Linux-audio-user August 2012

linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org

98 participants
87 discussions

Re: [LAU] Study Finds New Pop Music Does All Sound the Same.

by david

On 08/06/2012 01:57 AM, Brent Busby wrote: > On Sun, 5 Aug 2012, david wrote: > >> I didn't say it was either necessary or most common. It does depend on >> the person doing the hearing. But I remember many people whose >> response to singing or playing an instrument is, "Oh, I can't play >> like that," so they won't even try. > > There are some players whose real no-overdubs playing is good enough to > do that. Dave Weckl and Vinnie Colaiuta have both often made me wonder > who I think I'm kidding about playing drums. :) Yet if they weren't available on recordings, chances are very few people would have ever heard their no-overdub playing. They'd only have inaccurate descriptions by others to go on. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community http://clanjones.org/david/ http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/

13 years, 5 months

Re: [LAU] Study Finds New Pop Music Does All Sound the Same.

by Simon Wise

On 06/08/12 19:46, Brent Busby wrote: > On Mon, 6 Aug 2012, Simon Wise wrote: > >> On 06/08/12 02:16, Ralf Mardorf wrote: >> >>> Most people paying for listening to music aren't musicians theirselfes. They >>> neither are that (self-)educated that they need (or even are able to listen) >>> to more complex music. Mass media have the >> >> which is perhaps one of the huge changes in music in the last 60 or so years >> >> ... most popular music was played and sung by the listeners until then, the >> ability to play something pre-recorded, here music that is not directly >> connected to your own playing or singing, or at least someone in the room with >> you, is really very recent in the development of music. Older popular music >> was as much about the pleasure of reproducing it as it was about listening to it. > > That was true I think until the late 90's, and definitely has changed in the > 2000's back to the way it was in the earlier period you're talking about. Pop > music now seems to be about vocals, vocals, vocals...and by the way, did I > mention the vocals? If there's any instrumental track to speak of at all, it > usually seems to consist of some TR-909ish bass drum playing quarter notes, and > maybe some sine wave synth bass on top of that, a few padding chords if you're > lucky. And on top of that, it's literally all singing, all dancing. The bass > drum part is only there to keep someone out there from proclaiming the emporer > has no clothes when they notice there's actually no song really there. > > And the listeners seem to like it that way. If anything is too instrumentally > complicated, they think it's "weird." Psychedelic music is now "creepy." We've > re-entered the era of the campfire singalong. And let's not even get into the > prevalence of karaoke games for consoles. Styles like rock and jazz are starting > to feel to me, much as I love to play them, like something musicians do for > eachother's enjoyment, sometimes in over-the-Net collaboration projects. It's > almost become something where you have to be a player yourself to even > appreciate it. there is plenty of traditional popular music that is quite complicated, and also meant to be played by many not just a few experts ... sometimes its more fun to try something tricky than something easy ... that's the whole point of lots of games, popular and widely practised does not always mean dumbed-down. Simon

13 years, 5 months

Re: [LAU] OnDemand-performance was(OT: klang)

by Len Ovens

On Sun, August 5, 2012 8:01 am, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Sun, 2012-08-05 at 07:12 -0700, Len Ovens wrote: >> I have another idea... I make use of the system runlevels. Ubuntu only >> uses runlevels 0,1,2 and 6. > > What runlevels will Ubuntu Studio have got, when Ubuntu makes the switch > to systemd? Both upstart (which Ubuntu uses now) and systemd are compatable with init. I am in fact using upstart scripts now for my runlevel changes and because many of the services I want to control are already upstart scripts (ie. cron and mysql). Even with these new tools for doing what init used to, the idea of operating modes is still there. It would be possible to change RL 0 to halt.mode and RL 1 or S to single.mode, but even if that happens it should be possible to create a new mode called audio.mode. However, I don't see that happening because both upstart and systemd are created to allow parallel processing and daemon startup rather than the serial approach init uses. There seems to be no move to get rid of any of the operating modes being used now. We still need an orderly startup and shutdown. > Writing a script and use it with a button for the panel IMO is the > better way to go. Resp., everybody building customized kernels directly > could disable anything, but performance. Using a button from a panel is the way I like it, but I have talked to people who feel differently and would like it to start when jackd does. The way I am putting together can be used either way. The system side things have to be separate anyway... so the systray script actually runs a cli command that can just as easily be started by qjackctl or a session manager at need. I actually have 4 RL set up normal/audio/graphics/video. but they could just as easy be normal/audiofullspeed/audiohalfspeed/audioanotherspeed. (and as far as I know it would be possible to add RL7 if that was not enough.... though I honestly don't know how upstart or systemd would handle those... init would. Rather than build a special kernel I would just change /etc/init.d/ondemand to set performance... it would just take changing one word in one file. However, because I have heard of (not experienced) systems shutting themselves down due to overheating when run too hard I don't want to suggest that as a blanket solution. I also feel that being able to run at a lower speed that allows the machine to run with fans off is valuable too. The recording can be at low speed and the post production at full. By the way, runlevel switching seems like a non-event to the user so long as the runlevel chosen does not shut the session/X down. Of course if the user is using something that gets shutdown (like wireless in my case) it would be noticed. My next step is to create a gui that allows the user to choose what to shutdown when. This will take more time that everything I have figured out so far. > 2 Cents, Don't know if anything I say has monetary value... The one worthwhile thing I learned in tech school was: The more you know, the more you know you don't know. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net

