Audacious and MIDI files

[Lars Noodén]

On 18.08.2013 23:01, Aere Greenway wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for that.  The Fluidsynth plugin for VLC worked on the first try.
 Audacious, or something it depends on, seems to be lacking in some way.

Regards,
/Lars