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I'm running Mint 18.3 Mate on an Intel i5-8600K desktop. I do not have a sound card or speakers. I have a Sennheiser headset that works fine when I listen to something off the web like youtube.

I have a USB piano keyboard and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm using QjackCtl and Qsynth.

When I push a key on the piano, the green light in the lower left corner of Qsynth lights in unison.

In Qsynth, if I open Channels and push a key on the piano, the green light next to Yamaha Grand Piano lights. I do have two soundfont files loaded.

It has worked fine. Then it stops working. I have been searching a lot; what I've found says it should work, as far as I can tell.

Jack audio connections

Jack alsa connections

Qsynth settings

aplay -l

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  • "Then it stops working." When? What changed?
    – CL.
    Commented Oct 11, 2018 at 8:54
  • I'd have a clue if I could answer. Nothing I know of. Clearly something is different.
    – Steve
    Commented Oct 11, 2018 at 12:07
  • Do other sounds still work?
    – CL.
    Commented Oct 11, 2018 at 13:23
  • Yes. I have in the past had trouble with Mint losing track of my headset. When the piano doesn't work (all the time now), I check Youtube or something and the headset always works.
    – Steve
    Commented Oct 11, 2018 at 23:39
  • Changing QSynth > Setup > Audio > Audio Driver > pulseaudio instead of alsa fixed it for me
    – DLight
    Commented Sep 22, 2020 at 17:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Possibly I experienced the same issue as you. I now have it working again. It seems, once it starts working with certain settings, it seems to keep working from then on. Unfortunately I don't have a full answer on why that might be.

I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 and Fluidsynth 1.1.9. The technique I used was to go into Fluidsynth (i.e. the command-line tool), play with the settings til it works, and then go back into QSynth and set the same setting values.

What worked for me was:

audio.driver=alsa
audio.alsa.device=pulse   [I have never got any output by going directly to alsa devices. I'm not sure why that is. I haven't tried jack, so you may need to experiment.]
synth.gain=10.0    [The default of 0.2 is inaudible on my system]
audio.output-channels=1
audio.sample-rate=22050.0
audio.sample-format=16bits

Once it was working in QSynth with these settings, I was able to return some of them back to their default values.

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3
  • This works great. It was either setting audio driver to alsa or audio alsa device to pulse, or both. Now I don't need jack. Thanks very much. I must go make notes (both ways)..
    – Steve
    Commented Oct 16, 2018 at 3:10
  • OK, slight change. I do need to start jack for the piano to connect to Qsynth. Huge improvement over no sound.
    – Steve
    Commented Oct 16, 2018 at 3:14
  • How can you set synth.gain to 10 in Qsynth? By pressing the Setup button and going to the Settings tab, I can see the value 0.2 but cannot change it.
    – baptx
    Commented May 30, 2021 at 21:11

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