FAQ
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- ---------------------------*-indented-text-*------------------------------
- TiMidity -- Experimental MIDI to WAVE converter
- Copyright (C) 1995 Tuukka Toivonen <toivonen@clinet.fi>
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Frequently Asked Questions with answers:
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q: What is it?
- A: Where? Well Chris, TiMidity is a software-only synthesizer, MIDI
- renderer, MIDI to WAVE converter, realtime MIDI player for UNIX machines,
- even (I've heard) a Netscape helper application. It takes a MIDI file
- and writes a WAVE or raw PCM data or plays it on your digital audio
- device. It sounds much more realistic than FM synthesis, but you need a
- ~100Mhz processor to listen to 32kHz stereo music in the background while
- you work. 11kHz mono can be played on a low-end 486, and, to some, it
- still sounds better than FM.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q: I don't have a GUS, can I use TiMidity?
- A: Yes. That's the point. You don't need a Gravis Ultrasound to use
- TiMidity, you just need GUS-compatible patches, which are freely
- available on the Internet. See below for pointers.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q: I have a GUS, can I use TiMidity?
- A: The DOS port doesn't have GUS support, and TiMidity won't be taking
- advantage of the board's internal synthesizer under other operating
- systems either. So it kind of defeats the purpose. But you can use it.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q: I tried playing a MIDI file I got off the Net but all I got was a
- dozen warnings saying "No instrument mapped to tone bank 0, program
- xx - this instrument will not be heard". What's wrong?
- A: The General MIDI standard specifies 128 melodic instruments and
- some sixty percussion sounds. If you wish to play arbitrary General
- MIDI files, you'll need to get more patch files.
- There's a program called Midia for SGI's, which also plays MIDI
- files and has a lot more bells and whistles than TiMidity. It uses
- GUS-compatible patches, too -- so you can get the 8 MB set at
- ftp://archive.cs.umbc.edu/pub/midia for pretty good GM compatibility.
- There are also many excellent patches on the Ultrasound FTP sites.
- I can recommend Dustin McCartney's collections gsdrum*.zip and
- wow*.zip in the "[.../]sound/patches/files" directory. The huge
- ProPats series (pp3-*.zip) contains good patches as well. General
- MIDI files can also be found on these sites.
- This site list is from the GUS FAQ:
- > FTP Sites Archive Directories
- > --------- -------------------
- > Main N.American Site: archive.orst.edu pub/packages/gravis
- > wuarchive.wustl.edu systems/ibmpc/ultrasound
- > Main Asian Site: nctuccca.edu.tw PC/ultrasound
- > Main European Site: src.doc.ic.ac.uk packages/ultrasound
- > Main Australian Site: ftp.mpx.com.au /ultrasound/general
- > /ultrasound/submit
- > South African Site: ftp.sun.ac.za /pub/packages/ultrasound
- > Submissions: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound/submit
- > Newly Validated Files: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound
- >
- > Mirrors: garbo.uwasa.fi mirror/ultrasound
- > ftp.st.nepean.uws.edu.au pc/ultrasound
- > ftp.luth.se pub/msdos/ultrasound
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q: Some files have awful clicks and pops.
- A: Find out which patch is responsible for the clicking (try "timidity
- -P<patch> <midi/test-decay|midi/test-panning>". Add "strip=tail" in
- the config file after its name. If this doesn't fix it, mail me the
- patch.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Q: I'm playing Fantasie Impromptu in the background. When I run Netscape,
- the sound gets choppy and it takes ten minutes to load. What can I do?
- A: Here are some things to try:
- - Use a lower sampling rate.
- - Use mono output. This can improve performance by 10-30%.
- (Using 8-bit instead of 16-bit output makes no difference.)
- - Use a smaller number of simultaneous voices.
- - Make sure you compiled with FAST_DECAY and PRECALC_LOOPS enabled
- in config.h
- - If you don't have hardware to compute sines, recompile with
- LOOKUP_SINE enabled in config.h
- - Recompile with LOOKUP_HACK enabled in config.h.
- - Recompile with LINEAR_INTERPOLATION disabled in config.h.
- - Recompile with DANGEROUS_RENICE enabled in config.h, and make
- TiMidity setuid root. This will help only if you frequently play
- music while other processes are running.
- - Recompile with an Intel-optimized gcc for a 5-15%
- performance increase.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------