TES:Arena&Daggerfall dosbox munt 32 emu problem

[CrazyFredrik]

Hi!

I have TESA installed via gog, i also use munt-32 for better music, which worked totally fine 2-3 months ago.
Now wanting to return to my character i did those months ago, i fired up the game and to my suprise the music seemed really really odd. dungeon tracks were on weird loops and during some parts the music got so loud during a particular sequence where i had to stop playing (exiting the game)

I tested with daggerfall to see if it was just TESA being a weirdo but no same thing there but it was easier to pinpoint, the music was weird and played the songs very shall we say pecuilar?

Now i went on a crusade against the dosbox ini file and the autoexec file gog creates for it's dos games but nothing would stop the music sounding off.

I remember those 2-3 months ago being blown away how good the music really sounded with just emulation (can only imagine the real thing ^^) but coming back to this was a huge letdown and i don't know what i'm doing wrong.
I even remember the video i watched to set this up and it was very easy so i remember the steps.
any help is greatly appreciated perhaps someone also can test it out see if it works?

[Satribe]

Could you post your DOSBox conf settings for [midi] and [sblaster] as well as your batch settings for running arena with the sound setup?

That would be my starting place. Because munt is it's whole own separate thing, I'd uninstall it and set it back up with the roms. I've never used gog or munt. Are you using it separately or with a special DOSBox version? Like I said, I've never used it, but it looks like you could do it a few different ways.

And finally, can you think of anything else that changed? DOSBox ver, computer settings. Especially if you were tweaking sounds options for anything else.

I'd also recommend looking for that video you mentioned. Sometimes the easier something is, the more likely we are to forget later...that one obvious step.

[CrazyFredrik]

Hi!

Thanks for such a quick response.
here are my settings for
MIDI:
mpu401=intelligent
mididevice=default
midiconfig=1
SB:
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
sbmixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplemu=default
oplrate=44100

Also here is the autoexec text
[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
@ECHO OFF
cls
mount c ".."
mount C "..\cloud_saves" -t overlay
mount d ".." -t cdrom
c:
cls
@SET ARENADATA=C:
@d:
@ACD -Ssbpdig.adv -IOS220 -IRQS7 -DMAS1 -Mgenmidi.adv -IOM330 -IRQM2 -DMAM1
exit

note that if i remove anything like just "exit" for example the game won't start, changing IRQs or such is possible though.
I'll give a quick summary of the setup with munt and dosbox.
Just download and install munt 32 and get the roms for the MT-32, start it and direct it to the roms.
Next get in to DOSbox and listmidi devices which if the program was correctly set up should show up the MS synth driver and the MT-32 synth,
it will give an ID to each of the drivers 0-9
my mt 32 synth is ID'ed as 1 hence why midiconfig=1 in DOSBox settings.
next is to run said programs setup/installer and choosing Roland MT-32 which usually works fine and it does but once i get in-game the music works but that's about it.
It works but not as intended which i know since i remember the music being awsome with it, now it just sound weird and really wrong.
Now the emulator for the MT-32 shows signal and in the volume mixer for windows, the music is being played from it not dosbox but as i've said the music is really weird and some sounds are really loud and these usually go on forever hence reloading a save or closing the game entierly is the only fix for it at that point.

DOSBox ver is 0.74 can't think of me changing any computer settings besides some bass and surround and such in my sound software, actually i'll check that right away!
i actually rewatched the video after posting this and i did everything right it was really simple but i see your way of thinking

if you can think of anything else let me know

EDIT: Changing settings to default in sound software did nothing at all, music still sounds off and weird Also re-installing munt 32 emulator was done multiple times before making this post.

[SeaGtGruff]

The only thing I can think to add is that when things worked great several months ago, then suddenly seem to be glitchy, it could be due to an update that was applied, or another program that was installed, during the interim. I know my Windows desktop had a few non-Microsoft driver updates a few weeks ago in addition to the usual Windows updates, and I think there's been the occasional larger "cumulative" Windows update during the last few months.

Have you noticed any audio issues in other programs, or is it just with games running in DOSBox?

[Satribe]

Nothing really stands out. I figured that, but sometimes a second set of eyes helps. What concerns me is your sentence:

note that if i remove anything like just "exit" for example the game won't start

That shouldn't happen; right? All that should do is close your DOSBox window AFTER the game ends. If the game starts with the "EXIT" line, but won't start if you remove it, then I'd say you have a DOSBox problem.

I think I'm going to try later and see if I can get a setup running, but unless I misunderstood what you were saying, I'd focus on re-doing DOSBox.

[CrazyFredrik]

Yeah i'm starting to think there has been a windows 10 update or another software update that interfere with the emulation, because as i've said this happens in both Arena and Daggerfall, i was thinking to try Darklands also which also supports the MT-32.

Yeah weird isn't it that if i remove "exit" it starts a dosbox window but then closes again after 1 second, curiously this happens with all my GOG DOS games.
I also tried to setup Arena the old way downloading DOSBox and getting the Floppy version of the game, nope same thing there music is really weird.

I'm pretty certain at this moment that there is something which changed since i got it working wonderfully those months ago, but i'm out of ideas to what it could be so i'll just blame a windows 10 update or something

I'll just go back to letting the SB16 emulation do it's thing in the meantime works fine. ^^

Get back to me as soon as you've tested it with munt, check on youtube there are loads of tutorials to setup it up with DOSBox

[Satribe]

If removing "exit" causes DOSBox to close. Something's wrong. Did you have that same (exit) issue when you tried the Old way with your DOSBox and Arena floppy? As long as that's happening, trying to find a sound issue is almost moot.

DOSBox just sends general midi straight to your computers midi. So if you're able to play with the SBFM.adv just fine, then that places the problem back onto your systems midi setup.

Have you tried just the genmidi.adv without munt. I thought my system sounded pretty good. And if that starts working, you can try soundfonts (SF2 files). I haven't tried it in win10 though. I'd drop the midiconfig=1 back to the default midiconfig= (blank) and ensure your systems midi isn't trying to pass through to another device. My point is, even if you don't like your systems generic wavetable type sounds, you need to get that working first.

You might also give MT32MPU.ADV a try instead of genmidi.adv in your Arena.bat.

I'm glad you at least have basic music, but it's totally frustrating when things get all whackadoodle on you and you can't find the problem.

Good luck.

[CrazyFredrik]

Hi again.

Yeah i'll just use genmidi with the windows default it sounds okay in my opinion and right now better than mt 32 emulation
I tried different combos with mt 32 on and off and other midi inputs i.e (genmidi, mt32mpu, sbfm,)
the best sounding was genmidi with windows default on my system.
Too bad i really remember the mt 32 emulation doing really good those months ago and it sounded amazing.
I'll just drop the emulation for now,

Thanks for your help dude