Re: [pygame] MIDI files in Games?

[James Paige <Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 08:41:13AM -0700, Dave LeCompte (really) wrote:
> "John Eriksson" <john@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wondered:
> > I guess a midi-file will sound different on different platforms. But
> > will it be a huge difference or just a small difference?
> 
> I'm planning to use BASSMidi (http://www.un4seen.com/) for one of my
> current projects. The benefit to this is that the MIDI synthesis happens
> on the CPU, instead of the sound card, so the music guy can give me a
> "sound font" with the instruments he likes. This should give consistent
> sounding music across a variety of machines.

If I recall correctly, pygame plays midi using sdl_mixer, which plays 
midi using an embedded fork of timidity. Timidity is a software 
synth, and uses soundfonts, so you can get consistent-sounding midi 
across platforms.

What I don't know is how to replace/modify the sound font that 
pygame(sdl_mixer(timidity)) uses in a cross-platform way.

Also, when people have described problems with pygame's built-in midi 
support on this list, I have a hunch that they may actually be missing 
soundfont problems.

---
James Paige