LinuxQuestions.org - playing midi is harder to setup than it seems to be

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playing midi is harder to setup than it seems to be

I have a SBLive! Value sound card and some say that it has a built-in MIDI syntherizer which means that you might not have to use Timidity.

I have XMMS out of the RH box and it's just a matter of installing the xmms-mp3 package in order to play mp3s. This is so easy to setup. On the other hand, XMMS can't play MIDI at all

I try to install some packages like "MP3 route" but fails since it's a loop depandcy packages. And I got stuck.

My question is: "How do I get my sound card to play MIDI without using something like Timidity which I understand it's a MIDI-to-WAVE?"

Any other information website which explains how to setup XMMS to play MIDI with SBLive sound card? Is it a sound card driver related?

Thanks. Sorry if this question has been asked so many time before but I can't seem to get the right information through the "search" button

I successfully used timidity. Kmid did not work for me.

hi,
i think xmms won't play midi
you are right you don't have to use a softsynth like timidity.
i do recomend kmidi as an easy midi file player
and a utility "pmidi" to look at midi information and to play midi files from the command line

ok to use your soundcard midi capabilities first you need to be loading up all it's modules
i load these at boot

Code:

soundcore

snd

snd-emu10k1

snd-mixer-oss

snd-seq-oss

snd-pcm-oss

snd-seq-midi

snd-mpu401-uart

this results in this when i look at lsmod

Code:

(gary) /etc/sysconfig  $ lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by

snd_mpu401_uart        6784  0 

snd_pcm_oss            50344  0 

snd_seq_midi            6816  0 

snd_emu10k1_synth      7296  0 

snd_emux_synth        36352  1 snd_emu10k1_synth

snd_seq_virmidi        6272  1 snd_emux_synth

snd_seq_midi_emul      7424  1 snd_emux_synth

snd_seq_oss            33024  0 

snd_seq_midi_event      6784  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_oss

snd_seq                53008  8 snd_seq_midi,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_midi_emul,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event

snd_mixer_oss          17792  1 snd_pcm_oss

snd_emu10k1            94856  1 snd_emu10k1_synth

snd_rawmidi            21284  4 snd_mpu401_uart,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_emu10k1

snd_pcm                88836  2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_emu10k1

snd_timer              23044  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm

snd_seq_device          6792  7 snd_seq_midi,snd_emu10k1_synth,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi

snd_ac97_codec        66308  1 snd_emu10k1

snd_page_alloc          9096  2 snd_emu10k1,snd_pcm

snd_util_mem            3584  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1

snd_hwdep              7428  2 snd_emux_synth,snd_emu10k1

snd                    47844  17 snd_mpu401_uart,snd_pcm_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_emux_synth,snd_seq_virmidi,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq,snd_mixer_oss,snd_emu10k1,snd_rawmidi,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_seq_device,snd_ac97_codec,snd_util_mem,snd_hwdep

soundcore              7904  1 snd

ok on to loading those soundfonts
first find the soundfonts on the cards windows install cd
look around because there is more than one of them i bet
mine is CT4MGM.SF2
some people find CT8MGM.SF2
and also on my cd was a CT2MGM.SF2
you want to use the largest one - that is the one with the biggest number
copy the file to your computer -- i put mine in /usr/local/lib/sfbank but any place will due
now you need a package called "awesfx"
it's an old oss package for soundblaster that has some cool stuff in it
the utility you need is "sfxload"
you load the soundfonts with that
i would check out your alsa startup script and see if it is already set up to do this just by taking out some comments and adding the path to the soundfonts or you can alter the script to load and unload the fonts or you can load and unload them by hand
the commans for me are
to load
sfxload /usr/local/lib/sfbank/CT4MGM.SF2
now you can play midi files
to unload
sfxload -i
i think i would unload them before i power down just to be on the safe side

I only use MIDI for scummvm, last time I tried was Mandrake 9.2...and it worked.
Now with Mandrake 10.2 doesn't works, programs complains about /dev/sequence or /dev/snd/seq being missing (and yes, they are missing). Module snd_seq_midi isn't loaded, but I don't know what more to do (I don't really did so much :p )
Some info, "Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG" seems bad, but I don't have nothing to compare:

Quote:

# cat /proc/asound/version
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.8.

Quote:

# uname -a
Linux Primero 2.6.11-6mdkcustom #1 Sat May 14 23:32:52 CEST 2005 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+ unknown GNU/Linux
(without "custom" same problem)

Quote:

# cat /proc/asound/oss/sndstat
Sound Driver:3.8.1a-980706 (ALSA v1.0.8 emulation code)
Kernel: Linux Primero 2.6.11-6mdkcustom #1 Sat May 14 23:32:52 CEST 2005 i686
Config options: 0

Installed drivers:
Type 10: ALSA emulation

Card config:
Sound Blaster Live! (rev.7, serial:0x80271102) at 0xd800, irq 11

Audio devices:
0: ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback (DUPLEX)

Synth devices: NOT ENABLED IN CONFIG

Midi devices:
0: EMU10K1 MPU-401 (UART)

Timers:
7: system timer

Mixers:
0: TriTech TR28602

Quote:

# cat /proc/asound/seq/drivers
snd-emu10k1-synth,empty,1
snd-seq-midi,empty,1

Quote:

# lsmod
Module Size Used by
isofs 32312 1
raw 6944 1
snd-pcm-oss 49440 0
snd-mixer-oss 17408 2 snd-pcm-oss
snd-emu10k1 112516 2
snd-rawmidi 21152 1 snd-emu10k1
snd-seq-device 6860 2 snd-emu10k1,snd-rawmidi
snd-ac97-codec 74744 1 snd-emu10k1
snd-pcm 84552 3 snd-pcm-oss,snd-emu10k1,snd-ac97-codec
snd-timer 22084 2 snd-emu10k1,snd-pcm
snd-page-alloc 7556 2 snd-emu10k1,snd-pcm
snd-util-mem 3328 1 snd-emu10k1
snd-hwdep 7200 1 snd-emu10k1
snd 49732 11 snd-pcm-oss,snd-mixer-oss,snd-emu10k1,snd-rawmidi,snd-seq-device,snd-ac97-codec,snd-pcm,snd-timer,snd-hwdep
soundcore 7840 2 snd
af_packet 17416 0
floppy 55120 0
8139too 22336 0
mii 4224 1 8139too
ne2k-pci 8416 0
8390 8704 1 ne2k-pci
ide-cd 36868 1
loop 14536 0
supermount 33108 1
nls_cp850 4608 3
vfat 11392 3
fat 36636 1 vfat
nls_iso8859-15 4352 5
ntfs 206776 1
via-agp 7488 1
emu10k1-gp 2688 0
gameport 3584 1 emu10k1-gp
nvidia 3706436 20
agpgart 28584 2 via-agp,nvidia
uhci-hcd 29264 0
usbcore 108824 2 uhci-hcd
video 13956 0
thermal 10696 0
tc1100-wmi 5252 0
processor 18548 1 thermal
fan 3204 0
container 3136 0
button 4944 0
battery 7556 0
ac 3396 0
ext3 124296 1
jbd 54296 1 ext3

Quote:

udev-054-6mdk

Uhmmm, I'm stupid :p
With only modprobe the missing modules everything works correctly...I confused modprobe with insmod and didn't worked.