MIDI on OS4

I have been playing some MIDI files today and have been un-able to find one single program thats able to play all files correctly.
I have got TiMidity set up using the sound font AnotherXG.sf2 as this sounds better than the GUS patches though its a little quieter. The downside of this is the GUI has no play list so I thought I'd try TuneNet so donloaded the MIDI pluging and installed. With TuneNet I can not seem to be able to use the AnotherXG sound font only the GUS patches appear to work.
One thing I found both programs unable to do is play XG files properly (something I found Windows Media player struggles with aswell) regardless of what patch files are used.
The only way I am able to play files as they should sound is to use Bars&Pipes with my MU10, but this is a bit much just for play back and again no playlist.
Are there any other options I havn't found preferably using the camd midi out option like Bars&Pipes.

@Arnie

Maybe point to a file thats not working correctly and let us
see if the file is not broken or crippled/wrongly coded in
some way.

Maybe B&P has an inbuilt error filter for such files?

@Arnie

I don't know how well it will work with tricky files, but I use "PlayMF" from the classic CAMD toolkit to play files through CAMD from my user-startup.

http://aminet.net/mus/midi/CAMD_Toolkit.lha

I also dump SysEx setups using TSX from my own toolkit:

http://os4depot.net/index.php?functio ... driver/misc/camdtools.lha

I've been doing a lot of work lately with some tools that are used to control volume and pan from script files. I haven't released them yet, but they are available for asking if you are interested.

I've designed a new audio mixer, with NO moving parts. It's completely solid-state, and is usually controlled by a behringer BCR2000 deck or Bars&Pipes or CLI or script files or whatever else. It's only a basic Line mixer, i.e. volume and balance/pan, but it suits my studio well.
It's based on a GPL midi platform called MidiBox. Fun Stuff.

http://www.midibox.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?do=show&id=midiboxmixer

OK, I'll stop showing off now.

I hope PlayMF works for you. If not, you might try loading the file into B&P and re-saving it, in case of a bad file format. You could also try filtering some control events out to see which are giving you trouble.

[edit] putting "XG" at the end of the command line for PlayMF will do a "proper" XG reset. You can also do one at will using TSX and a file I have called "XG". Just ask if you want it.

Have Fun,
LyleHaze

@LyleHaze

I tried PlayMF but it doesn't seem to work here, I get no output to my MIDI device at all. As I said before B&P works so the camd set up must be correct.

@Raziel

The file I use to test for XG play back is a Yamaha demo tune called Cybergate.mid which came with my MU10 but can be found here.
Its hard to discribe what it should sound like but if you get a plain saxaphone sound in a sort of beep beep beep beeeeep way then its not playing correctly. It should sound a bit like a squeeky door particularly the forth longer note.

@Arnie

Funny thing is that (imho) everything else sounds very good,
just that squeeky sax...hmm

No idea (using TuneNet here), sorry

@Raziel

What patch set are you using, I can only get the GUS set from OS4 Depot to work with TuneNet and that is GM only with means you get the plain sax with a piano accompaniment which is totaly wrong. As far as I can tell it should be using the first effect in the XG sound fx bank with a rapid change in the sounds brightness which produces the squeeky sound.
The AnotherXG sound font produces better sound but I can only get this to work with Timidity but without the special effects. That said none sound as good as the real thing which is why I would prefere a MIDI out player.

@Arnie

I wonder why playmf isn't working for you?
I can paste the line I'm using in my user-startup..
c:playmf Work:midi/looneytunes.mid LINK "EDIROL UM-880.out.2" REPLACE XG

A few notes: if there are spaces in your output cluster name, then entire name must be in quotes (as shown). Also, cluster names are CaSe SenSiTive.. they have to match exactly. You can see a current list with the "showclusters" tool. It can also be used to test for a specific cluster name.

Since MANY of the older CAMD tools assume you'll be using out.0, I have added the folowing line in my user-startup:

run >nil: c:midithru out.0 "EDIROL UM-880.out.2"

This creates an "out.0" and lets me connect it to whatever cluster that I want for "default" program output.

Have Fun,
LyleHaze

@Arnie

Im currently looking into the Midi plugin that I wrote for TuneNet as it uses the Timidity lib which should allow the use of other soundfonts.

@Arnie

It doesn't seem the Amiga version of TiMidity can handle .sf2 files, yet?

Anyway, you can find a set of free patches here (freepats),
but be warned, they sound exactly (sax) like the one you
have already installed (GUS?) and worse for some other instruments.

Just my humble opinion, but i compared some freely available
patch sets the other day and the GUS set still sounded best.
Either you fix the sax for your installation yourself or you
may be stuck with the squeeky sound...sorry :-/

@Raziel
Quote:
I think you miss understand me, if you are hearing a sax sound then it is not playing correctly as it should be squeaky. The sound that should be playing is set by CTRL 0 bank select MSB set to 64 and CTRL 32 LSB set to 0 which will select the first SFX voice in XG mode which is a cutting noise. The squeaking is done by changing the sounds brightness. I think you need to hear it on a Yamaha XG sound card/module to know what it realy should sound like. I discovered today that loading the AnotherXG sound font into Windows almost gets it right by using the correct sounds but the brightness effects seem to be reversed.
The stand alone TiMidity player does support sf2 files but not the TuneNet plugin version, something that Curty has just said he is working on.

