[LAU] Does my audio card have a hardware MIDI synthesizer?

[Cedric Roux]

----- "Robert Jonsson" <spamatica at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Cedric,
>
> I suppose you want to playback sound from a sequencer or midi player.
> Just startup the software synthesizer make sure it is routed to the
> soundcard, connect it to the player and you should get sound.

No, from my wonderful gcomposer! :-)

I was at work and said to me: "hey, does it work here?"
But no luck, ALSA doesn't show any MIDI output device.
So the ALSA MIDI output of gcomposer does not make any
sound. I tried a few tricks, but no luck. I ended up
installing timidity and finally had some sound arriving
to my ears. But I don't like this approach. Back a few
years ago, my soundblaster was happily processing MIDI
commands and made sound with 0% CPU cost. So my little
program worked fine on a "basic" pentium (200MHz, 64MB
of RAM, linux 2.2.something).

So I wondered if the (ultra modern!(TM)) PC at work had
a MIDI internal synthesizer or not. Maybe the kernel was
not properly configured or something, I thought. I looked
for some info on the internet but couldn't find anything
relevant (by the way if someone has a link...). So I was
already in the "there is a very high probability that there
is no MIDI synth in it" mood. I just asked here in case more
up to date people knew something.

And you did. Thanks to all!

But alas, from what you and others say, no MIDI synth
in the very nice(TM) Dell computer. Audiocards' makers
don't care anymore. It's all in the CPU. No more funky
MIDI synths in their wonderful!(TM) audiocards.
(I don't even know if there is a MIDI out port on this
computer just in case one would have the crazy idea
to pilot external MIDI devices with the PC.)

Thanks for your reply.
Seems I'm getting a bit out of date...

No more noise,
back to normal funky(TM) life of working!

Cédric.

> 
> /Robert