DOS games' MIDI and certain sound cards in general.

[chaosruins]

I have an Audigy 2, when playing MIDI, I have a choice of selecting MIDI A/B, software synth, and then the Microsoft one. I presume A and B is the midi from the actual hardware, and the software synth is somehow from some kind of software from the card. But what I don’t get is the software synth must surely still be coming from the hardware or does the soundcards drivers install some kind of software waveset somewhere?

Anyway, my second question, I’m after more a nice old skool MIDI sound, you know, the general sound you used to get from DOS games when Doom was released, or Duke Nukem, I don’t know what it is but although the MIDI back then may have been inferior to today’s cards, they just had a kind of nice sound and I’m looking at ways of getting that sound back if its possible. Would it be best to set my cards MIDI playback to software synth as that feels like it has a slightly more old school sound over the A and B options. Still, the software synth I’m hearing doesn’t sound like classic MIDI from years back.

Is there some kind of program out there that allows you to play MIDIS using the sound of older cards such as the sound blaster 16 and other cards from around the early to mid nineties, or should it be a case of actually getting a hold of the old cards themselves, which I probably won’t be able to do.

Basically, I want to hear games like Doom the way they originally were played back in the early 90’s, is there any easy way for this to happen while staying on Windows XP, Thanks for any help.

[The_Sinister_Mastermind]

Not entirely sure if it's what you're after, but it might be worth giving VDM Sound a shot.