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rajan_kanwar 02-04-2004 08:37 AM

Playing MIDI files

I tried to play the .mid files on linux using Kmidi
It played but consimed a lot of CPU power ( just got hung at 100 % )
and also it missed some notes here and there
I tried to play the same file in windows.
It plays perfectly with all the notes and does not seem to consume
much CPU power ( just 1% here and there )

Why is it so ??

I have got a P4 with integrated Intel i810 soundcard on gigabyte motherboard ( AC 97 codecs ).


maroonbaboon 02-05-2004 05:46 AM

There is more than one way to play midi files. I use the command line program 'timidity' which has quite a sophisticated software synthesizer and is supposed to be pretty CPU intensive as far as midi players go.

I just checked and CPU useage is 3%-4% on a 2.4GHz P4. If you are saturating the CPU there must be something wrong with your sound setup.

I've used kmid (not the same as kmidi, but it plays midi karaoke files) with ALSA, running timidity as a daemon to process the midi data. Kmid has a few problems. In particular it seems to interfere with KDE's artsd sound daemon in some strange ways.

Have a look around the KDE control center under sound, and maybe try killing or switching off artsd.

I don't really understand Linux sound too well, but usually get things to work by poking around enough.
