Interesting info all around people, thank you.

I remembered reading a short and simple retrospective on all DOS-era sound cards some time ago, so I went looking for it. It even has some recorded examples of different sound cards in games. Here it is:
https://www.crossfire-designs.de/index.php?lang=en&what=articles&name=showarticle.htm&article=soundcards/&page=1

Not only in Poland. Same over here in the southern hemisphere. We had great access to games during all the nineties, but getting the hardware to play GenMIDI was almost unheard of.

Best sound I heard from a DOS game before the year 2000 came from my AWE32... I can't believe I gave that one away :/

I'm not sure if it's mentioned before, but in short;

before the 90s revolution we had expensive and beautiful keyboard synths, which was impossible to be admired up-close (including me :p), and needed expensive equipment, and they used MIDI as a defined and agreed-upon protocol (protocol is just a set of communication/behavioral rules, like TCP/IP or how a minister talks to foreign countries...). Physical communication between devices.

Software MIDI is actually based on pre-created soundfonts or sound samples from actual keyboards or derived hardware; sending "text" or "notes" to a device will play different on different devices/soundfont-packs (for both hardware and software).

General MIDI like on Windows (cheap) and Canvas (better), Roland/Yamaha (best) is examples of such "packs", and on a computer (outside of games) you can also use them as plug-ins for music creation software like Ableton or Fruity-Loops. These mentioned "ROM"s are proprietary sound "dumps" from a physical musical instrument. Professional sound packs/cards, like Yamaha and others were/is quite pricey.

Adlib, and later SoundBlaster changed all that. Now we had "good" sound at an (better) affordable price, but uses ordinary FM synthesis. Digital sound signals are sent directly to a soundcard which would then synthesize sound and create an analog signal, which then are sent to a speaker. Some Sound Blaster cards SUPPORTED MIDI but they where the cheap version.

SoundFonts are pre-created, while FM synthesizers synthesizes sound on-the-fly. Depending on several factors you can/would hear the differences, even with the same card or soundfont pack.

DOSBOX do emulate Adlib/Sounblaster hardware cards (but has not MIDI internally), and sends these signals to what ever driver are set to handle these, and MIDI fonts/notes are just sent to whatever is set to receive these, like General MIDI, or something more expensive.

I like to think of MIDI as PDF files - they're made to be viewed/heard the same on different computers, but in reality it's not always 100%, but close enough to the original.

Even better; Mozart created a music piece on a sheet of paper and then distributed it to several people who then scanned the paper, and since everyone already had their personal "Mozart"-copy indoors, they could all happily hear the Mozarts original intent.

Disclaimer: I'm by all means and nessesary no specialist on this, I just love to ponder on things. Please, correct me if I'm wrong :)

Thanks for the link! Had a good trip down memory-lane :)

Ok, I will! ;-)


That's not just 'MIDI', but a General MIDI compatible MIDI file.

If I record some notes and controller data meant for playback on my own synthesizers, then save it as a midi file; that file will not even sound close for anyone else who doesn't have that specific hardware.

I think that's what you meant, but you invited me to correct you. ;-)

yeah I know all that (I dabbled a lil bit amateurishly in creating music) but MIDI, as others said, is a communications protocol. A simple knob could be a MIDI input device. I can use that MIDI input device to connect that to an FM synthesizer, say a VST plug-in in a Digital Audio Worksation software, create presets in that plugin that would define the sound, assign that plug-in to a MIDI channel and voila - I can hear sound from the FM synthesizer as I turn my MIDI knob. Moreover, I can import a MIDI file into the DAW and let that FM synthesizer play it. That's how I thought the Sound Blaster / AdLib thing works.

so what do you mean by "digital sound signals"? You mean the application (game) is sending the FM synthesis info to the soundcard, that is - what type of wave (sine / square etc.), how many waves, what frequency etc.? that's kind of where i'm at now with understanding how AdLib/SoundBlaster cards worked

I have no problem understanding how MIDI worked but rather how SoundBlaster / AdLib worked (from the composer perspective)

thanks for the link, I get what you're saying but someone in the thread said that some games sound with AdLib better as they composer worked on AdLib and I have a hard time imagining how the MORE limited option with farty synth drums could sound better even if the compositions were made with AdLib in mind.

Like I'd think that the NES soundtrack for the first Final Fantasy would sound better if you could replace each sound with an appropriate/corresponding instrument in a MIDI soundfont even though Nobuo Uematsu composed that for the NES synthesizer specifically.

I gather that you don't like electronic music? So you have a hard time imagining that music that you don't like can sound better to other people?

okay, if I sounded too condescending, I am sorry, wasn't my intent.

You are wrong about me not liking electronic music. In fact the first music I fell in love with as a kid was my father's casette tape of Jean Michel Jarre, and my grandfather's collection of synthesizer music on vinyl ("best of"s all of them). Then I went on to listen to Kraftwerk, Autechre, Aphex Twin, Amon Tobin etc.... So no, I was raised on electronic music.

