I (just) upgraded from 11.4 to 11.10 and noticed some differences in the behavior of timidity.

I used to (11.4) exectute >timidity midifile.midi without running jackd, and thus using alsa (or pulseaudio?) to produce sound from midi files.

Now having upgraded, this does not work -- currently this command just freezes if jack is not running.

If jack is running, it does work but there is an initial audio glitch (noise burst at the start of playback, analogous to the sound of a plug being inserted) that I'd rather not have to deal with.

All the indications that I have is that in 11.10 timidity will only work (albeit glitchy) with jack on, whereas in 11.4 it did not require this.

• Is there any way to restore timidity's non-jack operation in 11.10?
• Is there a way to get rid of the audio glitch in with jack operation?
• Overall, what underlying changes in these programs and the audio infrastructure are behind this?