...nwood...

Last night I finally achieved a goal I've been doggedly pursuing for - well let's just say "too long." I've got Band-in-a-Box (BIAB) running under Wine (MS Windows emulation) in Ubuntu 7.10. I've been dual-booting Windows and Linux on my IBM Thinkpad T40 for quite a while. One of the main reason I've needed to subject myself to the ugly and soul-less world of Microsoft has been to use BIAB.

Here's what I did to get things running smoothly:

Install Wine:

sudo apt-get install wine

Configure Wine:

winecfg  #it might take a min or two to start!

In the Wine Configuration pane choose the Application Tab highlight Default Settings and change the Windows select menu to "Windows XP." Although this isn't required for BIAB, this is probably the setting you want.

While we're here, let's check the settings in the Audio tab. Assuming you are on Ubuntu 7.10, you want only the ALSA box checked. The rest of the settings should be at their defaults. When you click the Test Sound button you should hear a welcoming "boop!"

Install Band-in-a-Box:

Insert your BIAB CD or know the path to the BIAB setup.exe if you downloaded the installer. Invoke the installer using Wine. For me the command is:

wine /media/cdrom/setup.exe

The installer wizard should appear. Make your choices and let it install. Once installation is done you should find BIAB under Ubuntu's Applications > Wine > Programs > Band-in-a-Box

Check this page to see if there are any updates available for the version of BIAB you've just installed. If so, download the patch and run it:

wine [path to patch.exe]

(Optional) Install Roland Virtual Sound Canvas Dxi. This installer is on your CD. If you've downloaded a purchased version of BIAB, there should be a way to download this installer from PG Music. This software is useful for converting a BIAB song file to a WAV so that you can encode it as an OGG or MP3 and put it on your digital media player. There are other ways of accomplishing this, of course.

Start BIAB:

Fire up Wine/BIAB. Do this from the console because there is a good change you'll get some errors the first couple of times. For me the command is:

wine ~/.wine/c_drive/bb/bbw.exe

If BIAB starts, great! If it doesn't look at the output in the console. On my first two attempts I got messages about missing dlls they were wmvcore.dll and wmvasf.dll respectively. The best way to solve this problem is to copy the needed dlls from a Windows XP (since that's what we choose in winecfg) box. Since I dual boot and Ubuntu mounts my XP hard drive, all I had to do was

cp /media/sda1/WINDOWS/system32/wmvcore.dll /home/brian/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32
cp /media/sda1/WINDOWS/system32/wmasf.dll /home/brian/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32

I would recommend not using websites like www.dll-files.com to get these files. Some of their dlls didn't work for me.

I also copied this file, but am not sure if it is required:

cp /media/sda1/WINDOWS/system32/gdiplus.dll ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32/

Once you've copied the necessary dlls, you should be able to start BIAB either from the Applications menu or from the console:

wine ~/.wine/c_drive/bb/bbw.exe

Cool! You see the UI. You probably don't hear anything when you play a file. If you can play a file. You're done, go learn Confirmation in all 12 keys.

Install Timidity:

I used these great instructions.

I added these additional params to /etc/default/timidity:

TIM_ALSASEQPARAMS="-iA -B2,8 -Os1l -s 44100"

It should work now:

To be on the safe side close Wine/BIAB if it's open.

Make sure Timidity is running:

brian@diz:~$ ps -elf |grep -i timidity
5 S root      5159     1 36  75   0 -  5099 -      19:47 ?        01:14:35 /usr/bin/timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os1l -s 44100 -iAD

Start BIAB again and type Ctrl + E for Options and then Alt + D for Midi Driver.
In Midi Output driver, you should see "Wine Midi Mapper." Select this. (Note: The Driver Wizard Piano Test doesn't work for me. Don't worry about this.) Click OK. Close the Preferences dialog. Click play and you should have sound.

Notes:

If after waking from sleep BIAB sound stops working. To fix simply re-select the Wine Midi Mapper as described above.

If your sound is choppy, you want to experiment with the fragment size in ALSASEQPARAMS. Try using values like -B4,11 or also -B8,10 -B8,11. To experiment with this you will need to find the pid of the timidity process and 'sudo kill -9' it. (kill -1 doesn't do it for me.) Then restart timidity with new params from the command line. I don't think that you need to restart BIAB each time.