On Sun, 2003-03-23 at 00:43, Paul Scott wrote: > Mark L. Kahnt wrote: > > >On Sat, 2003-03-22 at 22:18, Paul Scott wrote: > > > > > >>My sound card works. I am using KDE on the 2.4.20-k6 kernel. I have a > >>number of midi players installed - kmid, rosegarden. They all look like > >>they are playing midi files but I get no sound. > >> > >>Any ideas for diagnosis? > >> > >>TIA, > >> > >>Paul Scott > >> > >> > > > >And what, pray tell, is the make/model of your sound card? Simple audio, > >and the reproduction of sound shapes (what MIDI does) are two different > >functions of the same card, and the latter isn't always implemented at > >the time the first part is available. > > > > > Understood. It's an SB AWE-64. The KMid web site says this card should > be supported. I have read the Sound and MIDI HOWTO's and other docs to > try to understand this. > > Thanks, > > Paul I used an SB AWE-32 for years - so old it was ISA bus (not as though modems or sound cards *really* need the bandwidth of anything more than that.) The AWE-32 was a two part driver, iirc, and I'd be surprised if the AWE-64 is any different. I've appended the info from the kernel source Documentation directory. The package awesfx includes the programs to load sound samples into your sound banks. There are also HOWTOs on this card (among others) in the Sound-HOWTO (/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/Sound-HOWTO.gz if you have the doc-linux-text package installed), MIDI-HOWTO (/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/MIDI-HOWTO.gz,) Sound-Playing-HOWTO (/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/Sound-Playing-HOWTO.gz,) and an SB AWE32/64 specific mini-HOWTO (/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/mini/Soundblaster-AWE.gz) By my memory, they weren't immensely contradictory amongst themselves (which helped) and actually had me up and running very quickly. If you can find any MIDIs that use the 64 voices, you will find that is a wonderous card - I loved the sound from my AWE 32, particularly from a friend that transcribed orchestral scores and liked to have an extra second violin that would slip out of sync with the rest to make it seem more like a live performance. -- Mark L. Kahnt, FLMI/M, ALHC, HIA, AIAA, ACS, MHP ML Kahnt New Markets Consulting Tel: (613) 531-8684 / (613) 539-0935 Email: kahnt@hosehead.dyndns.org
Installing and using Creative AWE midi sound under Linux. This documentation is devoted to the Creative Sound Blaster AWE32, AWE64 and SB32. 1) Make sure you have an ORIGINAL Creative SB32, AWE32 or AWE64 card. This is important, because the driver works only with real Creative cards. 2) The first thing you need to do is re-compile your kernel with support for your sound card. Run your favourite tool to configure the kernel and when you get to the "Sound" menu you should enable support for the following: Sound card support, OSS sound modules, 100% Sound Blaster compatibles (SB16/32/64, ESS, Jazz16) support, AWE32 synth If your card is "Plug and Play" you will also need to enable these two options, found under the "Plug and Play configuration" menu: Plug and Play support ISA Plug and Play support Now compile and install the kernel in normal fashion. If you don't know how to do this you can find instructions for this in the README file located in the root directory of the kernel source. 3) Before you can start playing midi files you will have to load a sound bank file. The utility needed for doing this is called "sfxload", and it is one of the utilities found in a package called "awesfx". If this package is not available in your distribution you can download the AWE snapshot from Creative Labs Open Source website: http://www.opensource.creative.com/snapshot.html Once you have unpacked the AWE snapshot you will see a "awesfx" directory. Follow the instructions in awesfx/docs/INSTALL to install the utilities in this package. After doing this, sfxload should be installed as: /usr/local/bin/sfxload To enable AWE general midi synthesis you should also get the sound bank file for general midi from: http://members.xoom.com/yar/synthgm.sbk.gz Copy it to a directory of your choice, and unpack it there. 4) Edit /etc/modules.conf, and insert the following lines at the end of the file: alias sound-slot-0 sb alias sound-service-0-1 awe_wave post-install awe_wave /usr/local/bin/sfxload PATH_TO_SOUND_BANK_FILE You will of course have to change "PATH_TO_SOUND_BANK_FILE" to the full path of of the sound bank file. That will enable the Sound Blaster and AWE wave synthesis. To play midi files you should get one of these programs if you don't already have them: Playmidi: http://playmidi.openprojects.net AWEMidi Player (drvmidi) Included in the previously mentioned AWE snapshot. You will probably have to pass the "-e" switch to playmidi to have it use your midi device. drvmidi should work without switches. If something goes wrong please e-mail me. All comments and suggestions are welcome. Yaroslav Rosomakho (alons55@dialup.ptt.ru) http://www.yar.opennet.ru Last Updated: Feb 3 2001
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part