Steve Kieu wrote: >--snip--< > Why kmidi can play (not mention about quality) but > playmidi and kmid can't? >
This has to do with how the actual musical sounds are generated. In older sound cards (like the original SoundBlasters) the sound "synthesis" was done with an on-board chip. The most popular method was to use a FM Synthesis chip, like the OPL-2. In newer sound cards this process is now done entirely in software and a "synthesis" chip is no longer included on the sound card / chipset hardware. The original GUS boards always used a software synthesis schema, and the popular program TIMIDITY makes use of this process in a generic way to provide a sequenced MIDI sound stream to the reqular audio input ports of almost any sound card. Timididy has advanced over the years to be able to use other "sound fonts" than the GUS patch set, but the GUS set seems to be the most popular/widespread. Another software sound synthesis engine is the "softoss2" driver found in your kernel modules. I have never had much luck getting this one going. There may be others..... KMID and PLAYMIDI depend upon the presence of a properly configured sound synthesizer and sequencer devices. In the older boards, this was done automatically during install. The newer sound cards will NOT set these devices up automatically when you install the card. You have to set them up yourself, generally. KMIDI is a KDE GUI "frontend" to Timidity. When you install this program with the proper patch set, then the appropriate needed devices are sort of "built-in" and you don't need them defined as system-wide devices. In a sense, TIMIDITY (and hence KMIDI) ARE the "/dev/sequencer". The basic point here are that KMID and KMIDI are two entirely different programs that work in different ways. I struggled with this for quite a while before giving up in frustration and using KMIDI for all my midi needs. I has "some" luck by using the Commersial OSS drivers from 4-Front Technologies, but not much.. This is probably more a tribute to my ineptitude than anything else <g>. Cheers, -Don Spoon-
