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"If I could have the music from Hatsworth's boss fight against Lance Banson (Sky Pirate Magazine's Handsomest Most Eligible Bachelor of the Year) playing on loop for every boss fight in any videogame ever, I would do it." 9.0 - IGN

"All of this silliness is funked out with great music during the battles which is evilly catchy and corresponds well to the moves, headphones are a must have."

- Console Obsession

"...the audio is "just about as good as it gets" and everything here adds to the game's overall atmosphere ... there's the wonderful score ... the sound effects are also spot on. - DS-x2

"...an excellent balance of both music and sound effects ... crisp and distinguished. - NintendoDS Advanced

"Great music - 8/10" - Gamespot"

"The musical score is epic, somber, and moody, a perfect accompaniment to the epic tale being told. - Planet GameCube

"The game's audio is very solid ... the background music is well done and fits the game perfectly." - PGNx Media.

G.A.N.G. Awards 2003: Best Handheld Audio

"Awesome soundtrack that goes great with the action. 9/10." - IGN

"...probably the first GBA game to have a full-length song, complete with vocals, during its credits sequence. 8/10" - Gamespot

"... some games have shown us that the GBAs sound hardware can put out "surprisingly high quality sound effects and music. Everything or Nothing is one of those games." - Worth Playing

"Particularly Impressive for a Gameboy Advance game ... 8/10" - PGNX Media

"... one of the clearest GBA titles I’ve played. Excellent compositions, but I must also give credit to the sound guys for making the sound quality as high as possible." - GameZone

"... What also can't be denied is the quality of the music ... its closeness to the console versions' score is amazing, and the victory fanfare's enough to send shivers up your spine if you're wearing headphones." - 1UP.com

"Outstanding use of the GBA hardware for a fantastic soundtrack. Crank up those headphones. 9/10" - IGN

About Me

My profession is contract game audio. You probably already guessed this. My specialty and passion is classic video game sounds, the sort of thing I grew up with playing NES and SNES. Platforms like the GBA and DS have given me the opportunity to work within similar limitations of this golden age of game audio, which is a huge privilege.

My dream project would be a survival horror game.

My idol is Hip Tanaka.

When I'm not doing music and sound, I program in C#. My most ambitious pet project is the NesTracker, though I've also made a bunch of tools that automate my build processes for work. My favorite custom tool lets me compose DS music using my all time favorite music making tool, Impulse Tracker.

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How To Run Impulse Tracker in Windows XP using DosBox

DateWednesday, July 12, 2006 at 04:25PM

If you grew up with IT back in the glory days of tracking, then I don't need to explain why I still use it for music composition. If you're wondering why I would use software that looks like this, it's because nothing else can compete with it in terms of rapid music production. Not to mention .IT is the perfect format for music on the Gameboy Advance.

Ever since upgrading to Windows XP, I have struggled with VDMSound as a host for Impulse Tracker. This seems to be the most common setup these days.

I recently found a superior solution in DOSBox. Here's why:

  • Lower CPU usage
  • Doesn't require EMS (my laptop doesn't have EMS!)
  • Windowed mode

Let's get started.

How to set up DOSBox to host IT in Windows XP

Step 1: Install DOSBox and Impulse Tracker

  1. Install DOSBox using all defaults.
  2. Install Impulse Tracker 2.14 by unzipping the file into c:\it

Step 2: Configure DOSBox

  1. Under [sdl], set fullscreen=false windowresolution=original . You can scale the window by changing windowresolution to something like 800×600.
  2. Under [render], set frameskip=1 (you can set it to 0 if your machine can handle it)
  3. Under [cpu], set cycles=7000 (10000 will give better performance if your machine can handle it)
  4. Under [mixer] set nosound=false rate=22222 blocksize=2048 prebuffer=16
  5. Under [dos] set xms=false ems=true umb=true

On my laptop I run IT at 22222Hz. Feel free to adjust this, but make sure DOSBox and IT are using the same value (it'll sound really distorted otherwise). To set the mixing rate in IT, use the command line switch -m22222. Note that the SB16 only has a few rates it can select from, so be sure to check what it's really giving you from Shift+F5 once IT is loaded. Default rate is 45454Hz.

Step 3: Mount song and sample folders

Right-click the shortcut to DOSBox and go to Properties. Then change the command line to the following:

"C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.65\DOSBox.exe" c:\it -conf "C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.65\dosbox.conf" -c "mount d d:\projects" -c "mount e d:\samples"

Just change the above folders to reflect your system setup. For example, c:\it is where I have it.exe.

Happy tracking!

AuthorIan Stocker | Comment4 Comments |
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Reader Comments (4)

All in all, a pretty good solution. I played around with it a bit at 45454hz. The sweet spot on my machine is around cycles=13000 - much more than 15k and my machine can't handle it, 12k and under and the sound begins to stutter and InfoPage display during playback gets a bit choppy.

Using itsb16.drv, changing to 16-bit mixing does not appear to save CPU cycles, and I'm a bit divided as to whether turning off the filter affects the sound chopping up much.

DosBox also, by default hijacks some playback commands - e.g. alt-F5 and alt-F6, for audio and video captures. I imagine there's a way to disable that, but I have't delved too deeply into that yet.

I was rather disappointed that the MMX soundcard drivers would not load - I gather DosBox does not support MMX? I'm not about to cry; they're used rarely, and poorly supported outside of IT itself from what I've seen. Still, it would be nice for the sake of completion. But hey - that's what this `98 box on the KVM is for!
July 23, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterEric Bryant
When I finally got rid of my 98 boot, VDMSound became my window into the IT world, and DOSBox finally completed the picture by allowing me to use it on my notebook.

I've moved up to 33333Hz on my desktop and it works great at 13000 cycles. As for the hijacked keys, I mostly miss CTRL+F12 to set the colors. But I can deal with the default color scheme in the meantime...
August 16, 2006 | Registered CommenterIan Stocker
MMX drivers work with this config:

http://www.fq-music.net/vdmsound.htm
September 18, 2006 | Unregistered CommenterJono
Thank you! I was successful using the latest Dosbox 0.73 in getting IT to work flawlessly under Vista SP2+ with your help. The trick was remembering that IT's default mixing rate was 45454, not 44100 as I expected. On my Core Duo laptop (Lenovo T60), I use CPU cycles of around 13000, mixer rate of 45454, no frameskip and the rest as you say. Output turns out flawlessly and the screen updates as fast as native used to. Thanks again!
October 4, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterwohali

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