Easy setup of Midi under Mandrake Linux 10

zero0w · February 2, 2005

Upgrading to Mandrake 10.1, the Linux desktop is getting better than ever.

And I think it is time to update my now-over-complicated-Midi-tutorial written two years ago.

If you own a SB Live! or Audigy, with Mandrake 10.x, there's no need to compile anything or looking for rpms over the internet anymore. The only file you need to provide yourself, in addition to your Mandrake Linux CD/DVD, is the soundfont file (*.sf2). Of course you'll need the MIDI files to play the music tracks of your choice.

Ok, let's get started.

The following tutorial has been verified to work with Mandrake 10.1:

I. Install the MIDI playback relevant packages

# urpmi awesfx kmid

(Note to Debian users, the package names are the same so 'apt-get awesfx kmid' would serve the same purpose to your distro)

II. Copy the soundfont file from your SB Liveware CD to your harddrive

Insert the Liveware 3 CD into your CD/DVD-Rom drive.

Suppose you have mounted the CD at this path: /mnt/cdrom

This will copy the soundfont files to /opt/

# cp /mnt/cdrom/AUDIO/COMMON/SFBANK/*.SF2 /opt/

You can also download and use other free soundfonts from many internet sites.

Do a Google search will help you on this matter.

III. Load the soundfont into memory

$ asfxload /opt/8MBGMSFX.SF2

(Or sfxload /opt/8MBGMSFX.SF2 if 'asfxload' command is not available)

Of course you can load any other soundfont (*.sf2 file) you like.

Update:

In order to pre-load soundfont every time you login the system, you can add the following lines to the file ~/.bash_profile:

asfxload -i
asfxload /opt/8MBGMSFX.SF2

The first line is needed for clearing any soundfont previously loaded into the memory, so that it won't waste another chunk of memory (with the same data) if you happen to restart X server or logout / login again.

IV. Setup and use Kmid to play MIDI

Before you start to play some MIDI files, you need to setup the ALSA MIDI port in order to make use of the Wavetable Synth from your soundcard:

Launch Kmid by

K > Multimedia > Sound > Kmid

In Kmid, choose

Settings > MIDI setup

Select

"Emu10k1 WaveTable Emu10k1 Port 0 - ALSA device"

as your MIDI device, click OK to confirm.

That's it! From now on you can use Kmid to play any MIDI files after loading soundfont into the memory (step III). Enjoy!

PS. If you do not own a Creative SB Live!/Audigy soundcard, this discussion would help you more:

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtopic=26177