Audacious and MIDI files

[Aere Greenway]

On 08/18/2013 06:28 AM, Lars Noodén wrote:
> Should Audacious be able to play MIDI files out of the box or is a
> little user-supplied configuration considered necessary?  When I try to
> load a MIDI file into Audacious, I get the following complaint when it
> tries to actually play the file:
>
> 	You have not selected any sequencer ports for MIDI
> 	playback.  You can do so in the MIDI plugin preferences.
>
> Regards,
> /Lars
>
Lars:

I haven't used Audacious for playing MIDI, having run into the same 
thing, and not knowing what to configure, or how to configure it.

However, VLC has a Fluidsynth plugin.  Its package name is 
"vlc-plugin-fluidsynth".  Here is the description from its package:

     FluidSynth plugin for VLC

     This plugin adds support for playing MIDI file via the FluidSynth 
software
     synthesizer to the VLC media player.

Since I have that plug-in, I tried playing one of my MIDI files using 
VLC, and it worked perfectly, with no additional configuration needed.

By the way, in my opinion, Fluidsynth (or its Qsynth GUI wrapper) is one 
of the very best software synthesizers around, and its default soundfont 
(FluidR3_GM) is also one of the best.

So with VLC, using this plug-in, you don't need a sound-card having 
hardware synthesizers (such as Soundblaster Live!, or Audigy 2).  It 
uses the Fluidsynth software synthesizer, which (when configured 
properly) will work even on a 450 megahertz machine.  I know this 
capability, because I test it regularly.

-- 
Sincerely,
Aere