Munt: An MT-32 Emulator (for use with Dosbox)

[Zombeaver]

I've been working pretty much non-stop on DOS stuff lately, which has been pretty time consuming because there are tons of things to tweak and I'm pretty OCD about getting everything just right. From Novert (for getting rid of the annoying forward/backward movement from vertical mouse movement that was present in a lot of early FPSs) to enabling Gravis Ultrasound support to tweaking ini/cfg files for custom controls and of course the standard adjustment of Dosbox cycles, output, etc... there's a lot of stuff to do.

Yesterday I came across a program called "Munt". This is a pretty fantastic Roland MT-32 (and CM-32L) emulator which can be used with DosBox. Not sure why that's significant or why you should care? Check out the two videos below. The first half is Adlib/Soundblaster and the second half is with MT-32. It's actually fairly easy to setup as well. I just followed this guide and it worked great!

Obviously your mileage will vary depending on the game because support for it varies, but when it's available it's usually pretty fantastic. I've found Sierra games, in particular, to be phenomenal with MT-32; especially the earlier titles. I've played some of these games since I was a kid and I was pretty blown away. Obviously it's all subjective and I will admit that it takes some adjustment if you're used to hearing something a certain way for so many years, but it's been a pretty exciting experience for me - it's almost like playing entirely new games. Check it out!

NOTE: This requires MT-32 rom files, which aren't included with Munt.

 

 

 

[SentaiBrad]

Thank you @Zombeaver. I'm a DOS nut too and this is awesome.

[CriticalCid]

I wanna thank you for this post as well! I didn’t even know that something like this exists and it sounds indeed a thousand times better. I will definitely give it a try when I have the time.

[Zombeaver]

Sure thing! :D I will admit that there's a certain charm to the distinctive, highly synthetic sound of an old fashioned sound blaster, probably in no small part because it's just what I'm so accustomed to for these games - ordinarily I always opt for unaltered aesthetics and try to keep things as close to my childhood recollection as I can get (I'll take chunky-ass software-mode Quake over any other variant, any day of the week); but... my jaw dropped on a few of these. Based on the reading I've been doing, Sierra actually composed nearly all of their soundtracks on the MT-32 from the beginning (it's my understanding that they actually used the hardware as a way to attract professional composers for their games), so it is indeed the "way they intended". Unfortunately, most gamers couldn't afford to drop the $500+ that these went for at the time so most of us grew up only knowing the sound blaster version.

Wikipedia: Despite its original purpose as a companion to other professional MIDI equipment, the MT-32 became one of several de facto standards for PC computer game publishers. Sierra On-Line, a leading PC game publisher of the time, took an interest in the sound-design of its PC games. Sierra secured a distribution deal to sell the MT-32 in the US, and invested heavily in giving its game titles (at the time) state-of-the-art sound by hiring professional composers to write in-game music. King's Quest IV, released in 1988, was the first Sierra title with a complete musical soundtrack scored on the MT-32. The MT-32 with a necessary MPU-401 interface cost $550.00 to purchase from Sierra when it first sold the device. Although the MT-32's high price prevented it from dominating the end-user market of gamers, other PC publishers quickly followed Sierra's lead, expanding the role of music in their own game titles with Roland supporting the industry by releasing CM modules for computer users. The MT-32 remained the gold-standard for musical composition well into the early 1990s, when the game-industry began to shift toward General MIDI and later CD Audio.

Mobygames has a list of all games that offer MT-32 support that's pretty useful. Just keep in mind that, outside of Sierra stuff, not everything that supports MT-32 was necessarily designed with MT-32 in mind. I think Descent, for example, sounds terrible with non-SB/Adlib OST; so some experimentation is still necessary from game to game. Since yesterday, I've started a spreadsheet for Sound and Music driver settings for all my DOS games so I can keep track of what I'm using for them and note what seems to sound the "best" to me. Yay! Even more things to catalog! I think I have a problem...