NoteWorthy Composer Forum

Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: Jonathan E. Brickman on 2021-11-18 05:38 am

Title: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
Post by: Jonathan E. Brickman on 2021-11-18 05:38 am
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?
Title: Re: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
Post by: Bart on 2021-11-19 06:11 pm
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
Title: Re: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
Post by: Jonathan E. Brickman on 2021-11-22 04:03 pm
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.
Title: Re: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
Post by: hmmueller on 2021-11-22 05:14 pm
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):

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.
Title: Working well! Re: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
Post by: Jonathan E. Brickman on 2021-11-23 05:07 pm
Wow, it was simple!  Here's the sum total of steps:

Title: Re: NWC MIDI sound on Ubuntu 20.04 ?
Post by: hmmueller on 2021-11-23 09:31 pm
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.