Can't play midi files

[Dennis N]

Two solutions to play MIDI files:

excellent sound: timidity + fluid-soundfont-gm
fair to good sound: Audacious + AMidi Plug Plugin + fluid-soundfont-gm

Timidity is a command line tool. Play files one-at-a-time, or play an entire directory. Timidity will also direct output to audio file (could be mp3 or ogg) with the identical sound so you can use them on any player. Get rid of the MIDIs.

If you want a playlist and graphical interface and controls, try Audacious.

[andrew.46]

vlc will do this when built against libfluidsynth and with a soundfont installed. I have not tested this package but it looks like a good choice:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/raring/vlc-plugin-fluidsynth

[pembertonq]

But as the OP points out, this used to work. In the past I could play midi files without problems, even in the browser.

That seems no longer to be the case.

So the question is: what changed? Why? How can we fix this permanently?

[tomwnorton]

I have the same problem. When I had 12.04 I could play midi files just fine on totem. But now that I have 13.10, I can't. Just like pembertonq, I chose to install the restricted extras upon installation.

[rubo77]

MIDI is not a proprietary format, so ubuntu-restricted extras doesn't help.

just install

sudo apt-get install vlc-plugin-fluidsynth