DOSBox MIDI only plays using General Midi/Roland settings?

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Posts: 2
Joined: 5 Feb 2018 - 11:49
DOSBox MIDI only plays using General Midi/Roland settings?

I've noticed I can only get VirtualMIDISynth to play midi sounds from DOSBOX using the following: General Midi/MPU-401/Roland MT-32/LAPC-1, Roland Canvas/GS, Roland SCC-1, Roland MPU 401.  All these always will detect port 330 in Dosbox to be used for midi.

I can't get VMS to take over if i select something like Soundblaster Pro/16, or even one of the other generic soundcards.

I was just curious of this is normal.  Or am I doing something wrong?  I was thinking it could be DOSBOX maybe emulating the midi sounds within the program before it even hits the soundcard making it into a regular audio sound and therefore not even being able to register with VMS?  There's a setting in DOSBOX called OPL Emulation, it sounds like this may be the reason Soundblaster settings don't get detected as MIDI in VMS?

Not a big deal either, probably over half or 3/4 of my favourite games have General Midi as an option which is great since General MIDI mixed with VMS makes it sound superior to the rest usually.  A few unfortunately only have Soundblaster options.

Sorry for asking this, I've only been using VMS with DOSBOX recently and just wanted to know if there was some setting in DOSBOX or VMS to get Soundblaster to let midi play through to VMS using custom soundfonts.

Posts: 1972
Joined: 25 Mar 2012 - 01:19
Re: DOSBox MIDI only plays using General Midi/Roland settings?

I'm not an expert on DosBox but, AFAIR (I'm a long-time computer geek ;)), the MPU-401 was the hardware MIDI-Out interface available in DOS era.
Selecting it you're telling your game to play the MIDI stream out to that interface.

Any other setting like SoundBlaster* means "do not play MIDI but play analog sounds through this analog device", or "try to render this MIDI with SoundBlaster emulation".
In this configurations, being VMS a (virtual) MIDI device, it is not used at all.

Webbie wrote:
just wanted to know if there was some setting in DOSBOX or VMS to get Soundblaster to let midi play through to VMS using custom soundfonts

SoundBlaster is an analog device or, better, has its own MIDI emulation (don't know if the hardware MIDI synthis emulated by DosBox), so it's unrelated with VMS.

Posts: 2
Joined: 5 Feb 2018 - 11:49
Re: DOSBox MIDI only plays using General Midi/Roland settings?

Was wondering why soundblaster setting wouldn't output to virtualmidi.... Thanks coolsoft, nicely explained.