alright, i've got everything settled down now and working flawlessly under win98. i switched to an azt-2320 sound card with good wdm drivers which instantly solved my directsound issues with multiple clients. i also switched from the java serial-midi bridge i was using with softmpu to the roland serial drivers which eliminated any remaining latency issues. i also tried out the yamaha cbx-midi driver which worked equally well. i did have to add midiox into my workflow to connect the drivers to my other virtual midi synths, but this wasn't necessary with munt.

i also discovered why mt32emu-qt was preventing my system from shutting down. i have kernelex installed and exempted mt32emu-qt from the kernelex extensions because it doesn't need it. strangely enough, when i re-enabled the extensions for mt32emu-qt i can now shut down my system normally.

munt under win98 is now running as smoothly as i've experienced it under winxp & linux. thanks again for doing the work to get it compiled with older versions of qt.