Re: ALSA midi SBLive - sfxload?

[Rick Macdonald <rickm@timshel.ca>]

Roy Pluschke said:
> On February 9, 2004 04:42 pm, Rick Macdonald wrote:

>> timidity is installed and works but I need true midi now.
>
> I don't understand the above statement. Timidity is/has true midi. To run
> timidity as a alsa synth start up timidity like this:
>
> timidity -Os -iA -B2,8 &

> Its best to have timidity suid root so that it can use the real time
> scheduler/clock or whatever it is called.

Yes, this works fine! So far I just tried "pmidi -p 128:0".

Now what I really need to do is get the test program working (code is
below), so I need to know an actual device name, but I can't get it
working.

I straced pmidi:

rickm@timshel:~/SRC$ strace -f pmidi -p 128:0 ~/Rainbow4.mid  2>&1 | grep
/dev
open("/dev/snd/seq", O_RDWR)            = 3

and it seems that it uses /dev/snd/seq, but playmidi doesn't like this:

rickm@timshel:~/SRC$ playmidi -D /dev/snd/seq ~/Rainbow4.mid
Playmidi 2.4 Copyright (C) 1994-1997 Nathan I. Laredo, AWE32 by Takashi Iwai
playmidi: No playback device found.

However, telling playmidi to use "external midi" does work:

rickm@timshel:~/SRC$ strace -f playmidi -e ~/Rainbow4.mid 2>&1 |grep seq
open("/dev/sequencer", O_WRONLY)        = 3
Requested buffer size 2048, fragment size 1024
ALSA pcm 'default' set buffer size 2048, period size 1024 bytes

But putting "-D /dev/sequencer" on the playmidi command line does _not_ work.

I've tried all these device names in the code below and none work. Any
idea how to get the test program to work? (I tried adding a sleep(3)
before the close in case it was cutting off the note, but it didn't help).

rickm@timshel:~/SRC$ playmidi --help
Playmidi 2.4 Copyright (C) 1994-1997 Nathan I. Laredo, AWE32 by Takashi Iwai
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details please see the file COPYING.
usage: playmidi [-options] file1 [file2 ...]
  -v       verbosity (additive)
  -i x     ignore channels set in bitmask x (hex)
  -c x     play only channels set in bitmask x (hex)
  -x x     exclude channel x from playable bitmask
  -p [c,]x play program x on channel c (all if no c)
  -V [c,]x play channel c with volume x (all if no c)
  -t x     skew tempo by x (float)
  -d       don't play any percussion
  -P x     play percussion on channel x
  -e       output to external midi
  -D x     output to midi device x
  -f       output to fm (sb patches)
  -4       output to 4-op fm (opl/3 patches)
  -a       output to awe32 wave synth
  -h x     skip to header x in large archive
  -g       output to gravis ultrasound
  -E x     play channels in bitmask x external
  -F x     play channels in bitmask x on fm
  -G x     play channels in bitmask x on gus
  -A x     play channels in bitmask x on awe32
  -z       ignore channel of all events
  -8       force 8-bit samples on GUS
  -M       enable MT-32 to GM translation mode
  -I       show list of all GM programs (see -p)
  -R x     set initial reverb to x (0-127)
  -C x     set initial chorus to x (0-127)
  -r       real-time playback graphics

I couldn't seem to get "amidi" to work either:

rickm@timshel:~$ amidi -p hw:128,0 -S "90 40 ef"
cannot open port "hw:128,0": No such device

rickm@timshel:~/SRC$ pmidi -l
 Port     Client name                       Port name
 64:0     Rawmidi 0 - EMU10K1 MPU-401 (U    EMU10K1 MPU-401 (UART)
 65:0     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 0
 65:1     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 1
 65:2     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 2
 65:3     Emu10k1 WaveTable                 Emu10k1 Port 3
128:0     Client-128                        TiMidity port 0
128:1     Client-128                        TiMidity port 1
rickm@timshel:~/SRC$ amidi -l
Device    Name
hw:0,0    EMU10K1 MPU-401 (UART)
hw:0,1    Emu10k1 Synth MIDI (16 subdevices)
hw:0,2    Emu10k1 Synth MIDI (16 subdevices)

My midi test program:

//
// Programmer:    Craig Stuart Sapp [craig@ccrma.stanford.edu]
// Creation Date: Mon Dec 21 18:00:42 PST 1998
// Last Modified: Mon Dec 21 18:00:42 PST 1998
// Filename:      ...linuxmidi/output/method1.c
// Syntax:        C
// $Smake:        gcc -O -o devmidiout devmidiout.c && strip devmidiout
//

#include <linux/soundcard.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void) {
   // char* device =  "/dev/midi" ;
   char* device =  "/dev/sequencer" ;
   unsigned char data[3] = {0x90, 60, 127};

   // step 1: open the OSS device for writing
   int fd = open(device, O_WRONLY, 0);
   if (fd < 0) {
      printf("Error: cannot open %s\n", device);
      exit(1);
   }

   // step 2: write the MIDI information to the OSS device
   write(fd, data, sizeof(data));

   // step 3: (optional) close the OSS device
   close(fd);

   return 0;
}

...RickM...