MIDI is a standard for
1. communications protocol
2. digital interface
3. electrical connectors

Adlib just do not support MIDI.
Soundblaster have a game port which could used to connect MIDI devices,
but you have to connect an MIDI instrument to it to play MIDI.

I did not check source code of DOSBox, but I doubt DOSBox emulated the MIDI interface of Soundblaster.

I tried to gather some information on this but can't seem to find out how bad it is. I'd be fine with an offline license key as long as it is transferable between computers when I update hardware. Alas, there doesn't seem to be any information.

What I did find out that it's not actually an emulation of SC-55 but SC-8820, and while the latter does have a SC-55 compatibility mode, a bunch of instruments will sound different regardless.

Maybe, I checked the trial version and there were 3 options, the option for SC-55 sounded just fine for me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kY9vvyj-Dk

Try it for yourself and see. Mind you the trial version have an expiration period and a time limit for each active session for about 10 minutes, but sometimes DOSBox and loopmidi blocked it for entire game playthrough.
https://www.roland.com/ru/support/by_product/sound_canvas_va/updates_drivers/

As for the DRM I have no problem with product online activation but since there is no clear indication about transfer to another device (only 1 active session of course) I have some doubts. I had a few similar issues with Windows reinstalling and broken online dictionary software due to "wrong key", it was resolved by sending a ticket to support team, it took only 2 business days. And I had a feeling that they were going to show me some kind of agreement about how I f@cked my copy of software because change OS or PC id or something like that. Not a very pleasant feeling I should say.

Guilty as charged :).

While it is true Soundblaster did have a MIDI interface and could play MIDI, I would not refer to any SB as a MIDI device. And while some DOS games can and do indeed play MIDI through Soundblaster in DOSBox (Tyrian comes to mind with its awesome MIDI soundtracks), I assumed you were reffering to older games which only had support for General MIDI. There is no General MIDI emulation in DOSBox, though, from what I am aware, they do plan to add it at some point - it's just not a priority.

Going from your remembrance to my remembrance (we may both be wrong, it's certainly been a while), that behavior only triggered in case a game needed to run in protected mode.

I think that it is to everyone's ear.

Still, as suggested, you can improve that General MIDI quality even further (by quite much) by using some better GM/GS soundfont. I personally like the ChoriumRevA soundfont, which I use in Windows with the Coolsoft VirtualMIDI Synth utility. I used to own a Roland SCC-1 (Sound Canvas/GS) soundcard back in the day (actually I still do, but don't use it anymore...), and to my ear ChoriumRevA is like a better version of Sound Canvas. I like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXJORA0wWi8

If you set up e.g. ChoriumRevA and want to hear what Sound Canvas game music was at its best, I suggest you to try out games like:

Privateer
Ultima 8
Wing Commander 3
Dune 2 (this game sounds great both with General MIDI/Sound Canvas, as well as Roland MT-32 (e.g. with the Munt MT-32/CM-32L emulator)).

Sure you can try those out also with Microsoft Wavetable Synthesis, but then you will be missing all the extra Sound Canvas extensions that those games supported.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrYX1Of4hzE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irljnvZXizI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIQk3gZQhDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q40USE35TU8

To me "authentic" means either Roland MT-32 (CM32L) or Roland Sound Canvas in those games that supported them, as I was (and am) lucky enough to own both.

At least I never found a game where a separate General MIDI option would sound different to a Sound Canvas/SCC-1 option (played on a SCC-1 that is fully compliant with both; GS/Sound Canvas is basically a superset of General MIDI, offering some extra sounds, alternative drum sets and extra effects (reverb etc.)).

Hence, I have no idea why a few games had separate options for "General MIDI" and "Sound Canvas".

- If the game offered the extended Sound Canvas music, other General MIDI cards would simply omit the MIDI messages they didn't understand, like using an alternative drumset, using some reverb effect etc. So the music would sound somewhat flatter and more generic on a non-Sound Canvas compliant card, but it would still sound fine.

- If the game offered only pure General MIDI music without the Sound Canvas extensions, then Sound Canvas would still play it just fine, without using its full potential.

So there was simply no reason to offer two separate MIDI soundtracks, one for "generic" General MIDI cards, and another for Sound Canvas.

Many Origin and Westwood games supported the Sound Canvas extensions.

You could decide it yourself. You had basically three options to run MS-DOS games in Windows 9x:

1. Run the game directly from Win9x (most MS-DOS games ran fine like this, the exception being games with oddball memory managers of their own, like JEMM and such...).

2. Exit Windows9x to pure MS-DOS (no reboot needed, you would just exit the Windows graphical user interface; after all, Windows 9x was basically running on top of MS-DOS all the time.

3. Create a shortcut the the MS-DOS game (the .exe file), and in the shortcut properties, give the game its own config.sys and autoexec.bat. In this case the system would reboot into pure MS-DOS, by using the config.sys and autoexec.bat provided in the game shortcut.

I still have two old PCs running also Windows 98SE. :) I admit I very rarely use them.

If I understood the VOGONS thread that I read (probably https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=46111) correctly, it sounds exactly like SC-8820 sounds in SC-55 mode, apart from some bug that may or may not have been fixed since. It's the closest sounding SC-55 software synth available, but some instruments are still different.. Here are some comparisons from DOOM.

