This is the first public release of KMidi a midi to wav player/converter.
If you have already given up on midi on Linux/Unix try this! Without expensive hard-ware such as a Gravis-Ultra sound or Sound-Blaster AWE 64 you will get fantastic sound comparable to what you get with the above mentioned hard-ware. FOR FREE!
The catch:
a) KMidi will use your CPU time: anywhere from 10 to 90% on my Pentium 120 at 32000 Hz. Typically about 30%, but it depends on the particular midi played. If you have a weaker machine, simply use the commandline options to reduce the sample frequency. You should be able to get very decent sound even on a 486 without straining your CPU.
b) You need the sound patches. You can get a full set of general midi sound patches at any ultra sound archive. Typical storage requirements around 10 megs.
Belive me for the sound you are going to get this is a small price to pay!
KMidi uses Tuukka Toivonen's timidity 0.2i engine Copyright (C) 1995 Tuukka Toivonen mailto:toivonen@clinet.fi together with Takashi Iwai latest sound font patches ( This means you can also use sound fonts with KMidi)
Where to get patches:
Check out the timidiy home-page (see below) which has a number of links and recommendations. Patches can also be found packagedas dep or rpm modules in the edhat and Depbian contribution directories.
TimidityPage: http://www.clinet.fi/~toivonen/timidity/
Takahis's Page: http://bahamut.mm.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~iwai/midi.html#TiMidity
I realize this is a rough release, and I am sure that if you try hard enough you will be able to get KMidi to crash, but I think KMidi is already more than usable and will hopefull give you hours of fun. Rememeber Midi files are typically around 50k or leas and are therefore so easily downloaded that you will never run out of great midi's to play.
TODO:
o Make the myriad of command line options available through a configuration dialog. o Elaborate visual display of notes played ( This one is going to be FUN!!!)
Have fun with KMidi!
Bernd Johannes Wuebben