28 Jan
2010
28 Jan
'10
5:40 p.m.
On Thu, 28 Jan 2010, David McClanahan wrote:
Who wants a DAW. I'd be happy a while with a
stable minimoog emulator. The
Bristol has that and CS80(descendant of Yamaha's GX-1). It'd be cool just to
have a stable, glitch a day, analog-like synth such as these. As it is now
Well, knock yourself out. Make us all proud!
with Ubuntu's Studio packages, Bristol locks up
and then locks up the
operating system as does Zyn. FluidSynth works but will glitch quite a bit.
As Torben said, Bristol and Zyn are well-known to be
programmed in a manner that is NOT RT-safe... even if the OS
is RT-safe.
Meanwhile, lots of folks here are getting good performance
with Linux audio without a ton of fiddling.
Well there are affordable synths(mostly wavetable
ones) that don't appear
any more sophisticated hardware-wise than a PC. The PC may be such a
Correct. And the entire OS and hardware is dedicated to the
task of synth. And the hardware is generally
application-specific. In fact, most of your hardware synths
(whether analog or digital) are build around several
application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) that act as
co-processors for specific tasks (whether an oscillator or
DSP).
GNU/Linux, on the other hand, is a general-purpose,
multi-tasking operating system for non-specific hardware.
Most people coming to Linux are /not/ looking for an OS to
turn their PC into a dedicated synth.
So, duh, the -rt kernels for a desktop OS are not fit to be
used for a safety-critical control system than needs HRT.
For that sort of application, you need a customized version
of Linux fine-tuned for the hardware.
Why hasn't it happened, yet? Because most folks don't want
this from Linux. And those that /do/ realize that it is
hardware specific, and you /will/ have to roll your own OS
(e.g. Korg, Harrison Consoles). You can't just download
"KewlSynthOS" and run it, because there are several
prerequisite hardware components to make the system run
properly (whether off-the-shelf or home-grown).
Well I understand it from that perspective, but for a
performance
instrument I would think no buffering would be the ideal.
No buffering? We're talking about DIGITAL signal
processing, right? Are you serious?
-gabriel