[linux-audio-user] Newbie question-- what can I do with just a PC keyboard, my Linux box, and a SB 16 PCI card?

[tim hall]

Last Saturday 19 June 2004 18:28, Mark Wilson was like:
> I don't have any sort of external MIDI equipment.
> Just as the subj. line indicates, a fairly ordinary PC
> setup, a few years out of date (Celeron 400MHz, 128 MB
> RAM, ATI Rage 128 card and SoundBlaster 16 PCI card).

I'm running a music system on a Celeron 600 + 192MB RAM and an onboard i810. 
It should be possible to do most things with this hardware, although you'll 
find yourself slightly underpowered when it comes to apps like Rosegarden4.

> With this setup, all I can figure out how to do so far
> is to use timidity to play MIDI files.  I can use
> Rosegarden to export my "scores" to a MIDI file, but I
> don't know how set up a virtual sequencer, or what
> /dev file to specify in Rosegarden's sequencer
> configuration. When I try to put in /dev/midi, *midi0,
> *sequencer, *audio, *dsp, *whatever, it tells me "no
> such device" or unable to access or something.

Rosegarden really needs JACK, which needs ALSA and you'll get best results 
with a kernel patched for low latency, realtime operation and all that. I use 
the AGNULA/DeMuDi packages, which more or less set themselves up, although 
you will need to tweak the settings for a low-spec system to make the most of 
what little resources you have. Think in terms of a digital 4-track and eight 
voice polyphony and no big delay-based effects patches. You may be able to 
figure how to do more with less as time goes on.

You can use VKeybd for MIDI input. If you have a soundblaster you can load 
soundfonts onto the card with a utility like sfxload, which should save some 
vital memory. MIDI sequencing is probably the most complicated and resource 
hungry thing to get working, it's worth looking at MusE & seq24 as well as 
Rosegarden, they all have different strengths in this arena and you will have 
to fiddle around a bit to get the results you want.

Other apps worth looking at for some quick, easy results are; Hydrogen - the 
nicest drum sequencer I've ever used, go easy on the LADSPA though ;) 
ecasound, command line multitracker. For softsynths, AmSynth, ZynAddSubFX 
(with the smallest oscillator size) and PureData. A brief skirmish through 
the tutorials of the latter will give you some idea of what your system is 
capable of.

> But this is not just a Rosegarden question -- will I
> be able to use any synthesizers or sequencers without
> a "real" device to specify?  Would the solution
> involve symlinks, or named pipes, or other things I've
> never yet explored?

The best way is to use JACK with the qjackctl interface. Once you find the 
settings that work on your machine - you won't be able to use the lowest 
latencies, but again with a bit of experimentation, you should be able to 
achieve some good results.

HTH & Have Fun.

tim hall