How does one playback MIDI files on Mac OS X?

Question

I’m on Mac OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite and in the past, I used VLC Media Player in combination with FluidSynth to play back MIDI sound files, but according to the answer to this question, this option is no longer viable. As QuickTime Player does not support MIDI playback, either, as it seems, I am looking for a method to play MIDI files, preferably not using GarageBand, which seems to be the only software on my computer that actually supports the MIDI file format.

What options, i. e. plug-ins, programs, etc., do I have to listen to MIDI on my Mac?

Solution 1

The recent VLC 3.0.0 has returned MIDI support and works on macOS.

Solution 2

In a terminal window:

brew install timidity; timidity yourfile.mid

If you don't have brew, get it here: https://brew.sh/

Solution 3

2022 UPDATE: I now use Cog for all my audio playback needs: https://cog.losno.co/ The latest versions have tons of midi options and support sound fonts too.

Historical answer (QuickTime 7 support is now gone from newer OSes):

Aria Maestosa looks a bit dodgy, couldn't open any of the midi files I downloaded... A better option is probably to install Quicktime 7, which supports MIDI, and still runs in Yosemite, check out http://osxdaily.com/2014/07/20/run-quicktime-player-7-in-mac-os-x/

I also discovered https://github.com/SamusAranX/MinimalMIDIPlayer recently. It is still very basic but the fact you can use custom sound fonts is promising. Hopefully the developer adds a global soundfont setting soon so you don't have to rename your soundfont to match the midi file you want to play.

Solution 4

Aria Maestosa does exactly what I need.

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Comments

[fixer1234]

Thanks for closing the loop on your question. However, link-only product recommendations aren't considered an answer; partly because it doesn't explain how to accomplish the solution (or even what makes it a good solution), and partly to distinguish it from spam. Please see meta.superuser.com/questions/5329/… for guidance on how to recommend software. Link-only product recommendations tend to attract downvotes and are usually deleted.

[George Profenza]

completely off-topic, that has got to be one of the best names for a software evah! :)

[Jess Riedel]

Agreed. Although Aria Maestosa worked for me on the midi file I wanted to play, I found Quicktime 7 to be a much easier and less bloated solution. FYI: Quicktime 7 runs without issue alongside Quicktime X.

[rraallvv]

It runs on Sierra too.

[zakinster]

And it still works perfectly in High Sierra too. This is the best solution I found so far to quickly play midi files before importing it in my DAW.

[Capsule]

And it supports custom sound fonts. Actually Quicktime did as well but since they removed the quicktime settings panel, you can't anymore so VLC definitely is the way to go from now.

[Peter W.]

Hi, I'm the developer of MinimalMIDIPlayer. If you found this answer via Google (like I just did), it now has soundfont support. Give it a try, it's probably exactly what you're looking for.

[lacostenycoder]

Nice find, and you might also wanna check out github.com/feross/timidity

[lacostenycoder]

However, as of today, VLC has much wider support of instruments. For example playing bitmidi.com/toto-africa-mid in timidity its missing a lot of sounds

[Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen]

QuickTime 7 is not supported under newest versions of MacOS.

[Capsule]

Thanks for pointing that out, I updated my answer to reflect the modern options