[LAU] Introduction and questions

Y-ellow fellow life forms. My name is Batz Goodfortune (Yes that really is my name.) I'm a noob here but no stranger to linux or audio. Having been working in electronic music for some 40 years or so. However I find myself in something of a `situation.' Put simply. I need a sampler. What happened to all the nice, solid hardware based instruments of the world? Anyway, I was rather hoping to have something up and running by Christmas. That's obviously not going to happen and if I MUST use software, Prey it be Linux based. Which would hopefully be somewhat less likely to fail me in front of an audience. To that end I have joined this prestigious group of pioneers in order that I might do a slight amount of brain picking if I may? Before I start dedicating any hardware to the task. Which won't be as simple as it may at first seem. But I'll get to that. I'm aware of the linux sampler project. I'd like to know how much CPU power is bare minimum for 16 MIDI channels and at least 32 voices. Plus FX. If it's going to require a dual or better processor and a g'zillion gig of RAM then this is not something I'm going to be able to muster any time soon. However if it would run on a tiny VIA processor/mo-bo, then I have a few I could muster. And eventually stick into a 19" rack box et all. How easy would this to get running under slackware? Slackware has been my weapon of choice for a long time. But mainly for servers and the likes. I'm at home with slackware but I'm more of a consol person than GUI. KDE/X chews lots of grunt on it's own. So I'm kind of expecting the answer to be no. But it would be convenient if I could get it to work on one of these tiny platforms I have. And sound card VS onboard sound? Would it be remotely possible to tune a system to get away with using the on-board sound on one of these Mo-Bos? I think I have one that even sports S/PDIF. This would be helpful in that it would help reduce the physical size of this thing. If not, can we use some kind of cheap USB sound? I need VERY low latency for live work obviously. Ideally, I'd like to squeeze the whole thing into a single U 19" rack enclosure. Either with one of these tiny Mo-bos or if I have to, buy a second hand lap top and rip the display off it. Some kind of arrangement like that. All driven by MIDI with a generic USB MIDI interface. These are just my thoughts so far. But essentially I need to make some kind of turn-key system that's giggable. If anyone has any thoughts on this and would allow me to benefit from your experience, I would be most grateful. Offering my first born in thanks. being a hardware person, ultimately it would be nice to build a hardware front-end at some point. A nice little LCD display on a front panel perhaps. But for the moment, I'd be happy with a powerful sampler in a tiny box. So if anyone here would be happy to point me in the right direction, I would be grateful. Thanks in advance and thank you for having me in your mail box. be absolutely icebox. ________ _ _ / ____|| | // Disgusting -> http://all-electric.com / /| |____ | |// The trusted _-_|\ / __ ____|| < name in / \ / / | |____ | \ \ non-sequitur \_.-*_/ / / |______|| |\ \ entertainment v All Electric Kitchen Music-> http://all-electric.com/music_downloads.html