the 2nd option, because as you can tell I'm not too familiar with the entire MT-32 tuning and setup field. Are the problems I face with the audio in games like SQ3 due to the MT-32 emulation in DosBox or the actual sound card on my system (I think I have SoundBlaster Live Value)? Finally, in using the emulator ScummVM, I could play an updated version of Monkey Island 1 (transferred from CD to my hard drive) that played high quality music (though I think the audio was somehow converted to MP3's, not MIDI's). I imagine MT-32 emulation is much more complex than just somehow piping the information into the General MIDI player or even in the form of MP3's, correct?