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FluidSynth vs. TiMidity++ (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/musicproduction@sh.itjust.works
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Anyone have strong opinions on these for playback of MIDI files via their CLI?

I saw that TiMidity++ has received virtually no development since 2004, but well, it does work. FluidSynth seems like it would be more flexible, but I'm not sure how much of that is for use as a library.

Would you recommend switching to FluidSynth just in general?

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[–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I use Lilypond to write sheet music, and well, it can also generate MIDI as an output.

You can get an IDE for Lilypond which has playback built-in, namely Frescobaldi, but I've had problems with it in the past (and to be fair, don't really like IDEs in general), so I've been putting together my own workflow using CLI tools.

I guess, that is one advantage of TiMidity++ that I figured out since posting this question. It allows specifying the measure to start playback from, which doesn't seem possible with FluidSynth:

timidity --segment=42-m    # start at measure 42 and play until end
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  • [–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Would qSynth provide the features you need? I use it to play back GuitarPro files with soundfonts.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 weeks ago

    Hmm, isn't that just a GUI to configure and run FluidSynth as a server? I imagine, you'd still need some program that reads the MIDI files and sends the notes to the server.

    Well, and presumably that program would need to have the feature of starting playback at a certain measure as well.

    But yeah, TiMidity++ is fine. I was just wondering, if I'm missing out on something by not using FluidSynth.

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