[LAU] QXGEdit (was Re: Suzuki QC1 Qchord Digital Songcard Guitar)

[Niels Mayer]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:59 AM, Rui Nuno Capela <rncbc at rncbc.org> wrote:

> On 05/08/2010 05:03 PM, Niels Mayer wrote:
>
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=200469896509&Category=3701&_trkparms=algo%3DLVI%26its%3DI%26otn%3D1#ht_1151wt_1029
>  )
> http://qxgedit.sourceforge.net .
>
> speaking of which, had you any success?
>

Yes!

I just got the DB-60XG yesterday, and today it's plugged into a Dynex
DX-SC51 running on Fedora12 alongside qxgedit and rosegarden.

Oh, and the qchord works beautifully with it too. (It never sounded so good,
with the ability to warp out the sounds via qxgedit).

qxgedit works well but needs a few features: (or I need a clue).
(1) Can qxgedit "read" the db50xg values so as to set all it's dials and
voice presets to whatever is currently setup on the DB50XG card? (There's
probably no "dump" on the card, right, is there even a MIDI output??)
(1.1) Alternately, is there a way to extract the sysex/control information
from an XG MIDI file (e.g. if I want to copy the "voicing" of an existing
song) so that qxgedit can be set to edit the values that are playing?
(1.2) Another alternative -- have qxgedit "track" sysex/control changes from
the ALSA midi source. I.e. if I sent rosegarden output to qxgedit input, the
presets should set to whatever's in the track, and the dials should track
whatever changes are going on in the track.... from their given positions
"riding" the playing midi file, they can be grabbed, which overrides what
they're "reading" and instead outputs a midi change.
(2) A way of hooking it up to a control surface (but then again, maybe
there's so magic I missed in hooking up the ALSA midi in of qxgedit??).
SInce there's so
many things to control, a way of automapping s.t. you can click-and-hold a
control, while jiggling a slider on the control surface. Once that's done,
you've bound the slider to the qxgedit control parameter....
(3) Feature request -- support for db60xg's analog input (e.g. for vocoding,
or using voice to modulate parameters)
  http://www.studio4all.de/htmle/main96.html
http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-21634-175.html

W/r/t the db50xg: can see now why people like these so much (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_XG )  They sound great! It's like
a Yamaha keyboard without the keyboard and for only $20.00! Plus I can now
listen to http://www.megatrade.ru/Russian/Midi.html in their full glory (had
to test it out, now that I have something that'll play XG... doh, but why
did I listen to that stupid Boney-M remix??). ............ I hope the db60xg
lasts, as one of the chips on there runs quite hot (they claim the board
draws 2w -- and it's all going to one chip).

..................................................................

The main issue/disappointment I have is with the $5.00  Dynex dx-sc51
soundcard I have the db60xg plugged into (because it has a wavetable header
for the db60xg). There's no way to get all this glorious XG'ness out to
SPDIF. And there's no obvious way to record the sound output from this card
-- other than looping back 1/4" stereo analog output back to the line-in.
Alas the lack of working  SPDIF out on this card, as well as decent HW-in
routing options makes it impossible to send the output of this card through
the mixer and out to SPDIF. I can make SPDIF output the noises from the
microphone when SPDIF0 is set to  "H/W In 0" or "H/W In 1" but no other
sound sources come out of SPDIF including the main PCM output. I wish
Envy24control worked on this card as it lacks input->output routing for
monitoring.

Finally, Linux itself doesn't like this card much despite the statement on
http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Ice1724#Dynex_DX-SC51;

> Linux seems to really like this card. AC3 and DTS passthrough out the
> optical jack works perfectly, and I can dump stereo audio into it no
> problem. I get full 5.1 sound out of the analog jacks too. Haven't tried
> capture or the headphone jack, mainly because I bought this card
> specifically for an HTPC.


The first issue is this: (the chip is actually a Via 1723 "tremor" not the
Via 1724 available in the Audiophile 196 and ESI Maya/Juli at ....

> ICE1724 0000:01:07.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ
> 19

ice1724: No matching model found for ID 0xc3140517

ice1724: Invalid EEPROM version 1


Attempting to fix this in /etc/modprobe.d with a "model=" setting is not
possible:
http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txtlists
"revo51, revo71, amp2000, prodigy71, prodigy71lt, prodigy71xt,
prodigy71hifi, prodigyhd2, prodigy192, juli, aureon51, aureon71, universe,
ap192, k8x800, phase22, phase28, ms300, av710, se200pci,
se90pci, fortissimo4, sn25p, WT192M, maya44" -- no dx-sc51.

The card comes up as:

> 01:07.0 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies Inc. VT1720/24
> [Envy24PT/HT] PCI Multi-Channel Audio Controller (rev 01)


The second issue: there's no way of getting SPDIF output working with this
card. In jack, the card shows up as two channels in, and two channels out.
In alsa, aplay -L gives:

front:CARD=ICE1724,DEV=0

    ICEnsemble ICE1724, ICE1724

    Front speakers

surround40:CARD=ICE1724,DEV=0

    ICEnsemble ICE1724, ICE1724

    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers

...

iec958:CARD=ICE1724,DEV=0

    ICEnsemble ICE1724, ICE1724

    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output


But none of them work.

Any suggestions anybody??? Googling indicates this issue is somewhat
pervasive, and affects a few cards, and nobody indicates a good solution.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=990351 seems the most promising.

Once I get the soundcard PCM out working properly. I'll also need to
understand how that output is routed to the db60xg's analog input. Although
I guess I could put my RMS Multimeter on the appropriate pins on the db60xg
and see if they're getting a test tone sent to the PCM...

-- Niels
http://nielsmayer.com
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