@Curty

That's great news, what are the chances of a Camd support option in the future? I wish I could code myself but don't know if I will ever grasp it.

@Arnie

Yes, sorry, misread your post

@Curty

Soundfont support?
Cool

@LyleHaze

I've managed to get some output from PlayMF now and is working somewhere in between the softsynths and Bars&Pipes. Some notes seem to be missing or not playing right like its not able to play over all channels or can only play a limited amount of notes at a time. The good news is that it sets up XG correctly.
Any ideas?
cheers Arnie.

@Arnie

I'm glad you were able to get something from it.
It is completely "classic", and I have done nothing with it, except to add it to my user-startup. I have not even had a look at the source code. Because I've been involved with the OS4 port of CAMD I was glad to have it to test the backward compatibility, but that's really all I know about it. I also played around with the "fireworks" toy that came with it. A few releases ago it was working as well. Interesting toy, and could be fun to compose something specifically for it.
I haven't really looked into a file player/sequencer because there are a few out there already. Bars&Pipes, Horny, and a few more, I'm sure. As far as I can tell CAMD is solid. The last bug has been found and the (hopefully final) release should be this weekend. Since we have CAMD and the USB driver working well, I've been off doing smaller projects. It seems I'm always writing little tools to do something different in CAMD. I release them in batches occasionally. At first there were SysEx tools to help me develop for the MIDIBox. Then I built an audio mixer, and needed some tools for volume and balance/pan controls. Got that working great, now I'm thinking about making MIDI controlled lighting systems, so eventually I'll need a RGB/HSV pixel editor of some sort.

Anyway, getting back to the topic...
There is nothing I can offer towards "fixing" PlayMF. Sorry.
The idea of adding a CAMD port to Timidity sounds great! I would be glad to help anyone who asks. CAMD is pretty easy to work with, and I have LOTS of example code.
There is a fresh release of CAMD coming very soon, but it's not much different. It just fixes a bug that comes up when you "avail flush".

LyleHaze

"Always keep a song in your heart. It's like Karaoke for the voices in your head."

Hi @Raziel

It sounded like normal 'coronet' to me.

I've just discovered a new CAMD MIDI player on OS4 Depot which is DG MIDI Player.
first impressions it seems to be a good little player but not without problems. GM files play ok but some seem to have a very long delay (longer than usual) at the start. XG files do get a little muddled my referance file Cybergate does not play correctly same old problem but other Yamaha files fare a little better.
The GUI is a simple but effective MUI affair complete with playlist. The only niggle here is the pattern wildcard in the requester is wrong as it is the msdos *. instead of the Amiga dos #?. which clearly does not work.
Prefs are easy to set up, just select your CAMD output and your off.
All in all thanks must go to D'Alba Giovanni for uploading this program which helps fill in another little gap in the OS4 program list.

@Arnie

For those that have not already noticed DG Midi player has now been updated and now sends system exclusive. It works great here and plays all my files as they should be.

I have even set it up as an external player within Ibrowse and files will play in the background flawlessly. The only problem is the GUI is not loaded so you can't stop them but I even found a way around this by putting a command in the main page FAB menu that calls the player with no arguments causing playback to stop. This must be done between tunes otherwise you get an error unless the tune playing has already finished.

Thanks again to D'Alba Giovanni for this great program.

@Arnie

Is there a version of TiMidity that plays out to MIDI? The one I have plays thru AHI or will convert .mids to .wavs, but it won't play a file thru a MIDI device yet.

@Valiant

TiMIDIty is a program for those who cannot use MIDI hardware.
It emulates the hardware by playing .mid files through i.e.
AHI or converting them to .wav.

You are looking for a MIDI player that initializes you
hardware and send the Sysex commands and MIDI notes to it
to make it play...

Try D'alba Giovanni's DG_MIDI_Player.

There's also an older player called PlayFM.

What hardware are you using btw?

@Raziel

I'm using the built-in VIA gameport with a MIDI adapter and a Casio CTK 700. After I finally got it setup correctly I've found Horny works just fine for playback. It's too bad though that the VIA driver only has MIDI-Out and no MIDI-In. I'd really like to use my keyboard to compose with. Has anyone taken a look at the interrupt problem recently?

Anyway thanks for the info on the other players. I had already downloaded them, but forgot all about them. I'll give them a try also.

@Valiant

Resurrecting this old-ish thread by asking the same question...

The AmigaOne onboard VIA soundchip/hardware DOES have the possibility to gather MIDI streams IN, right?

I'm talking about feeding a MIDI file through the onboard gameport to a MIDI hardware (like an MT-32) and back into the VIA's MIC(?) input and play through the VIA's sound output
or (as Valiant suggested)
feed MIDI notes from a hardware (like a MIDI keyboard) into the VIA and listen to it through VIA's output.

I didn't follow closely enough and (due to my old age and galopping dementia ) forgot most of the things DaveAE told me back when i struggeled to get the MT-32 to run, so if someone would be so kind to enlighten me what exactly is the (fixable?) problem with the VIA hardware?

Wrong or missing Interrupts?
"Could" this be fixed?