MIDI (and audio) on freeBSD

[Jan Christian Meyer]

> After some troubles, and a Kernel recompilation with the option "device
> pcm", I found in /dev directory lots of devices related to sound. KDE
> still does not sound at all: it looks for a /dev/dsp device that does
> not exists; a /dev/dsp0.0 exists instead, but I haven't found the way to
> instruct KDE to load the right device.

Even if /dev/dsp does not appear when you list the contents of /dev, under 
FBSD 5.X it should still magically appear when something tries to access it, 
if I've understood correctly. That is how my 5.1-machines behave anyway. With 
this in mind, something is apparently fishy in your sound system - without 
being wizardly enough to say what is up, I would not bet on it working out 
even if you reconfigure the device.

If you still want to try, though, you can point the KDE sound system (aRts) to 
a specific device by enabling the "Use custom sound device" setting in the 
KDE control center. It can be found under the "Sound I/O" tab in 
Sound & Multimedia -> Sound System.

Good luck,
 -Jan Christian