MIDI/audio info needed

[john snell]

In Volume 9 : Issue 370 of SUN-SPOTS Digest, Roger Davis asked:
> Is anybody out there aware of any MIDI products (or freeware!) available
> for Suns or other Unix boxes? I need a machine at home that can run MIDI
> sequencing software like Performer or Vision, but I'd much rather have a
> Sun than a Mac.

There is a powerful program for modern composition, signal processing and
synthesis called cmusic that will run on many UNIX machines (including
most Suns, the NeXT machine, and the DEC VAX line).  cmusic is a rewriten
and much extended version of the computer music software developed at Bell
Labs over several decades.  Most music composition programs permit little
programming on the part of the user, and make overly simplistic
assumptions about what sort of music one would like to compose.  While
cmusic does provide great flexibility in composition, it is not the right
program for the novice who wants to simply play traditional compositions.
cmusic is available from Center For Music Experiment, Q-037, University of
California, San Diego,  La Jolla, Ca 92093  USA.  Over the last decade or
so, Computer Music Journal (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA   USA) has published
many articles on software that runs on Suns and other UNIX machines.

There are lots of MIDI and SMPTE interfaces as well as signal processing
cards and a wide variety of music and audio programs for the Macintosh and
IBM PC.  Although this is not the forum to discuss software and hardware
for PCs, one can run these very cheap interfaces and this music software
on a Sun386i, as well as the powerful UNIX programs that run under the
386i's SunOS.  

The Sun386i provides a Sun high-speed 32-bit bus as well as PC/AT bus
slots for cheap I/O peripherals (e.g. 2 serial ports for less than $50).
Although DOS emulation was slow on the original version of the 386i's
SunOS, it was sped up in SunOS Version 4.0.2.  There are problems with the
386i (primarily with Sun's support of the machine); however there are
probems with every Sun (and computers by other manufacturers) as may be
noticed in SunSpots Digest.  DOS emulation on other Sun computers has been
slower.  The professional manuscripting program developed at Stanford,
SCORE, should run under DOS.  You can usually get a good deal on a used
Sun386i.  Apparently Peter Langston developed and collected a good bit of
UNIX MIDI software for the Sun386i while he was at Bellcore (a division of
AT&T?); but I don't know how to reach him these days.

I too would like to hear about other music and audio software and hardware
for the Sun computers.