Ehm... Using SBOS in DOSBox is kinda pointless, because DOSBox' Soundblaster Emulation is very, very good. Just use DOSBox' GUS emulation for native GUS titles, and the SB emulation for the rest.

I'm trying to build up the configuration I used to have back then. Thus it seems like GUS & SBOS are using different Midi-tables than the DoxBox native SB emulation. Makes things even more interesting to me.

Tsk-Tsk-Tsk...

From Wikipedia:

SBOS, Sound Board OS — SB Pro 8-bit Stereo emulation and AdLib FM synthesis. It was a real-mode software emulation that recreated the OPL 2-operator synthesis and required at least i286 processor. There were special versions for GUS MAX (MAXSBOS) and AMD InterWave (IWSBOS), which made use of the CS4231 codec chip.

SBOS has nothing to do with MIDI, according to the Wikipedia article, and my memory (i used to have a GUS back in the day). Are you sure you're not talking about Mega-Em?

DOSBox will use whatever the host provides for MIDI. In Windows, it's the MIDI mapper. I have an old SB Live in my system, so i can use the MIDI interface of the SBLive, too, with whatever Soundfont i have installed. So, if you're after the "perfect" General MIDI sound, you'll have to configure your host system accordingly. In general, i think the default Windows "GS Wavetable Software Synth" sound pretty good. I highly doubt the GUS sounded better (AFAIK, the GUS used low-quality samples for its Soundfont, compared to today's standards). The instrument mapping is another cup of tea, of course.

Perhaps it has nothing to do with midi, (then I wonder why midi music in games sounded so much different when I got my SB16 back then, but sound effects sounded much the same), and I actually don't care if it's midi or something else. I'm not interested in super sound qualitly, nor the perfect midi but the sound settings and the sound itself that I used to have back then. I'm trying to feed my nostalgic need, no more and no less. 😁
If Mega-Em provides this, then it will do, if not, I'll keep searching. Can't be that it was only a matter of semiconductors and resistors.

I'm confused. In your OP, you wrote that you want to get SBOS running, which implies that you're trying GUS emulation. Now you're talking about your old SB16, and how different the "MIDI music" sounds now.

If you would cleary describe what you're trying to achieve, we could help you.

In the meantime, you'll have to understand that the SB16 is a soundcard that can playback digital sound effects, and music via an OPL synthesizer. Music played back via that device will sound nothing like "real" music, because the sounds are synthesized, and no "real" instrument samples are used.

And then there's MIDI music. This is basically information about instruments, samples, and sound options (note to play, lenght, duration, etc.). A MIDI device will use this information to playback various instrument samples from a set of samples (the "Soundfont"). This kind of music does sound (more or less) like "real" music.

Now, the question is: which hardware did you have? The GUS was able to playback digital samples, synthesized music and MIDI music. The "normal" Soundblasters were only able to playback digital samples and synthesized music - unless you got a "Wavetable" expansion card.

You see, there's alot of possible combinations.

If you don't want to spend too much time fiddling with Soundfonts/emulation/strange TSR "drivers" (like SBOS and Mega-EM), and you're on Windows XP, my advice would be to use the built-in MIDI synth of Windows. As i already wrote, it sounds quite good IMHO. All you have to do is to configure your games to use the SB for digital sound effects, and "General MIDI" for music. DOSBox and Windows will do the rest.

PS: to use the GUS for MIDI, you have to install the GUS drivers, and the GUS "Soundfont" (the pack of instrument samples). There's a huge thread on VOGONS on how to install and use these packages in DOSBox.

Okay, let's get this straight.

I got an ISA GUS card (my first soundcard) 1994 and I really enjoyed it's sound. Of course, I had much trouble with some games, so I bought a SB16 in 1995. I noticed that the SB16 sounded way diffrent compared to the GUS.

I use an AMD64 X2 with WinXP SP2 and SB Audigy. All I want is trying to run the old GUS drivers of my overall first sound card correctly in DosBox, so I might listen again to exactly that sound I enjoyed so much when I was small in 1994.

Ah, now were getting somewhere! (; Just search for the massive thread dealing with the GUS drivers. I'd still recommend using the Windows MIDI synth, as it will sound _much_ better than the low-quality GUS samples, but that's your choice.

Just to make that clear: as far as sound (as in "Sound Effects") is concerned, you most likely won't hear much difference between the GUS and the SB (as it's the same samples for both cards). MIDI or synth music is a different topic.

Oh, and you might want to use the latest DOSBox version, which is 0.72.

One thing which I've always wondered about is the difference between a SB and the GUS using SBOS while running Wing Commander II.

On the first mission of the game, when your ship flies out of the space station, it makes a sort of static hissing noise using a real SB, but makes a sort of 'zing' sound using a GUS with SBOS. I always preferred the GUS sound.

Why would these sounds be so different?

A good example of SBOS sounding better than FM is the intro music in ultrabots/xenobots.

Hmmm... Maybe the better sound is just a coincidence? I mean, if i understood that right, SBOS is just a tool to emulate a SB card on GUS hardware. Emulation can never be perfect, so SBOS will most likely sound different than a SB card. It would be cool if someone with a real SB and GUS could record the line output, for comparison.

No. It emulates a Sound Blaster in function, not form. It plays sounds the GUS way, with a patch set. Some games sound better, some worse, some just different.

Yes. So the "better" sound _is_ a coincidence. I can't believe that SBOS uses samples (or patches, however you want to call them) to emulate FM synthesis. The Wikipedia article i've quoted says that SBOS is a tool for "SB Pro 8-bit Stereo emulation and AdLib FM synthesis" - i can't see the patchset involved for that functionality. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to assign a sample to a certain waveform. If it would be possible to do that, MIDI music would have been superfluous.

Not a coincidence, it was even used as a selling point of sounding better. That's how a GUS works, and the source is available, not that that's needed to know this, GUS has various sized SBOS patch sets, as well as a 1MB set made for the GUSMAX. MIDI devices and GUS aren't the same thing, GUS can play with samples unlike MIDI devices.