The KMidi Handbook: Introduction
Description: KMidi Midi Player Timidity Midi To Wav
Keywords: KMidi Midi Player Timidity Midi to Wav

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### 1. Introduction

KMidi is a midi file player and midi to wav file converter.

If you have already given up on midi on Linux/Unix try this! Without expensive hard-ware such as a Gravis Ultrasound or Sound Blaster AWE64 you will get fantastic sound comparable to what you get with the above mentioned hard-ware. FOR FREE!

The catch:

- KMidi will use your CPU time, typically about 10-30% at 32000 Hz on my Pentium 120. If you have a slower machine, simply use the commandline options to reduce the sample frequency. You should be able to get very decent sound even on a 486 without straining your CPU.
- You need the sound patches. You can get a full set of general midi sound patches at any Ultrasound archive. Typical storage requirements around 10 megs.

Belive me, for the sound you are going to get this is a small price to pay!

KMidi supports at the moment (Version 0.3) the following platforms:

- Linux
- FreeBSD
- DEC OSF/1
- HP UX
- SUN
- SUN SOLARIS

Ports to other platforms should be easy. Please contact me if you ported kmidi to another platform.

KMidi uses Tuukka Toivonen's timidity 0.2i engine Copyright (C) 1995 Tukka Toivonen together with Takashi Iwai latest sound font patches, which enables you to use SoundFonts with KMidi.

I realize this is a rough release, and I am sure that if you try hard enough you will be able to get KMidi to crash, but I think KMidi is already more than usable and will hopefull give you hours of fun. Remember Midi files are typically around 50k or less and are therefore so easily downloaded that you will never run out of great midi's to play.

Have fun with KMidi!

`Bernd Johannes Wuebben`, wuebben@kde.org

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