No sound with Rosegarden

studioj · 10-27-2006, 12:49 PM

at least we made some garbled music.
i can't remember anyone else i have tried to help on the web with this get even this far.
everybody else always gives up.
moving on.
fluidsynth is a terrible player with timing problems
just do
fluidsynth sYnerGi-8Mb.sf2
then
pmidi -l
and you find
128:0 FLUID Synth (6372) Synth input port (6372:0)
then
pmidi -p 128:0 SOMEFILE.mid

it should work alot better
all we are trying to do is use these software synth to create writeable midi ports

OK for timidity
there may be more than one timidity.cfg with the first one just sourcing the second
that doesn't matter
first look in /etc/timidity
once you find one just
mv timidity.cfg timidity.cfg.ORIG
or any thing similar
then open an editor like
emacs timidity.cfg
and in that file just put one line
soundfont /full/path/to/sYnerGi-8Mb.sf2
then save the file
start timidity and see if pmidi will play
i have a bunch of cfg files in /etc/timidity and i just switch them around

here when i use timidity like this with pmidi it sounds all scratchy but when i use timidity in realtime in the nice music apps with jack it sounds great.

if we can get it working i can show you some nice old style gravis soundfonts to use with timidity as well.

linmix · 10-28-2006, 03:46 PM

Yes, I'm still here, and I plan to see this one through to the end.

Before I reply to your suggestions though (I haven't found the time yet) a couple of other things.

I remembered something about a debian based multimedia distro and had a look at distrowatch. I found AGNULA. Is this the Debian you are using? If you know it, is it any good? I might just make a couple of extra partitions on my second pc and try it out. I've never used Debian before, so maybe here's a good excuse. The only thing that worries me is that the latest update to the page is about a year old...

There are also lots of tutorials at the AGNULA site and a timidity tutorial suggested simply doing

Quote:

timidity -Os foo.mid

. I did and it worked perfectly! That still doesn't solve my problem, but I felt exhilarated.

studioj · 10-29-2006, 02:08 AM

oh thats cool you used timidity to play a song
wonder why it wasn't playing the other way ?

what has happened to agnula/demudi is they have now synced with the main debian repository.
so what i just did is i installed vanilla debian etch (testing)
then followed this
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/Low-la...lBuildingHowto
per instructions install another version of pam modules for rtlimits
libpam-modules_0.76-22ubuntu3studio1_i386.deb
presumably from something called ubuntu studio and i locked it so it doesn't upgrade
added

Code:

none            /dev/shm        tmpfs     defaults              0 0

to /etc/fstab for jack
then i just tweeked my kernel a bit and it all works great. 2.6.18-rt6 latest and greatest
most likely didn't even have to tweek the kernel but it's an old habit.
debian makes it super easy to build and experiment with new kernels using kpkg.
the build even makes my new nvidia dislay drivers package automajically and installing updates grub.
then proceded to do the usual tuning stuff. Then install all the sound apps
the only things not in the debian repository are realtime preempt kernels and the rtlimits pam
i think the debian people are too security conscious to include those.
the only thing i found broken was the xmms-jack plugun caused a severe crash so i uninstalled it.
for some reason ecamegapedal doesn't show ladpsa plugins but that's it so i'm very happy with it.
the Xorg dispay server is really way too resource heavy for serious music and wish i could go back to XFree
but i deniced it to +5 and now it doesn't interupt things. (the cursor kind of lags now like an old pentium pro from 1980)

Debian is WAY better and faster and more enjoyable that fedora in myopinion and the number of sound packages is mind blowing. not all of them seem to show up in my fluxbox menu and still under sound there are about 90 apps and like i said i keep finding ones that aren't n the menu.

Debian always feels as fast as Linux from scratch to me accept for Xorg which is just people (big corporations) destroying the display server trying to make it like windows. I can run jack at fairly low latencies and i get a few xruns but no sound interuption or anything. all the soft synths are realtime and i don't notice an delays and i'm using a huge 63 mega byte sound font file.

linmix · 10-29-2006, 09:50 AM

Maybe the key to the earlier timidity problem (with the -iA switch) is something I have just noticed: there is an error message related to ALSA during bootup! The only thing I could see (at the speed things scroll by) was something related to the mic, but unfortunately the boot log isn't working in Fedora Core 4 and 5. I'm looking into a workaround though.

