System Shock 1, using BASSMIDI for higher quality music with soundfonts (.sf2)

[6633f865e926cPeter Meier]

Xenoneo's idea to exchange the Midi Soundbank is great. I wanted to do that too, since I have the audio tracks played with an AWE 32 burnt into my mind.

I'd like to recommend an alternative user driver MIDI device: VirtualMIDISynth. I had a better experience with it than BASSMIDI, and would like to suggest trying this instead, especially for Windows 8 users.

Retelling my experience:

Unfortunately, I could not get BASSMIDI to work properly, but found a different solution. I'll share in case others run into similar issues. I assume this is a Windows 8 issue, so any Win8 users may find this useful.

When I tried BASSMIDI, the music would distort after a few seconds of play and then turn silent, to reappear every once in a while for a few seconds. I'm quite an advanced computer user (including DOS, working with cfg files, etc) and tried fixing this for hours, but just couldn't get it to work as intended.

Then I noticed that instead of adding itself as an additional device, BASSMIDI completely replaced the default MIDI device of Windows and would not revert this even at uninstall. Since Windows 8 abandoned any MIDI settings (probably the same for Win7), I got stock with only non-working MIDI devices. I could get the game to use DSP synthesizer audio instead, so first I didn't bother with fixing the Windows issue for the time being.

When trying to fix this, it was clear that reverting to the old settings manually wouldn't work since I didn't have a backup of the previous registry settings (and couldn't find these online). When trying to fix the Midi device somehow, instead I found an alternative user mode driver for Midi, which is VirtualMIDISynth.

Unlike BASSMIDI, VirtualMIDISynth officially supports Windows 8 and is developed very actively, with new versions out every month or so.

Using VirtualMidiSynth the issue was solved for me. The music now plays flawlessly. I also like the GUI better than BASSMIDI, with more useful options available and better explanations given. It has a more modern feel to it overall.
And unlike BASSMIDI it seems to not replace other MIDI devices, but adds itself as the default, moving other devices down the chain (e.g. VMS is now the default device 0, while the two BM devices are now devices 1 and 2). I assume this would have been the same with the default device.

[6633f865e93e8JTD121]

Curious, since FfFCMAD brought it up, is there a better version of the original SS1 synths available for modern systems and/or DOSBox? Or configuration to use the OPL-based synth sounds, if I am understanding correctly?

I know for one of the Descent games, you can change the music used by swapping out a ZIP containing the music rendered on an OPL or SC synth....That might just be the ReBirth versions, though....:-/

[6633f865e94e7Tarvis]

Thanks, Peter! This VirtualMIDI works for me too. No more pausing in-game.

It seems this uses the same sound engine as BASSMIDI does, so it's essentially the same thing but with more options. Good stuff.

[6633f865e95e5irish]

Very nice, one thing that bugs me about playing SS1 now-a-days is I used to play it natively back when I had a Windows 98 machine and I had a sound library and a sound card that made the SS1 soundtrack shine. This isn't spot on to what it was, but its the closest it'll be.

[6633f865e9872GuyFawkesGaming]

To be honest BASSMIDI is a bit outdated now. If anyone's still reading this, I'd recommend you use Virtual MIDI Synth instead.
Also, Microsoft got rid of the midimapper in Windows 8 & 10. If you're on one of these systems, there's a video available here that shows you how to hack it as the default.

There's also a hacked GUS driver available here that enables use of gravis emulation with the enhanced CD version if anyone's interested in that.
UPDATE: I decided to try out the gus drivers and the music/midi driver is rather demanding, causing hangs at various parts, though the music isn't bad. The digital sound effects works perfectly though and actually sounds crisper than the plain old SB16 (possibly a placebo). I'll upload them to the site:
[USAIL311.ZIP expired]
[OFFAIL30.ZIP expired]

[6633f865e9975DEFINITELYSH0DAN]

[USAIL311.ZIP expired]
[OFFAIL30.ZIP expired]

Anyone have this as FLAC? Could upload to Internet Archive