https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55787
Bug ID: 55787 Summary: Use PipeWire/PulseAudio for synthing MIDI instead of FluidSynth Product: Wine Version: unspecified Hardware: x86-64 OS: Linux Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P2 Component: dmusic Assignee: wine-bugs@winehq.org Reporter: kolan_n@mail.ru Distribution: ---
I feel like using software synth can be waste of RAM and CPU cycles when hardware synth is available. PipeWire/PulseAudio have capabilities to pass MIDI to either hardware devices or software synth daemons, such as TiMidity++ or FluidSynth. There are 2 problems with it: 1. One cannot set a soundfont via it, usually a special binaries run as root like asfxload are needed, and sound font affects all the apps using the device. We need ways to do it via PipeWire for unprivileged processes. IMHO even ignoring it is not a big problem: the fonts installed from packages are of high-enough quality, and sound much better (as instruments, not as beeps) than the software synth used by Windows OSes. 2. There is no autorouting for MIDI in PipeWire, one has to choose the sink himself. It could be configurable in winecfg. Also it is highly desireable to have a pretty standalone shared lib automatically selecting the needed sink.