options for midi work w/ lmms

[conathan]

I was looking to start tinkering with an external keyboard and lmms, but it looks like my aging Sound Blaster live no longer has a PCI Slot.

browsing the far reaches of the internet, it looks like the only modern soundcard chipset that has MIDI is the Sound Blaster X-FI. It looked like driver support for linux might be iffy for this chip unfortunately...

I wanted to avoid a USB based interface, and having ASIO wouldn't hurt for future work, but all the options that would work well are still only in pci format.

[RealNC]

You do not need a MIDI-capable sound card. I'm using an M-Audio USB MIDI controller with a SoundBlaster Live 24-bit PCI (no MIDI). LMMS works perfectly.

When you buy a USB MIDI controller, just pay attention that it is "class compliant", meaning no drivers are needed and ALSA will support it out of the box. For reference, I'm using an M-Audio Oxygen and it works without issues.

[crazycheese]

I was looking to start tinkering with an external keyboard and lmms, but it looks like my aging Sound Blaster live no longer has a PCI Slot.

browsing the far reaches of the internet, it looks like the only modern soundcard chipset that has MIDI is the Sound Blaster X-FI. It looked like driver support for linux might be iffy for this chip unfortunately...

I wanted to avoid a USB based interface, and having ASIO wouldn't hurt for future work, but all the options that would work well are still only in pci format.

Asus Sonar D2 is what you need.
People reported it to work with ALSA.

[crazycheese]

I was looking to start tinkering with an external keyboard and lmms, but it looks like my aging Sound Blaster live no longer has a PCI Slot.

browsing the far reaches of the internet, it looks like the only modern soundcard chipset that has MIDI is the Sound Blaster X-FI. It looked like driver support for linux might be iffy for this chip unfortunately...

I wanted to avoid a USB based interface, and having ASIO wouldn't hurt for future work, but all the options that would work well are still only in pci format.

Also, cards from M-Audio are exceptionally good. Note that they are not PC-Audio(which is dead, divided between creative, build-in crap and china junk), but more "Audio Interface".
Good list: http://geizhals.at/eu/?cat=djaudioi
Note, by far not all work on ALSA, ask before you buy.