Soundblaster Live 5.1 Having trouble playing midi

GameboyHippo · 08-29-2006, 05:11 PM

I'm trying to run an allegro application that uses midi to output background music. I'm using a Soundblaster Live 5.1 soundcard (emu10k1). After thourouly checking google and linuxquestions.org, I found two solutions.

I've read about using sfxload or asfxload to get it to work, but it doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried using timidity++ as a midi alsa sound system, but although it works, it begins to slow way down and there is a bunch of pauses in the music.

Has anyone had luck in getting this soundcard to output midi using its own hardware? If so, can you give me step by step instructions? Perhaps I'm missing a step.

Thanks!

HappyTux · 08-29-2006, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GameboyHippo

I'm trying to run an allegro application that uses midi to output background music. I'm using a Soundblaster Live 5.1 soundcard (emu10k1). After thourouly checking google and linuxquestions.org, I found two solutions.

I've read about using sfxload or asfxload to get it to work, but it doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried using timidity++ as a midi alsa sound system, but although it works, it begins to slow way down and there is a bunch of pauses in the music.

Has anyone had luck in getting this soundcard to output midi using its own hardware? If so, can you give me step by step instructions? Perhaps I'm missing a step.

Thanks!

I did it a while back on my SB Live and just tried again with my Audigy. I used this page to get the Ultimate.SF2 zip file then uncompressed the file now make sure that you have the snd_emux_synth, snd_seq_virmidi, snd_emu10k1_synth modules loaded they should be enough to pull in whatever else is needed. Install the pmidi package since I see you already have the awesfx installed. Now sfxload Ultimate.SF2 to load the Ultimate sound font then use pmidi -l to see the ports available.

Code:

pmidi -l
 Port     Client name                       Port name
 14:0     Midi Through                      Midi Through Port-0
 16:0     Audigy MPU-401 #2                 Audigy MPU-401 (UART)
 16:32    Audigy MPU-401 #2                 Audigy MPU-401 #2
 17:0     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 0
 17:1     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 1
 17:2     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 2
 17:3     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 3

In my case it is pmidi -p 17:0 guitar.mid to use the guitar.mid that is in the soundfont file. That is about all I know about getting it working as I never played around with it more than that.

tauira · 10-22-2006, 02:27 AM

I also had problems getting midi hardware playback through my soundblaster live! using debian (libranet 3.0 and some sarge).

'pmidi -l' was not finding the midi ports at all.
The appropriate kernel and modules should have been there but seemed to not be working. I ran 'modconf', then selected kernel/sound/pci/emu10k1, and found three emu10k1 modules, but only one was enabled. I enabled 'snd-emu10k1-synth'.
After that 'pmidi -l' listed the available ports as shown by HappyTux's post.
then used sfxload to load the soundfonts from my soundcard's driver cd (ends in *.SF2)
in alsamixer the "Music" bar sets the midi playback volume, so needs to be turned up,
then I used 'playmidi -a music.mid' for playback of the midi file.

I hope you had already got your card working anyway!