Re: MIDI on SB Live! ?

On May 15, jimd_at_siu.edu wrote:
> I, for one, would really like to see full/complete MIDI capabilities under
> FreeBSD. I have an Amiga-2000 system that I have been using for MIDI with
> two MIDI keyboards (playback and input) for quite a few years, and have a
> SoundBlaster Live! soundcard under FreeBSD.
> 
> So far, I have not been able to find any useful music generating and MIDI
> software available for FreeBSD (yes - I have tried/looked at just about
> everything available from SourceForge, most of which doesn't work under
> FreeBSD, or is too limited in capability if it works at all).
> 
> I have tried KDE and Gnome applications, and others for those
> environments, to no avail. The Amiga Unix Emulation works fairly well for
> the music software, but I cannot get any MIDI functions to work, and I
> would prefer native FreeBSD applications.
> 
> I tried the 4Front OSS package once, but it didn't help and it caused
> problems with some music/sound applications. I am going to try OSS again
> under FreeBSD-5.1-BETA. I don't have much installed yet, so don't have as
> much to lose.
> 
> I might be willing to offer non-programming support for (EMU10K1) MIDI
> development support, depending on what is needed.

	Hello jimd, (jimmy d?)
	Sorry for taking so long to respond.  Anyway, yes midi is
lacking in FreeBSD.  I'm working on a new implementation (in
retrospect it would have been several times easier to just patch the
old one).
	Consider this a status report:
		raw midi access:%100
		mpu401's:	%100
		synth:		%40
		pseudo-midi:	%0.1

	That's over %240.  But anything under a billion is probably
incomplete.

	A quick aside here, it occurred to me that last night that
Apple should have a midi implementation in their Darwin kernel. The
bad news: browsing the source isn't so easy and their licenses doesn't
let me rip it off it.  The good news: there *is* easily accessible
documentation on writing and using device drivers and knowledge to be
learned from it.

	What's slowing me down is that *no-one* remembers how midi is
even supposed to work and I haven't really heard of other people with
external midi hardware using fbsd.  That makes it a "priority: fun"
project.

	So onto a lack of (userland) software support.  I'm intrigued
by your reference to "Amiga Unix Emulation", could provide a link?
	I've used playmidi from the ports, it compiles with some minor
fixing.  Midimoutain works (won't build on -current) but sequencer
input is broken.
	Newer applications seems to be written with alsa in mind.  It
pains me that people are ignoring a perfectly good standard (oss on
/dev/music) but considering how hard it is to decipher some times, I
don't blame them.  From my limited experience Alsa apps (I've looked
at on-line docs but haven't actually used it) link to a library and
don't directly deal with hardware.  We could create a stub library or
campaign to bring back the older, more compatible ways.  (I hear the
discordian society will back us)


	Have you ever used midi before?  Can your ear recognize good
timing from bad timing?  Do you have external midi hardware?  Can you
test kernel modules that cause heart-ache and no reward.  Then you can
help.

	--Mat
-- 
There only two things I hate, lactose intolerant societies and cows