[LAU] Synths (software vs hardware, speed)

[Simon Williams]

Matthias Schönborn wrote:
> On Wednesday 22 August 2007 14:22:41 Simon Williams wrote:
>> I'm now at the point where I can play midi files, and I have a midi
>> keyboard connected and can play sounds to and from that.
>> Timidity is rubbish, frankly, so I'm using fluidsynth, which works fine.
>> However, for some reason I can't get qsynth to work.
> 
> What soundcard do you use?
nforce (on an asus mobo).

> Do you use jack?
Qsynth won't start without it.

> If so, what settings do you use?
SERVER_PARAMS="-s -d alsa"
DRIVER_PARAMS="-d hw:0 -p 1024"

That's all I could find- and even those are the defaults. I'm running it 
with qjackctl.

With the default setting (alsa_seq), qsynth gives this:

21:14:04.045 Qsynth1: Creating synthesizer engine...
21:14:05.078 Qsynth1: Creating audio driver (jack)...
21:14:05.144 Qsynth1: Creating MIDI router (alsa_seq)...
21:14:05.150 Qsynth1: Creating MIDI driver (alsa_seq)...
21:14:05.153 Qsynth1: Failed to create the MIDI driver (alsa_seq). No 
MIDI input will be available.
JACK tmpdir identified as [/tmp]
fluidsynth: warning: Couldn't set high priority scheduling for the MIDI 
input
fluidsynth: warning: Couldn't set high priority scheduling for the MIDI 
input
fluidsynth: panic: Couldn't create the midi thread.

Changing the setting to alsa_raw or oss makes little difference to these 
errors. My usual rant when dealing with linux sound issues is about the 
total lack of any meaningful errors when something doesn't work.

I get the impression that qsynth has a major bug- I've posts on other 
mailing lists from people with similar problems- fluidsynth works fine, 
but qsynth is broken. If anyone can shed some light on this that would 
be great.

Thanks
Simon