Thanks to Bryan, Alan and Rudolfo for your replies.
My question is about support for specific hardware.
My goal is to play MIDI data from Rosegarden (a MIDI sequencer program) or to play back any .MID files. Currently if I select a .mid file and do "Play with Kmid" for example, I get no sound although it goes through all the motions.
I'm looking for a card that has MIDI capability that is recognized by Linux drivers.
I wasted money on one recommended card ("Sound Blaster Live! 24-Bit") which was supposed to have built-in wavetable sound and appears in the Rosegarden literature as a MIDI device; but Creative changed the chipset for the card with that name, and the new chipset (CA0106) turns out not to be supported for MIDI based on all the searching I've done.
Rosegarden displays the CA0106 as a "General MIDI Device" -- "16:0 CA0106 MPU-401 (UART)(duplex)". But I get no sound.
I even downloaded a distro intended specifically for music support (Musix) and it would not even support wave sound for my Sound Blaster. Go figure.
I'm also trying to learn to use software synthesizers -- I gather they are less hardware sensitive. I've installed QSynth, ZynAddSubFX, Audacity and Jack, but nothing happens. Most of these don't appear in the menus or "open with" dialog. I'm sure there's a bunch of configuration that I need to read up on, but most of the documentation expects you to already understand digital music and I never went to that school.
So I don't want to throw away more money on yet another card that is not supported.
I appreciate the suggestions about a USB sound device, but I am not ready to spend that kind of money.
Yes, as Bryan suggested I'll also go to ASULUG with this.
Thanks,
Vic
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