Is it just me, or does the synthesized AdLib music sound... off? I had to find the 1.2 release amongst my oldest stuff and compare them. Sure enough, the older version sounded a LOT better. I suspect the instrument banks have been switched in the 1.3 release. Here's a quick comparison I've recorded:

http://www.mediafire.com/?e4282b6qkr2rbr0

First is the 1.3 release, with the Apogee fanfare and an excerpt from "Goin' Down The Fast Way". Afterwards the 1.2 version.

Is there any way to perhaps hack the original banks back in? It means that much to my nostalgia ;) .

Wow! There is a huge difference there. I have no solution for you other than to try WinROTT with external music files. Maybe you or someone else could sample the tunes from the 1.2 version and use them that way? :)

This was a known problem back when ROTT was still new, the 1.3 patch redid all the FM music and it sounded crap. I never discovered how to resolve this, apart from just using version 1.2. There is actually a ROTT FAQ floating around on the internet that references this problem and draws the same conclusion- if you aren't playing multiplayer, just use version 1.2 and hope you don't run into any of the bugs (mainly to do with boss battles crashing the game IIRC).

I do have both versions but I'm not sure where you'd find them on the internet, or if I'd be allowed to offer 1.2 for download (it's not just the EXE that's changed, there are additional files as well).

However, if you are serious about your ROTT music, some form of MIDI is the way to go. On old machines, the best music device for ROTT was a Gravis Ultrasound, IMO. I remember reading somewhere that Lee Jackson actually composed the games music on a GUS. I actually still have a 486 with a GUS and sound blaster, so this is what I prefer... although I can see how this isn't very practical for most people :P

Fortunately, DOSBox can emulate a Gravis Ultrasound.
Please see this page for info: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Sound

Another option is to load a SoundFont in windows and use that for your General MIDI device. If you have a Creative sound card, you can find info on this here: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=27016&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

If you don't have a Creative sound card, you can use a software solution like Timidity to load a soundfont. I have done this using onboard Realtek audio. The instructions are on near the bottom of the second page of that previous link.

The fortunate thing is that these two options will work with any games that support General MIDI, not just ROTT :) I believe that windows ports like WinROTT support general MIDI, so this should work with them as well.

Ha, didn't know Lee Jackson composed using the GUS :) . Explains a lot though.

While I was so obviously not checking out this forum, I was thinking about generating my own set of adlib-like patches for a soundfont to plug it in with ROTT. I got some oldschool FM synths lying around, shouldn't be too hard to recreate the instruments by ear. I haven't started doing this yet and I'm not so sure I'll ever get around to doing that seeing as I'm having a bit of an aggressive schedule, but maybe once the holidays are here I'll play around.

Still, shame about not being able to play around with the original sound banks - they're built into the executable, and I'm not an assembler whiz to know what to switch around ;] .

Thanks for the help anyway :) .

Protip! - Get the D-Fend Reloaded DOSBox frontend. I use it for all my DOS GOG's, especially those with "Setup.exe" files. It let's you customize every single environment variable with a handy GUI (rather than using DOSBox' tedious command prompt), and as far as sound emulation, it handles all the old SB cards, GUS, and even DSS. If pixels aren't your thing, you can apply the 2xsai or supereagle (or the combination "super2xsai") scaling filters that made 8 and 16-bit console emulators look so smooth.

Setting up a separate "Profile" for ROTT in the frontend is easy. All you have to do is point it towards the the locations of the game's main executable, and it's SETUP.exe if one is applicable.