Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux

Topic: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP! (Read 6927 times) previous topic - next topic

Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

2009-08-15 07:48 pm

I am using Puppy Linux (harddrive install) on a Gateway E3110 with 159 M of ram. It has a ES1868 soundcard. Noteworthy is running through Wine. I have TiMidity++ installed. I configured it as a server for ALSA. This is after about 3 weeks unable to get any sound at all, and trying everything I could find and think of. I have googled and searched all kinds of forums, FAQs, manuals etc and finally have no choice but to seek help here.

Finally, with TiMidity++ I get sound, but it is totally distorted, not remotely like music at all. I tried turning down the master volume in ALSA, it reduces the volume, but it is still distorted.

The machine will play other music formats, but not midi, at least not in Noteworthy, which is all I really want to play midis. I also have Finale Printmusic 2006 which will play music with its built-in synth, but the output is all jittery and irregular. It won't do anything at all with TiMidity. I have tried configuring TiMidity according to the various suggestions offered in this and other forums, which is how I finally got "sound" but nothing I've tried helps with the distortion.

I am a very new Linux user. Except for this issue, I love the Puppy distro, it's the only one that has gotten this far with the wine/noteworthy playback. I use noteworthy all the time, but want to get away from Windows, and would love suggestions that will help me get it up and running without all the distortion. Seriously, its really bad, nothing like music at all, except a vague sense of rhythm. Synced Distortion...

Can anyone help?

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #1 – 2009-08-15 08:43 pm

You say that you have a Gateway E3110 with 159 M of ram. That is a strange amount of ram. Ram usually installed in at least 64M increments. In any case, it is not a lot. Google searches for "Gateway E3110" show them as having a 233MHz or 300MHz Pentium II processor.

IMO, this is not enough processor power or memory to use a software synth and expect any quality.
Adding memory would help some but probably not enough.

I see only 2 options with your computer:

install a compatible SoundBlaster card and use its internal hardware synth

---- or ----

attach a keyboard to the MIDI port and use its synth

NoteWorthy's playback is not any better than that obtainable by playing a MIDI file.
When you can get a MIDI file of your desired complexity to sound acceptable, you should find that similarly complex song files will play with NoteWorthy.

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #2 – 2009-08-15 10:38 pm

Thanks for your reply. I was suspecting the ram issue.

Noteworthy worked fine on windows on the same machine, so, if you're right, it must be the TiMidity and wine that present the problem: wine must suck up some memory, and I gather TiMidity uses a lot too.

Eventually I'm going to move Linux to a newer machine with much more ram and speed, so it's more likely to work there. If so, I can phase out Windows. In the meantime, Noteworthy can create the music, and I can play the midi files with TiMidity all by itself.

Thanks again.

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #3 – 2009-08-15 10:42 pm

The unusual RAM figure will be reflecting that some of the RAM is being used for the on board video "card".

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #4 – 2009-08-16 08:16 am

About a year ago I tried NWC2 on a very old 400 MHz Dell Latitude laptop with 128 M of RAM, running Puppy Linux and WINE. I remember that setting up Midi sound on Puppy using Timidity was somewhat hard, but I got it to work with Eawpatches sound fonts. Playback was jerky and intermittent, but I think it improved when I unticked "Chase playing notes". I cannot recall if I had a really satisfactory end result finally.

If I ever set up NWC on that vintage machine again (it has the latest Puppy installed), I will take notes of what I did and how well it worked. Those of us who use Linux could benefit from sharing.

--Christian

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #5 – 2009-09-03 01:46 pm

Christian, thanks for your thoughts. I've moved to a better computer, and it works fine now. But I learned a lot by messing around with the older computer, so it wasn't a waste! The speed, and the RAM were definitely issues, and TiMidity is necessary.

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #6 – 2009-09-03 02:16 pm

Running Software on Wine is never a good idea.
I know it can reach the same speed, but still its an foreign object in your host system.

The better way is alway using native software. This is native Linux notation software or boot Windows to use NWC.

Re: Wine, Timidity, ALSA on Linux - HELP!

Reply #7 – 2009-09-05 05:09 am

I have used NWC on Wine for several years without problems. NWC is the only reason why I need Wine. When I changed to Linux I did not want to switch to other notation software. I wish NWC could be ported to Linux, making my system simpler.

I wonder how many NWC users prefer Linux?

--Christian