You need to change your sound settings

[Tiltowait]

Two things have come to my attention recently. First, from watching youtube, a lot of you play with the music on. This seems strange to me, seeing as Master of Magic's music loops endlessly and plays the same tune over and over again. Especially in combat, it just drives me nuts. I turned the music off back in 1995 and never looked back. If I want music, I'll play mp3s in the background, or I'll just play silently. It's not a big deal for me. But some of you like it, which leads me to my second point.

Second, those of you who DO keep the music on, you use the horrid Soundblaster music. Why, why, why? Dosbox includes support for Roland MT-32 and General Midi. Both of these options are far, far superior to the bleeps and bloops of the Soundblaster. Please, do yourself a favor and enable this in the sound settings. You don't need a $400 card to enjoy the superior sound of midi music any more, the sound support should work in dosbox automatically.

1) Run INSTALL.EXE

2) Select Roland MT-32 or General MIDI. As far as I can tell, there is no difference in the sound. Maybe someone with a golden ear can tell us which one is better. You don't need to click configure card or anything, just click OK.

[Hadriex]

I've already recorded the next video, which will go live tomorrow. But I'll see about tweaking this setting for next time.


...I grew up with sound blaster, I wonder what it'll feel like to change the music...

[Tiltowait]

Edited: now with working youtube links, this site's embed tag is really screwy.

IT'S BETTER. So much better you don't even know. Those Roland cards were hugely expensive for a reason.

If anyone out there needs convincing, just listen to this sample music that pits the Soundblaster against the Roland. The vaunted Amiga 500 is in there, too.



(and for comedy value, the PC speaker version of the same, which is actually a good effort! Bitmap Brothers rule)

[Hadriex]

Argh. I haven't heard the internal speaker in ages. Stop torturing the poor thing, it's just not meant for music.

That's a hell of a difference in the first video. I'll have to give it a try.

[Rakir]

Argh. I haven't heard the internal speaker in ages. Stop torturing the poor thing, it's just not meant for music.

That's a hell of a difference in the first video. I'll have to give it a try.

Actually the internal PC speaker is not terrible. If you have ever opened a pair of external computer speakers they look the same as the internal PC speaker. The problem is not the quality or construction but rather the input that it gets. I am sure it would sound better if you solder it to your soundcard and choose another setting than PC speaker which seems to be a mode for very old computers that didn't have any soundchip on their motherboard.

[Seravy]

I tried both of those options and both caused the game to crash on start. What additional settings do I need for Dosbox to support those options?
Could it be that the Dosbox that came with MoM is outdated?

[Tiltowait]

Dosbox doesn't come with Master of Magic, they are separate products. Definitely update to the latest version. If it still crashes, ask at vogons.org, they are super knowledgeable and helpful.

[Seravy]

Tried the latest dosbox and it still doesn't work. I guess I'll give up, it's not that important, I turn the sound off 75% of the time anyway.

[TwilightSparkletheAlicorn]

Soundblaster's nostalgic though.

[Seravy]

My solution : open the dosboxmom config file and change sbtype=sb16 into sbpro1 or something. I don't know which sb card is supposed to be better but that sb16 sounded awful and much worse than my computer 20 years ago which had an actual sb card.