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List:       fedora-list
Subject:    Re: Need soundcard advice
From:       "T.C. Hollingsworth" <tchollingsworth () gmail ! com>
Date:       2014-12-29 8:04:42
Message-ID: CAJVv0OkfzBKQgWXkce6PsswNR3YwFqb=YrXmXNCS6P8wA0RQeQ () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Mon, Dec 29, 2014 at 12:07 AM, William W. Austin <airedad@att.net> wrote:
> My wife composes, and for playback she has used an Audigy2 PCI card in
> her desktop machine for years.   That computer is beyond it's last legs
> now, and her new one has only PCIE slots.  (Yes she uses Linux for her
> composing and playback.)
>
> The problem is that she uses the Midi feature of that card and has
> sound fonts that she loads (about 126 MB in size) into it.  She has
> given up trying to find one and has asked me to help... but so far I've
> struck out.

Does she just play back MIDI files with her own custom SoundFont
files?  MIDI playback these days is usually done completely in
software, it's hard to find a card that does it anymore.

The Fedora repositories contain a software MIDI implementation called
fluidsynth.  You can install it with `yum install fluidsynth`.  Once
it's installed, it can be run in server mode.  This exposes a MIDI
sound device to other applications that appears identical to to a
hardware MIDI playback device.

Just run something like:
fluidsynth --server --audio-driver=alsa -o audio.alsa.device=hw:0
/path/to/her/soundfont.sf2

And a MIDI device with the soundfont she wants is created, which she
can use in all her software just like she used to use with her real
live card in the past.

> Are there ANY PCIE sound which is roughly the equivalent of the Audigy
> 2 cards?   I won't say "money is no object", but I'm approaching the
> point where cost is less important than finding such a card if on
> exists.

Of course, if she needs to plug a MIDI instrument in, you can't just
do that in software.  ;-)

Unfortunately PCI-e cards that do MIDI are a rare, expensive breed,
and most that do seem to have a bunch of other stuff she probably
doesn't need.  She might be stuck with a USB or FireWire device.  :-(

-T.C.
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