I have followed several sets of instructions; NWC 2.75a.2 installs and runs, graphics and fonts work great. Timidity ports show up, have selected them. Timidity works fine, responds to aplaymidi. But NWC doesn't send a peep to Timidity. Anyone have suggestions?
Dear Jonathan,
I have tested NWC in Ubuntu several years ago but I wasn't happy with the result.
After long hours struggling I was finally able to get NWC running and playing sound, but for some unknown reason it didn't work anymore a week later. After searching several hours it worked again, but because of what I call "instability" (to avoid calling it "my stupidity") I decided to stay on Windows (mainly because of NWC).
What I remember is that I first installed WINE and Timitidy, and in Wine I installed NWC.
Just like under Windows, I had to select a play device (Timidity) in the NWC configuration (TOOLS-OPTIONS-MIDI).
Of course now we are several years later and stuff can be easier today.
Unless you didn't configure NWC correctly, I fear there is little I can help you with.
Bart
Bart, thanks for writing, that does help a lot. Recently I received a suggestion that the LTS versions of Ubuntu are very stable indeed, whereas the others aren't; so far this has carried well, I used MX Linux on desktop for a number of years. The only thing that is not working now, is NWC MIDI :-) Timidity is in, working, and recognized as present in NWC-in-wine, and NWC even says that it is working, it does play, there's just no actual tone.
I do hope and pray for a resurgence in development in NWC, there's nothing like its intuitive setup and keyboard note-entry.
On Windows, when the sound pipeline does not work, I look a the byte counter of my virtual MIDI cable - this helps me to understand whether the problem is before the cable (NWC, i.e. MIDI generation) or after (my DWS, e.g. Reaper):
- When I play a piece and the counter increases -> MIDI commands are sent out, problem is at receiving end.
- No counter increase -> NWC is silent (muted staff, ...).
Maybe this is also possible on Linux.
I have no idea about Linux, but here are two links that seem to give reasonable information that might be helpüful:
http://www.tedfelix.com/linux/linux-midi.html
https://askubuntu.com/questions/526275/is-there-any-virtual-midi-loopback-solution-for-ubuntu-linux
H.M.
Wow, it was simple! Here's the sum total of steps:
- Installed default Ubuntu-native non-snap non-development wine. This is wine 5.0, which according to winehq is a lot older than they like, but I wanted to run using minimum changes to the distro for now.
- Install NWC with Wine.
- Try running NWC. No sound.
- Opened the MIDI options (Tool > Options > MIDI), selected the single available playback device "Midi Through Port-0". No sound.
- Installed Timidity with 'apt install timidity'. It automatically set up to run using ~/.config/autostart/timidity.desktop . Rebooted.
- Ran NWC. No sound.
- Opened the MIDI options (Tool > Options > MIDI), added the rest of the available playback devices, "TiMidity - TiMidity port 0" through port 3. No sound.
- Edited ~/.config/autostart/timidity.desktop . Third line was "Exec=timidity -iA". Changed it to "Exec=timidity -iA -Os". Logged off and logged on
- Used apt to install the OSS wrapper for ALSA, package "alsa-oss".
- Started NWC and loaded a score. No sound.
- Opened the MIDI options (Tool > Options > MIDI), de-selected the playback device "Midi Through Port-0", leaving the "TiMidity" devices in place.
- Sound working very well!
I'm not THAT sure that this simplicity doesn't contain some fair amount of sarcasm ... but anyway, nice you did it! (Others will find this helpful, I assume).
H.M.