MIDI

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 11 November 2006 15:04, jdow wrote:
>From: "Gene Heskett" <gene.heskett at verizon.net>
>
>> On Saturday 11 November 2006 10:12, Anne Wilson wrote:
>>>On Saturday 11 November 2006 13:16, Nigel Henry wrote:
>>>> Hi Anne. I usually just copy them to my /home/user directory. As
>>>> long as you have the awesfx package installed, just run sfxload, or
>>>> asfxload as user, putting the soundfont name after it. In my case
>>>> see below.
>>>>
>>>> sfxload CT4MGM.SF2
>>>>
>>>> To check if they are loaded ok you can run.
>>>>
>>>> cat /proc/asound/card0/wavetableD1  , changing the card No for yours
>>>> if it's different.
>>>
>>>I'm having no success at all with this.  I do remember that in kmid
>>> settings I had to try the different midi devices to find the one that
>>> worked, but so far I haven't got any of them working.  I'm also
>>> concerned that it is looking at /usr/share/apps/kmid/maps/gm.map, and
>>> wonder if this should be ringing bells for me, but it isn't :-(
>>>
>>>You did remark about getting a gm font - could you amplify, please? 
>>> I'm not sure what I'm looking for on the hammersound site.
>>>
>>>Also, do I have to do anything more to get kmid to recognise the
>>> soundfonts I do have installed?
>>>
>>>Anne
>>
>> I was just playing with kmidi here, and found that I had to configure
>> the midi path to one of the 4 channels shown under my audigy 400 entry
>> in that menu. Setting it to the card itself didn't work.  What I did
>> was start a .mid file playing, and then played with the midi menu
>> until it worked.  I had already loaded the CT4MGM.* soundfont file
>> thats on the audigy cd.
>>
>> Your config/midi menu will show up differently for the hammerfall card
>> of course. If it will pass, I've attached a .png of that menu.
>
>For what it is worth the state of MIDI on 'ix is one of the chief
>reasons I do not do more of my professional development on an 'ix
>operating system. Microsoft MIDI is bad enough. But 'ixish MIDI
>is sickening to work with the last times I tried. Good luck.
>
>{o.o}   <- needs MIDI with sub-millisecond accuracy for some things.
>        SMF files can't do that. But the software we have can. Even
>        millisecond accuracy on ix machines has been "amusing" to
>        try to get. Making arpeggios work right is bad enough. But
>        MIDI Show Control and MIDI Machine Control sometimes needs
>        that 1 ms or finer timing accuracy to make effects work right.

Yup, and its been a constant src of amazement to this old fart that when 
the midi spec was setup, they used a serial port, thats fine, but when 
they set the data rate at only 31,250 baud, which was then about 8% of 
the state of the art in hardware, by the time you've outputted a whole 
orchestra's next note, its going to be about as accurate as the humans in 
that orchestra.

Consistently attrocious timeing, with the horns always 1/16 beat late 
unless the actual output order of each instrument is scrambled in the 
order output.  That would make it sound a heck of a lot less mechanical. 
And there isn't a heck of a lot that can be done until we put midi on an 
optical circuit running at several megabytes/sec.  Something like TOS 
maybe?

-- 
Cheers, Gene