Debian sounds more and more interesting...

studioj · 10-29-2006, 04:26 PM

yea i was thinking too about that mobo sound.
i think i have that too but have never used it.
i think nvidia actually made some oss drivers for soundstorm once but stopped.
i know there is a mixer called nvmixer for linux.

it could be i am giving you the commands i use and they are not working for your board
because of the driver.

i remember reading where it was hard for the alsa developers because it is a combination of two chips and nvidia was less that open about the specs.

might want to just experiment

the real drag is we are so screwed when it comes to hardware.
i think your mobo sound actually can do DLS midi but there is just no support or understanding of how under Linux.

studioj · 10-29-2006, 10:02 PM

i don't know what you are trying to setup Linux to do
but there is killer support for
m-audio Audiophile 2496 pci card is good and the card is fast as lightning.
the old standby i use old now discontinued but some still available e-mu soundblasters (live and audigy) they have onboard synth (not the new ones)
and also now discontinued RME Hammerfall series cards.

linmix · 11-06-2006, 02:48 AM

Sounds like that might be difficult to get my hands on. Getting a decent soundcard with onboard synth does sound like the best option though.

No luck with boot.log - the work-around didn't give the desired results - but when I accidentally booted into the standard FC5 kernel there were no such messages... Maybe I didn't install the right packages or maybe somthing else happened, but I'm definitely getting some results:

I can now start timidity the way you suggested

Quote:

$ timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os
Requested buffer size 2048, fragment size 1024
ALSA pcm 'default' set buffer size 44100, period size 22048 bytes
TiMidity starting in ALSA server mode
Opening sequencer port: 128:0 128:1 128:2 128:3

Then I started vkeybd and after that set up the connection with aconnect:

Quote:

$ aconnect 129:0 128:0

WHen I click a key on the virtual keyboard I hear the corresponding sound after a short delay!

studioj · 11-06-2006, 02:25 PM

weird huh
anyway thats cool
it really doesn't matter that much which kernel anymore because reatime permissions is a part of PAM now. people tell me kernels with RT-prempt patch just don't work on some hardware. perhaps if planetccrma has a kernel done without the RT-preempt patch you could try that one.
the delay is coming from those abnormally large buffer and period sizes

Code:

Requested buffer size 2048, fragment size 1024
ALSA pcm 'default' set buffer size 44100, period size 22048 bytes

mine says

Code:

Requested buffer size 2048, fragment size 1024
ALSA pcm 'default' set buffer size 2016, period size 72 bytes

i have no idea why those are so high
go back now and retry setting the size in .asoundrc
this would be under pcm.nforce

Code:

period_time 2
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 48000

someone told me recently nvidia uses 48000 and cant do 44100 rate
this might help even if timidity says the same thing

OK next is to run jack and see what the output is in the message window of qjackctl
very cool you figured out the problem

linmix · 11-08-2006, 03:23 AM

My old asound config had the pcm.nforce lines commented (as you suggested some posts back), but I have now changed them to the values you indicated.

The piano keyboard now reacts moch faster. There's still the very short delay between click and action, but that's inherent to the way mouseclicks work so that's perfect.

I was a little worried things wouldn't work fine since I messed up my gnome (lost window borders and can't move windows around + only one desktop) so I'm currently using KDE, but it doesn't seem to affetc anything we're doing.

qtjackctl starts fine, but that is of course only the beginning: no error output... what's next

linmix · 11-08-2006, 03:30 AM

I've tried the following:

Quote:

$ pmidi -l
Port Client name Port name
14:0 Midi Through Midi Through Port-0
129:0 TiMidity TiMidity port 0
129:1 TiMidity TiMidity port 1
129:2 TiMidity TiMidity port 2
129:3 TiMidity TiMidity port 3
130:0 Client-130 qjackctl
$ pmidi -p 129:0 mahler.mid
$ pmidi -p 130:0 mahler.mid

But I get no sound...

studioj · 11-11-2006, 10:18 PM

sorry it took so long to get back
once you start jack i think you can't run normal sound apps like pmidi and junk
sounds like to me you are done
fire up jack the muse or rosegarden and record a tune !

Ice82 · 11-13-2006, 02:48 AM

May I get in the conversation?

I'm getting mad with this midi! I can play midi files using

Code:

timidity file.mid

or

Code:

playsound file.mid

, and now, thanks to studioj

, I can even play the keyboard.
However

Code:

aplaymidi -p 128 file.mid

freezes at the first note,

Code:

playmidi file.mid

does not produce any sound, and the same is for every other midi application such as gmorgan or Rosegarden (with or without jack support). The latter shows a message saying that the resource or device is busy, so it will use the null output device.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance,

Ice82

linmix · 11-25-2006, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by studioj

sorry it took so long to get back
once you start jack i think you can't run normal sound apps like pmidi and junk
sounds like to me you are done
fire up jack the muse or rosegarden and record a tune !

Same here. I completely screwed up my box doing something else and have started getting everything back up to speed with FC6 after all. This thread will serve as a guide to get the sound/midi stuff going again. If I run into trouble again I'll most certainly call for your expertise, but untill then, a big thanks for all the help so far!!