Audacity Forum

My sincere thanks. It was fast and worked like a charm. That is easy enough that maybe I can show her how and let her do it herself. LOL Guess thats what grand fathers are for though.Thanks again

Thank you gentlemen. It worked like a charm. Now her and I both know how to convert a midi file. They don't sound any different but are easier to use.

In ancient times midi's would sound completely different from one sound card to another... That was because it all was sampled at the sound card itself and all sound cards had a dedicated chip for midi playing. That was one of the reasons for upgrading the sound card.

I have no idea how it's done today, it's been a very long time since I last played around with midi's but I suspect that nowadays everything is probably done at software level... So shouldn't be any difference regardless of the hardware used.

bgravato wrote:So shouldn't be any difference regardless of the hardware used

Some cards still have hardware midi synths.
Timidity uses a SoundFont bank (software wave tables) and may be configured to use custom SoundFont banks. The default SounFont bank in Linux (Ubuntu) sounds pretty good, but for non-real-time rendering there is a very large SoundFont (Fluid Synth) that may be used and this can sound terrific for appropriate types of music.
Windows Media Player uses it's own software synth.
QuickTime uses its own software synth.
DAW programs such as Cubase and Sonar usually use SoundFont players with user selectable SoundFont banks.
They all sound different.

Thanks steve for the clarification