Mageia forum

Simple question, complicated answer: How can I get my MIDI applications to play nicely with each other under Mageia 1?

I don't think there is any argument about the whole stupid system being far too complicated. But under Mandriva 2010.2, I managed after a while to play back a file from Rosegarden, to get JACK to route the output to qsynth, and for qsynth to produce sound. No such luck with Mageia 1; the settings are the same as before because I upgraded from Mandriva 2010.2.

Using vkeybd, I can get the input indicators on qsynth to light up, so the problem may be with JACK. But, as always with these problems, the issue could be at other levels. Please help!

I think this can help: On my Acer notebook, i have a Intel HD Audio, with Realtek based chipset.
I got a similar problem here, but i was about really hear any sound on ZSnes. On other programs, i've heard some wheezing. Try this:

1. Open the Mageia Control Center.
2. Go to Hardware.
3. Open a icon that have a speaker icon (probably in your computer will have a name like "Sound Configurator" or something like that)
4. Unmark the Pulse Audio option.
5. Reboot your Mageia Linux.

Making these changes, Mageia will use ALSA instead of Pulse Audio to control your sound card. See if you have any problems to play sounds now.

Even so, you tried to play MIDIS with the Timidity? It's preety too.

Feel free to call for help again. o/

I was certain that this recommendation would come. On Mandriva 2010.2, I had pulseaudio disabled for a while, for the same reason. But this created other sound problems, which were ultimately more annoying. (After all, pulseaudio doesn't just exist to annoy people.) So I tried again and found that there were some plugins I could install to make it work. On Mandriva. Obviously not on Mageia.

Playing back MIDI files on Timidity works well, thank you. But I want to be able to play back a piece of notation entered into Rosegarden, without the need for a MIDI export.

Gelsenbury wrote:... and found that there were some plugins I could install to make it work. On Mandriva. Obviously not on Mageia.

Are these plugins missing in Mageia? Which ones?

Hi wobo! No, I don't think the plugins are missing. I always believed that the installation of pulseaudio-module-jack made the difference when I was using Mandriva 2010.2, because everything worked afterwards. But the same package is supplied by Mageia too, and I have it installed. But things aren't working. I suspect a bug or a corrupt/outdated config file somewhere, but with the ridiculous number of programs involved in getting any sound out of Rosegarden, I'm really not sure where to look for the issue. I'm just interested in whether others have similar problems, so that we can look for the problem together.

Hmm, I just tested.
I have normal audio output working. Now I installed rosegarden with all dependencies. I opened rosegarden and wrote a simple phrase (just 12 keys, grand piano). When I tried to play it I get no sound either.

Just notice this thread. I had spent a month away from Mageia because I was on holiday and the temporary 3G stick I was using didn't want to work with Mageia (or any KDE distro). I used to use Rosegarden as my main DAW about 3 or 4 years ago, and although it has moved to Qt rather than KDE 3, I don't think much has changed. I didn't use a ton of midi, only for drums and organ - but I did in most songs. Because of this I prefered to use the DSSI fluidsynth rather than outputing everything to Qsynth or timidity. Have you tried this? You need to have jack running, and select "synth plugin" for the track. This way the track behaves similar to an audio track, and can use normal effects as well. To record a full mix, you can then use qjackctl to output the master outs to a recording program, or just arm a new stereo track in Rosegarden to record the master outs.