13 years, 5 months

[LAU] NSM demo

by rosea.grammostola

Hi, Here is a little demo of NSM (non-session-manager) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oo-3CLrIE4&feature=youtu.be See also: http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7986 Thanks to Autostatic for his screencast tutorial http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/tutorials/start#screencasting Regards, \r

13 years, 5 months

Re: [LAU] OnDemand-performance was(OT: klang)

by Len Ovens

On Sun, August 5, 2012 1:54 pm, Robin Gareus wrote: > On 08/05/2012 10:46 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: >> On Sun, 2012-08-05 at 22:20 +0200, Robin Gareus wrote: >>> I really wonder why you are all raving about this. >> >> Take a look at your own NB [1]. > > That's why there's jackfreqd. I did look at jackfreqd, which according to it's author has a high hysteresis which in effect turns full speed on almost when jackd starts and keeps it there till it ends... it even mentions that at jack startup there may be one xrun as the speed ramps. So for having yet another process running, I can get the same thing I get by having jackd run a script at startup that puts the machine in performance mode and quites... no extra process running while I am doing audio either. really, any tweak is an as needed thing, not for everyone, but the knowledge is there if needed. "on modern machines" I have two things to say... my more modern year old machine has more problems than my 8 year old machine does.... second, I don't replace machines just because something new is out. there is enough churn in the world as is. (end of rant- sorry) > This is an edge case and very hard to reproduce and very unlikely to > cause any issue to normal users (Sorry Nando, you and your setup at > CCRMA don't qualify as /normal/. It's an awesome setup). > > NTL, you could have left the link to http://rg42.org/oss/jackfreqd/ > here. It's piece of software that can work around the described problem. It is also true on lower end machines. Perhaps less of an edge case. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net

13 years, 5 months

Re: [LAU] OnDemand-performance was(OT: klang)

by Len Ovens

On Sun, 5 Aug 2012, Ralf Mardorf wrote: > On Thu, 2012-08-02 at 09:51 -0400, Brett McCoy wrote: >> AFAIK, if you have your cpu governor set to 'performance', you >> shouldn't have an issue with frequency scaling anyway. I have so much stuff consuming power in my studio as it is, I doubt Jack is going to make that much of an impact on it. :-) > > I guess the governor needs to be set up to a fixed frequency. > Performance or any lower fixed frequency. FWIW measurements with an elCheapo tool resulted in nearly no difference for my dual-core 2.1GHz set to performance and ondemand. If you are changing the governor setting in Ubuntu (12.04 anyway), be aware that OnDemand gets set 60 seconds after login. I assume the delay is to allow a speedier login... but the governor has already been set by that time anyway. At least cpufreq-info shows ondemand right after login. The page http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php?id=system_configuration suggests setting performance in /etc/rc.local but this results in performance when I first login and then it jumps back to ondemand. On the same page there is another suggestion to use: /etc/init.d/ondemand stop which doesn't work either as the stop command does nothing. However: sudo update-rc.d ondemand disable does get rid of the 60 second reset for ondemand and then setting performance in /etc/rc.local will work. I don't know that this is the best solution. I have had no problems running at full speed even over night in my cheap atom based netbook, but I have heard of some laptops that have heat problems even in ondemand (or windows) if they are pushing it too hard. The fan on my netbook is noisier too. The idea of running at a lower constant speed would help. I seem to be able to do quite well at even 800Mhz and have a quiet machine. I have another idea... I make use of the system runlevels. Ubuntu only uses runlevels 0,1,2 and 6. I think most distros don't use all the runlevels, last time I was running Slackware I think they used RL3 as well. Anyway I use RL3 for audio. RL3 is very quiet, I shut off: - cron and friends (this gets rid of auto updates and log rolling for example) - mysql and other daemons I don't need (netmanger is a good candidate to if you are not using netjack) - my wireless kernel module (ath9k) which gives me xrun/minute when running and xrun/5sec with netmanger turned off... - some people would find this a good way to shut off pulse as well. (if they need it installed... for recording skype calls for podcasting for example) And I set cpufreq to performance. I set up a bash script that has to be run as root to change runlevel to either 2 or 3 and have added it to policy kit so it can be run with pkexec without a password screen. (same way as we already can set runlevel 0 and 6) This can be run as part of the jackd startup or, I have an icon in systray for one click use. It would be easy to set RL 3,4 and 5 to be three different cpu speeds depending on need. Len -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net

