Sound advice sought

Sound advice sought

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Today, for the first time, I got midi sound out of dosemu
(1.1.99)!  By trial & error -- because I know practically nothing
about midi.

My soundcard (ens1371 chip) does not have a hardware midi
synthesizer. I have sound in the kernel (2.4.20) by means of

   CONFIG_SOUND=y
   CONFIG_SOUND_ES1371=y

Now if I do

   timidity -ir 3 &

as root, and then as user

   midid -p3 ~/.dosemu/run/dosemu-midi &

I can produce midi sounds from dosemu, playing .mid files through
midi-player programs for DOS, like GSPLAY. I have not yet found a
*game* that can make midi music in this way.

In the above commands, '3' can be any number it seems; but it must
be the same in both commands.

Questions:

-- is this the 'right' way? Or is there a simpler way?
-- is there a correct value for the 'magic number' (3 in the
   example above)?
-- the sound is a bit weird: a bit too slow, and the tempo is
   somehow "wobbly" (the notes don´t seem to arrive
   always exactly at the correct time). Anyway it sounds much
   'snappier' if I just say timidity [somefile].mid outside
   dosemu. Also, if I stop gsplay, there is some 'afterburst' of
   music (a few notes). Is this normal?

Regards, Jan

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Re: Sound advice sought

[Stas Sergeev]

Hello.

Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:
> By trial & error -- because I know practically nothing
> about midi.
But there is a sound-usage.txt that
describes the ways of getting midi to
work, among other things.
The midid program is not properly
documented there, but "midid --help"
can fill the gap sometimes.

> I have not yet found a
> *game* that can make midi music in this way.
They all can (almost). Just set them
to General Midi or MPU-401. Or to MT-32
and use the -m option for midid. Or "Sound
Canvas" with the same option to midid,
etc.

> In the above commands, '3' can be any number it seems; but it must
> be the same in both commands.
True. This is a TCP port number which
is used for communication between midid
and timidity.

> -- is this the 'right' way? Or is there a simpler way?
There are other ways, see sound-usage.txt.
They may (and usually do) work better.
However in case you stuck with OSS and
without the HW synth, this might be the
only way for you to get midi. Also midid
allows you to record the music to a .mid
files.

> -- is there a correct value for the 'magic number' (3 in the
> example above)?
7777 is a default for midid, but basically
any number above 1024 is OK. Using ports
below 1024 requires root and is not
recommended.

> -- the sound is a bit weird: a bit too slow, and the tempo is
> somehow "wobbly" (the notes don?t seem to arrive
> always exactly at the correct time).
Try renicing timidity for a higher priority.
Sometimes that helps.

> Also, if I stop gsplay, there is some 'afterburst' of
> music (a few notes). Is this normal?
You have to upgrade to the daily snapshot of
TiMidity++, or from CVS to avoid some of the
weirdness, although some problems are still
there. Also try playing around with the -o
option of midid.

Re: Sound advice sought

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Stas Sergeev wrote:
>> I have not yet found a *game* that can make midi music in
>> this way.
> 
> They all can (almost). Just set them to General Midi or
> MPU-401.

Right ... in the Duke3D setup program I selected 'music via
General Midi' and I could hear the 'Duke Theme Music'! But
the game itself would not start (not until I selected 'no music
card' again). I suppose you cannot play 2 sounds (effects + music)
at the same time. Is there a fix? Do I have to study esd, artsd?

Thanks very much for your explanation on the 'magic', i.e. port,
number. After starting timidity with -ir 7777 the midid no longer
needs a -p parameter. This information should go into the doc's
(or on my Dosemu for Dummies page when I get around to updating it..)

I'll experiment with the latest version of timidity.

Regards, Jan

Re: Sound advice sought

[Robert Komar]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003, Jan Willem Stumpel wrote:

> Right ... in the Duke3D setup program I selected 'music via
> General Midi' and I could hear the 'Duke Theme Music'! But
> the game itself would not start (not until I selected 'no music
> card' again). I suppose you cannot play 2 sounds (effects + music)
> at the same time. Is there a fix? Do I have to study esd, artsd?

Hi,
apparently the es1371 has two PCM interfaces.  If they are both
supported by the driver, maybe you can point either dosemu or
timidity to /dev/dsp1 and thus get both sound effects and music.
I don't have such a card, so I don't know if this works, but
the Documentation/sound/es1371 file in the kernel sources suggests
that it may work.

Cheers,
Rob Komar

P.S.  The sources to Duke3D have been released and you can build
a version that runs natively on Linux that performs better than
running it in dosemu (see www.icculus.org), and doesn't need
separate sound and music channels.  However, you will need dosemu
to play the other great BUILD-based games (Redneck Rampage, Shadow
Warrior, Blood,...).  Thank goodness dosemu works so well.

Re: Sound advice sought

[Jan Willem Stumpel]

Robert Komar wrote:

> apparently the es1371 has two PCM interfaces.  If they are both
> supported by the driver, maybe you can point either dosemu or
> timidity to /dev/dsp1 and thus get both sound effects and music.

This is true. Thanks very much! The two commands which I execute
before starting xdosemu are now:

   timidity -o /dev/dsp1 -ir 7777 &

and

   midid ~/.dosemu/run/dosemu-midi &

Now I can get both music and sounds in Duke3D. Well, in the intro
sequence. When the actual game begins, Duke freezes and, after a
mouse movement, crashes with a lot of messages beginning with

  DOS/4GW Professional error (2002): transfer stack overflow on
  interrupt 0Dh at A7:000074C8

So not everything is all right, but this is huge progress anyway.
I also could get music out of "Jones in the fast lane" for the
first time.

Regards, Jan