A simple software piano that works with Pipewire out-of-the-box?

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I need a simple piano or electric piano sound to be played from a MIDI keyboard while being able to listen to other sounds from browser and so on.
On other systems I used Pianoteq + JACK to do this, but the only other option in Pianoteq is ALSA and when I choose it no other software con output audio.
I have also tried installing pipewire-jack but it requires to uninstall jack2 and and lib32-jack2, and if I try to uninstall them Octopi wants to uninstall something like more than 300 packages.
Can you please suggest a solution to give my MIDI keyboard a (even low quality) piano sound?

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300 packages is probably a lot more than just JACK audio packages

If you still want to replace JACK with Pipewire I suggest using pamac to install pipewire-jack instead of octopi, That might be able to replace jack2 without removing additional packages

There are not many musicians and audio-producers here on a regular basis so it may be better to ask about this on linuxmusicians.com forum. There should be some pianoteq users and musicians who may be able to help with alternatives

ALSA is the optimal choice for lowest latency and simplicity for some pro-audio use-cases (Ardour recommends using ALSA rather than JACK)
Playback to ALSA usually does take exclusive control of an audio device. There is a dmix plugin for ALSA to share a device, but most users use PulseAudio or PipeWire for dealing with multiple audio streams

Do you have any problem using JACK on Manjaro?
Manjaro is not configured to run JACK after installing like UbuntuStudio or AVLinux
For other distributions there is a script to check system configuration – rtcqs

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Thanks!

Anyway, in Pianoteq, I found «PipeWire Media Server» is among the Audio output options.
It was enough to select it instead of my real soundcard to make it work together with other softwares’ audio.

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If the steps you put here fixed your issue, please click the “solution” button on the post to help others find it easier.

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Well not really: this solution works for me, but nobody pointed out a simple software instrument alternative (Pianoteq is a proprietary solution and it works in a limited way unless you buy it). Should I mark my answer as a solution anyway?

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If it resolved the underlying issue, even if that is not the explicit issue stated in the question, it is best to mark as resolved. Part of the purpose is to help others find your answer (and this may be what they are looking for even if they do not know it), but the other purpose is to help forum members know if you still require help.

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I do not use synthesiser plugins much at the moment

I have used linuxsampler from community repository with samples from pianobook, but not the piano samples

I have seen AUR package compiano-git suggested by other musicians
Also No Budget Orchestra Plugins are available in LV2 format and also as standalone executables that do not need a DAW or plugin host

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Ranked by vote, should get you started. 15 Best Free and Open Source Linux Synthesizers (Updated 2023) - LinuxLinks

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