[linux-audio-user] fluidsynth fails with alsa

[Mikhail Ramendik]

Hello!

I have switched to alsa drivers. The sound card (ES1371) works OK.

There is alsa-0.9rc2 in the kernel I use, but the distro, ASP Linux 7.3
(a Red Hat derivative) does not provide alsa-lib. I got alsa-lib,
alsa-lib-devel and alsa-util from freshrpms.net (RPMs for RH 7.3 work on
ASP 7.3); the version is, as I understand, 0.9rc7.

I have compiled fluidsynth again starting with configure, and now it
includes alsa libraries.

But when I start it, as root, with no parameters, and even with X not
running, it just hangs until Ctrl-C.

It starts with -a oss, however. It says that uses midi via alsa-seq,
but audio via oss. And it does not get any data from the MIDI keyboard
(ran it with --verbose to check).

Only when I used full OSS settings:

fluidsynth -a oss -m oss -o midi.oss.device="/dev/midi00"

did it work again. So, it's oss over alsa, not alsa. And yet alsa is
there, for example, alsamixer works. (And, unlike the case without alsa,
it does start an ALSA MIDI input, just gets no data).

What should I do? Can it be the fault of version difference between
alsa-driver in the kernel and alsa-lib/alsa-lib-devel? 

I gave it a try; I ununstalled alsa-lib and alsa-lib-devel and
alsa-util, and tried to compile alsa-lib 0.9.0rc2 from the source on
alsa-project.org. But it asked for the alsa-driver package. The kernel
source (which includes alsa-driver) is installed, so I really don't know
what to do next in this case. I'll try to investigate more - IT the
version difference is likely to be at fault...

Perhaps I just need to set some options I don't know about?
-- 
Sincerely yours, Mikhail Ramendik