KMid2

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Simple Karaoke or getting the best from your Midi Synthesizer!

KMid 2 is in preparation. As part of Extragear it does not necessarily ship on the same date as KDE SC 4.4, but it is on track for a stable release around that time. Meanwhile, a preliminary release 0.1.0 has been published.

So what is the current status?

Currently implemented

Here are some major features implemented in KMid2:

• MIDI and Karaoke files are supported.
• Playback to external hardware MIDI devices.
• Allow to use software synths as well, like Timidity++ and QSynth/FluidSynth.
• Tempo and volume controls.
• Added a pitch (transpose) control.
• Rhythm view (visual metronome).
• Configurable character encoding, font and color for lyrics.
• Playlists (song collections).
• MIDI Mapper, translating General Midi events into other events understood by some synthesizers.
• Channel window, with solo/muting controls and instrument selectors.
• Piano player window, using VMPK artwork and technology.
• Runs in Linux, using the ALSA Sequencer.

What is not yet ready?

• Support for Windows and Mac OSX.
• Multiple MIDI output ports. Currently plays to a single output port.
• Konqueror integration.

Demo

See KMid2 in action in this Screencast

Notes for usage

• If you use Timidity++ as a software synthesizer, you may have to install GUS patches or sound fonts. You can find them at freepats
• In this case you will need to start Timidity++ with

$ timidity -iA

• There is an init script

$ /etc/init.d/timidity start

(in Debian, the package timidity-daemon)

• Fluidsynth is an alternative. It has a helpful gui called QSynth. For soundfonts, try General User GS.

• For more information and options, there is a tutorial available.

Download

• Source packages

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmid2/files/

• openSUSE Build Service - Search packages

http://software.opensuse.org

• openSUSE Build Service - RPM packages for openSUSE

openSUSE 11.2

openSUSE 11.1

openSUSE 11.0

• openSUSE Build Service - DEB packages for xUbuntu

xUbuntu_9.04

xUbuntu_9.10

• Gentoo ebuild

http://packages.gentoo.org

• Mandriva 2010

http://www.mandrivalinux.gr

Resources

• Some sample .kar and .mid files are installed with the application. Others are available from http://www.mididb.com/ and http://midikaraoke.com/songdir/ . There is a useful search engine at http://www.vanbasco.com/midisearch.html
• If you are interested in building for testing, please read the README
• The source code repository for testing and development is available from here

Note

This status report has been updated on 25th December 2009