[linux-audio-user] Rosegarden-4 or Muse or...

Rocco linuxmedia4 at netscape.net
Wed Jan 14 08:59:31 EST 2004


>>what midi-sequencer do you like on linux (with *.wav playing function)?

This only audio *and* midi program I used was muse. The midi part of the 
program is wonderful and even has "built-in" softsynths. I've never had 
success with the "live" (audio) recording capabilities. And the newest 
version just wouldn't compile on my computer.

I hear that Rosegarden-4 will be supporting syncing with other (jack 
transport aware) programs. My hope (if the audio capabilities of one of 
these midi programs don't pan out) is to sync Rosegarden-4 to ecasound 
(command line multitrack recorder) via jack transport functionality. And 
if that works, I will try using "tkeca" as the front end to ecasound so 
that I can move towards setting things up for some of my (non-computer) 
friends. This is all challenging, because I've only tried the jack 
transport features by syncronizing ecasound with ecasound. I can't wait 
to actually have something to sync up to ecasound other than a second 
running ecasound.

Until things pan out with being able to sync/record/playback *both* midi 
and "live" audio, I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing. I went 
out and bought a second soundblaster card. I have my soft synths passing 
thru the first card and use the second card for monitoring (I notice 
that with a soundblaster card, the "wave capture" need to be activated 
with alsamixer). I use ecasound, so I don't know how it would work with 
other mulitrack recorders, but the reason I have two cards is because 
when I use a soft synth, I want to be able to use effects like "echo" 
and have it come out of the earphones and *not* in the resulting audio 
file (so I can add effects during the final mix). And (so far) the only 
way I've been able to seperate the "dry" sound and the effects is to 
have the softsynth pass thru the first card (and record a sound file 
directly to the hard drive) and then have it monitored (with effects) to 
the second card. This sounds like a combersome set up, but it's easy now 
that I've got it all set up. And getting audio and midi to sync up 
wasn't any easier (in fact, I've *not* been succesful with it). So now I 
have synth tracs that are WAVS, and I record "live" instruments 
alongside them on other track.

Of course, to properly record drum tracks, one really need midi and live 
audio working together. I managed to get by this by panning one drum all 
the way to the left, the other all the way to the right and use ecasound 
to create two mono tracks at the same time. But then I can only play two 
drums at any one time (if I want to seperated them into their own 
seperate files). Think of the the two channels of your sound card (left 
and right) as a two track recorder.

Rocco




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