0007775: unix midiplugin cannot play standard instruments via ALSA midi connection

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Category

Severity

Reproducibility

Date Submitted

Last Update

0007775

[Squeak] OS-Linux

major

always

06-25-13 18:05

10-20-17 22:21

Reporter

tim

View Status

public

Assigned To

Priority

high

Resolution

open

Status

new

Product Version

4.4

Summary

0007775: unix midiplugin cannot play standard instruments via ALSA midi connection

Description

The MIDI plugin is expected to be able to play sounds using the standard MIDI instrument list; on unix with ALSA sound drivers (i.e. on the Raspberry Pi in this case) this seems not to work. Apparently this has been a problem for some time since the Scratch code using it has been commented out since 2009.
The result is that a lot of sounds are very sub-par for the users of Scratch on any unix platform and of course the Pi. This is a pity, since it gives a very poor impression.

Additional Information

After gazing at the unix midi code I had to conclude that it didn't look like it could work at all, but what do I know? At the simplest level, querying the number of ports seems to give an answer that classes with related functions that get passed a port number. Compare, for example, sqMIDIGetPortCount and sqMIDIGetPortDirectionality

Attached Files

sqUnixMIDIALSA.inc [^] (18,532 bytes) 06-25-13 18:05

Relationships

Notes
(0014602 - 88 - 88 - 260 - 260 - 260 - 260) travm1 04-07-17 05:53	More info about ALSA here: https://www.everipedia.com/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture/ [^]

(0014604 - 48 - 60 - 154 - 154 - 154 - 154) thalamus 10-20-17 18:29	awesome, thanks travm1 http://www.thalamus.co [^]

(0014605 - 532 - 562 - 562 - 562 - 562 - 562) tim 10-20-17 22:21	Oh my, I'd forgotten about this; long time ago. The problem was actually 'fixed' a couple of years ago by someone (and I can't find any trace of the name, but Yoshiki might recall since it is one of the Japanese squeakers) who wrote a shell scfript to install Timidity and soundfonts. It works, but Timidity seems to have a resource leak since it gradually takes more and more cpu%. There are timing issues as well, with the HDMI sound being particularly strange. The script on the Pi is /usr/share/scratch/timidityinstall.sh

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
06-25-13 18:05	tim	New Issue
06-25-13 18:05	tim	File Added: sqUnixMIDIALSA.inc
06-25-13 18:06	tim	Issue Monitored: tim
04-07-17 05:53	travm1	Note Added: 0014602
10-20-17 18:29	thalamus	Note Added: 0014604
10-20-17 22:21	tim	Note Added: 0014605

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