[wellylug] Soundcards with hardware midi syth?

[Pete Black]

Upon further mailing list traversal, I have found that I tell a lie - at 
least some documentation for Yamaha XG chips is available, and some 
framework code is present, but nobody has so far bothered to implement a 
driver that will allow actual synth playback for these devices. As I 
mentioned, OPL-2/3/4 can be made to work but require patch upload with 
the 'sbitool' program, so this doesnt make them any better than the 
EMU10k soundfont-based synths for your purposes..

-Pete

> Most sound cards have some form of hardware MIDI synth onboard, many 
> of them based on single-chip Yamaha XG devices with embedded 
> wavetables, and older ones on OPL-2/3/4 FM Synth chips.
>
> However, Yamaha refuses to release documentation for the XG parts so 
> there is no support for these wavetable cards under Linux. I think the 
> OPL-2/3/4 chips may be supported but will likely sound pretty crap 
> compared to wavetable or softsynths.
>
> Your best bet is SB Live/Audigy, and a little script that loads a 
> soundfont with the 'sfxload' tool on boot. Otherwise I think you're 
> out of luck w/regard to hardware wavetable on Linux.
>
> -Pete
>