For all who have midi sound troubles

[steveblotman]

Hello everybody. :)


This is a master trouble in the subcategory of sound issues : "I have no midi output", "I can't hear any midi sound!" "Rosegarden doesn't play anything!"...

Well, this thread is about that. My aim is to propose a simple way to make midi work... Not exactly, but to play midi... :p


First go to the CNR at this adresses (or search for "timidity")

http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=19849

http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=7344

Download both packages. And then you can forget about CNR...

Actually, Timidity is not a simple midi player. It's a synthetiser transforming the midi into wave sound in order to render it on a computer that lacks of material midi support. It's a kind of midi software emulator.

But when installed, you don't know how to make it work!! No shortcut, no icon, nothing appears! :confused: :mad: :twisted:

Just follow the instructions!


Open a terminal konsole log (as root if possible) and type : timidity

You will see this text appear :

TiMidity++ version 2.13.2 -- MIDI to WAVE converter and player
Copyright (C) 1999-2004 Masanao Izumo <iz@onicos.co.jp>
Copyright (C) 1995 Tuukka Toivonen <tt@cgs.fi>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA



Nothing really exciting. But you can play midi through the konsole by typing : timidity mymidifile.mid.

Actually it didn't work for me, so I searched a liitle bit and found that :

In the same konsole, type : timidity -ig

And then the miracle comes : a graphical interface appears with clear options! You can test it before finishing this "tutorial" ...


Does it work? So we 're going to create a shortcut to launch it by one click, and forget the terminal program.


Open your favorite text editor (ah, Kate is so lovely!). Now, paste this text in your blank document :


[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name= MIDI Reader Timidity
Comment=Play Midi files
Exec=timidity -ig
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=false
MimeType=audio/midi;
Categories=Application;AudioVideo;
Icon=
#NoDisplay=true


That's it? Almost...

Save this document to : /usr/share/applications/ under the name of timidity.desktop.

If you did it well, by clicking on /usr/share/applications/timidity.desktop, the user interface appears!

Last point : just right click on the executable file you created and copy it to where you can easily find it (desktop, my documents, or wherever you want!)


And then enjoy your midi songs! :)


I hope this will help some. I was looking for that kind of solutions since months... And I tried every other solution (soundfounts, rosegarden, fluidsynth...). This is the most simple I have found.


Good luck, and never give up! :D

[Elbato]

Hello everybody. :)


This is a master trouble in the subcategory of sound issues : "I have no midi output", "I can't hear any midi sound!" "Rosegarden doesn't play anything!"...

Well, this thread is about that. My aim is to propose a simple way to make midi work... Not exactly, but to play midi... :p


First go to the CNR at this adresses (or search for "timidity")

http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=19849

http://www.linspire.com/lindows_products_details.php?product_id=7344

Download both packages. And then you can forget about CNR...

Actually, Timidity is not a simple midi player. It's a synthetiser transforming the midi into wave sound in order to render it on a computer that lacks of material midi support. It's a kind of midi software emulator.

But when installed, you don't know how to make it work!! No shortcut, no icon, nothing appears! :confused: :mad: :twisted:

Just follow the instructions!


Open a terminal konsole log (as root if possible) and type : timidity

You will see this text appear :

TiMidity++ version 2.13.2 -- MIDI to WAVE converter and player
Copyright (C) 1999-2004 Masanao Izumo <iz@onicos.co.jp>
Copyright (C) 1995 Tuukka Toivonen <tt@cgs.fi>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA



Nothing really exciting. But you can play midi through the konsole by typing : timidity mymidifile.mid.

Actually it didn't work for me, so I searched a liitle bit and found that :

In the same konsole, type : timidity -ig

And then the miracle comes : a graphical interface appears with clear options! You can test it before finishing this "tutorial" ...


Does it work? So we 're going to create a shortcut to launch it by one click, and forget the terminal program.


Open your favorite text editor (ah, Kate is so lovely!). Now, paste this text in your blank document :


[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name= MIDI Reader Timidity
Comment=Play Midi files
Exec=timidity -ig
Terminal=false
Type=Application
StartupNotify=false
MimeType=audio/midi;
Categories=Application;AudioVideo;
Icon=
#NoDisplay=true


That's it? Almost...

Save this document to : /usr/share/applications/ under the name of timidity.desktop.

If you did it well, by clicking on /usr/share/applications/timidity.desktop, the user interface appears!

Last point : just right click on the executable file you created and copy it to where you can easily find it (desktop, my documents, or wherever you want!)


And then enjoy your midi songs! :)


I hope this will help some. I was looking for that kind of solutions since months... And I tried every other solution (soundfounts, rosegarden, fluidsynth...). This is the most simple I have found.


Good luck, and never give up! :D

This is chido... gonna try!!!!!!!!!!

errr.. have to reinstall Freespire 1.0... mmmh mhhh maybe.. anyway is good to know how to make it work.. thankss!

[revhouse1]

This is a great hit -- time to put this in the wiki.

one correction though, if you don't have freepats installed you'll get an error when you try to run timidity -ig.
You can get freepats from CNR from the following link, however the file is serveral years old.
http://www.linspire.com/search_results.php?q=freepats

There is a newer file which can be downloaded from here (http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/download.pl?arch=all&file=pool%2Fmain%2Ff%2Ffreepats%2Ffreepats_2006021 9-1_all.deb&md5sum=c83e1ba34647ab46b24d01b6f8c333f4&arch=all&type=main)
I downloaded the file and used synaptic package manager to install it.

