Re: [LAU] recommendation for a handy midi player

From: Niels Mayer <nielsmayer@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Jun 01 2010 - 22:52:42 EEST

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 3:28 AM, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas
<pedro.lopez.cabanillas@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> - drumstick-smfplayer: with GUI, simple, interactive. Drag and drop from file
> managers.
> Players based on the Drumstick libraries:
> - kmid2: GUI, interactive, drag and drop from file managers, play lists,
> pianola display.

I strongly recommend drumstick-smfplayer and kmid2. What is especially
nice is that once drumstick-smfplayer or kmid2 are installed, they are
added to the list of programs for playing back MIME-type of MIDI: now
you can click a MIDI link in your web-browser of 'dolphin'
filebrowser, and hear sounds immediately, w/o any extra setup or
connections. (Now listening to results of
"wget -r -l0 --accept=zip http://www.megatrade.ru/Russian/Midi.html" :-) ).

Furthermore, they can both be setup to always connect to a particular
MIDI port -- in my case, a http://qmidinet.sourceforge.net/ port
routing the MIDI to the computer housing my Yamaha db60xg (NEC xr-385)
. For those without hardware MIDI players, kmid2 also hooks up your
fluidsynth (Settings->Configure Kmid->Softsynth->Fluidsynth) and plays
that sofsynth through the appropriate ALSA port.

Kmid2 has the added advantage of allowing MIDI volume adjustment: many
XG midi files on the net end up with clipped output
unless the overall volume is reduced (might be a particular issue w/
using db60xg (NEC xr-385) with my crap $5.00 Dynex dx-sc51 soundcard
that needs a -10db "pad" soldered to the waveblaster header that
mounts the synth-card). Even better, kmid2 "remembers" the last volume
level set on a per-MIDI file basis, so that the next time you play it,
you don't need to adjust the volume.

Finally, I'm particularly impressed with Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas' fast
turn-around time on bug-fixing, along with Fedora packager Kevin
Kofler: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=597354 ...

Unfortunately, in testing out the bugfixed kmid2/drumstick, I
discovered a bug in Kmid2 that is caused by having too many MIDI files
in a single directory (500+):
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240391 (
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/drumstick-0.3.1-2.fc12,kmid2-2.3.0-1.fc12
)

Thanks for the great software!

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com

PS: Regarding hardware MIDI cards:
http://www.ssstjy.com/wenzhang/wz8-midcard10.htm :-) (google-translate
can be downright hilarious).
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Received on Wed Jun 2 00:15:03 2010

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