I think acid express does play them back.

but if you setup your audio mixer to record the "stereo" mode it will record whatever you hear on your speakers. MIDI included.

And, of course, how a MIDI file sounds is completely dependent on how you set up your computer to play it. The possibilities are infinite.

You may want to get it rendered into audio by a few people who have a very professional MIDI sound module.

If you have two computers you can do it. You can play your midi file with Windows Media Player. Outplug your speaker wire of computer 1into computer 2 where you have sound recorder ready to capture. Sound recorder is located at Start> All Programs> Accessories> Entertainment> Sound Recorder. This way you will be able to capture it digitally. Acid and Sound Forge are much more sophisticated.
Once you've captured it you can save it as a .wav file. Then transfer the file from where ever you saved it to, to the folder where you can access it from Vegas. The quality of the sound of the music depends on the sound card or sound module that you use. This can very from $29.00 Sound Blaster card to $1200 Yamaha Motif Sound Module. Of course both of these are extremes. The higher the price the nicer the nice. The average sound card will sound like midi tones you hear on your cell phone. So the need for a sound card or sound module. Any General Midi player should work.
If you plan to start playing MIDI files regularly that's a whole field all by itself. They are small files 21kb, but the time used per song of the wav file will determine the MB the file will be.

that's not true. Many "game" level sound cards support midi instruments & can sound very very well. Some let you load up custom instrument profiles. My old Sound Blaster AWE 32 had amazing midi play back capability.

I haven't heard cell-phone like midi sounds since the early '90's. It's gotten much better on all levels since then.

You can play midi files in Media Player and record it straight to the Vegas timeline, on the same computer. Some cheapish sound cards such as Audigy have surprisingly good sounds for some instruments, Usually better to use an external sound module though, or better still to use soft samples with suitable software.

Thanks for the information, one and all.

Jack

1. What steps are done to record from Media player to Vegas? I've never tried it.
2.The $29 Blaster card will play insturments but they don't sound like what you hear in ANY KIND of professional recording studio. I haven't bought a 32 or 64 Bit blaster card in years. But the last time I did it didn't cost $29.00. So much for progress.
3. When you hear the new cell phones sound great its not because they are playing midi files. They are playing wav or mp3 files. Midi files cannot play vocals. They play set of instructions like an old player piano. If the sound source is of good quality it will sound good. But if the sound source is GREAT, it makes the difference of what a Pro will use and what he will put his name on.

I am using a shareware software named Audio Compositor. It is able to render midi files to wav files with very high quality. Depending on your settings, rendering can take a few hours, but it is worth waiting, seen the output quality you will obtain. It also allows you to specifiy an external sf2 soundbank to utilise. I am using Fluid R3. With audio compositor used together with this soundbank, you really obtain very realistic souding results. Generally I use soundforge to apply an accoustic mirror (I am using Meyerson Concert Hall) to it for an even more realistic sounding result.