No sound from Midi Keyboard via USB

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Mon, 2011-09-19 at 20:13 +0200, DennisMail at gmx.net wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> first of allthanks for your answer.
> 
> > MIDI isn't a protocol for sound and MIDI devices don't generate sound, 
> > the Oxygen 8 is a controller keyboard.
> 
> I am aware of this - I am sorry if I didn't mention this.
>  
> > If your Oxygen 8 isn't connected to a software synthesizer on your 
> > computer (such as a DSSI synth or a soundfont engine in Rosegarden) or a 
> > hardware synth or sound module, you'll never hear anything, whether 
> > connected with a DIN connector or MIDI over USB.
> 
> Well, as I am beginner in midi, I just thought that I might get a sound when having chosed "General MIDI Device" and under it "Acoustic Grand Piano" in the section "Wiedergabeparameter". I just assumed that somehow, Rosegarden has integrated a software synth here. Am I completely wrong?
> 
> Anyhow, when I select "Synth Plugin" under "Wiedergabeparameter" and then eg "Xsynth DSSI plugin" as Paramter for the instrument, I perfectly hear something. Also, I am able to get sound via ZynAddSubFX. But I still want to understand how rosegarden is working here - can somebody please explain me where my brain went wrong?
> 
> Greets,
> Dennis

Very simple, Rosegarden is a sequencer, just recording MIDI events. It
doesn't produce sound. Xsynth, ZynAddSubFX etc. are soft synth that are
independent of Rosegarden, Rosegarden is just a host, able to load those
softsynth as plug-ins. You can use the same synth with other sequencers.

A MIDI event is data that e.g contains information about what note
should be played, this and nothing more is recorded by a sequencer. The
sound modules aka softsynth understand this information and will play
that e.g. note, but you need to load such a softsynth as plug.in,
assumed the sequencer is able to be a host, otherwise you need to send
the data by MIDI out to an hardware or soft-synth. I suspect that
something like LMMS http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ does work different, I
suspect it will directly rout to included synth, not a way to work
professional.

-- 
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splitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning of an
exciting chapter and the other half at the end of it. Can any one
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"separable verbs." The German grammar is blistered all over with
separable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them are
spread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with his
performance. from Mark Twain, The Awful German Language