[TriLUG] MIDI Software Synths?

[Roy Vestal]

I would check out Planet CCRMA. This is the Stanford Center for Computer 
Research in Music and Acoustics. They have a TON of info on how to tweak 
your box and remove latency. They are based on FC3/4 but if you don't 
use those distros, their tweaks can still be run on other flavors.

Brian Henning wrote:

> Heh.  Followup to my first message on this subject.  I got  TiMidity++ 
> working, with the help of a howto I found.  But I'd still like  to 
> know what any of you guys use out there for sequencing and composition.
>
> Also, what do you all do to address the issue of lag?  If my 3-D games 
> can  make me hear "KAPOW!!" at the (apparent) exact instant I click my 
> mouse  button, why do most of my MIDI programs often suffer lag of a 
> second or  more?  If I'm chaining devices just as simply as MIDI-in -> 
> MIDI-synth,  why do I have so much trouble getting anything LESS than 
> 250ms of lag  between when I press a key and when I hear a note?  Any 
> pianists out there  can imagine how hard it'd be to play a song if 
> your piano didn't make any  sound until a quarter of a second after 
> you press a key..
>
> This should be simple.  Why isn't it? :-P
>
> Cheers,
> ~Brian
>
> On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 21:28:44 -0500, Brian Henning  
> <lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Folks!
>>    Just curious if anyone out there in TriLUG land does much with 
>> MIDI  on our favorite platform.  I've been doing some looking around, 
>> and a  lot of what I've found hasn't been encouraging.
>>
>> There're two main issues I currently face in wanting to get MIDI  
>> functionality with my current setup.  One is composition tools, and 
>> so  far I haven't even looked that far into it, because it's 
>> currently  undermined by the second issue, which is software synths.  
>> If my onboard  sound hardware has a hardware synth at all, it's a 
>> cinch that it sounds  like crap, and furthermore FC4 doesn't know 
>> anything about it by default  and I don't feel like expending the 
>> effort to get it working when I'm so  certain the sound results will 
>> be horrid.  So I'm looking for software  synth programs, and I'm 
>> coming up very discouraged.
>>    Of course, there's TiMidity++, which seems to require a lot of 
>> inside  knowledge to get working (and doesn't include a GUI by 
>> default).   There's a few others, which all seem to have stagnated or 
>> not be geared  toward the simple rendering of a run-of-the-mill MIDI 
>> song.
>>    So I ask you all.  What do yous guyses use, if anything?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> ~Brian
>>
>>
>
>
>