Re: Midi questions

On Thursday, December 17, 2009, Koenraad Lelong wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have problems with midi-output on my OS11.2/Gnome. I installed
> fluidsynth and qsynth. When I try to play a midi-file with note-edit,
> the sound is very distorted, unrecognizable. That's on my snd-hda-intel
> card. What could be the problem ?

It is hard to say without more information. It happens only with Noteedit, or 
also with other MIDI applications? 

Try FluidSynth 1.0.8 or 1.0.9, but not older. The newest release 1.1.0 has 
some problems with QSynth, that will be fixed in the not yet published 1.1.1 
release. Sorry for all the mess ;)

In order to isolate the problem, my advice would be to try a simple scenario 
like this one: in one terminal, start fluidsynth:

$ fluidsynth -a alsa file.sf2
(you may want to try "-a pulseaudio" or "-a oss" if you want)

The command line interface of fluidsynth provides a shell-like session, where 
you can try commands. For instance, you may want to set the gain value to a 
lower value with "gain 0.4". Try the "settings" command to see all the 
current settings. Later, you would be able to set most settings using the 
QSynth friendly GUI.

In another terminal, use the aplaymidi (from alsa-utils) utility: 
$ aplaymidi -l
...
$ aplaymidi -p FLUID song.mid

> I also do have a soundblaser live in the machine. When I take this as a
> midi-output, I don't have any sound, unless I install a soundfont with
> asfxload. Is it possible to have the soundfont automatically loaded on
> boot ? I have seen something in /etc/udev/rules and /etc/alsa.d, but I
> don't understand these.

I don't have an Audigy, but yes, this card has a MIDI hardware synth, and need 
a soundfont. The RPM package awesfx provides the /etc/udev/rules.d 
and /etc/alsa.d scripts to load soundfont files into the card. You should 
copy your .SF2 files into the /usr/share/sounds/sf2 directory, and write the 
name of your preferred one in the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/sound 
following the key name SOUNDFONT-FILES.

Regards,
Pedro