Revision as of 11:26, 13 August 2008

TiMidity is a software synthesizer that can load SoundFonts and GUS (Gravis Ultrasound) patches and render midi instruments as "real" ones.

Linux

Timidity may be obtained from your distribution's repository or by building from the source. The standard patches distributed with Timidity are insufficient for the playback of DOOM music, and you must obtain appropriate patches from one of the sources mentioned in "External Links", below.

Windows

Overview

Timidity on Windows comes in 2 flavours: SDL_mixer's Built-in support or a windows driver.

SDL_mixers built-in version is very old and has a few problems (memory leaks, bad sound handling, squeaks/pops etc), the only benefit it offers over the driver is the ability to change the music volume inside Odamex and the fact you will only need to download GUS patches. To use it, you will need to have a timidity.cfg in the Odamex directory that points to the location of your GUS patch set.

The driver may be a better solution if you want a newer version (it is Timidity++), higher quality sound with less bugs. It can also be used with other programs on the system that support MIDI. As mentioned above, the volume cannot be changed with the music/midi slider, in Odamex or the windows volume applet (You can work around this if you fiddle with the Wave and Master sliders, along with the sound slider in Odamex)

Installation

This is a basic installation guide that will show you how to use GUS patches with the timidity driver and thus use it with Odamex

The driver has Timidity++ built in, so you will not need timidity.

GUS patches

You can download these from various sources on the web, Google is a good start, patches are also available at the bottom of this article.

Install these to a directory such as c:\timidity (the directory can be configured in c:\windows\timidity.cfg once the driver has been installed)

Note: If you're using eawpats, copy the timidity.cfg file from its directory and replace c:\windows\timidity.cfg (presuming you have installed timidity previously), modify the lines that contain dir and replace the path with the path of the eawpats dir.

Timidity driver

The latest driver can be downloaded from here (the US sourceforge site has an older project, this one has the latest CVS releases), you will need to download the latest CVS (timiditydrv070209_bin.zip was tested and works on Windows XP SP2)

Extract to a location on your hard disk

Follow the instructions in windrv.txt in the zip file or:

Navigate to: Start->Settings->Control Panel->Add Hardware Wizard
Click Next
Click "Yes, I have already connected the hadware."
Click Next
Select "Add a new Hardware device" 
Click Next
Select "Install the hardware that manually select from list[Advanced]" 
Click Next
Select "sound, video and game contollers" 
Click Next
Click "Have Disk ..."
Click "Browse" and find timiditydrv.INF where you extracted it
Click OK
Click "Continue Anyway"
Click Finish.

The driver is now installed.

Usage

To use the driver, do the following:

Navigate to: Start->Settings->Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices
Click Audio Tab
Select "MIDI music playback" combobox as "Timidity++ Driver"
Click OK

The driver is now the default midi driver, for more information on configuration, read windrv.txt from your driver dir for more info.

If all goes well, you can run Odamex and the sound should come through the driver.

Notes

There is a problem with SDL_mixer not changing the volume of the driver, so changing the music volume in Odamex (and even other programs that use SDL_mixer) won't work, there is no known workaround for this.

Resources

GUS patches

You can download these from various sources on the web, Google is a good start, patches are also available at the bottom of this article.

External Links

TiMidity++ sourceforge site

Japanese TWSYNTH page (latest driver)

eawpats GUS patches