Checkout videos 9 to 13 for a taste.

http://www.philscomputerlab.com/gogcom.html

Which soundcard is the best to use, assuming all are supported? I'm tired of the dyoup-dyoup sound of the soundblaster.

Tiltowait wrote:

Which soundcard is the best to use, assuming all are supported? I'm tired of the dyoup-dyoup sound of the soundblaster.

While some might debate this, the de-facto standard for "best" sound are the Roland MT-32 and Roland Sound Canvas.

I followed the guide to set up munt. However, the game still sounds the same. 😵 All that changed was the music, and I have that turned off anyway (it gets really repetitive.) Did I do something wrong?

What game? New games use Roland for music and Sound Blaster for digital sound effects.

Oh...so I'm still stuck with the soundblaster then? Roland only does music? That's weird. I never heard of a sound card that just does music. Maybe it was meant for professionals?

Tiltowait wrote:

Oh...so I'm still stuck with the soundblaster then? Roland only does music? That's weird. I never heard of a sound card that just does music. Maybe it was meant for professionals?

What game?

Well, the one I tried it with was Master of Magic, since it's the only DOS game I'm playing right now.

Tiltowait wrote:

Well, the one I tried it with was Master of Magic, since it's the only DOS game I'm playing right now.

Hmm not that familiar with it, but it's a 1994 game so quite likely that it supports both.

Did you run SETUP.EXE and configured the sound options? It should tell you exactly what is supported.

Nice screenshots, that helps!

Looks like it supports General MIDI as well. Yes sound effects come through the Sound Blaster and Music through MT-32 or General MIDI. But your system must be configured properly like with MUNT or BASSMIDI.

Is General Midi better than Roland? And I should be using CM-32 instead, because it's specifically designed for computer games, right?

Dang, I really wanted to have better sounds in my games. Not really better music, because video game music is repetitive and I usually turn it off after listening to it for a few loops. What about that other option, Pro Audio Spectrum? I'm just really tired of the Soundblaster's characteristic sounds.

It's digital sound effects. Not much you can do to make it sound any better...

I wouldn't say that General MIDI is better, but it replaced the MT-32 as de-facto MIDI standard and newer games likely had the musicians focus on General MIDI.

Ok, well, if that's the case, then thanks for all your help. I'll do my best to spread this to others. I just want my dang games to sound better. Maybe this should be in the FAQ? "How to get the best sound out of your DOS games - beyond Soundblaster" or something like that.

The Pro Audio Spectrum or Gravis Ultrasound don't help with SFX?

Again, thanks for all your expert help! 😀

I think your thinking about this the wrong way.
Digital sound is the same no matter what device you use to play it. Just like CD's/MP3's etc don't sound different playing it on other devices.
A higher end soundcard will make it sound a little better, like a high end stereo compared to some no name job, Better speakers may help as well, but the sounds are recorded (and usually a fairly low sample rate due to keep file size down) so will sound pretty much the same

Cretan sound cards are cleaner then others, but then you have to look out what they compatible with. Most other non creative cards are only compatible up to Sound Blaster Pro, such as the PAS. Most likely wont matter with DOS games era but towards the end you wont be getting the highest quality.

AWE64 is probably the safest bet for digital sound. Its one of the cleanest ISA soundcards and is backward compatible with most of the previous SoundBlaster standards. But I cant emphasise enough its not going to make a big difference to the recordings.

Midi is more like sheet music, it simply tells the sound card which notes to play and the soundcard actually contains the instruments.
A Roland has high quality instrument samples a SoundBlaster does not. Hence the difference in sound.
(Very simplistic overview but gives you an idea)