#107 MIDI wavetable software synthesis backend
The following patch adds General Midi software wavetable synthesys to
DosBox' MPU-401 emulation.
It links (when available) with fluidsynth, which is a software synthesizer
available at http://www.fluidsynth.org/
To use it, add entries to dosbox.conf like:
[midi]
device=synth
samplerate=44100
config=/path/to/soundfont.sf2
To test it, I dumped the ROM of my old ISA SoundBlaster AWE64 and
made a sound font out of it.
Any other General Midi sound font will do, like "8MBGMSFX.SF2" that is
shipped with SoundBlaster Live! cards.
It is even possible to get an approximate Roland MT-32 emulation using
an MT-32 sound font instead of a General Midi one.
Windows users already have a software wavetable synthesizer shipped
with DirectX (and using a different sound font format).
patch for MIDI synth using fluidsynth library
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what is it use?
under linux there is timidity that works fine with dosbox
and people who have a soundblaster live can simply load
soundfont in their player and dosbox creates an alsa client
for the midi data.
Or am I missing something obvious ?
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I prefer to use the integrated mixer of DosBox.
Why? Because I haven't managed to configure ALSA so that it accepts
simultaneous digital sound and timidity (or fluidsynth) MIDI synthesis (like "dmix")
without breaking compatibility with OSS only applications like "dosemu".
I think also that DosBox should have the ability to do MIDI and sound effects
simultaneously even on Linux with OSS (and without ALSA), which can not use a
MIDI software synthesizer backend and has no software mixing capability.
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Now, if the patch supported loading of soundfonts so it would essentially behave like an AWE32/64/... card, that would make sense. DungeonKeeper used a custom soundfont, for example.
As for ALSA vs. OSS: OSS is officially deprecated, apps will have to move to ALSA anyways. It's easy to add ALSA support to an OSS-only app.