RHEL clone won't play MIDI on Analog Devices SoundMAX

[Matt Mets]

First:  Does your soundcard work for playing non-MIDI music?  Assuming
the answer is yes.

Do you use OSS or ALSA as your sound library?  From what I understand
the ALSA one has much nicer interfaces for MIDI.  I believe that
/dev/midi and /dev/sequencer are older, outdated interfaces, so their
omission might not be a big deal.  CentOS probably made this decision
for you, but I dont know much about that distro.  I would *guess* that
it isnt a hardware driver issue, but a software configuration one.

XMMS uses a series of plugins to decode media files, I dont believe
that it know how to play anything intrinsically.  This means that if
you want to use XMMS to play the file, you will need is a plugin that
can decode MIDI files.  It has been my experiance with XMMS that if
you attempt to add a file it doesnt recognise to the playlist, and if
it is the only file in the playlist then XMMS thinks it has an empty
playlist and opens a file dialog to allow you to select a file to
play.  Counterintuitive, probably.  If XMMS did understand the file it
was trying to play but was having trouble accessing the device, it
would probably pop up a dialog with an error, which leads me to
believe that you dont have a MIDI decoding plugin installed.  In the
configuration/preferences menu, there should be a list of the input
plugins that are installed, check them to see if there is one that can
interpret MIDI files. There is a list of available input plugins at:

http://www.xmms.org/plugins.php?category=input


There is an interersting series of articles about Linux and MIDI you
might want to check out:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7773
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7912
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7918
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8050

-Matt

On 11/21/05, Dan Lund <situationalawareness at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do an "lspci -v" as root, send the results.
> The problem is not with XMMS, it's with the audio not being
> initialized, driver-wise.
>
> This is not even to the point of discussing audio formats, yet.
>
> --Dan
>
> On 11/21/05, Victor Odhner <vodhner at cox.net> wrote:
> > I have a few hundred midi files to edit over the next several months, and
> > this problem may drive me back to Windows for a long time.  I really
> > don't want to regress, but to prevent that, I need not only (1) for MIDI
> > files to play on my machine, but (2) to find a viable MIDI sequencer
> > package (which I expect I'll have to pay for).
> >
> > So, is there anybody out there who can discuss MIDI under Linux?
> >
> > Dan Lund wrote in another thread:
> >
> > >Well, I do know that XMMS will play MIDI format.
> >
> > It's comforting to hear that.  So, how do I make it happen?
> >
> > I'm on CentOS 4.
> >
> > I select a MIDI file, say "Open With" and enter XMMS, and up it comes.
> > Or I bring up "xmms &" from the command line.
> > Or "xmms /wherever/it/is/filename.mid &", which doesn't help any.
> > Either way there is a (highly non-standard, of course!) file-browse menu.
> > I can see my file after pressing the "Add Files in Directory" button.
> >
> > So I browse to the file and select it, and the browse dialog disappears.
> >
> > xmms stares at me blankly.
> > I press "Play".  The browse dialog comes up again.
> > I select the file.  Highlight it.  Press "Play".  Dialog disappears.
> >
> > What weird little cultural incantation am I missing?
> >
> > FOSS programmers need to be *so* doggone inventive with
> > their interfaces, but can't produce a decent diagnostic message.
> > Grrr.
> >
> > KDE offers kmid to play the file, so I try that.
> >  Could not open /dev/sequencer;
> >  probably there is another program using it
> >
> > ls -ld /dev/sequencer
> >  ls: /dev/sequencer: No such file or directory
> >
> > ls -ld /dev/midi
> >  ls: /dev/midi: No such file or directory
> >
> > /sbin/modprobe -l | grep via
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/sound/pci/snd-via82xx.ko
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/drivers/scsi/sata_via.ko
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-via.ko
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/drivers/i2c/busses/i2c-viapro.ko
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/drivers/i2c/chips/via686a.ko
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/drivers/net/via-rhine.ko
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/drivers/net/via-velocity.ko
> >
> > # /sbin/modprobe -l snd-intel8x0
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/sound/pci/snd-intel8x0.ko
> >
> > # /sbin/modprobe -l snd-pcm-oss
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-pcm-oss.ko
> >
> > # /sbin/modprobe -l snd-mixer-oss
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/sound/core/oss/snd-mixer-oss.ko
> >
> > # /sbin/modprobe -l snd-seq-oss
> >  /lib/modules/2.6.9-5.0.3.EL/kernel/sound/core/seq/oss/snd-seq-oss.ko
> >
> > /dev/sequencer and /dev/midi are still AWOL.
> >
> > # cat /etc/modprobe.conf
> >  alias eth0 via-rhine
> >  alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx
> >  options snd-card-0 index=0
> >  install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx &&
> > /usr/sbin/alsactl restore >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
> >  remove snd-via82xx { /usr/sbin/alsactl store >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; };
> > /sbin/modprobe -r --ignore-remove snd-via82xx
> >  alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
> >  alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd
> >
> > ... so I enter:
> >  # install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install snd-via82xx
> > Modprobe returns a process result of 1 and replies:
> >  install: unrecognized option `--ignore-install'
> >  Try `install --help' for more information.
> >
> > /usr/sbin/alsactl restore
> >  no response; result code is zero; those two devices still absent.
> >
> > shutdown; switch to Windows; double-click the file.  Hear music.
> >
> > Help!
> >
> > Vic
> >
> >
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>
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