[LAT] Setting up a performance synth

[David McClanahan]

Hi,

I'm trying get a Dell 7000 laptop(with about a 3G harddrive) to be a
synthesizer. Yes it's older(How old is tooo old?) Yes its slower(How slow is
too slow?) But it's what I've got and I'm not convinced it can't do the job
yet.

Anyway when I say "synthesizer", I mean

1. It's tweakable(like a minimoog etc) as in has ADSR, filters, and the like
that can be controlled(via midi) on the fly.

2. It doesn't crack and wheeze(or xrun all over me)

3. It's doesn't lock up when I bend over to tie my shoes.

4. It's midi controllable

I have managed to install Ubuntu and crippled piece of Ubuntu Studio(Karma I
think). I say that it's crippled because a full installation took up more
disk space than I had so I took some things off(using the normal packaging
mechanisms 'apt' etc). The realtime kernel is still present however along
with the Jack stuff. The sound works-I can play an mp3.

But soft synths like Bristol either don't work or lock up the machine. I
managed to get Bristol to partially work by starting the network loop
interface, but even then it was sluggish and eventually locked up the whole
machine. Same goes for PD and Zyn.

Fluidsynth(qsynth) works but it's pretty easy to cause xruns(and the pops).

So here's my question/comment.

Is it worth trying to get something working on this(or another)
distribution?

I'd like to just get something working but these distribution(Puredyne,
Ubuntu Studio, etc) seem to have a heavy footprint and they don't seem very
configurable. Ubuntu seems heavily coupled to GNOME, PulseAudio, LASH and
stuff for which I have no clue what they're for. As a side question, from
the perspective of sound synthesis, is Jack useful? It seems to provide
interprocess communication between audio apps. I can see it being useful if
you have multiple apps talking audio to each other. But if you have a single
process soft synth and ALSA what's on top of the hardware how does Jack
help?  m-dist might be an exception. It worked on my desktop but locked up
on my laptops.

OR would it be better to build a dedicated synth on a hard realtime
platform.

Has anyone just adapted Linux to just boot a computer as a dedicated
synthbox(or engine) with little or no other I/O concerns to get in the way?
I don't care if I can play Space Invaders and write my resume at the same
time. I've got a Roland JV1010 tone box and I doubt it has 10th of the
processing power or memory of the Dell and yet it doesn't crack or wheeze. I
don't even care if it drove the display. As long as it acted like a stable
hardware synth and was midi controllable I could get along. Maybe such a
thing already is out there.  I've looked but had no success.
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