Home Page Forums MAME MAME The SNES WIP topic

To answer a question that seems to have disappeared, you can route MIDI to the Quicktime synth on OSX easily enough. Be aware I'm still on 10.6 so some things may have changed on newer versions.

• Open Audio MIDI Setup (from /Applications/Utilities).
• Now look at the MIDI Studio window. If it isn't open, choose Show MIDI Window from the Windows menu.
• Double-click the IAC driver to show its properties. Make sure there's at least one IAC bus in the Ports list in the lower left. If there isn't, click the + below the list to add one.
• Run mess -listmidi and make sure you can see the IAC bus(ses). If you can't, check Audio MIDI setup again, if you can, close Audio MIDI Setup.
• Get MidiPipe and extract it somewhere.
• Launch MidiPipe. You'll get a window with a list of "Tools" on the left, and an "unnamed pipe" with no entries on the right.
• Drag a "Midi In" from the Tools to the pipe and select it to show its properties at the bottom of the window. Set its MIDI Input to an IAC bus, and don't select "hijack".
• Drag a "DLS Synth" from the Tools to the pipe, below the "Midi In" you added in the previous step. The default properties will use QuickTime synth, channel 10 mapped to standard kit and the remaining channels mapped to piano 1, and a GS-compatible program map. You shouldn't need to change this.
• Make MESS send MIDI to the IAC bus you selected for the "Midi In" a couple of steps ago.

If on the other hand you need to send MIDI into MESS, you'll need to go a different way. You could use the "SMF Player" and "Midi Out" tools in MidiPipe to play a MIDI file into an IAC bus, or you could get a soft keyboard program.

Thanks Vas, I'll try that.

ETA: Works perfectly as described on 10.10.2. Beautiful


ETA2: I'll add the MESS command line should be something like:

./mess64 snes miraclep -ctrl1 miracle_piano -midiout "IAC Driver Bus 1"

If it starts playing La Bamba you're good to go. If all you hear is the annoying SNES metronome, you have a problem.

WTF trying to compile latest mess I get:
gah, stale depends I think...

Cool, I hear the music.

BTW another valuable MIDI tool for OSX is MIDI Monitor. Very useful for troubleshooting MIDI issues.

I confirm it works this way on 10.6.8, except that
1. I had to tick the "Device is online" option in the IAC Driver Bus window, in order to have MESS acknowledging it in -listmidi
2. I needed to select hijack in MidiPipe, because without it, I was getting only "MIDI out: packet assembly overflow, contact MAMEdev!" messages instead of real sound

overall: great info, Vas!! thanks a lot!

Ah yes, you would have to make sure the IAC Driver is online, I took that for granted. Sorry. But there's something wrong with your setup if you have to select hijack. I'm using 10.6.8 and I'm definitely not using hijack, and it's working perfectly. I don't know what would cause that problem, though.

I'll see to investigate a bit what can be the cause. Thanks.