[PD] pd & oss / midi

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,

(cc'ing the list back.)

Thoralf Schulze hat gesagt: // Thoralf Schulze wrote:

> --- Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org> wrote:
> 
> thanks a million for your answer.
> 
> > First: Running pd -oss is not deprecated or
> > anything. I mostly use
> > "-oss" myself. So if it works, just stick with it. 
> 
> So I guess I'll stick with the oss emulation, I just
> got pd decently married to it. it still strikes me as
> weird that the oss emulation of alsa is capable of
> doing things that the underlying alsa doesn't seem to
> support.

It's the other way around: ALSA's OSS emulation is a simplified way to
access the ALSA devices. To directly access the ALSA devices, the
application, Pd, needs to do a bit more configuration, which seems to
be broken somewhat in Pd. 

> while we're at it, another question regarding midi:
> you wrote a while ago
> (http://lists.puredata.info/pipermail/pd-list/2005-10/031793.html)
> that it is possible to get data from an usb midi
> controller into pd by using the /dev/midi* files. I
> actually do have a bunch of them: 
> 
> vj at thoralf ~ $ ls /dev/midi* -al
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  2 31. Aug 15:23
> /dev/midi
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 35,  0 14. Feb 2006 
> /dev/midi0
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 14,  2 14. Feb 2006 
> /dev/midi00
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 14, 18 14. Feb 2006 
> /dev/midi01
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 14, 34 14. Feb 2006 
> /dev/midi02
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 14, 50 14. Feb 2006 
> /dev/midi03
> crw-rw----  1 root audio 14, 50 21. Aug 19:52
> /dev/midi3

Hm, no /dev/midi1 or /dev/midi2? Try to create them with:

cd /dev && MAKEDEV audio

> I understand that I need to load the snd-usb-audio
> module (pd -listdev without this module returns 
> 
> input devices:
> 1. OSS MIDI device #1
> output devices:
> 1. OSS MIDI device #1
> 
> , both are not working) to access the controller. with
> this module loaded, i get 
> 
> input devices:
> 1. OSS MIDI device #1
> 2. OSS MIDI device #2
> output devices:
> 1. OSS MIDI device #1
> 2. OSS MIDI device #2
> 
> , but none if these devices actually works. I tried
> various iterations of -mididev x , to no avail. am i
> missing another module? and how do i get alsa to load
> snd-usb-audio when it starts up?

I don't remember what distribution you're on, but on Debian based
systems you can just add your soundcard modules to /etc/modules. They
will get loaded in the order they appear there. So add your normal
soundcard module there and then snd-usb-audio at the end there to make
the USB midi device show up as the last device. 

You may also want to load "snd-seq-midi" there, and make sure,
"snd-rawmidi" is loaded as well, but I guess, it is already. 

Regarding the midi devices: If you start Pd with "-mididev 2" it will
try to open /dev/midi1, if you start with "-mididev 1,2" it will look
for /dev/midi0 and /dev/midi1. It's always the -mididev number minus
1. Another example: -mididev 33 will search /dev/midi32

Do you have more than one USB sound/midi card? Then I could also tell
you some more tricks how to configure these to a specific order
involving the "pid=" and "vid=" module options for snd-usb-audio.

Just make sure you don't load the old OSS modules (add 

audio
usb-midi

to /etc/hotplug/blacklist

Regarding the midi problem: Here I would say, using -alsamidi should
be the preferred way. Pd's alsamidi support is quite good, but it's
missing one crucial feature: autoconnect to devices on startup.

Hopefully it will get this one fine day, then the hassle with OSS midi
will be over.

Ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                 _ ______footils.org_ __goto10.org__