Phoenix.pm: Playing MIDI with Perl on Windows

[Doug Miles]

Chris Krum wrote:
>>Hey all!
>>
>>I'm looking for a solution to play MIDI files from Perl on Windows.  I'm
>>already aware of Win32API::MIDI on CPAN, but it requires Visual C++ to
>>compile, and I don't have that available.  There are other MIDI modules
>>on CPAN, but they appear to be concerned with generating/reading/munging
>>MIDI.  I was wondering if there is a way to do it using Win32::OLE.  I'm
>>woefully (or blissfully) ignorant of the Windows API, so any ideas are
>>appreciated.  Thanks!
>>
> 
> I'm also interested in playing midi from perl. Here are a few questions to
> help me understand your situation better.
> 
> Does this have to be a pure perl solution? Could you use a rendering engine
> like Timidity++ to render the midi to a wave file and output that to the
> soundcard? Are you restricted to midi or could you use something like SAOL?
> Is your app generating the midi files or does it pull them from a file
> system somewhere? Do you need to play the midi notes in realtime (like
> creating your own midi instrument) or are they stored in files and played
> back later?

Unfortunately, I can't answer all of those questions right now.  I 
should be getting more information soon.  What I did find was 
Win32::MCI::Basic.  I was excited at first, because it worked fine on my 
WinME box (boo, hiss :) ), but have since discovered that it doesn't 
work on Win2000 (and possibly all NT based systems - just a guess).  I'm 
wondering if the MCI API was removed in NT.  I haven't finished with my 
research yet.

All of that being said, I might be able to use mp3 or wav files instead, 
so if anyone has any suggestions on playing those under windows, feel 
free. :)