On Sunday 14 July 2002 6:55 pm, kagus ting wrote: > Im using the same sound card and im now enjoying KMidi. But i've > only got to enjoy this after upgrading my system to Redhat 7.3
I've tried to use KMidi as soon as I got into Linux 6 months ago, but was disappointed with the sound. The percussion intruments sound like tin drums. No more heart-thumping fat basses, shimmering choir, and punchy orchestra hits. How I wish that Timidity understands the General MIDI specifications, so it can accurately play my sound card's patches. KMidi is a graphical front-end to Timidity's frequency modulated (FM) synthesis engine. The synthesizer technology is comparable to Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, an instrument very popular back in the 80s. Whenever you hear the theme instrumental track to "Beverly Hills Cop" or the lead keyboard in Van Halen's "Jump", the keyboard in Psychedelic Fur's "The Ghost in You", or any happy 80's new wave track, that's how frequency-modulated synthesis sounds. Timidity uses a single tone generator and other necessary oscillators (virtual mathematical algorithmic oscillators, in a software sense, as opposed to hardware electronic synthesis circuits found in commercial keyboard synthesizers). The two envelope generators can shape up sine waves with basic ADSRs (attack, decay, sustain, and release) algorithms. Really basic but functional. The effects units are nice. Reverb, chorus, detuning, phaser effects. Very nice. The detuning effect makes it possible to do finger-style string pitch bends with an electric guitar patch. I wish it has a distortion effects algorithm to go nicely with it. Reading through the manual, I discovered that it can use Soundfonts. So Timidity is also a sample-playback synthesizer after all, and not just an ordinary MIDI player! And an upgradable synthesizer too! I'm looking forward to loading the AWE and AWE32 Sound fonts. I'd go over the suggested ftp sites to download these sound presets later this evening. I'm excited that this will improve the sound quality a lot. The downside of timidity: no graphical waveform-editing utility. I would love to tweak those tone, envelope and effects generators, much like what I did when I still have my old Commodore 64 computer around. Perhaps someday. > Can you share your mixes? I'd love to, but the remixes are inside my broken 4 gig Seagate hard drive. Do you know of any company doing hard drive recovery? Only the drive's electronic circuit board was detached. One could still recover data on the platters. > I have a friend who like you is into Cakewalk and he's using old > MacNotebook (forgot the model) but something he bought for P 5000.00 at > hmr, as his midi player. he is also uses 386 box with win3.1 for his midi > player for a church choir. well maybe something as minimal as that can be > ported with linux. Glad to hear about your friend. He's lucky finding that old MacNotebook for P 5t. I presume he's using Cakewalk on Win 3.1. Windows 3.1 has excellent support for MIDI. As long as he doesn't use it to do digital audio recording, he'd be out of trouble. Can I contact him sometime? What sound card is he using? I'm interested in knowing how he manages to synchronize MIDI music with the live choir. mikol _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
