[TriLUG] MIDI Software Synths?

[Brian Henning]

Heh.  Followup to my first message on this subject.  I got  
TiMidity++ working, with the help of a howto I found.  But I'd still like  
to know what any of you guys use out there for sequencing and composition.

Also, what do you all do to address the issue of lag?  If my 3-D games can  
make me hear "KAPOW!!" at the (apparent) exact instant I click my mouse  
button, why do most of my MIDI programs often suffer lag of a second or  
more?  If I'm chaining devices just as simply as MIDI-in -> MIDI-synth,  
why do I have so much trouble getting anything LESS than 250ms of lag  
between when I press a key and when I hear a note?  Any pianists out there  
can imagine how hard it'd be to play a song if your piano didn't make any  
sound until a quarter of a second after you press a key..

This should be simple.  Why isn't it? :-P

Cheers,
~Brian

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005 21:28:44 -0500, Brian Henning  
<lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com> wrote:

> Hi Folks!
>    Just curious if anyone out there in TriLUG land does much with MIDI  
> on our favorite platform.  I've been doing some looking around, and a  
> lot of what I've found hasn't been encouraging.
>
> There're two main issues I currently face in wanting to get MIDI  
> functionality with my current setup.  One is composition tools, and so  
> far I haven't even looked that far into it, because it's currently  
> undermined by the second issue, which is software synths.  If my onboard  
> sound hardware has a hardware synth at all, it's a cinch that it sounds  
> like crap, and furthermore FC4 doesn't know anything about it by default  
> and I don't feel like expending the effort to get it working when I'm so  
> certain the sound results will be horrid.  So I'm looking for software  
> synth programs, and I'm coming up very discouraged.
>    Of course, there's TiMidity++, which seems to require a lot of inside  
> knowledge to get working (and doesn't include a GUI by default).   
> There's a few others, which all seem to have stagnated or not be geared  
> toward the simple rendering of a run-of-the-mill MIDI song.
>    So I ask you all.  What do yous guyses use, if anything?
>
> Cheers,
> ~Brian
>
>



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