Laura, As I understand it, fluidsynth requires a sound font (easy to find), and qsynth provides an easy way to use it. I’m using Frescobaldi, and preview files from the midi window. Garage Band will play MIDI and convert it to a sharable file. I installed Fluidsynth from MacPorts long ago- haven’t paid much attention to why it works… If Qsynth is running when I open Frescobaldi, it just works. Otherwise I have to go to the preferences and hit the refresh audio button.
VLC also plays midi files (on my machine(s) at least -Early 2014 MB-air, newer desktop (don’t recall the model) & a 2024 MacBook Air running Sonoma). Sorry I can’t be more specific! - -Stan > On Feb 18, 2025, at 8:49 AM, Laura Conrad <lcon...@laymusic.org> wrote: > > Stan> For what it's worth, I am a Mac user- for many years I have been > using > Stan> qsynth as a front end for fluidsynth, with sound fonts from various > Stan> sources. I’d hate to be without it! > > So if I tell my mac user to install fluidsynth, would his browser start > using it and play the MIDI files? And is installing fluidsynth easy > enough that he could do it?
