Comment 13 for bug 347307

Reinstalled Fluidsynth 1.09 from your PPA David and called a .mid file using the following:-

fluidsynth ~/Guitar/Soundfonts/32MbGMStereo.sf2 ~/snooker.mid -a alsa o audio.alsa.device=plughw:0

also used :-

fluidsynth ~/Guitar/Soundfonts/32MbGMStereo.sf2 ~/snooker.mid -a alsa

First the bad news I got the following errors before playback from both files :-

dave@dave-laptop:~$ fluidsynth ~/Guitar/Soundfonts/32MbGMStereo.sf2 ~/snooker.mid -a alsa
lash_open_socket: could not connect to host 'localhost', service '14541'
lash_comm_connect_to_server: could not create server connection
lash_open_socket: could not connect to host 'localhost', service '14541'
lash_comm_connect_to_server: could not create server connection
lash_open_socket: could not connect to host 'localhost', service '14541'
lash_comm_connect_to_server: could not create server connection
lash_open_socket: could not connect to host 'localhost', service '14541'
lash_comm_connect_to_server: could not create server connection
lash_open_socket: could not connect to host 'localhost', service '14541'
lash_comm_connect_to_server: could not create server connection
lash_open_socket: could not connect to host 'localhost', service '14541'
lash_comm_connect_to_server: could not create server connection
lash_init: could not connect to server 'localhost' - disabling LASH
fluidsynth: warning: Failed to pin the sample data to RAM; swapping is possible.
fluidsynth: ALSA driver: Using format s16, rw, interleaved
FluidSynth version 1.0.9
Copyright (C) 2000-2006 Peter Hanappe and others.
Distributed under the LGPL license.
SoundFont(R) is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc.

Type 'help' for information on commands and 'help help' for help topics.

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But now the good news both files played at first well with no distortion or timing errors.
So it would appear to me that pulseaudio and dmix are not causing problems.

The only playback issue seemed display screen related.
When I switched screens "ctrl alt left arrow" or scrolled the screen the distortion reapeared for the duration of the screen interuption.
This is another problem I have when using tuxguitar-fluidsynth 1.08 as a plugin to tuxguitar as a playback tool the output goes all distorted with screen activity.

I have not tried tuxguitar-fluidsynth 1.09 with Tuxguitar as I dont have Jack installed or is there a way to force alsa playback with tuxguitar-fluidsynth.

Fluidsynth 1.09 would require a change in the way packages are installed for tuxguitar.
At the moment if tuxguitar and tuxguitar-fluidsyth are installed with apt-get or synaptic, fluidsynth 1.08 and libfluidsynth1 (1.08) are loaded as dependencies. Its then just a case of pointing tuxguitar at a soundfont for playback. With fluidsynth 1.09 installation of Jack or an alsa work around would be necessary.