I've been thinking about this before but now that I've read up on these it I decided to get me a real SC-55(mkII) thingie. It doesn't get that much much more expensive than the software (a more reasonable pricing would help here, Roland), will always give the right SC-55 sound, and I don't have to worry about DRM shutting me out of it.

Of course it's nowhere near as convenient as a software solution would be :(

On the topic of the Sound Canvas VA. Upon registering you get access to the Roland account website where you can manage your activations. 3 are available at one time, and cancellation of an activated device is possible (which I assume means your possible activation count goes back up). Also about having more than once instance of the product open, I just tried it, and use of the product works on multiple computers simultaneously (I understand you can also have multiple instances open on one computer for recording purposes, but I haven't tried that).

If you do want to use Sound Canvas VA, I recommend looking into how to set it up with Falcosoft MIDI player. If I remember right, Phil's computer lab had a couple video's on using it. Falcosoft MIDI player can be set up, using presets, to easily change to a variety of MIDI device setups e.g. MT-32, soundfonts, Yamaha S-YXG50, etc. You'll also probably need Coolsoft MIDI Mapper and LoopMIDI, or similar software installed.

On the OP's topic, If it hasn't been said before, DOS games that use MIDI generally (not always) sound best when played back on the MIDI device it was originally composed for. A simple Google search will usually shed light on which game was designed for what.

*Oh and thanks to Bluddy for the earlier reply, that Fatboy Soundfont is great!

Thank you, it's good to know. Perhaps it's time to buy Sound Canvas VA after all.

Hope you can still deactivate a device even if it's totally dead and can no longer call in. (This didn't use to be the case with Playstation network, for instance). And of course if Roland ceased to be or just discontinued the service for some reason - maybe to push Roland Cloud? - that would also be bad.

OK, Decided to try playing with the Sound Canvas VA Roland account management activations (For Science!) and discovered the following.

From the Roland management account website, choosing "Manage activations" and then "Confirm registered computer" on the SOUND Canvas VA product will give you access to the list of currently activated computers.

I chose "Cancellation of the activated computer" for my laptop (which was not turned on at the time) and was able to successfully de-activate my laptop and increase the "Number of available activations" by 1.

I then turned on my laptop, and disabled internet access. Started Sound Canvas VA through Falcosoft MIDI player and it seems to still have full usage. (Which will be good if the Roland Account Website ever goes down, use of the software on computers that currently have it registered shouldn't be affected)

Went to the activation spot through the Sound Canvas VA software, enabled internet, and successfully reactivated the software for my laptop. As expected, the "Number of available activations" went down by 1 on the website and I could see my laptop on the activated computers list once again.

Hopefully this will answer any questions on how the activation process for the Sound Canvas VA works :-)

Indeed, thanks for science! :)

Are you saying that the data sent from the game application to the Adlib/Sound Blaster soundcard was not in MIDI format? Perhaps that the data actually contained the FM synthesis instructions, not just note triggers? I stand corrected then, but blame it on the games themselves then, not me, they are the ones that labeled the Sound Blaster and Adlib as MIDI devices in their sound setups! Because of that everyone non-savvy I know referred to this music as MIDI music!

The way I imagined it worked is that an application is not interfacing with FM synthesis directly but through MIDI, i.e. that the synth has presets for every MIDI command

With GOG games, it seems to depend on the game what the default is. Quite often it is set to Adlib/Soundblaster as that is guaranteed to work ok (as DOSBox emulates it and doesn't have to rely on an external MIDI synth, even the Windows default General MIDI synth). Who know at what point Microsoft decides to drop the software General MIDI synth away thinking no one needs it anymore in this day and age, and at that point all those General MIDI GOG games would become silent (for the music part), unless you install some third-party General MIDI software synth. The Adlib/Soundblaster option would still work fine.

I do recall some GOG games being set to General MIDI by default. IIRC one game was even set to Roland MT-32 which is odd as you'd need a real MT-32 compatible synth or Munt emulator installed, to hear it correctly.

The composers usually did adjust the compositions to different devices. However, not all MIDI devices are equal in quality or ability and often if a comparable couldn't be found they went with the "good enough" option instead. For example, both Ultima Underworld and Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis will have added sound effects when playing with the CM-32L over a MT-32. Also time constraints usually means that the original composition device had the most time spent perfecting it. I remember hearing of a few games that actually had uniquely designed soundtracks for a couple of different sound devices, but don't believe it was a common practice.

As another post mentioned earlier, MIDI and AdLib are not the same, and (as you wrote) It would be very hard to imagine an AdLib soundtrack sounding better than a properly composed MIDI one! The MIDI devices that are commonly composed for in DOS include: Roland MT-32/CM-32L, General MIDI, Roland SoundCanvas and sometimes the Yamaha XG.

If you're interested, found this older article on the History of Sound/MIDI devices on the PC. It's a bit long (and the author is not a fan of Creative), but goes into differences of AdLib, SoundBlaster, MIDI Devices, and even touches on the Gravis Ultrasound.
https://www.midimusicadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/History_of_PC_Game_MIDI.pdf