Get Even BETTER Music out of the DOS Versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter with VirtualMIDISynth!

Big thanks to friend-of-the-site Chase Dahl for this tip. While the iMuse MIDI music of the 1994 DOS versions of X-Wing and TIE Fighter sound pretty good, there’s a free way to make them EVEN BETTER. First, you have to download and install the current stable version of VirtualMIDISynth from its website (version 1.12.0). THEN, once that’s done, you have to download a SoundFont pack (of which there are several, I’m using this one) and point the VirtualMIDISynth program to it. Once that’s all done, DOSBox will use VirtualMIDISynth rather than the Windows-based MIDI synthesizer automagically. I just did a quick run in the GOG version of TIE Fighter, and it sounds GREAT. I took a recording of my latest mission (which I failed AGAIN, YEESH) using the GOG version of the game to illustrate audibly how great this sounds.

Here’s the video of the same mission using the DOS Collector’s CD I took before making the change.

Personally, I can TOTALLY hear the difference, and I hope y’all can too. If you’re playing the DOS versions of X-Wing or TIE Fighter, you need this. Enjoy!