FAQ (5216B)
1 ---------------------------*-indented-text-*------------------------------ 2 3 TiMidity -- Experimental MIDI to WAVE converter 4 Copyright (C) 1995 Tuukka Toivonen <toivonen@clinet.fi> 5 6 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 8 Frequently Asked Questions with answers: 9 10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Q: What is it? 12 13 A: Where? Well Chris, TiMidity is a software-only synthesizer, MIDI 14 renderer, MIDI to WAVE converter, realtime MIDI player for UNIX machines, 15 even (I've heard) a Netscape helper application. It takes a MIDI file 16 and writes a WAVE or raw PCM data or plays it on your digital audio 17 device. It sounds much more realistic than FM synthesis, but you need a 18 ~100Mhz processor to listen to 32kHz stereo music in the background while 19 you work. 11kHz mono can be played on a low-end 486, and, to some, it 20 still sounds better than FM. 21 22 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Q: I don't have a GUS, can I use TiMidity? 24 25 A: Yes. That's the point. You don't need a Gravis Ultrasound to use 26 TiMidity, you just need GUS-compatible patches, which are freely 27 available on the Internet. See below for pointers. 28 29 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Q: I have a GUS, can I use TiMidity? 31 32 A: The DOS port doesn't have GUS support, and TiMidity won't be taking 33 advantage of the board's internal synthesizer under other operating 34 systems either. So it kind of defeats the purpose. But you can use it. 35 36 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Q: I tried playing a MIDI file I got off the Net but all I got was a 38 dozen warnings saying "No instrument mapped to tone bank 0, program 39 xx - this instrument will not be heard". What's wrong? 40 41 A: The General MIDI standard specifies 128 melodic instruments and 42 some sixty percussion sounds. If you wish to play arbitrary General 43 MIDI files, you'll need to get more patch files. 44 45 There's a program called Midia for SGI's, which also plays MIDI 46 files and has a lot more bells and whistles than TiMidity. It uses 47 GUS-compatible patches, too -- so you can get the 8 MB set at 48 ftp://archive.cs.umbc.edu/pub/midia for pretty good GM compatibility. 49 50 There are also many excellent patches on the Ultrasound FTP sites. 51 I can recommend Dustin McCartney's collections gsdrum*.zip and 52 wow*.zip in the "[.../]sound/patches/files" directory. The huge 53 ProPats series (pp3-*.zip) contains good patches as well. General 54 MIDI files can also be found on these sites. 55 56 This site list is from the GUS FAQ: 57 58 > FTP Sites Archive Directories 59 > --------- ------------------- 60 > Main N.American Site: archive.orst.edu pub/packages/gravis 61 > wuarchive.wustl.edu systems/ibmpc/ultrasound 62 > Main Asian Site: nctuccca.edu.tw PC/ultrasound 63 > Main European Site: src.doc.ic.ac.uk packages/ultrasound 64 > Main Australian Site: ftp.mpx.com.au /ultrasound/general 65 > /ultrasound/submit 66 > South African Site: ftp.sun.ac.za /pub/packages/ultrasound 67 > Submissions: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound/submit 68 > Newly Validated Files: archive.epas.utoronto.ca pub/pc/ultrasound 69 > 70 > Mirrors: garbo.uwasa.fi mirror/ultrasound 71 > ftp.st.nepean.uws.edu.au pc/ultrasound 72 > ftp.luth.se pub/msdos/ultrasound 73 74 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 75 Q: Some files have awful clicks and pops. 76 77 A: Find out which patch is responsible for the clicking (try "timidity 78 -P<patch> <midi/test-decay|midi/test-panning>". Add "strip=tail" in 79 the config file after its name. If this doesn't fix it, mail me the 80 patch. 81 82 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 83 Q: I'm playing Fantasie Impromptu in the background. When I run Netscape, 84 the sound gets choppy and it takes ten minutes to load. What can I do? 85 86 A: Here are some things to try: 87 88 - Use a lower sampling rate. 89 90 - Use mono output. This can improve performance by 10-30%. 91 (Using 8-bit instead of 16-bit output makes no difference.) 92 93 - Use a smaller number of simultaneous voices. 94 95 - Make sure you compiled with FAST_DECAY and PRECALC_LOOPS enabled 96 in config.h 97 98 - If you don't have hardware to compute sines, recompile with 99 LOOKUP_SINE enabled in config.h 100 101 - Recompile with LOOKUP_HACK enabled in config.h. 102 103 - Recompile with LINEAR_INTERPOLATION disabled in config.h. 104 105 - Recompile with DANGEROUS_RENICE enabled in config.h, and make 106 TiMidity setuid root. This will help only if you frequently play 107 music while other processes are running. 108 109 - Recompile with an Intel-optimized gcc for a 5-15% 110 performance increase. 111 112 --------------------------------------------------------------------------