[linux-audio-dev] Re: Best-performing Linux-friendly MIDI interfaces?

[Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen]

Paul Davis:
> 
> >what is the 'easiest' MIDI interface to get working under the average 
> >Linux kernel?  what sort of experiences do folks have with getting 
> >MIDI working (on a programming level) using API's such as (but not 
> >limited to) ALSA, and MidiShare?
> >
> >for me so far, MidiShare seems to offer the most direct and usable 
> >approach .. while ALSA is wraught with complexity and dependencies 
> >which often seem out of control.  i'd like to know what your 
> >experience, as developers, has been with getting a working MIDI 
> >subsystem under Linux ...
> 
> i can speak up as someone who has avoided any interactions with the
> ALSA sequencer for years because of a similar perception. i recently
> converted Tim Thompson's KeyKit from its raw MIDI port-based
> implementation under Linux to one that uses the ALSA sequencer (and
> adding multiport support along the way). it was suprisingly easy and
> obvious, given a simple example (in this case, the "ALSA sequencer
> MIDI Port object" that someone contributed to Ardour). even more
> gratifying was comparing the code to the keykit implementations for
> win32 and CoreMidi. the ALSA sequencer one was smaller, more logical
> and less bogged down in details.
> 

Yepp, same experience as you. Before using the alsa seq api myself,
it seemed to be horrible complicated. But it really wasn't.

Tip: the source for jack-rack by bob ham has some clean alsa-seq code
to look at.



--