newbie has a silent rosegarden

Hello Jay, I'm at work just now, so I don't have rosegarden in front of me, however, can you check out a few of things? (Apologies if this is all a bit basic, but I'm trying to go through things end to end.) I will produce a HOWTO document on this subject; I was in your position a while ago, and it is far from obvious how the different components interract. Firstly, for MIDI playback, the basic chain should be as follows: MIDI file (Rosegarden) or MIDI input device (Keyboard) ..... sends MIDI commands on a channel to ... an instrument (example: ZynAddSubFX or Hexter) or an external Synth like a DX7 or to a MIDI powered sound card with a soundfont loaded .... which generates the digital sound waveform..... which is sent to your audio card.... which is physically connected to your speakers or headphones Things that tend to go wrong are: o) Rosegarden's output track is not connected to the instrument. o) Rosegarden is sending MIDI to the instrument, but Rosegarden and the Instrument are not using the same MIDI channel number. o) The instrument ID selected by Rosegarden isn't recognised by the instrument o) Rosegarden is actually wanting to send an audio stream rather than a MIDI o) The track is muted in Rosegarden o) There are so many writable devices connected by Rosegarden by default, that you lose track of the name of the currently active one. o) Rosegardens MIDI volume is set to low or to zero. o) If using Qsynth as the instrument, the instrument bank has not been loaded. o) If one of the tracks plays something totally horrid, This is generally because it is a percussion track which was never intended to be played on a pitched instrument)! Solution: Use Hydrogen, or your instruments percussion bank). o) The volume is turned down on the computer's volume control window. o) The sound is turned down on the output amp, or the output amp isn't switched on!!!!! Basic walkthrough for you to try: 1. Start JACK and Rosegarden. 2. Startup whatever virtual instrument you are going to use to generate the audio tones (ZynAddSubFX will do to begin with). 3. Go to Jack control / Audio, and confirm that the virtual instrument is connected to your sound card. 4. Test that sound is produced by going to Zyn and playing a few notes. Troubleshoot this before going any further. 5. Make sure MIDI channel 1 is selected in Zyn. 6. Goto Rosegarden, open up the MIDI config window (the greenish button), you should see an entry for ZynAddSubFX in the Writable ports area. If not, change one of the existing entries to send its output to Zyn. (Or add a new device entry) 7. Important! remember the name of the device which is writing to Zyn.!!!!! 8. Goto Rosegarden's main window, select one of the MIDI lines (tracks). Right click on the track name and select the output of that track to go to the one selected in step 6. 9. In the left hand window for that track, set the channel number to be "1". 10. Set the "instrument " code/ID to be the first one on the list (Probably a grand piano or something similar). 11. Check that the chosen track is not muted (the coloured radio button). 12. Go to Rosegarden's MIDI mixing desk, check that the MIDI volume for that track is set to a reasonable level (127 is the maximum, so set it to that!). 13. Fingers crossed, when you play the track, it should now sound. 14. Remember, that even though the Rosegarden Instrument ID is set to a piano, the actual sound you get will be whatever Zyn produces when it is asked to play that ID code. You can actually set Rosegarden's default list of output devices, which means that you don't have to perpetually repeat this process. Let me know how you get on, I watch the forum almost every day.