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eclab / edisyn

Synthesizer Patch Editor
Apache License 2.0
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Linux and support for softsynths and bridged midi ports #90

Open Kirtai opened 2 days ago

Kirtai commented 2 days ago

I just found out that the that Edisyn only connects directly to hardware MIDI ports. If your device is on a software port or accessed via a bridge then it won't be recognized.

A workaround is to use

sudo modprobe snd-virmidi midi_devs=1

to create a virtual hardware port and connect via that.

I have tested this and got it working with some softsynths.

eclab commented 2 days ago

This isn't Edisyn or even Java. The MIDI spec, as implemented by all three major operating systems (MacOS, Windows, Linux) has a very stupid connection model. Unlike hardware MIDI, software MIDI has typed endpoints: one end has to be an application and the other end has to be a "device". Normally devices are hardware devices. Thus applications cannot connect to or even see one another: they can only see devices.

However MacOS and Linux both have support for creating virtual bridge devices, called MIDI Loopbacks, so Edisyn can connect to one end of the loopback, and (say) a softsynth or DAW can connect to the other end. That's what you've discovered. Windows doesn't have OS support for it: you have to buy a program which does it.

This model is so stupid that recently a number of DAWs have begun providing a virtual bridge device built into the DAW itself as a workaround. Logic I think was the first one to do it. But this requires low-level OS API support and Java doesn't have that.

Anyway, if you check in Edisyn's manual, it goes on in some detail about how to set up a MIDI loopback in Linux. You might look there and compare it against your suggestion and verify that the manual looking correct.