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Re: current state of MIDI in Debian



On Thursday 16 February 2006 22:17, Junichi Uekawa was like:
> Hi
>
> I'd like to do some research into current state of Debian MIDI
> support. The following is the different usage scenarios I have in
> mind.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking for here. I'll give my usual slightly 
dumb user's perspective. ;)

> 1. casual user playing back SMF file
>
> A web browser invoking some player. Handled via MIME.  Currently it
> probably invokes timidity, since timidty+freepats is probably the only
> thing in Debian supporting GM.

As a casual user, I don't know what an SMF file is. Is this something to do 
with Flash? I suspect timidity+freepats is the only option.

> 2. user using Debian as MIDI GM instrument
>
> vkeybd + timidity?
>
> running
> 	timidity -Oj -iA
> 	vkeybd
>
> resulted in a very latent MIDI keyboard. I'm not quite sure if it's my
> local setup or it's fundamentally busted

Probably better results using:
External MIDI keyboard + JACK + Qsynth/fluidsynth
You need JACK otherwise you get latency problems.

> 3. user using Debian as MIDI sequencer
>
> vkeybd/external MIDI device + sequencer + external MIDI device or
> soft-synth software

vkeybd/external MIDI device + JACK + [Rosegarden | MUsE | seq24] + [external 
MIDI device | Qsynth/fluidsynth | ZynAddSubFX | Hydrogen]

Also Pd, Csound and SuperCollider probably represent complete solutions in 
themselves or in combination. Not for Newbies.

> 4. user using Debian as DAW
>
> Handling audio at the same time as using MIDI, which probably means a
> lot of jack connection.

Add [Ardour | Audacity] + JAMin + LADSPA to the end of that list.
If you want to do all this at the same time as the above, you're going to need 
a reasonably powerful machine stuffed with as much memory as you can get hold 
of!

> The more interesting parts are 3 and 4, and I would like to know the
> current package offerings, and what can be implemented for
> interoperation of the packages.

hope that was useful.
-- 
cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim



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