So, I installed timidity + sound fonts and was experimenting with it. Initially I only get sound via esd or oss output, then turned out I can add '-s 48000' switch to both command line and Alsa sequencer mode - and now it plays in TDE midi application, aplaymidi, or even xmms! http://www.develia.org/files/amidi-plug-0.7.tar.bz2 Nice to have old sites/software still around .... I wonder if many modern (but alsa-based) systems suffer from it? I think I saw this bug (as no sound/heavily distorted first seconds of sound) on both desktop and laptop.