Can't get my MT-32 to work

[FitzRoy]

I just bought this mt-32 and I have no idea how to hook it up, much less get it to work. I am not familiar with midi equipment. I am using Windows XP and a sound blaster audigy EX. This is how my midi cables are hooked up:

EX midi out MT32 midi in
MT32 midi out EX midi in

First of all, wth is midi thru and do I need this?
I also have an L phone jack cable which appears to be able to connect to the two phone output holes and/or the EX line2 input.

Do I need any drivers? If so, will they work under xp? As you can see, I have no idea what I'm doing here...

[Dominus]

Ok, I don´t have a Mt32 and never had one but I guess you should try like that:
EX midi out MT32 midi in
and in Windows Systemcontrol-> Sounds and Audio (whatever that is called in English)-> Audio -> Midi-> SB Audigy MIDI UART (or similar, as I have only a Live!).
Try it out.

[FitzRoy]

OMG!! ITS ALIVE!!! Thanks Dominus.

[Dominus]

*sniff*
and how does it sound?

[FitzRoy]

Freaking amazing. Beats the **** out of gm conversion, it really is the way the game was meant to be heard. Not a big surprise though, I've heard Tom's Ultima mp3s, though this is much more concise.

One thing that still annoys me though, and that's the sfx. I always get this annoying *bzzz* blip once in a while walking around trinsic. How did the original U7 handle sound? Would it be possible to use my mt-32 instead of the sfx pack?

[Lord Rat]

Actually, Ultima 7 DOS used to also periodically go *bzzzz

[nadir]

The ideal setup for the original U7 is the following:

MT32 for MIDI
SoundBlaster for SFX/Speech

The original used FM synthesis on the Soundblaster to create its SFX. The jmsfx.flx and jmsisfx.flx files are digital soundcaptures of exactly those "generated" sfx. Because Origin manipulated the OPL registers directly instead of having digital SFX, the quality is awful...