[linux-audio-user] Midi output

Hi! I'm new to that list, i'm Alexander Feder, student in Vienna. I play synthesizer and [E-]violin and finally want to try to sequence and record what i'm playing. It seems though there is lots to do before i can do that. I've bought a M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 card which i've set up using Alsa. Audio works fine when using the oss-emulation, but trying to access the card directly (aplay -D hw:0,0, or using the alsa-xmms plugin or with ecasound) fails with "Sample format non available". Isn't that odd? I've thought alsa-oss-emulation would be just another layer on top of what i would access when using aplay & co. .. Recording works fine (also using oss), i've used ecasound for adding nice real time effects while playing my e-violin. i can control everything with envy24control though.... Another problem i have is sequencing, actually midi as a whole. Neither outputting with pmidi, playmidi or muse works. I'm quite sure i've put all cables correctly into the Audiophile and my Yamaha CS1x synth. Both cables (male-male) are 5 pin, the one that i've plugged into the [in] in my soundcard and to [out] on my synth has 3 pins used (4,2,5 - the three in the middle) and the other cable has all 5 pins used. I've checked every combination with my ohm-meter, so there is no short-circuit. All pins are mapped 1:1. 'pmidi -l' gives 64:0 Rawmidi 0 - M Audio Audiophile M Audio Audiophile 24/96 MPU-401 trying to output a midi file with pmidi (which i have successfully outputted using playmidi on a pc with an sb16 and oss, iirc) results in no audible result. :/ (pmidi -p 64:0 test.mid) muse outputs something more interesting whenever a note should be played: MidiAlsaDevice::putEvent(): midi write error, returns -19 expected 28: No such device Which i further find odd is that muse is not willing to start playing unless i've first stepped into the config->audio system to apply the already activated setting of No Audio. Before that the transport indicator will not move. Further when i activate "Use Alsa" muse exits with the "ALSA: Sample format not available" message. So does this mean i can't trust what /proc/asound/seq/clients and pmidi -l says? or does that mean that at the other end, where my synth should be, is no device attached? same problem in the other direction. muse does not receive any signals from my cs1x. I've recorded with this cs1x successfully on another pc with.. another os.. so i think the hardware works. I'm using Debian GNU/Linux Sid on an Athlon, alsa 0.9.1-2 (for base and libs). The things i described both happen on vanilla 2.4.20 with the alsa drivers coming with debian (also 0.9.1-2) and on a 2.4.20 WOLK-kernel (rc3) with the integrated alsa-drivers. (these behave slightly different, for example i can't set the DAC volume with envy24control with the wolk-kernel - the sliders don't move. this works fine with the vanilla kernel.) what could i be doing wrong? or could it be that the soundcard itself is broken? i have no other OS to falsify that.. :/ thank you very much for any help in advance bye xandi