Linux-audio-user October 2004

linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org

153 participants
223 discussions

[linux-audio-user] Do I have a synth? :-/

by Alejandro Lopez

Hi Everyone, In the proccess of configuring the music studio so it has acceptable GM synthesis some way or another. Although I now have Timidity++ working very nicely as a soft synth, I'm trying to figure out if my soundcard has a synth I could use instead in order to free up some useful CPU cycles. My apologies in advance for not knowing what my f*cking hardware is in advance, I know it sounds weird. It's a PC a bought some time ago, I've never opened it yet so I wasn't sure wether the sound was implemented in the mother board or in a sound card. I now have some details about this computer and sound card, maybe from them you could tell me if it has any synth (ROM, wavetable, whatever) or not. Actually I'm almost sure there isn't, but I thought I'd ask for advice as I'm often wrong. -The computer is a HP Pavilion 420.es: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?product=73009&lang=en&lc=en&cc=… -HP claims the motherboard is an Asus A7V-VM: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?product=73009&lang=en&lc=en&cc=… -The Asus website does not list any motherboard with that name: http://www.asus.com/prog/p_search.asp?kp=a7v&langs=01 -In the description for the motherboard provided by HP (second link), the information regarding sound is limited to mentioning the chip Crystal CS4299, which is an AC'97 compliant circuit. This seems to address digital audio only (D/A, A/D and that), nothing to do with synth: http://www.cirrus.com/en/products/pro/detail/P25.html Some more hints / background: 1. In earlier posts I assumed my soundcard had an onboard synth. My naive assumption came only from the fact that Cakewalk produces GM sounds under Win XP. 2. In a reply (thank you Emiliano), I've been suggested that XP uses a soft synth and therefore I may not have any synth after all. 3. In a different reply (thank you Damien), I've been suggested that XP doesn't use a soft synth, but it has a soundfont named "8mbgmgs.sf2" that it loads into any wavetable soundcard it may find (Soundblaster etc). I have not checked if loading this sound font on Timidity++ or Fluidsynth produces roughly the same sounds I was getting under Windows but I'll be checking shortly. 4. ALSA creates a MIDI channel for the card, but I've discovered the computer has an external MIDI connector, so it looks like this channel routes to the connector. The description for the channel is not clear about this. I've noticed that none of the mixers I have feature a slide for synth output, it looks like no synth is connected to the hardware audio mixer in the sound card. However, another reply (thank you Marv) showed me that the slide could have a non trivial name such as "playback". When I route MIDI data to this port, MIDI vumeters at the sequencer move (indicating that MIDI data is actually being written successfully) but no sound comes out the card. Although it looks like I definitely don't have a synth, I guess there could be a possibility that I have some wavetable onboard synth but it doesn't produce anything because I didn't load any sound fonts into it prior to using it (as I've been suggested I need to do for Soundblasters in a reply, for instance, by using "sbiload" or "sfxload", thanks again Emiliano!). Thank you so much for your helpful replies so far, I'm feeling like I'm really close to getting it to work now and I'm quite excited about it, feels good. Also sorry for the extremely long email, not my initial intention really.. Cheers, Alex _________________________________________________________________ La información más fresca desde diferentes puntos de vista en la Revista de Prensa de MSN. http://es.newsbot.msn.com/

20 years, 5 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] GM sound font sets, was Now trying to configure

by Alejandro Lopez

Hi Clemens, >This isn't a "SC-55 implementation" -- while the samples are a reduced >version of the SC-55's samples, the MIDI implementation is essentially >only at the General MIDI level, and not fully GS compatible. I see, sorry I missunderstood, clear now! >Creative's soundfonts were created by Emu. It is said that Roland's >sample set is more balanced. Well I've listened to SB and RSC renderings in different occasions (including Win XP synth, which I din't know it had Roland samples). SB ones have never ever impressed me. Although RSC are not huge quality (definitely not what you would like to hear in music CD in my opinion), at least they always sounded balanced and "pleasing" to me. I would be very happy to use these for composing purposes, that is, to use the PC for writing tunes that would eventually be played by a band at some point. >Have a look at the gm.dls file. Size isn't everything. ;-) Dead right. The only "but" is so far I've been unsuccessful to find a way to use a DLS file with a soft synth for Linux (I just made a first Google attempt to search for either a soft synth that would load them or a conversion utility DLS to SF2 or something). Any suggestion? Thank you very much. Cheers, Alex _________________________________________________________________ Dale rienda suelta a tu tiempo libre. Encuentra mil ideas para exprimir tu ocio con MSN Entretenimiento. http://entretenimiento.msn.es/

20 years, 5 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] GM sound font sets, was Now trying to configure

by Alejandro Lopez

>Why would you ever want to use the Windows soundfonts? There are much >better ones. Google for "personal copy soundfont". Absolutely. Cheers for the tip. Initially I thought I'd use that set since it sounds nice and smooth but hey, why not try something else and see. I've now downloaded a couple of GM sets from Hammersounds. Cheers, Alex _________________________________________________________________ La información más fresca desde diferentes puntos de vista en la Revista de Prensa de MSN. http://es.newsbot.msn.com/

20 years, 5 months

[linux-audio-user] Free Audio Note Recognition

by Gilles Degottex

Hi all, I'm currently working on a note recognition software and I just released the version 0.5.2 the main goal is simple: find notes in a wave, known as "pitch detection" too. the monophonic algorithm is not perfect but seems usefull. http://gna.org/projects/fanr I'm looking for feedback, test, comment, roten tomatoes or any idea. Best Regards, Gilles

20 years, 5 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] GM sound font sets, was Now trying to configure

by Alejandro Lopez

Superb post Clemens, I'll be investigating how to convert that to something readable by Timidity or Fluydsynth (SF2 I guess) in a not too painful way, in case it can be done at all. I'm now reading about Windows' SC-55 implementation, really interesting stuff. What do you think about the Windows file "8mbgmgs.sf2" that has been mentioned before as being the default sund font that Windows loads into wavetable sound cards it detects? It may be the case that it contains the same samples even, although I'm kind of guessing it may be a lower quality / more compact set, the name looks as it is intended for 8 Mb cards, whilst the virtual SC-55 based synth may use a much bigger set I guess. Any clue? Cheers, Alex >They are related to Roland's Sound Canvas sounds: >http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.HPX.4.33n.0404070904380.17626-100… > >The file gm.dls or gm16.dls is stored in ...\system32\drivers\. > >The DLS format is an MMA standard: >http://www.midi.org/about-midi/dls/abtdls.shtml > > >HTH >Clemens _________________________________________________________________ Acepta el reto MSN Premium: Protección para tus hijos en internet. Descárgalo y pruébalo 2 meses gratis. http://join.msn.com?XAPID=1697&DI=1055&HL=Footer_mailsenviados_proteccionin…

20 years, 5 months

Re: [linux-audio-user] GM sound font sets, was Now trying to configure

by Alejandro Lopez

Hi Dave, >>What do you think about the Windows file "8mbgmgs.sf2" ... > >Just so you know: That font is from the distribution CD for Creative Labs >SBLive. You can use it with TiMidity by setting up your $HOME/timidity.cfg >file like so: I see! So since I don't have a SB, I suppose I will not find this file in my Windows system (I'm not currently at home but will be able to check tomorrow). Which is more importante to me, this file is not responsible for the nice synth sounds that come out of my card when I use a sequencer under Windows. Looks like they're coming from the sound font that the Windows SC-55 implementation uses, the one that has been mentioned before. Thanks! Will be checking this all soon.. Cheers, Alex _________________________________________________________________ Móviles, DVD, cámaras digitales, coleccionismo... Con unas ofertas que ni te imaginas. http://www.msn.es/Subastas/

20 years, 5 months

[linux-audio-user] GM sound font sets, was Now trying to configure

by Alejandro Lopez

Hi Emiliano, Hi Everyone, Just a quick note that yesterday I tried your suggestions and was successful with every thing I tried. >timidity comes with a set of GUS patches (not really a soundfont but sort >of): the package is called "freepats" and should be available in demudi. It is. The default freepats.cfg had a bug at least in my beta Demudi (percussion pats are not located where stated in the config file) but once solved it works very nicely. >These are not very high quality, but at least you should hear something if >you issue the command "timidity <midifile>". I used Timidity in various ways yesterday (player, synth, output to ALSA, output to Jack). I have a couple of comments / issues. 1. The default piano patch (as well as other patches) seem to have a loop setup. This is not a problem in itself if every note-on has an associated note-off somewhere (they always have in MIDI files). However, if I open a piano-roll window in Rosegarden (it's called matrix window) and click on different notes of the piano on my left, they stay on forever (until the Timidity can't proccess so many at the same time and starts to go funny). Any cure for this? 2. I'm afraid that the quality of the patches is not good enough to actually know what I'm doing (composing-wise). More on this just below in this post. >timidity can also use soundfonts, check the Dave's doc about it. >Another option you have is to use qsynth, a GUI for fluidsynth - this works What can I say? Excellent. >For GM soundfonts you can look at http://www.personalcopy.com or >http://www.hammersound.net Thanks a lot. I have several other links I collected a few months ago when I was searching for sound fonts, may be of use? The best site ever for sound fonts suddenly dissapeared a few months ago, it used to be at http://www.thesoundsite.net Others include: http://www.samplearena.com/sites.htm http://www.synthzone.com/soundfont.htm http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Square/3191/ http://hazels.feeservers.com/steve/ditty/ http://www.soundcentral.com/ http://www bananaquartz.com/ Beware I've not checked these lately.. The other thing is, apparently Windows XP uses a soft synth by default. Since somehow I've been forced to buy a copy of XP Home Editon (it came preinstalled), I now have both XP and Demudi on the same hard disk. I'll be looking into using the fonts that Windows may have. At the moment, all I know is they sound quite good and quite uniform (they work well as a GM set). I shall investigate wether the waves are in any known sond font format or not. Cheers, Alex _________________________________________________________________ Descarga gratis la Barra de Herramientas de MSN http://www.msn.es/usuario/busqueda/barra?XAPID=2031&DI=1055&SU=http%3A//www…

20 years, 5 months

[linux-audio-user] xrun madness

by Joel White

Hi, all, Sorry for the length, here, but I'm out of ideas for things to try! Back in June, I wrote to the list lamenting xruns in my system using jackd and ardour with a Delta 1010LT and an Adaptec 7890 SCSI controller. I was trying out early 2.6 kernels, but ended up going back to a 2.4.23 with low latency patches, but there were still xruns with the 2.4.23 kernel. I came across info suggesting the problem was the Adaptec controller: http://eca.cx/lau/2004/06/0000.html I ended up adding an IDE drive to use for audio, and things seemed to work: http://eca.cx/lau/2004/06/0026.html I've continue fussing with the system to try and figure out the SCSI problem. "Why bother?" you ask? Well, my system is still on the SCSI Raid0 and occassionally I still get an xrun (last night, the "occasional" became "in the middle of 3 or 4 attempts to lay down basic tracks with the band" - arrggh!), even when I've shut off just about all processes. I can really pile up the xruns while recording to the IDE drive by coping a big file on the SCSI Raid0, suggesting again a problem with the Adaptec. I wrote to Justin Gibbs, who worked on the aic7xxx driver. He said that the contention expressed on the ST Audio website (referenced in the first message linked above) that the Adaptec keeps steady access to the PCI bus was "complete hogwash." He mentioned that there may be problems with the latency timer settings on the devices, so I've tried just about every possible combination of latency timer settings for the AIC7890 and the 1010LT, but nothing changes the number of xruns when recording to the SCSI Raid0 (about 30 in a 1 min recording session, 8 channels, -n 2 -p 256). So that doesn't seem to be it. Justin expressed doubts about whether the AIC7890 was the problem, but it is clear that the xruns are linked to disk writes (I monitored iostat while recording, and the xruns occured when the disks were written to). This seems rather damning, but I've found that I can record to the SCSI Raid0 with no xruns at all when running Capture only, with periods down to 128. Iostat shows the same amount of disk activity. Interestingly, running in Duplex mode on the SCSI Raid0, I cannot eliminate xruns even with the largest period possible (something like -n 2 -p 2048) - I will still get occasional xruns. In an effort to track down the problem, with Lee Revell's help (thanks, Lee!) I've tried out the recent 2.6.9-rc2-mm4-VP-S7 kernel to take advantage of its kernel latency tracing capabilities. Turning on all the preempt and latency doo-dads shows that the max kernel latency to be around 200 - 400 usec when recording to either the SCSI Raid0 or IDE disks. This kernel latency is far below the 5.8ms period time (-p 256 -r 44100). Unfortunately, I still get xruns when recording to either disk (about 30 in 30 sec of recording). The xrun diagnostics don't really tell me much, either. I get a lot of: Oct 18 22:09:38 darth XRUN: pcmC0D0p Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<e0a316a0>] snd_pcm_period_elapsed+0x280/0x3f0 [snd_pcm] Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c02e1613>] schedule+0x403/0x7d0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133516>] handle_IRQ_event+0x36/0x70 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0111608>] mcount+0x14/0x18 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<e0a447f6>] snd_ice1712_interrupt+0x1a6/0x230 [snd_ice171 2] Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133516>] handle_IRQ_event+0x36/0x70 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133c90>] do_hardirq+0x70/0xe0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133e24>] do_irqd+0x124/0x1f0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0132b5b>] kthread+0xbb/0xc0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133d00>] do_irqd+0x0/0x1f0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0132aa0>] kthread+0x0/0xc0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0102779>] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0xc Oct 18 22:09:38 darth XRUN: pcmC0D0p Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<e0a316a0>] snd_pcm_period_elapsed+0x280/0x3f0 [snd_pcm] Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c02e1613>] schedule+0x403/0x7d0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133516>] handle_IRQ_event+0x36/0x70 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0111608>] mcount+0x14/0x18 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<e0a447f6>] snd_ice1712_interrupt+0x1a6/0x230 [snd_ice171 2] Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133516>] handle_IRQ_event+0x36/0x70 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133c90>] do_hardirq+0x70/0xe0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133e24>] do_irqd+0x124/0x1f0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0132b5b>] kthread+0xbb/0xc0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0133d00>] do_irqd+0x0/0x1f0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0132aa0>] kthread+0x0/0xc0 Oct 18 22:09:38 darth [<c0102779>] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0xc Oct 18 22:10:10 darth XRUN: pcmC0D0p Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<e0a316a0>] snd_pcm_period_elapsed+0x280/0x3f0 [snd_pcm] Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c02e1613>] schedule+0x403/0x7d0 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0133516>] handle_IRQ_event+0x36/0x70 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0111608>] mcount+0x14/0x18 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<e0a447f6>] snd_ice1712_interrupt+0x1a6/0x230 [snd_ice171 2] Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0133516>] handle_IRQ_event+0x36/0x70 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0133c90>] do_hardirq+0x70/0xe0 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0133e24>] do_irqd+0x124/0x1f0 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0132b5b>] kthread+0xbb/0xc0 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0133d00>] do_irqd+0x0/0x1f0 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0132aa0>] kthread+0x0/0xc0 Oct 18 22:10:10 darth [<c0102779>] kernel_thread_helper+0x5/0xc If anyone can help interpret this, I'm all ears/eyes! Under this kernel, running in Capture mode does not generate any xruns, but jackd halts ardour after about a minute of recording with a "subgraph starting at ardour timed out" error. Capture mode with the 2.4.23 kernel seems to work fine recording to either disk. One more bit of info: Running jackd in verbose mode, under 2.4.23 the max usec runs around 800-1000 when there are no xruns (still well below the 5.8ms period). Under 2.4.9, the max usec run between 1100-2000 (odd that it is higher with the different kernel, but still below the 5ms). Most xruns are below 1 ms. Oh, and I _never_ get an xrun during playback, even in Duplex mode. I have a Gentoo system, so after seeing recent messages about potential issue with Gentoo, I tried booting the Demudi LiveCD to test things. I didn't get far - with no clients, qjackctl showed frequent xruns "just idling." I figured I'd stick to debugging the Gentoo system, since it seemed to be closer to working. At this point, Lee's stumped, and I've run out of things to try. It doesn't seem to be a kernel latency problem per se, but there are clearly differences between what is going on under the two kernels. "Why not just run in Capture mode with hardware monitoring?" you ask? Well, that is certainly a possibility, but it is a pain in the butt to record some tracks, then have to stop ardour, stop jack, restart jack in duplex (or play) and restart jack to hear what's been recorded, then redo the process to go back to recording. Plus, I've had xruns when I've tried to overdub a single channel (where I have to run in duplex)! Not as bad as having an xrun halt ardour while the whole band is laying down basic tracks, but bad enough. If anyone has any ideas on things to try, test, whatever, I'd be happy to give it a go. I feel like I could be close to having a good system for recording my band, but last night was pretty frustrating! Thanks for "listening"! Joel

20 years, 5 months

[linux-audio-user] Now trying to configure

by Alejandro Lopez

Guys, Alter installing Demudi, Im now trying to configure it. First thing I need is to be able to play a Standard Midi File (conformant to GM) through the crappy synth in my soundcard or, failing that, through any soft synth available. Id prefer the first option for simplicity since I use synth sounds to compose music only (music to be played live by a real band eventually), so I dont care at all for quality for now. But in case I fail to use the first method, it would be good to hear of any GM soundfont set you may know which is readily available (may have it already as part of Agnula?) and reasonable trouble free (not too noisy or out of tune or some instruments too loud while others are too quiet, that sort of thing). Also, what is the simplest soft synth that could do the job and is included in Agnula? I see Timidity is under "synths" in the launch menu but the docs seem to suggest it's more like a kind of file converter type of synth rather than a real time software. Ive opened a MIDI file under MusE as well as under Rosegarden. Both seem to think they are playing it (no error will show up and the screen gets updated) but no sound comes out. Being a moron as for Linux, I need to learn some things from you guys in order to start troubleshooting. 1. When I run an application from the command line (rather than from the desktop menu), I get lots of potentially useful messages. Id love to have a look at the ones from rosegarden4 but only part seem to be printed to stdout, so if I redirect to a file using rosegarden4 > file.text Im still missing the majority of messages. Ive been looking for any text file where these messages could be written but I cant find it (Ive pushed my find and grep knowledge beyond limits now). Any advice? Id like to check for silly things like the sequencer not getting the permission needed to open the soundcard and stuff like that. 2. How do I test if ALSA has successfully detected the synth and is ready to use it? I seem to remember that it should create something like /dev/sequencer but I dont know how to test it. Should I get a description of the device if I do cat /dev/sequencer? Could I play a file by doing cat file.midi > /dev/sequencer? Also I suspect that maybe the default MIDI out connection is not going to the synth but to a port in the soundcard which is actually a MIDI out connector (although there arent any physical MIDI connectors, there may be a physical port). The thing is: both sequencers list my soundcard as the MIDI out where the music is being routed to, but they dont specify wether that is actually a synth or an external connection. Any tips? 3. Last thing I suspect is maybe the synth is getting the messages and generating the sounds and its just me failing to turn it up? Ive tried a couple of soundcard mixers including the ALSA mixer, another (similar) one (cant remember name), plus the built-in MIDI mixer each sequencer has; no joy. The thing I find a bit suspicious is that the soundcard mixers dont have a synth slide. They have slides for mic in, aux, wave and several others (all of them are now selected just in case) but not for the internal synth. I should mention that I actually have a synth there, since its producing sound under Windows :-) Many thanks in advance. Ive spent some unsuccessful hours and cant measure how useful this kind of forum is, it gets so frustrating sometimes! Cheers, Alex _________________________________________________________________ Un amor, una aventura, compañía para un viaje. Regístrate gratis en MSN Amor & Amistad. http://match.msn.es/

20 years, 5 months

[linux-audio-user] Announcement: ltsb - linux textbased studio

by Julien Claassen

Hi all! Although still in the early - very early - stages, I finally decided to announce it: my webpage, http://ltsb.sf.net . I try to demonstrate how you can use a text-based linux environment (console) as a nicely equipped recording-studio. At the moment only the basic chapters of this guide and a few early audio-examples are online. But as time allows, I'll continue. Kindest regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net - the Linux TextBased Studio guide

20 years, 5 months

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Linux-audio-user October 2004