Thank you for the info. I wonder if this is an SC-88 specific issue? The key combination to initiate a GS Reset is different for the SC-88 (hold Select and press the Instrument <> buttons), but I tried sending a GS Reset and still got the same telephone sound. (I have also tried sending a GS reset through both windows and DOS tools). At this point, I am thinking the SC-88 is just not gonna work right for this game, even with SC-55 map configured.
Ah sorry, for some reason I assumed you had an SC-55 too. That's really weird though, I don't understand why the SC-88 would work differently with resets. It also doesn't make sense - there MUST be a way to reset the device mode, otherwise you'd never have access to the GS tones ever again! I never had or used the SC-88 though so I'm afraid I can't help. You might want to try searching for similar issues with resets - there's a surprising number of retro gamers with Roland devices and one of them might have found a solution.
Well, I just tested it with my CM-500 in GS mode, and the sound effects all play fine. So this looks like an SC-88 issue.
Time to spend more money on Roland synths to track down a genuine SC-55.
(Switching between the MT-32 and GS modes on the CM-500 is annoying, I got the CM-500 because I wanted the updated MT-32 sound effects...).
Resets on the CM-500 are quite easy IIRC (I don't have one, but I remember
Jaesun mentioning doing this on his). If you do end up hunting an SC-55, try to get the mkII if you can, it has a few extra tones that I don't think many games use (I've suspect for a long time that WOX does but could never prove it) but more importantly it can play more instruments at once, so there's less chance of something not playing because all channels are in use.
Also, this has nothing to do with M&M and ALSO I am drunk, but can I just say here that the Sound Canvas is FUCKING AMAZING
Yes, yes it is. There are good software alternatives but nothing that I've heard sounds exactly like a real SC (unlike Munt which at this point is indistinguishable from a real CM-32L or CM-500), the way certain tones play is really obvious in some specific games like WOX, Doom, Stonekeep or QFG3. Speaking of Warcraft, try playing the first game with an SC; I used to think the music was great on an SB16, but it's really something on an SC.
Some of the instruments are not great (tho better than anything else at the time), but load up the WC2 midis, or the soundtrack to Anvil of Dawn, and it's almost like listening to an orchestrated version.
It's interesting to compare the SC (especially the SC-55) to more modern modules. Some tones on the SC-55 clearly show the age of the module, even the piano sounds flatter than say the JV-1080, but there are certain subtleties in the way the module plays tones, and it's obvious composers had a specific sound when composing on the SC-55. You can really hear this in the jungle themes in QFG3, where the African-style percussions sound fantastic on the SC-55 but sound more and more off the more modern the module is (even as the general quality of the samples goes up). Same with the piano in the Pagan intro - the piano sounds fuller and much closer to a real piano on modern modules, but the individual notes somehow sound more garbled and less distinct. It's like listening to a virtuoso on a shitty recording versus a shitty player on a crystal-clear recording - personally I'd rather have the former.
I'm using MUNT with a cm-32l rom for the sound in World of Xeen, such a huge upgrade from the stock sound! It took a bit of ini configuring and running the Xeen installer in dosbox to get it working but it was well worth it.
WOX was composed on the SC-55, and it shows, but I've always been impressed by the quality of the CM-32L port and how much effort NWC put to make sure it sounded as good as you could possibly get from the older module.
I remember fiddling around with the settings trying to recreate what it sounded like on my old 386 computer and sbpro2 seemed to be the closest to it. The soundblaster 16 is a slightly newer card than the soundblaster pro though I'm not sure what the differences would be or even if there might be an issue with the emulation of one over the other.
To make a long story short: original SBpro uses the OPL2 chip for synth sound. SBpro rev2 uses 2 OPL2 chips in stereo mode - in games that support this mode (Dragonsphere is one of them) the music sounds distinctly better. SB16 upgraded to the OPL3, but back to using only one in mono. The actual sound quality of the OPL3 is obviously better, but there's a depth from using stereo OPL2 that you can never get with the OPL3. I can never decide which one I like more in games that support both, but it's usually a non-issue because as far as I can tell all those games support either MT-32/CM32-L or Sound Canvas, and are in fact usually composed originally for either module, and will usually sound better than any OPL (YMMV, some OPL recordings are considered the best by many).
