midi sound quality help needed

[Kenneth Wolcott]

HI All;

  This is really not a Lilypond question, but I'm sure you have some
helpful information, as you always do :-)

  midi sound quality help needed

  I'm on a Mac.

  I'm using Lilypond 2.22.0 via MacPorts.

  I'm using Garageband as my midi player, with Timidity (from home
brew) as an alternative.

  I don't do rock music, synthesizers, sound effects, etc.  I do
traditional classical music.  I do some pop, and folks music, but in a
classical manner...

  I'm not asking for a professional live performance output quality
from midi, but most often the midi output sounds really bad.

  Now here's an interesting twist to the story.

  I installed Alda from home brew which is a more rudimentary
text-based musical scoring system.  I also installed the suggested
alternative soundfont (FluidR3).

  The Alda coding is much more rudimentary than what Lilypond offers,
so I'm not in any way going to abandon Lilypond!!!

  But the sound quality of what comes out of playing the Alda scripts
is phenomenal (!) compared to what I get out of GarageBand and/or
Timidity.  I've even tried MidiAndMusicXmlPlayer as an alternative
midi player.

  How do I improve my midi output quality?

Thanks in advance for your advice,
Ken Wolcott