Actually Qsynth all works PERFECTLY fine when I run as root ... but that's bloody dangerous, especially when hooked live to the net... :-)

Jack is a clever attempt to provide a virtual jack patch board and can be very useful (multiple outputs from a single input, patching effects processors back and forth, etc) - it helps to run jackd - the jack demon - in the background but jack/qsynth wants to run as a real time scheduling app - which can preclude 'nornmal' Linux scheduling - unless you have a specific dedicated box just for your synth.

Maybe some su commands (to run the package safely as root) are needed somewhere ... :-)

Movie Player (this version) did not link to or suggest what was needed - so I will have to look around... a brief search thru the install library revealed nothing obvious.


But I can happily play midi files (as per Mudcat ones here) just thru Timidity - no need for a full synth for that :-)