Linux-audio-dev June 2005

linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org

120 participants
101 discussions

[linux-audio-dev] Software controller for homemade edrums

by Olivier Guilyardi

Hi, Assembling piezo microphones, cardboard, foam, wood and a cymbal stand, I have just made my first DIY electronic pads. Actually it's electronic percussions, because I will play these mostly with hands. I've found a few sites about DIY "edrums" (1), as well as some detailed documentation about how to build a trigger-to-midi hardware controller (2). But since I started this little project, I've been thinking about plugging the piezo mikes directly into my soundcard inputs. My first tests are very good : the signal is clean, and indicates faithfully how hard the pads get hit. I am now about to code a software controller to : 1 - either interprete the signal and produce midi (or OSC) events 2 - or interprete the signal, and play samples by itself, in a standalone manner (no midi) I tend to prefer the second option, for the following reasons (criticism welcome) : - I want to reduce latency _as_much_as_possible_ (keeping the rythm is hard enough ;-). To me, the midi layer introduces useless buffers - I'd like the whole thing to use minimal resources, so that I can run it on old hardware (simple boxes to be carried in studios and on stage). In this regard, a small tool built upon Alsa, which run without any sound server or midi layer, looks to me as the lightest solution - I don't want to use harware expanders, such as the one that is built into my soundcard. I want to play samples. With midi, I would then need a such tool as Timidity, which is pretty heavy according to my latest tests. Jtrigger seems lighter (http://sparked.zadzmo.org/jtrigger), but it relies on Jack : I like Jack, but it seems too heavy to me, for this specific job. - In regard to clicks and other noises, I believe a lightweight application running on a dedicated barebone Linux system is more reliable than a realtime thread with a complex layer as Jack, especially on slow hardware. Are these good/coherent reasons to you ? Do you have any other advice ? Is there already some software that could help me, or some pieces I could reuse, to achieve any part of this process ? Best regards References : (1) http://edrum.for.free.fr (2) http://www.midibox.org/edrum -- og

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Linux-audio-dev June 2005