Another useful thread might be this one: How to make midis sound good again

What's the difference between the MT-32 and the CM-32L ROMS? I mean, I have them both but is there a comparison somewhere or something?

Yeah, I added that also under my earlier link (first one on the list), trying to gather most of the earlier useful MT-32 (and General MIDI) discussions into one place. :)

That reminds me, has there been any new Munt versions lately...? Not that I feel I really need a new version anyway, the version I've been using quite some time was a vast improvement over the earlier ones.

Well I saw one released in March of this year, I think..?

I think the youtube linked in this message covers the differences:

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/roland_mt32_the_ultimate_tutorial/post1

Some games sound somewhat better, or rather, more correct, with the MT-32 ROMs, while some others with CM-32L ROMs. Usually the earlier MT-32 supported games with MT-32, and later ones with CM-32L. So it depends on the games you are going to play, but I'd say either ones are fine. The little glitches and such with the "wrong" ROMs are not that significant as far as I can tell. So what if the cow moos sound funny in Hearth of China with CM-32L, or the swimming sound is odd/missing in Ultima Underworld with MT-32, or something like that.

timppu can you explain to me what the significance of BASSMIDI is? Like, what is it used for? I see it says for soundfonts or something, but if I have the ROMS I thought those were the soundfonts...

After you have installed Munt (+ the Roland ROMs), you need to be able to tell Windows that all MIDI messages that anything (like DOSBox) sends out should go through the Munt driver/synth and not the default MS Windows General MIDI/GS synthesizer ("Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth").

In Windows XP, you would select the Munt Synth driver from Control Panel MIDI sound options or somesuch. In its idiotic wisdom, Microsoft removed this ability (as well as the ability to change MIDI volume apparently) in later Windows versions, like Vista/7/8.

So, BASSMIDI gives you back the ability to change back and forth between the Munt synth driver and the MS General MIDI/GS driver, depending whether you want MT-32/CM-32L or General MIDI. And BASSMIDI also lets you change the MIDI volume too, I think.

Other purpose (which has nothing to do with MT-32/CM-32L) for retrogamers with BASSMIDI is that it also lets you enhance your General MIDI/Sound Canvas game music sounds, by replacing the poor sounding "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" intruments with better soundfonts that you can download from internet (I propose Chorium rev.A). In that case, you'd load the replacement soundfonts with BASSMIDI, and select "BASSMIDI driver" instead of the MS GS Wavetable Synth (or the Munt MT-32 Synth). This you would use with all your General MIDI/Sound Canvas games.

BASSMIDI also seems to support the extended Sound Canvas MIDI messages, so you would also get some extra goodies with some General MIDI games like different drumsets, vibrato or hall/echo effects etc., that you'd also be missing with the basic MS GS Wavetable Synth. Privateer, Ultima 8, Jurassic Park, Dune 2 etc. used these extra Sound Canvas effects quite nicely.

Another, more lightweight alternative to circumvent Microsoft's idiocy is Putzlowitschs Vista-MIDIMapper which adds the ability to choose Midi device to the Control Panel.
It works well on my Win7 machine, and all the trouble (mainly aquiring the Roland ROMs) was worth it for the better sound, escecially in the Ultima Underworld games.

I found the Pix Patcher did the job well enough for enabling UU with Roland sound

For some reason it didn't work for me. Instead I'm using Coolsoft VirtualMIDISynth. I actually installed it to use custom soundfonts for games with General MIDI music but its configuration tool is also perfect for switching the MIDI devices.

Sounds basically similar to BASSMIDI then.

I used to use the Vista-MIDIMapper on one Win7 machine and IIRC it worked for me, but afterwards I've been using BASSMIDI so that I can also use the replacement General MIDI sound fonts.

Should probably check this one out eventually - I must say though, I'm very loyal to the Coolsoft guy and will recommend VirtualMIDISynth wherever I can. He listens a lot to his user base and has already done a lot of stuff for them - just drop a comment and odds are that he will reply and consider implementing a suggested feature. Apparently the tool was originally meant mainly for karaoke music but he has actually already made changes exclusively for supporting games. I discovered the tool late in 2012 and it has already evolved a whole damn lot since then.

Just making sure you are aware that you also have to tell the game itself that you want MT-32 music (if the game supports it)? So after Munt and BASSMIDI (or similar) are installed, before running the game (or DOSBox) for the first time, you'd have to:

- Run BASSMIDI (or similar) as an administrator to swap the MIDI sound target to Munt synth driver. (You can then exit BASSMIDI, no need to keep it running in the background.)

- Run the game sound setup inside the DOSBox session (setsound,exe, setup.exe or install.exe; or in the worst case if the sound setup executable is missing, you'd need to edit some sound config file manually; in the best case the game recognizes automatically that there is a MIDI (MPU-401) device present and enables Roland music when you run the game itself, e.g. Monkey Island 2 does this I think).

- Run the game.

But if you later want to play e.g. some General MIDI music game, you need to re-run BASSMIDI to switch the MIDI target back to General MIDI.