ALSA

[Guest Thor Giversen]

Hi everybody

I that one of you may be able to help me, i recently installed a program called Note Edit (a score editor) but i have run into a problem. It seems that it wont play any sounds, so i checked the creators Website and found an answer to my problem, apparently i have to install something called ALSA but how am i to do that..? hope some one can help me out here.. i will post the answer i found on the creators website in case that it will help you come up with an answer..

 

#

I can't hear any sound! I see the running red notes but there is no sound! What's wrong?

 

First of all: Try to play a MIDI file with kmid (not (!!!)kmidi). As long as kmid does not produce any sound, NoteEdit (and any other MIDI device based software) will not produce any sound, too! The reason is: Either your soundcard has no hardware MIDI synthesizer or it has a hardware MIDI synthesizer but it is not supported by Linux.

 

Be not confused if you can play MIDI files on Windows. If your soundcard has no hardware MIDI synthesizer Windows automatically starts a software which converts the MIDI data into WAV (PCM) data in real time. This works if your computer has enough performance.

 

Such software exists for Linux, too. But it is more complicated because:

 

* It works only if you have an ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org) system. This is always the case with SuSE (http://www.suse.de/de/index.html) Linux. (Other Linuxes I don't know). In any case: You can always change from OSS System to ALSA by compiling the ALSA modules "by hand".

* You have to start this software "by hand".

* These software MIDI sythesizers need a so-called soundfont, a collection of sample tones of every instrument of a virtual orchestra. These soundfonts are copyrighted, i.e. actually nothing for a free system like Linux

 

But there is a (relatively bulky) way! See The TiMidity server detailed instructions!

[AussieJohn]

Welcome Thor to MUB.

 

Open the Mandriva control centre (known as MCC) and select Software management and select Look at installable software and install software package. In the little window on the left of the Search button, type in alsa and click the search button. It will bring up a menu of all packages that have alsa in their title. Select a number of them and press the Apply button below. This will bring up a popup listing all the packages to be installed including dependencies. Click OK. It wil then most likely ask you to insert the install DVD or the appropiate CDrom. Just follow through.

 

Cheers. John.

[iphitus]

if you have sound in anything, then alsa is correctly configured and installed, and there's something wrong with the application you're trying to use.

 

James

[Greg2]

if you have sound in anything, then alsa is correctly configured and installed

This is not necessarily true in Mandriva. You can have sound without alsa or alsaconfig, but you cannot play midi files without libalsa, libalsa-data, libalsa-oss, alsaconf, alsa-plugins, timidity-init, and for the OP, probably timidity-patch-freepats.