Sound System/MIDI Device

[skyhawk]

Mandriva 2007.0 provides excellent sound to all applications that call for it on my computer (Compaq Deskpro EN, Pentium III 933MHz), but I presently have no way to play MIDI files. KDE Control Center/Sound & Multimedia/Sound System/Hardware shows 'MIDI Device' disabled.

 

Reading documentation that is available on MIDI topics, all of it sadly out-of-date, leads to two possibilities: 1. Recompiling the kernel to load modules needed for MIDI sound functions; 2. Simply installing the required driver(s) for MIDI sound functions, ALSA being the recommended architecture. There is also the possibility that my Compaq Deskpro's on-board audio is not supported for MIDI, but I doubt this possibility very much, because it is an old, run-of-the-mill box that works so well with Mandriva 2007.0 in almost every other respect.

 

About the best information I can find pertaining to MIDI sound in Linux is found here:

 

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/MIDI-HOWTO.html

 

Note that the article is dated May, 2002.

 

To put it as simply as possible, should I: 1. Expect that my kernel will need recompiling or; 2. Can I simply install the necessary RPM packages to enable MIDI sound? Of course, another possibility could be both of the preceding. I have already selected TiMidity to be my MIDI software package, since it seems to be highly regarded.

 

As far as ALSA is concerned, the following packages were included in my Mandriva 2007.0 installation:

 

alsa-utils-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0

libalsa2-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0

libalsa2-devel-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0

libalsa-data-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0

 

Doing a search using the keyword 'ALSA', reveals that the following additional packages are available:

 

alsaconf-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0.i586

alsamixergui-0.9.0-0.10rc1_3mdk.i586

alsa-patch-bay-1.0.0-4mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-input-flac-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-input-mad-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-input-mod-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-input-sndfile-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-input-vorbis-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-output-esound-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-output-jack-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-output-nas-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-scopes-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsaplayer-plugin-ui-gtk-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

alsa-plugins-1.0.12-1mdv2007.0.i586

gstreamer-alsa-0.8.12-9mdv2007.0.i586

gstreamer-plugins-0.8.12-9mdv2007.0.i586

libalsa2-docs-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0.i586

libalsa2-static-devel-1.0.12-2mdv2007.0.i586

libalsa-oss0-1.0.12-1mdv2007.0.i586

libalsa-oss0-devel-1.0.12-1mdv2007.0.i586

libalsaplayer0-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

libalsaplayer0-devel-0.99.76-9mdv2007.0.i586

libclalsadrv1-1.0.1-3mdv2007.0.i586

libclalsadrv1-devel-1.0.1-3mdv2007.0.i586

libgstreamer-plugins0.8-0.8.12-9mdv2007.0.i586

libgtk+1.2-1.2.10-45mdv2007.0.i586

libgtkmm2.0_1-2.2.12-3mdv2007.0.i586

libladcca2-0.4.0-6mdv2007.0.i586

libpulseaudio0-0.9.5-1mdv2007.0.i586

libpulsecore2-0.9.5-1mdv2007.0.i586

libsigc++1.2_5-1.2.7-1mdk.i586

libxmms1-1.2.10-33mdv2007.0.i586

libxosd2-2.2.14-5mdv2007.0.i586

xmms-1.2.10-33mdv2007.0.i586

xmms-alsa-1.2.10-33mdv2007.0.i586

 

Quite a long list!

 

What follows is selected Konsole output displayed when invoking some hardware info commands. It might or might not be helpful to those reading this post.

 

[me@mycomputer ~]$ dmesg
i810_audio: Audio Controller supports 6 channels.
i810_audio: Defaulting to base 2 channel mode.
i810_audio: Resetting connection 0
ac97_codec: AC97 Audio codec, id: ADS96 (Analog Devices AD1885)
i810_audio: AC'97 codec 0 Unable to map surround DAC's (or DAC's not present), total channels = 2
i810_audio: setting clocking to 41498

[me@mycomputer etc]$ cat modprobe.conf
alias eth0 eepro100
alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio
install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /bin/true
alias net-pf-10 off

[me@mycomputer ~]$ cat /proc/modules
i810_audio 33684 1 - Live 0xd14e1000
ac97_codec 18316 1 i810_audio, Live 0xd14ca000
soundcore 8096 2 i810_audio, Live 0xd083b000

 

As can be readily seen, there are no references to MIDI functions.