No sound with ubuntu 9.10

[Bill B]

Hello Chaps,
I am the newbiest of newbies so replies need to be in words of less than one syllable pls. Am running Ubuntu 9.10. Downloaded pianobooster and everything seems to work fine, notes scroll along etc and it recognises my midi keyboard however, there is no sound at all. I have downloaded fluidsynth and the additional pkgs and used louis b. commands from june last year but all to no avail. Some midi files I have on my computer play fine in movie player but not pianobooster.Done the obvious stuff, nothing muted vols turned up high etc.
At my wits end, any ideas gratefully received.
Bill B.

[Louis B.]

Hi,

I have just updated this page:

http://pianobooster.sourceforge.net/faq.html#how-do-i-hear-the-sound-on-linux-ubuntu

I hope that helps. If you add midifile onto the end of the very long fluidsynth line it should play the midifile which will prove that fluidsynth is working OK.

Also watch out for the error message:

     fluidsynth: error: The "plughw:0" audio device is used by another application

If this happens then try to closing everything else that may be using the sound.

Please let us know how you get on.

Louis

[trevh]

Strange ....
What midi keyboard do you have? If it has standard midi sockets, what midi interface do you use?
I ask because it might help if you are able to see midi activity coming out of your computer, independent of hearing notes coming out.

For example my Casio WK-8000 shows a little flashing crotchet on its LCD display when midi is coming in on its usb port. For my other synths, I have a cheap (< AU$10) usb-to-midi interface which has flashing leds for both midi in and out activity, very helpful for diagnostics, I find.

Have you downloaded at least one the PianoBooster recommended midi files from those external sites? Remember that PianoBooster expects the piano to be on a specific channel, and accompanyment to be on other channels and those recommended files are already correctly set up for that.

Lastly does you midi keyboard need to be "switched" to multi timbral mode? Does it have midi-thru mode in which it sends incoming midi  on via its out or thru port while making no sound unless on the particular midi channel it has been told to "listen" to.

hope some of this helps.
regds
Trev

[Bill B]

Hello Trevh,
                Many thanks for your reply but when I say I'm a newby I really mean it and most of your reply is undecipherable to me. Don't understand about different channels for instance. My keyboard is an old Hohner PSK 75R (with no screen) connected via midi to usb cable.However my first concern is that I can get no sound from pianobooster with the keyboard disconnected.Yes I downloaded some midi files and they play fine on other progs I've got but not on pianobooster.No other music progs running at the moment.
Will have a go at Louis B's reply
Cheers
Bill B.

[Bill B]

Hello Louis, many thanks for your reply but as I explained to Trevh, I really am a newby having only been with linux for a couple of months and finding it hard going. I navigated to the web site you indicated and pasted in the command, I enclose the reply I got hope it makes sense to You.

fluidsynth: warning: Failed to pin the sample data to RAM; swapping is possible.
fluidsynth: warning: Failed to pin the sample data to RAM; swapping is possible.
fluidsynth: ALSA driver: Using format s16, rw, interleaved
FluidSynth version 1.0.9
Copyright (C) 2000-2006 Peter Hanappe and others.
Distributed under the LGPL license.
SoundFont(R) is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc.

Thanks for your efforts anyway
Bill B.

[Louis B.]

Yep that make sense to me and is exactly the same as I am getting.

What is your PianoBooster "Midi Output Device" set to? (look in  Setup/Midi Setup  from the PianoBooster menu) it should be "FLUID Synth (fs):0"

{HINT: to run fliudsynth again in the command prompt press control+R then start typing "fluidsynth"}

Louis

[Bill B]

Cracked it !! Yipee !!
Midi output device was set to none and when I changed it "FLUID Synth (fs):0" as you recommended I now have sound and the prog works fine with the keyboard.
Tomorrows project to connect to my keyboard.
Many,many thanks