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I want to run Master of Magic with dosbox and i think i am missing something obvious regarding the sound/music settings. I do have in game sound but without any music. Strangely i have chosen the same soundblaster with the same settings, although i can only fill in the hex for the music device. It is just very strange i can get the sound to work but not the music, am i missing something?

I have created a dosbox.conf with these sound settings: sbtype=sbpro2 #Tried most of them by now sbbase=220 #did not change irq=7 #tried 3 and 5 too. dma=1 #tried 3 too. hdma=5 #tried 1 and 3 too. sbmixer=true oplmode=auto oplemu=default oplrate=44100

I changed blaster settings with the above settings so current are: SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4

Within the Master of Magic install i have chosen for SB original, SB pro (early) and SB pro (later). They all do the same, giving me only sound no music. Adlib, roland and general midi do not work at all.

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I can't find solid confirmation, but I'm almost certain that Master of Magic used "redbook audio", based on its 1994 release date and its CD release medium.

Redbook audio is normal CD music on the install disc after the game data track. The game does not contain any music in its programming, and all it does is tell the CD drive when to play which track. Due to the way CD drive music output connected directly to the sound card then, the music was then played directly from the disc to your speakers, with no connection to the game.

Because this method of playing music requires a physical CD, digital downloads of old games almost always have their music missing. Restoring the music requires rewriting the game, or including a CD image that then must be burned to a real CD and inserted in the disc drive while playing; and most digital retailers don't do either of those options.

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  • "Restoring the music requires rewriting the game, or including a CD image that then must be burned to a real CD..." -- this is not the case; if you have a CD image, you can mount it in Dosbox with the IMGMOUNT command and it will play CD audio from the image just fine. This is how most GOG releases of games with CD audio handle it.
    – ToxicFrog
    Oct 12, 2013 at 23:06
  • @ToxicFrog Really?! That's a neat feature. That must have taken a bit of work on the part of the DOSBox team.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Oct 12, 2013 at 23:23
  • It's not as hard as it sounds; CDDA is stored on disk as PCM audio (aka WAV files), which is dead simple to play. Once you can play that, all you need to support playback of CD images is the ability to read the CD TOC - which is also pretty simple. Once you have audio playback and CD mounting implemented at all, you're 95% of the way there.
    – ToxicFrog
    Oct 12, 2013 at 23:41
  • I had an old install of the game and if i remember correctly everything worked fine. I also have a music file of around 500kb, not sure if this actually contains the music though. I keep this open for a better answer, otherwise i have to search through my huge collection somewhere in some box on the attic :)
    – Madmenyo
    Oct 14, 2013 at 15:03
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    @Fambida Cool, that sounds like you have enough information to post an answer that will be better than this one. Please do!
    – SevenSidedDie
    May 26, 2018 at 17:01
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A set of dosbox.conf settings which I can confirm works are those shipped with the GOG copy of the game.

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
sbmixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplemu=default
oplrate=22050

You will also need to run install.exe (within dosbox) to make sure MoM's settings match the dosbox ones. Use Soundblaster pro (later) with 220 for the music, and Soundblaster Pro (later) with the dosbox settings above for sound.

If these do not work, try updating/reinstalling your copy of Dosbox.

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