"audio/MIDI engine could not be started": ALSA library on FreeBSD doesn't support MIDI

[yurivict]

But Jack interface is fully capable to pass MIDI signals. It should be possible to connect a piano through the HW MIDI interface and route its MIDI signals through JACK to qtractor, no?

[rncbc]

nope. qtractor takes the ALSA Sequencer driver as its main MIDI engine, and not JACK. It is actually stated on its manifest since day one.

[yurivict]

Is JACK less functional than ALSA when it comes to MIDI?

[rncbc]

no, when Qtractor was conceived there was no JACK-MIDI at all; OTOH. on GNU/Linux at least, JACK takes ALSA as the system's MIDI hardware/device interface for sure.

what you need there is that the ALSA-MIDI (aka. ALSA-sequencer) interface to be fully-implemented on freeBSD, which I think is not or else not set up and running properly (if actually implemented).

[yurivict]

what you need there is that the ALSA-MIDI (aka. ALSA-sequencer) interface to be fully-implemented on freeBSD, which I think is not or else not set up and running properly (if actually implemented).

ALSA library exists on FreeBSD, but it attempts to open /dev/snd/seq which does not exist because it is a Linux-only kernel device. FreeBSD uses OSS for audio including MIDI.

So I need to have an OSS-to-ALSA library or JACK-to-ALSA library to satisfy the qtractor's requirement to work through the ALSA interface.

Do you know if such libraries exist?

[rncbc]

none that I know of. sorry to tell

[hselasky]

FreeBSD now has audio/alsa-seq-server, which create /dev/snd/seq .

[yurivict]

@hselasky

Thank you for this tip and for creating alsa-seq-server. I just added the port for Qtractor: audio/qtractor.

https://cgit.freebsd.org/ports/commit/?id=285ba5106abdb1f50d858622cfae3b0de88407db