[LAU] Hardware Midi from Wine

[Brent Busby]

Up until now, I've never really done much with Midi in emulated Windows 
apps because I haven't needed them, but recently I acquired a copy of 
SoundDiver 3 for Windows from just before Apple killed them (jerks!). 
It's widely regarded as the only Midi patch librarian/editor for 
hardware synths that ever actually worked.

Before I go resorting to a Windows laptop to run it though (which will 
almost guarantee that I'll seldom use it), I wanted to see if I can get 
it working in Wine.  It seems remarkably well behaved.  Actually the 
only thing that ever crashes it is actual attempts to contact the 
hardware over Midi -- you can get around in the program and do just 
about everything else.  This seems to have been the issue in just about 
every other studio app I've ever tried to run in Wine also.

For interconnects, I have four hardware in/out pairs: the in/out 
provided on the RME Multiface II, plus an Edirol UM-3EX provides another 
3 in/out pairs connected by USB.  I mostly use the ports on the UM-3EX, 
and they all work fine in Linux under bare Alsa, and in Jack.  Also Java 
apps like JSynthLib can use any of my hardware Midi ports fine also, 
which is significant because Java provides its own handlers for Midi 
which must work for that to happen.

But Wine seems to be having some problems.  All these devices do show up 
in Wine configuration, and Windows applications also do show them in 
their menus.  Wine comes to a screeching halt when I try to use them.

Any recommendations?  I notice that Wine also has a Jack driver in 
addition to the Alsa driver (though it doesn't seem to list any Midi 
devices...perhaps I need to map them in QJackCtl to make them show up?). 
Should I be trying to use Jack Midi instead of bare Alsa?

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ Sr. UNIX Systems Admin +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ James Franck Institute +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ Materials Research Ctr +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky