10 Feb
2010
10 Feb
'10
2:33 p.m.
On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 20:30 +0100, Emanuel Rumpf wrote:
I've been working for a while in a piece for real-time synthesis /
sample playback and a piano controller (and pedals, etc, etc). I
normally play with my laptop, a dual core lenovo t61 running the latest
rt patched kernel and: linuxsampler at 96 voices max (4 different piano
samples), two instances of the supercollider synthesis engine doing
synthesis and spatialization, a program in supercollider controlling the
whole thing (including the GUI feedback screen for the performer),
jconvolver for convolution reverb and ambdec for ambisonics decoding.
All with a PCMCIA RME card and a Multiface running at 128x2 48KHz.
It can glitch but if it does it is because it has actually run out of
cpu (and I have had a couple of instances in rehearsal where I'm playing
textures so thick that the supercollider scheduling queue has filled up
with not so good results, argh :-)
All in all quite reliable (I played an earlier version of the piece in
last year's LAC).
-- Fernando
Interesting, although uneligible for my laptop..
2010/2/4 Arnold Krille <arnold(a)arnoldarts.de>de>:
> On Thursday 04 February 2010 18:50:28 Emanuel Rumpf wrote:
>> Has anyone ever played a plugin in realtime ( live )...
>> ...and I don't mean a one-finger melody, but a mutli-polyphonic piano
>> piece, eventually with sustain held down, which resulted in about 20 to 40
>> simultaneusly processed voices.
Yes.
Yes, I have. I
believe Ken Restivo, Atte Andre Jensen and many others too.
Reliably ? At a latency below 10 ms ?
Which synth ? I don't intend to mistrust you, but I remain
disbelieving for now. :-)
Linuxsampler is well written and reliable, but
when playing intensely, it xran too here. We have dedicated hardware for graphics, why not for
audio ?
There are manufacturers selling dedicated PCI-cards to do VST-plugin work and
free your cpu of that.
But whats the purpose of running some piece of
(almost)
generic software on generic platforms, when you still need specialised
hardware?
Being generic means (for the platform) to support a bunch of
specialised applications.
It doesn't bother much to buy additional hardware, in order to make
the system more generic, but not being able to make it
generic enough for being able to use it for a cerain specialised application.
We are used to extend the systems usability through additional peripherials
such as graphic-cards, audio-cards, printers....
That's what has made it a success.
Of course you can buy dedicated audio-hardware.
Its called keyboards and
synths and mixers and effects (outboard).
These make me lose the generality.
But isn't it easier to have it all in
software and carry it around on your
pc/laptop/usb-stick?
It absolutely would, if it gave me the same reliability.
Please give us some pointers to help you improve
performance on your definitely
un-tuned and probably mis-configured system before making our work bad in
general.
I'm not making it bad. I'm even searching for a way to
make it more valueable by making it more usable.
I don't think my system is so badly configured - how to measure ?
It's not the most recent hardware, I admit.
Have fun,
Thanks