Otherwise it works as advertized

tom
Community Board -- wiki liaison

[steveblotman]

You're right, you need freepats to make things work. I didn't mention it because I selected automatic dependencies packages installation. :rolleyes:

Sorry for forgetting this, but happy to see it works and might help! :)

[seeker5528]

You're right, you need freepats to make things work. I didn't mention it because I selected automatic dependencies packages installation. :rolleyes:

I take it you mean the 'treat recomends as dependencies' option. ;)

Freepats is not a dependency because some of us prefer to use sound fonts to get a little better sounding instrument representation, in which case Freepats becomes dead weight.

Later, Seeker

[revhouse1]

I take it you mean the 'treat recomends as dependencies' option. ;)

Freepats is not a dependency because some of us prefer to use sound fonts to get a little better sounding instrument representation, in which case Freepats becomes dead weight.

Later, Seeker

sound fonts? What do you use?

tom

[steveblotman]

Let's complete the tutorial!! :)


Actually what I was said troubled me, and I searched a little bit more!! ;)


So go to this page :

http://www.personalcopy.com/home.htm

On the right part, in the menu, click on : Soundfonts for Linux. Then download the Unison.sf2 file on your desktop, for example.

Uncompress it and save the font itself in :

/etc/timidity/

Then in order for Timidity to take care of it, edit the timidity.cfg file (found at /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg) with a text editor.

Just comment the line concerning freepats if you have it (last line) by ading # and a space

(like this : # source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg)

And add at the last line this command :

soundfont /etc/timidity/Unison.sf2

Then turn on timidity, and the soundfont will be used! :)

If you want to use another soundfont, just follow the instrucions and modify only the path to the soundfont! And don't forget to comment (with # and space) the fonts you don't want to use!!


Your config file (well, mine!) should be :

# Instrument configuration file for timidity
# $Id: timidity.cfg,v 1.5 2004/08/07 15:59:19 hmh Exp $

# You can change just about every option in TiMidity++ using
# This config file. Please refer to the timidity.cfg(5) manpage
# for more details

## If you have a slow CPU, uncomment these:
#opt EFresamp=d #disable resampling
#opt EFvlpf=d #disable VLPF
#opt EFreverb=d #disable reverb
#opt EFchorus=d #disable chorus
#opt EFdelay=d #disable delay
#opt no-antialias #disable sample anti-aliasing
#opt EWPVSETOZ #disable all Midi Controls
#opt p32a #default to 32 voices with auto reduction
#opt s32kHz #default sample frequency to 32kHz
#opt fast-decay #fast decay notes

# By default, try to use the instrument patches from freepats:

# source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg
soundfont /etc/timidity/Unison.sf2


And Timidity will run perfectly.


Let me know if it works for you!! ;)

Last point : timidity actually offers two interfaces. If you want to try the other one, open a konsole terminal and type : timidity -ia.

If you prefer this one, just read the first post of this message, and change timidity -ig into timidity -ia when necessary!

[revhouse1]

I downloaded the soundfonts and modified timidity.cfg

everythings is working just fine.:)

thanks

tom
Community Board -- wiki liaison

[hqlinux]

Since this comes up all the time, I made this sticky...

GREAT JOB, steveblotman (http://forum.freespire.org/member.php?u=12063)

Thanks for sharing.

Harvey

[steveblotman]

My knowledge is growing up, so I've got something new for all those who have midi troubles!! :)


The solutions exposed above are great, but not perfect... :rolleyes:

I found the way to expand Timidity for a permanent work. That is to say to make it work within Kmid and Rosegarden! :D


The manipulation is quite simple!

Just open a terminal konsole, and type the following command :

/usr/bin/timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os -EFreverb=0

This will start Timidity as an Alsa based program. Every midi application will then use Timidity to render sound! :cool:

You will then be able to use any midi application without any trouble.

I'm still looking for a way to start this script with the system. Hold the line!

[steveblotman]

Wow! I found it! :D

Open the file alsa-utils (found at /etc/intit.d/alsa-utils)

At the end of the file, just add the following :

echo "starting timidity"
timidity=/usr/bin/timidity
$timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os -EFreverb=0 > /dev/null &

If everything goes fine, your Alsa based midi applications will work immediately when the system starts! :cool:



If you're blocked by a denied permission, it is not a problem. Just copy the file to your Desktop.

Open it, and modify it.

Then open a root terminal and copy the file.

Something like that :

cp /home/"your name"/Desktop/alsa-utils /etc/init.d/

The original file will then be overwriten. :cool:

[seeker5528]

I found the way to expand Timidity for a permanent work. That is to say to make it work within Kmid and Rosegarden! :D


The manipulation is quite simple!

Just open a terminal konsole, and type the following command :

/usr/bin/timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os -EFreverb=0

This will start Timidity as an Alsa based program. Every midi application will then use Timidity to render sound! :cool:


You shouldn't even need to do that.....

Debian and Ubuntu place a file in /etc/default named timidity.
The init script for timidity looks at /etc/default/timidity to see if it should be enabled during boot up.
Being based on Ubuntu Freespire 2 and Linspire 6 should be the same.
If you find the relevant line in /etc/default/timidity:

TIM_ALSASEQ=false

: and change it to:

TIM_ALSASEQ=true

: timidity should be started in alsa sequencer mode during boot up, no muss, no fuss.

In Ubuntu Fiesty it is disable by default, in Gutsy it is enabled by default.

Later, Seeker

[steveblotman]

It should... but actually it doesn't!

I don't clearly know why but even if the file is configured, I have to run the specified command to make things work... Probably a material support problem...

But your suggestion is very interesting for those who have this option disabled!

Thanks!