13 years, 5 months

[LAU] klang

by Alexandre Prokoudine

Hi folks, If you haven't seen it yet, someone started creating a whole new audio system for Linux and BSD. http://klang.eudyptula.org/ P.S. Yep, a system, not just a server. Just as we got ALSA, PA and JACK working together nicely.... :) Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

13 years, 5 months

[LAU] any mididings users here?

by Robin Paulson

hi all, bit of a niche question here, i can't get the mididings 'System' function call to work as i understand it. i'm sure i'm doing something wrong, i wondered if one of you could help? i wrote a python patch, but couldn't get it to work. so, i made it simpler and simpler, to try and understand it. in the end i got down to this, which i named 'mididings_test.py': ========================= from mididings import * run( System('aplay /home/robin/autest.wav') ) ========================= now, please note that this is trivially simple, it's not the command i actually want to run, it is purely a way for me to understand how 'System' works. yes, the autest.wav file exists, and it is in that location. and yes, aplay is installed (part of alsa_base) when i run the script ($ python mididings_test.py), it does nothing so, what am i doing wrong here? once i figure that out, i can write the real patch i require cheers, -- robin http://fu.ac.nz - Auckland's Free University

13 years, 5 months

[LAU] How can we convert money to fixing bugs in software?

by renato

Hi, I was wondering, what can we non-dev users do when our favorite piece of FOSS software is lacking a little feature, but one that makes the software for us of little or no use? I'm thinking of seq24 not working, since a year or so, with JACK Transport - which for an app like seq24 makes it almost useless. It really itches me and I'd like to do what's in my power to help fix it. I was thinking, since this would be (I think) a few hours of devs work, couldn't I/we raise some money to pay a dev to do it? How would I/we do it? In long term thinking, we could have a site where users propose a bug, devs name a price for it, and when the money raising reaches that quantity, the dev starts to work on it and when he fixes it he recieves the money. Basically a mix of kickstarter and amazon's mechanical turk. I think this could work quite well for such bugs, which often appear in awesome but semi-abandoned software (freewheeling and kluppe for example come to [my] mind). I totally get that the original devs may have lost interest and moved on in life, but being FOSS, the code is there and maybe a few paid hours of a dev could get it working/add a basic feature you really need. Thoughts? renato

13 years, 5 months

[LAU] The Influence of the Actor Model (Praxis architecture 101)

by Neil C Smith

Hi All, I know I've posted an announcement about Praxis / Praxis LIVE here before. Thought a few people might be interested in this blog entry about Praxis' underlying architecture and the influence of the Actor Model. Be really interested in any comments with thoughts, insights, corrections, stupid mistakes, similar models in use elsewhere, etc., etc. http://praxisintermedia.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/the-influence-of-the-actor… Thanks in advance. Best wishes, Neil -- Neil C Smith Artist : Technologist : Adviser http://neilcsmith.net Praxis - open-source intermedia system for live creative play - http://code.google.com/p/praxis OpenEye - specialist web solutions for the cultural, education, charitable and local government sectors - http://openeye.info

13 years, 5 months

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Linux-audio-user August 2012