It can be tricky since OPL3 is not a MIDI compatible device. When you just 'set it as the main playback synth within Windows', many processes hidden from your sight occur. Actually, Windows OPL3 driver uses some kind of an OPL timbre bank to translate MIDI into OPL compatible data.

I am not sure Creative's play.exe has this kind of functionality. If you point at where to get it (the PLAY.EXE), I will look into it further.

Meanwhile, why wouldn't you just use my PX player for your purposes? If you select SBAWE32.ADV driver, it will play through EMU8000; if you select SBP2FM.ADV or WSS.ADV, it will play through AWE32's OPL3 chip. Although, PX player might be incompatible with some (seemingly rare) MIDI files.

Checkout this thread which I started a little while back.

SET MIDI AUTOEXEC.BAT Question

I use a program called Midier for playing back midi in OPL-3, in dos.
http://www.pldos.pl/windos/midier.htm
It works fine most of the time, on most cards I've tried it on, and sounds much better then playing them through windows.
You can use it in windows too.
Never had it crash on me in a 9x dosbox.

There's also an old Cakewalk demo for DOS that can't save, but can still serve as a midi player of some sort. CAKE5DMO.ZIP, posted it on here before

Another vote for Midier. This is the Swiss knife of DOS MIDI players for sure. Works with just about any ISA sound card and beyond...

BTW. the midier.bat launcher file defaults to OPL2 / OPL3 but on an AWE32 with a DB attached and/or external synth attached the following options are also available:

@echo off
sbmidi.exe /3 THIS IS THE MPU 401, ie. daughterboard or external device

OR

sbmidi /2 FOR the EMU8000 (Proteus) synth of the AWE32

sbsim.com
tui.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5
sbsim.com /u
sbmidi.exe /u

Using Aweutil to reroute 330 requests to 620 (MPU401 to AWE32 EMU8000) may or may not work.

Fantastic. If I have no need to fiddle with Creative's play.exe and the SET BLASTER variables much better then. I will have a look at these players you suggested me.

Bristlehog: play can be found with normal DOS driver packages for SB16/AWE32 cards

OT: Pretty much nothing to do with the topic, but out of curiosity <and probably discussed many times before> but how does an OPN2 actually compare to an OPL3 knowing they are both 4-op chips?

OPL3's differences from OPL2 are described in wikipedia article. In my subjective opinion, the most noticeable difference is its ability to perform stereo.

You can easily notice this using only your AWE32 card. Take PX player, grab a MIDI file and first play it using ADLIB.ADV driver, and it will sound monophonic, then play using WSS.ADV, and it will sound stereo (provided your MIDI file is stereo itself).

Here, I recorded an example video.

bristlehog wrote:

OPL3's differences from OPL2 are described in wikipedia article. In my subjective opinion, the most noticeable difference is its ability to perform stereo.

You can easily notice this using only your AWE32 card. Take PX player, grab a MIDI file and first play it using ADLIB.ADV driver, and it will sound monophonic, then play using WSS.ADV, and it will sound stereo (provided your MIDI file is stereo itself).

Here, I recorded an example video.

Ahh, sorry for the misunderstanding but I was referring not to the OPL2 itself but the OPN2 chip that the Sega Megadrive uses (YM2612).

Still, thanks for the info and video you uploaded. It seems that not many composers managed to take advantage of the newer chip.