Is there a way to lower the music volume without lowering the sound effects?

Here's my contribution on setting up Ultima Underworld 1-2 music and sound effects:

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/music_and_sound_effects/page1

Which game(s) are you talking about, and with what sound sources (e.g. Ultima Underworld using Rolant CM-32L (Munt) for music + sound effects, and Soundblaster for sampled speech)?

If you are using Soundblaster for both music and sound effects, then I don't think there is a way to change the volume balance (as the game has no internal mixer).

If you are using Roland + Soundblaster combo for Ultima Underworld (the most best sounding combination), then all the sound effects, as well as music, is generated by Roland. Soundblaster is used only for the digitized speech during the intro (and where else there is speech in the game, maybe in the ending?). Since the game itself doesn't let you change music/sound effect volumes separately, you can't make Roland music louder or quieter compared to Roland sound effects. The volume balance between music and sound effects is what it is, as intended by the game developers.

But if that UUW intro speech is too quiet compared to the Roland music, then read on.

Ultima Underworld 2 though uses digitized (Soundblaster) sound effects too so there you might want to rebalance the music/sound effects volumes. So what you want to do is to somehow make DOSBox Roland MIDI output quieter, and/or Soundblaster (digitized) louder.

If you are using Munt (Roland MT-32 emulator), are you also using BASSMIDI or VirtualMIDISynth with it, or have you edited dosbox.conf instead to get the correct MIDI output for DOSBox? I'm asking this because it may be BASSMIDI/VMS affect the MIDI output volume as well, IIRC BASSMIDI had a slider for the MIDI output volume, and VMS has some MIDI volume shortcuts explained in the "Shortcuts" tab. But then I don't think BASSMIDI works fully in Windows 8.1 or 10, so BASSMIDI/VMS may be useful only in Windows 7/Vista...

Another way may be using the DOSBox mixer settings. So edit the game's DOSBox config file, and at the end of the file under the [autoexec] section, add a line for MIXER. I don't think it has an option to lower MIDI volume, but it has an option to raise Soundblaster (or master) volume.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/MIXER

I tested with it a bit, so if I added e.g. a MIXER line into dosboxULTIMA1_single.conf so that the [autoexec] section looks like this (I added the bolded line), then at least for me the intro speech got louder compared to the Roland MIDI music. I think the mixer setting 100 is the default, so over that makes it louder than the default (also compared to MIDI music). But as said, this changes the volume balance only between sampled and MIDI sounds. In the first Ultima Underworld you can't change the volume balance between other sound effects and the music, as they always come from the same sound device (either the Roland MIDI device (e.g. the Munt emulator), or the Adlib/Soundblaster device emulated by DOSBox).

I was asking for UUW and I wanted to know if you could lower the music without lowering the in-game sound effects.

Thanks for the clarifications, too bad that nothing can be done but it's not a big deal.

Yeah... when you play it, sometimes there is slower and quieter music playing so then you probably hear the sound effects (footsteps etc.) better, at least this is the case when using Roland (I haven't played the game with Soundblaster music).

If hearing the sound effects is vital in UUW, then I think the only alternative is to switch off music altogether from the in-game options.

Hello all,

Thanks to everyone for your contributions to this thread. I had previously spent an evening unsuccessfully attempting to get midi support working for Ultima VI. Tonight, I found this thread and despite some misgivings, gave it another shot - and it worked, first try. I'm looking forward to replaying some of these games from my youth with the sort of perks that my childhood self could not afford.

Can you tell me what you changed to get midi to work for Ultima VI? I've managed to get Munt working with Ultima Underworld, but it seems that no matter what I cannot get Ultima VI to use Munt... I tried setting midiconfig=1 which worked well enough for UU.

It's been a little while now, but I believe it was starting with this post, #88, that got me on the right track:
That patcher is pretty magical

Regarding Ultima 2 Martian Dreams

I recall being able to move very fast in this game. I cannot get the character to move above a crawl now though. It's jerky and lags. Is there any way to fix this?

I installed the Roland emulator but I don't know which settings in the UW.cfg I should use to get the intro speech and get the music and sounds from Roland?

If I set my UW.cfg file like the below, I get the rolan sounds and music but only subtitles in the intro:
--------------------------
6 -1 -1 -1 sound

6 -1 -1 -1 speech

0 cuts
--------------------------
The only way for me to get the voice in the intro is if I use "2 7 220 1 sound", but then I lose the Roland sounds and music.

Perhaps you've figured it out already, but I think what you would want is to combine them:

Yes, I found that is the settings the Ultima Patcher changed it to.

That and putting "Mixer Master 200:200" in the .conf file gave me a good balance between voice and music.

Ultima Patcher did the trick. Was able to do it all on a USB and without any privileges.