I admit I don't even know what percussion's are, but when I tested my X-Fi under W7 with soundfonts, I made a few recordings:

Creative Labs X-Fi + SoundFont + W7 64bit + DOSBox + General Midi Games

They are in the first post. And at least another one further down (Raptor). Have a listen and tell me how they compare...

LinkChoriumRevA.SF2 is the one I really really liked.

Do you mean that the percussion sounds like it's being played by a melodic instrument (e.g. a piano)? Lemme guess... the problem reared it's ugly head <grin> after playing a "WAD" engine based game (e.g. DOOM, DOOM2, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, etc...) in DOSBox?

If so, I'd almost guarantee this is your problem (and details of the extremely EASY and QUICK fix):

Drums of midi files broken after DosBox usage

dosbox and windows midi problem

http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/S … AWOL/m-p/523917

First thread has a simple MIDi file that you can play in any MIDI player to fix things, as well as a DOS utility to fix the problem (great for running in DOSBox after playing a game that causes the problem, and then before exiting DOSBox).

Second thread has a little WinDoZe utility to fix it.

Third thread is my inital post on the subject (over at Creative Labs' forums).

Son of a *****. I had a feeling Doom had something to do with it because Doom always had good sound no matter what I used. Well, I used a hex editor to remove the "GM Mode OFF" sysex command from Doom's executable(I actually set it to "GM Mode ON," problem solved.

I don't get why "GM Mode OFF" causes either a remapping of the percussion, or, in my case, a complete loss of percussion. Either way, the problem's fixed and I'm happy. Now to play some games in DOSBox with GM.dls loaded into my SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 until I get my Roland CM-300(and CM-64) in a little under 2 weeks.

Ace wrote:

Son of a *****. I had a feeling Doom had something to do with it because Doom always had good sound no matter what I used.

I first stumbled on the problem back in March 2009... that's when I built up my current rig, and bought my SBLive (CT4780), and initally migrated to WinDoZe XP. As well as discovering DOSBox; I absolutely HAD to have some way of running my old DOS games <grin>.

As detailed in those messages, I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I then remembered that I just may have had similar problems years before with my Wave Blaster 1... as I had a bunch of batch files that would reset the WB1 after running the all of the various WAD based games.

Ace wrote:

Well, I used a hex editor to remove the "GM Mode OFF" sysex command from Doom's executable(I actually set it to "GM Mode ON," problem solved.

Hehe, like me, one of the brave ones... nuthin' like a good hex editor 😀

Ace wrote:

I don't get why "GM Mode OFF" causes either a remapping of the percussion, or, in my case, a complete loss of percussion.

"GM Mode Off" allows for MIDI channel 10 to be used as a melodic channel (instead of a percussive channel), hence MIDI channel 10 is converted to a melodic channel when that sysex is sent.

Now, what initially confused me back in 2009 was, that the SBLive would STAY like that even after a complete PC power-down and reboot. Heh, I'm used to hardware completely resetting when powering off and then powering up the computer again. Doesn't seem to be the case with the SBLive... BTW, it has something to do with those "*.CDF" and "*.SFM" files in your "C:\Windows" and "C:\Windows\System32" directories.

Ace wrote:

Either way, the problem's fixed and I'm happy.

Glad to hear it 😀

Ace wrote:

Now to play some games in DOSBox with GM.dls loaded into my SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 until I get my Roland CM-300(and CM-64) in a little under 2 weeks.

The GM.dls banks can sound rather nice... as long as the original MIDI files contain reverb MIDI controllers 😀 One game that does NOT contain any MIDI reverb or chorus controllers within it's MIDI files is DOOM, as well as DOOM2 (Damn, Bobby Prince... what were you thinking?!).

Anyhow, for games like that, I've found what sounds better is to use the bog-standard MS GS Wavetable Software Synthesizer, and then use the SBLive's EAX control panel to set up some "global" reverb... the MSGSSW Synth will then sound a lot nicer, and all of the MIDI files that are piped through it will have some nice reverb applied to them.

BTW, something that you might like; load the GM.dls into your SBLive, and then snag and play these MIDI files -> http://www.cmoo.com/snor/weeds/SoundFonts/War … _MIDI_Files.zip ... sounds EXACTLY like the Redbook audio tracks on the original WC2 CD, that originally was recorded from an SC-55 😀