Re: [Alsa-user] Irregular sound on AMD64

[Greg L. <gr...@li...>]

Eric Sharkey wrote:
...
> AFAICT the wav sounds ok, but the midi is pretty screwed up.  It's
> worse if I call timidity (from Debian) directly rather than calling
> the SDL playmus I've just compiled, and the degree of the problem
> seems to vary by file as well.

The timidity you call directly is, I suppose, Timidity++.  I've heard
from one person that Timidity++ does work ok on a 64 bit system.

> It's almost comical.  The midi files sound like they're being performed
> by a very amateur band that keeps losing it's place, dropping a beat
> here or there, and then catching up.

Maybe it's just the dropouts you get when timidity can't supply
data as fast as the Alsa driver is consuming it.  Nor that this
would tell us why.  But if that's it, it should get worse when the
system is performing other concurrent tasks.

> It may be the case that the same problem could be affecting both
> wave and midi, but because of the comparative simplicity of playing
> a wave file, the problems are not easily audible.

Yes, timidity does give the CPU a workout.  Timidity++ is more
demanding than the timidity inside SDL.
...
> Why would timidity have anything to do with sound quality in,
> for example, a game like Fish Fillets NG, which stores its music
> as ogg vorbis files?

It wouldn't.  My suggestion was just wishful thinking.  I was hoping
it was something I could do something about.  Now, I don't have
a clue.

Greg