I've been playing a number of DOS games lately that support music through General MIDI. and have so far tried these soundfonts to go with them: FluidR3, SGM, Timbres of Heaven and WeedsGM3. I saw them mentioned on forums and videos and they were easy to find.

Of these, SGM sounds to me overall the best. What soundfonts do you use? Do you just pick one and go with it or use different ones for different games? Is there perhaps a reasonably priced commercial option that would be worth buying, or is the soundfont scene dead?

(I'm not a musician and know next to nothing about music. I can just tell which of two particular things I like more.)

I find FluidR3, SGM and WeedsGM3 merely passable, none of them are really my favourites.

I am currently using only two: Chorium Rev.A and Timbres of Heaven, in this order. I think technically speaking ToH has somewhat better quality instruments than Chorium, but it depends on the game which sounds better to my ear, e.g.:

X-Wing and Tie Fighter games: Timbres of Heaven sounds somewhat better, albeit I feel in X-Wing (at least the theme music) the ToH trumpets or whatever horns they are are too "strong", eclipsing rest of the instruments. Chorium instruments, while a bit poorer in quality, are better balanced IMHO. But still, ToH wins in those two games (talking about the DOS versions of course, as the Windows versions don't support General MIDI).

Privateer: I feel Chorium offers superior music in this game, especially the in-flight music. I can't now elaborate why I feel this way, I'd need to listen to them again.

I don't know if it affects my preferences that back in the old days I had a Sound Canvas sound card (Roland SCC-1). To me Chorium Rev.A resembles the SCC-1 soundfont, but is better. I have also some SCC-1/SC-55 soundfont, but I feel Chorium has made it obsolete.

For Ultima Underworld 1-2, you shouldn't use General MIDI soundfonts, but MT-32 (or rather, CM-32L so that you get proper swimming sound effect etc.) ROMs with Munt.

UUW games supported Roland LA-synths (MT-32 and derivatives), not General MIDI.

Obviously I need to check the new ToH, in case it differs considerably from the earlier one.

Thank you for the info. I have a rather hard time keeping things straight when it comes to MIDI, so the help is nice. :)

For reference, this is how Ultima Underworld should sound (digitized speech disabled for this video):

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

At least what I just tried UUW with Timbres of Heaven soundfont, it sounded wildly different from that, using wrong instruments in many places I guess.

I think it might be possible to make a special General MIDI soundfont that mimics MT-32/CM-32L closely enough, to be used e.g. with this game. Probably there is such somewhere already, I recall someone else using one for e.g. Ultima 7 (which also supports MT-32, not General MIDI).

I recall that with e.g. Roland SCC-1 (which was a General MIDI card, or rather GS), it was possible to set the card into a MT-32 compatibility mode. Then the UUW music would sound quite good (occasionally maybe even better than with a real MT-32, due to better quality instruments), but I think the sound effects were still wrong, e.g. piano sounds instead of footstep thumps etc.

I gave Timbres of Heaven another chance and tried Chorium, but I still like SGM the best. I think you are going after a particular sound due to your history with SCC-1, I don't have such a frame of reference regarding how the songs "should" sound like.

Good information on Ultima Underworld there, CM-32L being better than MT-32 there would go unnoticed quite easily. Someone should really compile a list of recommended music options for old games, it's not always clear what the music was made on.. I understand that the General MIDI option is often the best when offered, but didn't at least X-Wing have its general midi track derived from the mt-32? Theres probably more exceptions out there.

Frankly ever since I discovered FluidR3 I stuck with it, despite trying a bunch of other supposedly better ones over the years. Here's a few tracks that IMO sound minblowingly good with FluidR3, much better than with any other SoundFonts I've tried yet:
Ultima 3 Title Music
Descent Title Music
Abuse - Track 01
Abuse Outro

You just motivated me to continue my search for better SoundFonts, though. :P

Edit: Okay, I just tried Timbres of Heaven for the first time. Disappointed.

I find SynergiGS as most versatile, also YamahaXG soft synthesizer sounds very good to me.
Let us also not forget about installing GUS under DOSBox ;-)

Yeah, the GUS' default wavetable is pretty nice, for me GUS emulation tends to skip "stop" instructions, though, and I regularly end up with notes getting "stuck" until they are played again. Much more often than with General MIDI. That's the main reason I don't use it anymore.

Heh - love that 'issue'...or music slow-downs while playing game ..:-D

Truth to be told I cannot remember if I ever ended up playing a game using Gravis..TFTD? Flashback? But still - it IS another option to choose from - that's why I mentioned it.

I forgot about GUS. I have a SB16+GUS ACE card in a retro box where I don't really have other options. Is it worth emulating though, are there examples of games where the GUS music really shines in contrast to other options? Or maybe games for which it has other benefits, like quality hardware mixing of samples instead of quick and dirty software algorithms.

GUS is supposedly awesome for tracker music (which makes sense, given that even its default MIDI wavetable is not permanently stored on the hardware in a ROM but has to be loaded into the soundcard's own RAM each time you start the computer). I have yet to find a game that uses its special capabilities, though. I remember reading that Terminal Velocity makes special use of the GUS but IIRC I couldn't make out any differences between GUS and Soundblaster when I tried DOSBox' GUS emulation on it.

Sigh.. if GOG could fix the damn search, we wouldn't need to repeat the same topic every 3 months -_-
(sorry guys)

I like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tmN1a3cDMg

I suspect GOG forums are not easily fixed, else they would have done so long ago. Best use google to perform an advanced search within the site.