Re: [Rosegarden-user] ATTN: Silvan

[Silvan <dmm...@us...>]

On Saturday 05 April 2003 11:37 pm, eagle99 wrote:

> My results :

Looks good.  Since you can play MP3s, you don't likely have any trouble in 
this area anyway, so you don't need to bother with further investigation.

> If I play an audio file (mp3) the system sound is very good--but midis are
> terrible. What suggestions do you have for improving midi sound? Midi is
> what I'm most interested in.

My last solution to horrible MIDI was to go plunk down $584 for a Roland Sound 
Canvas.  That was back when I had credit cards...  :)

But seriously, you should be able to get pretty good results with FluidSynth.  
My Sound Canvas sounds better than any of the soundfonts I've dug up to date, 
but FluidSynth sounds more respectable than a lot of other things I've played 
with other the years.

The first thing you need is a decent soundfont.  Soundfonts abound, but good 
ones are hard to find.  Bigger is better, usually.  I can't really recommend 
one because everything on my hard drive at the moment sounds pretty sad.  My 
favorite is one called "chaos.sft" though I have no clue where I got it.

I run Fluid Synth with the script I've attached to this message, for 
convenience.  YMMV and stuff, but I like having it in its own xterm.  Syntax 
for that is:

	synthon path-to-soundfont

  Though of course the root of it all is just:

	fluidsynth -m alsa_seq path-to-soundfont

Once you've gotten FluidSynth running properly, you should be able to play 
MIDI files with:

	pmidi -p 128:0 path-to-midi-file

(if that port isn't valid, try a pmidi -l to see which ports *are* valid)

Of course, Rosegarden should fly too.

Note, of course, that I've not included Jack in this picture.  I've assumed 
that you do *not* have Jack running.  I'll leave Jack to Rich or somebody who 
doesn't detest the thing as much as I do.  Jack and I are not friends.

-- 
Michael McIntyre         USDA zone 6b in SW VA, USA
Silvan <dmm...@us...> Linux Druid
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