[linux-audio-user] Re: B3 emulator

[Ken Restivo]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Mar 20, 2007 at 02:18:58PM +0000, philicorda wrote:
> 
> > From: Ken Restivo <ken at restivo.org>
> > Subject: [linux-audio-user] Free-as-in-freedom B3, other than Bristol?
> > To: linux-audio-user at music.columbia.edu
> > Message-ID: <20070320054905.GC14350 at bc.restivo.org>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> > 
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> > 
> > Is there such a thing as a free-as-in-freedom alternative (no matter how paltry) to the Native Instruments "B4"?
> > 
> > I tried Bristol and... it looks gorgeous but IMHO sounds way too thin and cheezy.
> > 
> > There seem to be dozens of soundfonts out there with B3 sounds, but the ones I've tried so far aren't very good. The free GigaSampler/LinuxSampler B3 samples I've found are even worse.
> > 
> > If there's no good tonewheel simulator, are there any recommended good free soundfonts of B3 sounds? Samples made with Leslie are useless to me, since I'll simulate that using LADSPA plugins. If I go the soundfont route, I'd just need samples of the organ line-out.
> 
> 
> Beatrix is worth a go:
> http://people.dsv.su.se/~fk/beatrix_home.html

Hmm. Not only does it lack JACK support, but it doesn't even have ALSA support, apparently. 

It might be fun to try it out anyway, but it won't run without OSS /dev/midiX stuff.

> 
> Not a 'free' licence, but it runs on Linux and includes source code.
> 

Very odd indeed; I'll call it the "close-to-the-chest license". At least he provides source though.

I suppose I could invest a few days of work and hack up a patch that'd add ALSA and JACK client support, but it looks from his blog like he's already added ALSA support, but hasn't "released" it yet. 

Last release was 3 years ago, so I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath. Alas, if it were a more conventional Open Source projects (i.e. with a SourceForge/GNA/Savannah site, public SVN repository, etc.) it might have attracted developers or at least patches, and would be farther along now, and I could just "svn up" it and build it to try it out (as I've done with, say, ingen).

I'm also not clear whether his stuff is RT safe either, and whether it'd break if JACK-ified. Nice thing about higher-level languages (ChucK, SuperCollider, CSound) is that a lot of that plumbing is already taken care of.

His code is nice and clean though. And, joy of joys, it's in blessed, ordinary C (not C++)! Also, he wisely moves a lot of functionality out of the codebase and into the config files. And I love the approach of just eschewing the GUI entirely, and doing everything through MIDI program changes and control surfaces instead. So it could be a nice package.

I've gotta wonder if it might be more productive to just hack up a no-frills tonewheel emulator in ChucK. I'm not sure I'd need to go to the level of detail in modelling that he's gone to (i.e. including the leakage from terminal strips), nor extra things like distortion, reverb, or Leslie simulation since those are available through LADSPA.


- -ken
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFGAHC8e8HF+6xeOIcRAsJZAKCaXgUxdm3HPDazgLwfx9qWKdg4zwCg+ysg
EO/XtgQesYtGFYhgHW4M1CE=
=8fji
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----