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How do I get MT-32 emulation? Is MUNT the only way?

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First post, by Nazo

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As nearly as I can determine from the help texts, with version 0.63 the need for a seperate version specifically designed with MT-32 emulation has been negated. In other words, MT-32 emulation is supposed to be built in, correct? I actually have MUNT installed and correctly working, but, the fact is that I occasionally listen to MIDIs, and I play many game that are new enough to support General Sound (or even General MIDI for most with the exception of a few like Sierra games maybe.) Between my SB Audigy 2 ZS and a handful of soundfonts I've picked out over the years not to mention the software Yamaha synthesis (yes, I actually still have a copy of this and you can bet I've made more than a few backups since Yamaha no longer sells it as nearly as I can determine) which actually seems to do better for the DOS games (probably doesn't hurt that XG is supposed to support GS and not just GM like my soundcard) the fact is, I really don't want to leave my MIDI device set on MUNT, and it's a pain having to change back and forth. Besides, I have DOSBOX installed on an external harddrive mainly for a few DOS programs, but, it occurs to me that if I felt a desire to play a game through it, it would be nice if it could work without MUNT even being installed (all the MT-32 files are there as far as I know.)

I've tried to dig through all the documentation, search the forums, etc, and as nearly as I can tell it must be assumed that everyone will just use MUNT. Did I misunderstand and DOSBOX perhaps actually does not have integrated MT-32 emulation? If it does have it, how do I enable and configure it so that I can use it with those games (preferably in such a way that it can be configured and work with the games that I set to MT-32, but, use the normal method for games I select MPU-401 or whatever in)?

Reply 1 of 4, by gulikoza

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You need a special patched version that includes mt32 emulation, official builds do not.
Seen the config= option in the [midi] section? 😉

http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza

Reply 2 of 4, by Nazo

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Well, yours used to have it, does it still? I'm using your CVS compiles (and pretty much have been since I first found out that they had pixel shaders and D3D.)

Anyway, I looked through on the config= statement. It looks like in Windows all it can do is select which device ID and nothing else (no configuration of IRQ for example.) Ok, I guess I should be able to use this to set it in the configuration to use MUNT instead of the default MIDI synthesis, but, I still have to either change back and forth or keep a seperate copy just for the one game. More importantly though, I was really hoping to not have to rely on MUNT all the time since I may want to run this on some other system without having to install MUNT to that system.

Reply 3 of 4, by gulikoza

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My builds have mt32 emulation, you need to set device=mt32 instead of default. For config= option type mixer /listmidi in dosbox. You will get the list of available devices to use...

http://www.si-gamer.net/gulikoza

Reply 4 of 4, by Nazo

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Ok, looks like config= is only used if it's default or win32 I think. If you set the type to mt32, then it uses built-in MT-32 emulation I think (seems to run less smoothly than MUNT?) Config= set to the MUNT device won't really help there. It's too bad there's no way to use one or the other just by in-game settings, but, I do understand the fact that they are so similar that they could easily conflict if you tried to have both at once.

Anyway, guess that answers my question. Now that I have fully working MT-32 I realize that I'm dissapointed how few games really sound better on it, though some like Gateway pretty much have to be played with it since the alternatives are quite bad (FM synthesis should have died long before it did if you ask me.) Oh well, for some time now I've been thinking that we really need to just get used to the idea of dropping a copy of DOSBOX complete with it's own configuration in individual game folders and running via a batch file or something (I've already been doing this for a few games like QuadNet that just absolutely will not work under Windows even with VDMSound, and Zone66 which require a specialized configuration.)

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