| Installing and using Creative AWE midi sound under Linux. | |
| This documentation is devoted to the Creative Sound Blaster AWE32, AWE64 and | |
| SB32. | |
| 1) Make sure you have an ORIGINAL Creative SB32, AWE32 or AWE64 card. This | |
| is important, because the driver works only with real Creative cards. | |
| 2) The first thing you need to do is re-compile your kernel with support for | |
| your sound card. Run your favourite tool to configure the kernel and when | |
| you get to the "Sound" menu you should enable support for the following: | |
| Sound card support, | |
| OSS sound modules, | |
| 100% Sound Blaster compatibles (SB16/32/64, ESS, Jazz16) support, | |
| AWE32 synth | |
| If your card is "Plug and Play" you will also need to enable these two | |
| options, found under the "Plug and Play configuration" menu: | |
| Plug and Play support | |
| ISA Plug and Play support | |
| Now compile and install the kernel in normal fashion. If you don't know | |
| how to do this you can find instructions for this in the README file | |
| located in the root directory of the kernel source. | |
| 3) Before you can start playing midi files you will have to load a sound | |
| bank file. The utility needed for doing this is called "sfxload", and it | |
| is one of the utilities found in a package called "awesfx". If this | |
| package is not available in your distribution you can download the AWE | |
| snapshot from Creative Labs Open Source website: | |
| http://www.opensource.creative.com/snapshot.html | |
| Once you have unpacked the AWE snapshot you will see a "awesfx" | |
| directory. Follow the instructions in awesfx/docs/INSTALL to install the | |
| utilities in this package. After doing this, sfxload should be installed | |
| as: | |
| /usr/local/bin/sfxload | |
| To enable AWE general midi synthesis you should also get the sound bank | |
| file for general midi from: | |
| http://members.xoom.com/yar/synthgm.sbk.gz | |
| Copy it to a directory of your choice, and unpack it there. | |
| 4) Edit /etc/modprobe.conf, and insert the following lines at the end of the | |
| file: | |
| alias sound-slot-0 sb | |
| alias sound-service-0-1 awe_wave | |
| install awe_wave /sbin/modprobe --first-time -i awe_wave && /usr/local/bin/sfxload PATH_TO_SOUND_BANK_FILE | |
| You will of course have to change "PATH_TO_SOUND_BANK_FILE" to the full | |
| path of of the sound bank file. That will enable the Sound Blaster and AWE | |
| wave synthesis. To play midi files you should get one of these programs if | |
| you don't already have them: | |
| Playmidi: http://playmidi.openprojects.net | |
| AWEMidi Player (drvmidi) Included in the previously mentioned AWE | |
| snapshot. | |
| You will probably have to pass the "-e" switch to playmidi to have it use | |
| your midi device. drvmidi should work without switches. | |
| If something goes wrong please e-mail me. All comments and suggestions are | |
| welcome. | |
| Yaroslav Rosomakho (alons55@dialup.ptt.ru) | |
| http://www.yar.opennet.ru | |
| Last Updated: Feb 3 2001 |