Hardware Roland MT-32? Win10?

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Monochrome

Hardware Roland MT-32? Win10?

Post by Monochrome »

Hi!

Read the FAQ and done a search of discussion.

It appears that Exult should support my hardware Roland MT-32. Though I had to use a third-party tool because Microsoft appears to have removed the Midi Mapper from recent versions of Windows, my hardware MT-32 is my default Windows midi device. i.e. playing a midi file in Windows Media Player plays over the MT-32. Playing Ultima 5 with the music patch in DOSbox plays over the MT-32.

I have Exult set to use the Windows midi driver, and the MT-32 sub-type (so it doesn't convert patch mappings!), but for some reason it's still playing through some sort of soft synth. It does sound better than the other non-digital options for what it's worth ... but I'm wondering if there's something I can do to force it to play on "midi device #1" as opposed to what it seems to be using, which is probably #0.

Any ideas? Is this possibly a bug?
Monochrome

Re: Hardware Roland MT-32? Win10?

Post by Monochrome »

...and I can't delete my post.

Apparently I didn't read far enough. Closed the discussion tab and found this in documentation:

3.4. Windows MIDI Mapper
You can now tell Exult which MIDI device it should use. This is useful if you want Exult to use a different MIDI device than the default Windows device (like an MT-32).

To do this start Exult, on the menu choose "Exit". Now open the file stdout.txt in the folder where exult.cfg is located (see 2.2.). You will see a listing of the MIDI devices.
For example with an SB Live! in Win2k it will look like this:

4 Midi Devices Detected
Listing midi devices:
-1: Microsoft MIDI-Mapper
0: A: SB Live! MIDI Synth
1: B: SB Live! MIDI Synth
2: SB Live! MIDI UART

By default Exult uses the Microsoft MIDI-Mapper (which uses the device you choose in the Windows Multimedia Properties).
To change the MIDI Device open exult.cfg and change





-1

with the device you want to use.


--------

So I needed to add the section with option "1"

Hopefully this is of use to someone else!
Dominus
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Posts: 5656
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Re: Hardware Roland MT-32? Win10?

Post by Dominus »

Yes, our documentation is excellent ;)

Funnily at the time our midi device chooser was done, I thought it was pretty redundant. In hindsight it was perfect. Starting with Vista (or at least Windows 7) MS made the Midi mapper hard to access and later did away with it. Without an independant implementation as we did, it's almost impossible to choose a Windows wide midi device...
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WaltC
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu May 14, 2020 1:34 pm

Re: Hardware Roland MT-32? Win10?

Post by WaltC »

Yes! It did work out perfectly for yet another reason...so propitious...;)

For softmidi support w/soundfonts I highly recommend:

http://coolsoft.altervista.org/en/virtualmidisynth

Just so happens it automatically plugs into Midi Device = win32 in 7,8, & 10! (works a treat in 10x64 even latest builds!)

Sounds great with Exult, no settings tweaking required...!
WaltC
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu May 14, 2020 1:34 pm

Re: Hardware Roland MT-32? Win10?

Post by WaltC »

I meant to add above that I find the in-Exult GM setting superior to the MT-32 setting through the CoolsoftVMS--but that's just my big ears, I suppose...;)
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