Automatically turn MIDI files into .wav or .mp3

Question

I'm searching a tool that can be used in Python or via the command line (preferably Windows but Linux would also be okay) that returns a .wav or .mp3 file for a MIDI file.

What is the best choice for this task?

Answer 1

You can use TiMidity++:

• free and open source
• CLI
• Linux and Windows (although it seems to be painful to make it work on Windows, but maybe things have improved since then)
• can convert MIDI files into WAV files: timidity input.mid -Ow -o out.wav

Answer 2

You can use SoX - Sound eXchange:

• free and open source
• CLI
• cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc.)
• can convert MIDI file to WAV: sox -t raw -r 44100 -e signed -b 16 -c 1 raw_audio audio.wav

Answer 3

timidity + FFmpeg for MP3 output

And for MP3 conversion you can put it together with timidity + ffmpeg:

sudo apt install timidity ffmpeg
timidity MIDI_sample.mid -Ow -o - | ffmpeg -y -f wav -i - MIDI_sample.mp3

FluidSynth + FFmpeg

fluidsynth -a alsa -T raw -F - /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2 MIDI_sample.mid |
  ffmpeg -f s32le -i - MIDI_sample.mp3

Tested on Ubuntu 20.04, FluidSynth 2.1.1-2, timidity 2.14.0, and this MIDI file: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MIDI_sample.mid

Related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16295459/convert-midi-to-mp3

Answer 4

You can use SoundKonverter, which relies on FluidSynth and Timidity++ MIDI engines (you can manually switch between them) for converting MIDI to any audio format (Wav, MP3, AAC, Opus, etc.)
https://github.com/dfaust/soundkonverter/wiki/Installing-soundKonverter