What kind of midi synth do macs have?

[invictius]

I tried zdoom on a g4 emac, the only system midi device was titled "sound system". It sounded very gus-ish. I don't remember what my mid-2007 macbook pro sounded like. Can't really find any info about whether the g4 has wavetable, fm or what.

[fraggle]

Apple have their own software MIDI synth. I don't know much about it but it's definitely based on high quality samples of real instruments (ie. similar to Timidity with a good patch set). In general the built-in MIDI on Macs is really good, I expect they've invested a lot in making it good since lots of musicians use Macs.

In your case you're talking about an older Mac (2002-2005) but I expect even back then OS X had good software MIDI output.

You're unlikely to find any computers nowadays (Macs, PCs or otherwise) using FM synthesis since CPUs are fast enough to generate sampled MIDI in real time. Same goes for "wavetable". These were really just stopgap technologies included in hardware on sound cards back in the '90s to allow crude/low quality MIDI output without taxing the CPU too much. Nowadays they're obsolete.

[esselfortium]

MIDI playback on Mac OS was historically QuickTime-based, I believe. It used a simple and familiar-sounding Roland SoundCanvas-based instrument set, similarly to Windows' built-in midi playback, though with some annoying oddities and idiosyncrasies. (And reverb.) As of the past couple of OS versions, though, I don't know of any simple and functional way to just play a damn midi file without opening it in my Win7 VM, which is disappointing. It would be really nice if someone would make a simple and functional freeware midi player that could take up the task since QuickTime dropped support for it. I've not found one that really does the job satisfactorily...

To expand on what Fraggle said about high-quality instrument sets, though, Apple has bundled a ton of their old products and newer acquisitions into their music production software and is selling it for pennies on the dollar compared to what any competitor can afford to do. Last I checked you could get MainStage, a program intended to assist with live performances, for $15 on the app store, and it includes the entire GarageBand instrument/sample/loop library and all of the expansion packs that were ever released for it. There are definitely some exceptionally nice instruments in there, some of which I've even ported over for my own personal use in Reason, but it's not relevant to standard MIDI playback (which IMO is best suited to the simple and familiar sounds that most MIDIs are being composed with in the first place).

[Ribbiks]

esselfortium said:

It would be really nice if someone would make a simple and functional freeware midi player that could take up the task since QuickTime dropped support for it. I've not found one that really does the job satisfactorily...

MIditrail is kind of ok, but refuses to load many types of midi. "midi and musicxml player" tends to work on most midi, but has one of the worst UIs I've ever seen. If you find something better let me know, these days I'm more inclined to just do all my midi activity in a snow leopard VM :p

[invictius]

Can anyone recommend a midi player with gui for true dos? One that I tried complained about missing patches even though my set blaster line was all in check. And btw, should a sound blaster live have midi sounding different in dos and windows? AFAIK they're both running in emulation mode but the midis sound slightly different.

[esselfortium]

Ribbiks said:

MIditrail is kind of ok, but refuses to load many types of midi. "midi and musicxml player" tends to work on most midi, but has one of the worst UIs I've ever seen. If you find something better let me know, these days I'm more inclined to just do all my midi activity in a snow leopard VM :p

Yeah, I had been using MidiTrail for a little while, but gave up when I found that it was refusing to play a lot of files. Ugh.

[Mogens Lundholm]

Could anybody send me midi-files, that won't play with MidiAndMusicXmlPlayer?

Would be glad to check these files to improve the program. Also I would like to know what you don't like with the UI and how you would like the UI to be. You may even change the program to what you like - source code is on programfabriken.com. However the UI might have limitations (compile by Lazarus)

Kind regards
Mogens
mogens.lundholm@programfabriken.com

[Man of Doom]

Interestingly enough, I play with GZDoom on my Mac, and from what I've gathered with how the MIDI system works, it can't sustain notes or it can't even play certain instruments (or it may play some notes on another instrument incorrectly).
I've even asked the developer of the GZDoom OSX port about how to install Timidity++ to make it work on said port, and even there, he's told me he has yet to finish up because that process has been giving him such a hard time.

[Csonicgo]

fraggle said:

In general the built-in MIDI on Macs is really good, I expect they've invested a lot in making it good since lots of musicians use Macs.

Sorry, but that's not true. I dunno where this came from, but it's never been the case. MIDI as an interface is "really good" in OS X. But, the software synth used to play back SMF sequences is hot garbage. The issue is that people confuse SMF sequences with MIDI as a standard - they are not the same.

Here are the problems with any SMF playback through OSX "Software synth":

* Program changes are not immediate. The problem is QuickTime does not handle MIDI program changes properly. Program change messages are not acknowledged until a note plays, so there is a lag behind by one note.
* Some effects are not supported or interpreted incorrectly. The best example I can give is Doom II's Title screen music that inserts pitch bends after keyoffs.
* No more MIDI Sequence Preview or Midi Sequence playback is possible, unless you download an older version of QuickTime, which, as of Yosemite, is pushed through a "Compressor" effect and drowned out to fuzzy trash. Quoth a QT dev: "Nope. MIDI music is done. MIDI playback will not be coming back to OS X." Even after educators brought this up. Repeatedly.

MIDI sequence playback was once great on OS X. Then Mountain Lion happened. It's only gotten worse.

[printz]

I confirm what Csonicgo said about some instruments being pitch-bent and sounding weird. But if I'm not unlucky to hear such a music, the instrument quality is superior to what I get in on-board RealTek audio on Windows (which I also saw fail spectacularly on some other songs, such as nin.wad D_E1M1).

[Mogens Lundholm]

When somebody dislikes MidiAndMusicXmlPlayer so much (”has one of the worst UIs I've ever seen”) I would like to have some information about what this is about? And Midi-files that does not work: Could you send me some example?

About the synth in MAC: The sound discussion made me add soundfont selection to IdiAndMusicXmlPlayer. On MAC, the build-in soundfont is bad, but PC is worse (RealTek) . Soundfonts seem to be placed in different places - therefore I made my own place:
<user>Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks/MidiAndMusicXmlPlayer
(With Finder, Click on your home-directory, use meny ”go/go to folder” and write Library/Audio/Sounds/Banks and create directory MidiAndMusicXmlPlayer and place sound font file there)

Does that make sense?

I think that FluidR3_GM.sf2 is a good soundfont, but there are many free fonts available.

/Mogens