No Midi sound on Wine - Piano Roll Composer.exe

General Help
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#1

Hi. I'm pretty sure I got this to work before, but I forgot how.
I wanna use Piano Roll Composer.exe from this website on my Linux PC:
http://jdmcox.com/
I installed the 64 bit version using Wine, but I don't hear any sound.
The 32Bit version of this app has the same problem.
I can play .mid files in VLC for Linux. But not in Piano Roll Composer in Wine, or any other midi exe app or VLC in Wine.

How can I get sound to play in Piano Roll Composer.exe?

P.S. I'm still using Zorin OS Lite 15.3 (XFCE) https://zorin.com/ Ubuntun Bionic. I tried upgrading to Zorin OS Lite 16, but it won't install.

Here's what I tried on WineHQ forum:

Searched the FAQ. There's nothing there on Mid or midi. I can play mp3's in vlc.exe, so it's not a problem with sound in general.
Searched the the AppDB. PianoRollComposer isn't there.
I tried searching on the WineHQ forum, but it just says you can't search at this time, please wait 360seconds (which is 6minutes)...

Other things i've tried:

I tried a different app: https://www.midieditor.org/
Again, no sound.

There's this webpage:
MIDI - WineHQ Wiki

  • ^But I don't know what's going on here.*

I've tried these commands in Terminal (ps I don't really know what's going on here):
sudo apt-get install timidity freepats
sudo apt install timidity
It didn't fix it.

*I noticed that in PulseAudio Volume Control app (Ubuntu), Piano Roll Composer or Wine do not appear under the Playback tab, but other apps do like Firefox or VLC. *

  • I did find a test-audio button somewhere in Wine (Winecfg I think?) and it did play a sound tho.*
  • I installed (or enabled?) ALSA in Wine. It didn't work.*

Restarting my computer didn't fix this.

I tried installing and opening with PlayOnLinux. Still doesn't play sound

#2

It sounds like a codec issue. You may want to try the following:

  • Open the terminal.

  • type the following two commands:

    • sudo apt update
    • sudo apt install ubuntu-restricted-extras

  • attempt to play a file (may require a reboot).

This may also need to be done for wine, if wine doesn't utilize the system codecs (it should, but i don't use wine much so don't know it's limitations).

#3

Didn't work, even after restarting my Pc.

This may also need to be done for wine, if wine doesn't utilize the system codecs (it should, but i don't use wine much so don't know it's limitations).

Does this mean I have to use terminal in Wine? If so, I can't find a tutorial on using terminal in Wine. There's how to install wine using Ubuntu terminal...

#4

Have you looked into Ardour or MuseScore, Bitwig... LMMS... many great native Linux apps for Midi Composition?

It might be easier than chasing the ghost in the shell.

#5

Other apps had problems (see below). So if anyone can help me with PianoRollComposer, or suggest a similar music app (and I've looked at diff apps in the past), please let me know.

I might try Musescore. But I just realized that writing music in MuseScore might be much more difficult than it has to be, since I don't have enough experience to easily read and write rhythm in music. PianoRollComposer (and apps with piano roll editors i.e. the long black bars as music notes) makes this so much easier. Hopefully MuseScore can do something similar.

I'd want to use an offline app.
Edit: It has to use software instruments i.e. you don't need a real life instrument. Because I don't really have those.
If it's decent enough for my uses and intermediate skill level and the price is reasonable, then I'll pay for it.

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LMMS crashed and one of my projects won't open anymore. I can't have all my hard work getting lost like that. If that didn't happen, then maybe I can live with LMMS. But this was for the stable latest version of LMMS (at the time).

Other apps I tried, maybe one of them was Ardour, and it was just way too complicated.

If I had an Apple product, I'd use Garageband. So easy. Doesn't corrupt my projects from my experience. Reliable.

#6

From what I read, Ardour and Audacity are the best two options similar to garageband.

sudo apt install ardour
sudo apt install audacity

According to sound - Are there any good alternatives to GarageBand available? - Ask Ubuntu