[timidity] many problems (Solved - migrated to fluid+qsynth)

i92guboj · Last edited by i92guboj on Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:41 am; edited 1 time in total

Edited: I decided to give up the timidity++ issues forever and give a try to fluid+qsynth, for now I am indeed surprised by the easiness of the process and the inmediate availability. Plus, you have to consider all the advantajes of a system based on soundfonts rather than patches. I will add the details on another post below, in case someone is interested in migrating from timidity++

I know that there are tons of timidity++ related topics, but haven't found one like this. If there is one, anyone, feel free to move it and forgive me.

My issue is the following: new install in an average box (1700+), I have set timidity with eawpatches and thru the latest alsa on the vanilla kernel (1.0.10_rc1, me thinks). Timidity -Os <filename,mid> works without any problem, but now I am experiencing a strange thing: aplaymidi -l does not show any timidity port:

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

I wouldn't have timidity start as a default service. 1) it's not very stable and 2) it's a CPU hog. I would start and stop it manually when ever you need to use it.
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i92guboj · Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 10:21 pm Post subject:

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

there is fluidsynth. it loads soundfonts. there is a nice front end for it that is a little more user friendly than the timidity CLI. There is also qsampler which loads GIGA samples. (also a nice front end for it too)
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i92guboj · Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 3:57 am Post subject:

i92guboj · Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2005 11:57 am Post subject:

Migration to fluid+qsynth

As I expose above, I have become tired of some of the timidity++ little annoyances. Fluidsynth is a very similar mechanism, for those not familiar with it I will say that it is also a software synthetiser. What are the main differences that I have found on it compared to timidity?

The main one is that any user can turn it on when s/he needs it (so there is no need to start it at boot time, which is a good thing for me). Another thing that I like over timidity++ is the fact that it has a usefull frontend, formerly qsynth. Timidity++ lacks a similar thing. It has several frontends that can be activated via use flags, but none of them has even a fraction of the functionality that qsynth offers.

It is not particularly heavy or light (I havent tested it so much so cant compare the memory or cpu usage with timidity++, but is certainly nor worse). Well, appart from that you have to note that, being a solutions based in sounfonts rather than patches you have a wider range of possibilities or sounds to choose from, and also that it can be much lighter or much heavier in memory usage, depending on the soundfonts that you use.

The procedure

tecknojunky · Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2007 3:14 pm Post subject:

Thanks.

But I can't see any midi devices in kguitar. I'm seing that I have this message when fluidsynth is started:

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

You need to have jack running before you start fluidsynth.
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tecknojunky · Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 12:46 am Post subject:

I've been having thi card for like 6 years and I always thought there was no midi capabilities on it. Well, it seems it does (CMI8738/PCI).
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sonicbhoc · Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 3:18 am Post subject:

Back when I was a noob to this I had both fluidsynth and timidity installed. Thanks for helping me get rid of timidity though, I don't need it anymore after all! Besides, I need all the resources I can muster to run by fancy beryl effects on this PC. :lol:

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tecknojunky · Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 8:10 pm Post subject:

I tried AIGLX with my voodoo 3 2000 but for an unknown reason I borked GL rendering straight pipe. Not a big deal.

For my CMI8738 card, I now have a midi device showing in Jack, but I can't seem to be able to make the capture ports working, apart the mic port. In alsamixer, they appear this way:

tecknojunky · Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 12:55 am Post subject:

Hey! It worked after a reboot!

I plugged my cdrom output jack directly in the line-in of the sound card and I could hear the audio cd play. I then plugued my electric guitar and I could (faintly) hear it in one of the speakers. But I can't route that to ecamegapedal, just for adding simple gain to the sound.

I also realized that I have a .rcsound in my home folder:

Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1610 Location: indiana

any idea what the problem is ?

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

Read you own error message. :roll:

Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1610 Location: indiana

FishB8 · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 820

You need to run jackd.

Try installing qjackctl. It's a front end that makes starting and stopping jack much easier.
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"...as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." -Benjamin Franklin

Mgiese · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1610 Location: indiana

ok i can start it but in the message window i got the following problem :

nickrout · Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 9:30 am Post subject:

you don't actually need jack, although I have no doubt it will work better.

You can click past the jack error message, click on setup and then the audio tab choose alsa as the output, or oss (on my system anyway, it may depend on the USE flags for fluidsynth.