[LAU] Audigy too

[Batz]

Y-ellow Leigh 'n' all.
         Thanks for that.

At 06:23 PM 3/13/2011 +1100, Leigh Dyer wrote:

>Is there a reason you can't use software? Fluidsynth/Qsynth is
>efficient, sounds great, and will load any SoundFont file that you
>might've wanted to load on to your sound card's synth. I regularly use
>LinuxSampler, too, for Gigastudio and SFZ files.

For the record. No. Just that I've not been able to get this stuff running 
to any kind of level where I can even begin to test it's efficacy. Someone 
on this list suggested that the emu10k1 would be an alternative some months 
back so I've hedged my bets as it were.

Also for the record. The emu10k1 synth chip onboard the CreatiFlabs Audigy 
2 card is NOT a ROMpler. It is a sample playback engine. AKA a Wave Table 
Synth. And a relatively sophisticated one. In this case, it uses system RAM 
not ROM, and is also the basis of most of the EMU synths and samplers of 
that time. (probably still is.) Although the SoundFont format leaves 
something to be desired, it is usable and relatively robust. Note that this 
one chip also handles FX processing, routing, mixing. Has digital I/Os, SVF 
filters on every channel as well as DMA and it's own PCI interface.

An advantage of using dedicated hardware such as this is that it is 
relatively bullet proof. Removing at least 4 layers of software from the 
equation. (7 if you're also using a java based VM as your front-end.) 
Removing such a house of cards from a live performance always makes for a 
better, more confident gig IMHO. :)

However, this is linux we're talking about so one might expect things to be 
a whole lot more stable. So far, my experience has been that it is not.

Having said that. I re-installed KXstudio again last night and it seems to 
be actually working. Albeit, dog slow. In fact it's behavior in general is 
altogether different to the first time I tried installing it. Still, 
although I can bring Linux Sampler up, Jack won't connect to it. It won't 
see the ENVY24/DSP124 sound card either and certainly won't see the 
CreatiFlabs card. Though ALSA MIDI will see both. And the emu10K1 synth as 
well. It insists on using something called pulse audio. Whatever that is? 
But I recall someone saying that if pulse exists, nothing else will work. 
So I'm guessing it's time to move on.

Anyway, the whole thing is so slow you'd think it were running on a old 
pentium 90. I suspect it didn't even install the RT kernel. Judging by the 
number of Xruns reported.

So if there's a distro where all this actually works. Please let me know. 
I'm all ears.

Also, where can one get a suitable GM sample set to load into Linux sampler 
assuming I ever see it working? Need some banks to test it with. This is 
supposed to be automatic with things like an emu10K1 but evidently you need 
to fend for yourself with linux sampler?

Thanks in advance.

Be absolutely icebox.

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