Kmid - Does it work or is there a replacement for MIDI files?

[Kevin Kofler]

> Hmm... read everywhere that Kmid does not 
> work for some.  On my FC3 it doesn't - it 
> reports a /dev/sequencer in use by another 
> application when the device does not even 
> exist.  Most everything else seems to work 
> that is not MIDI file based. 
>  
> Some suggested to use Kmidi as a replacement 
> but I guess that is not even around. 
>  
> So... folks... what is used for doing MIDI files? 
 
If you don't have hardware support for MIDI (older soundcards commonly had FM 
synthesis onboard, but nowadays wavetable synthesis is the norm, and this is 
usually done in software to make the hardware cheaper), you need to run 
Timidity++ as an ALSA sequencer (which makes it pretty much indistinguishable 
from hardware MIDI support for KMid). 
 
Here's the command I use: 
timidity -iADq -Os -s 22050 -EFresamp=l --sequencer-ports=1 
--realtime-priority=1 
Realtime priority of course needs root privileges, maybe binding to ALSA does, 
too. 
I get a strange error "Playmode `k' is not compiled in." when I run this, but 
this doesn't seem to matter. 
If you don't have hardware mixing nor dmix set up (FC4 and higher set up dmix 
automatically if you don't have hardware mixing, FC3 doesn't), you may want to 
use a sound server as an output device rather than ALSA, so Timidity++ doesn't 
monopolize your sound card. 
 
        Kevin Kofler