Now I can see a place for AdLib/SoundBlaster sounds as part of some weird chiptune ensemble, okay. I can imagine using its sound for some artistic purpose. But we're not talking about just the specific sounds of those synths but whole compositions. And not just any compositions but 90s game music compositions. This was music with a purpose - to enhance gameplay. The capabilities of those soundcards were just so limited for that purpose. Yes they have their own sound but it's a vary limited array of sound, which results in many games sounding almost the same. And most of those soundtracks were trying to sound like classical orchestral soundtracks anyway, they were musically saying "imagine these were the real instruments...". So when you translated those soundtracks into MIDI soundfonts, well they got closer to what they were supposed to represent in the first place! I doubt all those fantasy games composers had sci-fi synths in mind, they were desperately trying to get the soundcards to play something close to strings. And even in sci-fi games you most often had the same situation. They weren't making "chiptune" then. You enjoyed those soundtracks because you basically imagined it was an orchestra, suspended your musical disbelief in a sense.

Now there may have been some AdLib fanatic and magician who actually generated something unbelievable out of it.... It just seems so improbable. But ok, maybe. After all, I myself have said in the past that I admire the composers of early games music that they could come up with memorable parts in spite of all the limitations. Sometimes the limitations stimulate creativity and I always love to see artists come up with creative solutions to get around them.

But as far as the games I played go, I have never encountered a soundtrack that wasn't enhanced by giving it more channels, more instruments, more recognisable sounds through MIDI soundfont. Even if you already kind of liked the SB sound. I'd wager it's true in the vast majority of cases. Those soundcards didn't give you unique options, but limitations. They just had their own sound is all.

Yeah, I get it, but IMHO they should come with a setup to allow people to change it easily (some games have it, for DOSbox display options usually), even better if pops up the first time you run the game to maybe inform some people who might not know about the option. I mean, you could say that about just any Windows supported feature that Microsoft might drop it. This happens all the time and breaking a lot of older games and GoG / devs have to update them.

EDIT: sorry for writing walls of text but it's just a fascinating topic and I can't help myself!

General MIDI is not an option that always works, and it can also sound pretty terrible in some games with certain sound banks. Compared to that, SB/Adlib's emulation is very robust and quite good in dosbox. Also MT32 and General MIDI support is partially broken in some older games, as they don't support playing sound effects when these cards are chosen for music.

Also, most people know DOS games by their Adlib sound, since the majority who owned a 386 or a 486 PC had either a Sound Blaster or its clone or simply used the PC speaker. I used to like General MIDI emulation but now I use it quite selectively for specific games, as I started to like Adlib sound more for some reason. Of course, one should always experiment to find out what sounds best for him/her for each specific game. Luckily, dosbox supports all major types of sound in some way or another.

which is why a frontend for sound options just like they have for display would have been a nice thing

oh well, I guess I should be thankful that we have the option of running these games at all on newer systems. We've come a long way since the pre-GoG/Steam era in that regard.

I think another issue here is that even if you emulate some of these old sound cards successfully, the cards themselves were over-priced, market-hyped consumer-grade trash: they had lousy FM-synth sample tables, and crappy DACs. Consequently, with all 16 channels, output could be really dissonant at times. . . and the better your speakers, the worse it sounded.

MIDI should really sound like this. At 1:07, there's the 'breakdown' when the game starts, and more channels kick in. Really. Good. Sound. This was possible because of the Yamaha YM2149F SPU in the Atari 1040ST, and the MIDI instruction sets.

Here's another example on the Amiga, 8-bit, 4-channel. I have no idea what SPU the Amiga had, nor do I know what insturction set protocol it used. I feel like they're using some multi-channel virtualisation here. Absolutely amazing sound.

In all instances you also need to change a game configuration in addition to the DOSBox settings; best case scenario is adding some parameters to the command line when running the game. In many cases it implies making changes (or replacing) files with binary contents.

It's still doable, but not so easy as doing a frontend for some text file changes, and it would imply GOG making a way to change the sound settings on a game by game basis.

If you are really into DOS era games, and have many, I suggest you look into putting them in some DOSBox frontend like DBGL instead of simply using the GOG install.

ok, I obviously was too broad in my original post. Let me change that a bit - I think MIDI soundfont is most of the time better in compositions that sound like if they were intended for analog instruments, which is all the orchestral sounding soundtracks in RPGs or adventure titles or games with a "cinematic" flair like Wing Commander, or "rock" tracks in Doom.

those that sound like they were meant to be an FM synthesis chiptune, that's probably more subjective.
i'm probably biased by the types of games I played. I think platformers for example often had more amorphous soundtracks that could by anything, but I didn't play as much of those.

as for composer intent it's not as clear-cut to me, 'cause it's usually not known to a player and some composers worked hard on each of the music options to make them sound as acceptable as possible. I think in many cases composers themselves wouldn't know which one is the "true" one and their opinion on which one they like best would have been as subjective.

lol, of course! stupid me
thing is sometimes GoG versions make it actually harder to access the sound configuration file.
so maybe not really a frontend, but just simply a way to open sound configuration in dosbox with a single click, just like you click a big "play" button in Galaxy to open the game itself.

Fortunately it seems they are increasingly supporting this. Earlier it used to be quite bad at times, as if GOG even removed the sound setup utilities from some games (e.g. I recall this being the case with Ultima Underworld and Theme Hospital, I haven't checked lately if they have fixed it), but lately many DOSBox games seem to do what you say, either give you a separate shortcut to game (incl. sound) options, or even pointing you first to that (e.g. Wing Commander 3, I think).

Anyway, the problem with this can also be that it increases support calls to GOG when people set their DOS game audio settings without understanding what they are doing. IRQ? DMA? Port? Wow, a list of 20 different sound cards, which should I choose, Waveblaster, RAP-10 or Gravis Ultrasound? Why not try all of them and then contact GOG support because the game is silent?