8 Aug
2004
8 Aug
'04
3:51 p.m.
On Sun, 2004-08-08 at 08:12, Robert Jonsson wrote:
On Sunday 08 August 2004 06.45, Iván Almada wrote:
Sound fonts don't necessarily sound bad...if you load a file that is
massive...
But they are a pain to control from sequences. velocity, CC, etc.
Otherwise I'd be using them instead of windows. They don't seem to
behave as bad on a SBlive...and I'm no MIDI or soudfont genious! I'll
declare that right now. But for whatever reason, the fairly intense
experimentation I've done with SF on Linux in either Fluidsynth, etc,
has been erratic when playing back a sequence. Instrument mapping all
over the place instead of conforming to GM or GM2. I have about a 100 or
so sequences that I use for gigs. Before I spend that time remapping and
converting/editing, I want something I know is going to work.
If not for that, SF are my friend! :)
hi, ive been making music for 5 yrs with the
computer, ive been using virtual sequencer + sampler
configurations (cubase + halion) i just love making
music this way (i dont use synths a lot, when i use
them i render them to .wav and load it in a sampler) ,
i bought a creative labs audigy card for using the
software sampler in realtime using the asio driver
with my midi keyboard (yamaha DSR-500, very old but
with midi!) and a dual head graphics card (ati radeon
7000)... ive been using it in windows with dual
screens and just love the way dual screen works in a
virtual studio... so, what i want to do is totally
dump windows and start making music in linux i totally
love this os , so i installed fedora core 2 with the
all the planet ccrma tweaks and apps... i think i have
a decent setup now, alsa, jack bla bla bla , i also
have a decent computer (i guess) athlon xp 1700+ with
640 mb ram (or something like that) ...
so, i have several questions:
1) Which software combination do you recommend for
using a sequencer and a sampler? ive been using
rosegarden, and i think its excellent but i havent
found a way to hook up a virtual sampler, and i
really need one!!! (have my own custom wav sample
library ive been making all these years)
is there any dssi sampler or something like that???
or maybe should i mess with the muse softsynth api ?
or it would be better to use an external soft sampler
like specimen??? any one knows other programs?
or should i use a tracker and render to wav and load
it in rosegarden or perhaps ardour???
or should i use soundfonts (ive never tried) and send
midi data to the audigy wavetable? (thats the last
option for me i guess... ive never really liked sf
Ok, this isn't directed directly at you so please don't take it personally ;)
<rant>
It just seems to me that a lot of people direct a lot of negative energy
towards soundfonts for all the wrong reasons.
There is nothing glaringly wrong with the soundfont format, infact I think it
is pretty good. And there are prepackaged soundfonts of very high quality.
If you have found soundfonts sound bad, that's just because the soundfonts you
tried where badly programmed or contained below par samples.
Making a soundfont out of samples will not make the samples sound worse.
</rant>
Now, for the problem at hand it might however be a bit hard to use soundfonts.
Thing is (which IS a drawback of SF) it's a binary format in one monolithic
file. Which means you need a program that can compile a soundfont out of the
soundfiles. The only program I know of that can accomplish this is
smurf/swami and I am not sure to what extent it can be used to create
soundfonts from scratch..
I haven't tried specimen I guess it is a candidate since it is more of a
sample player which seems to be what you are after.
Linuxsampler is another candidate though it has about the same drawbacks as
soundfonts for this particular use case, it supports only gig files at the
moment, binary, monolithic. I just saw on the LS-Mailinglist though that
someone is building a sample player ontop of it which might change things to
the better for this use case.
It also depends a little on how you use the samples... To explain a little
about my own work environment, MusE based.
I almost never use samples out of their scope", I don't stretch/transpose and
what not... This is a special case and pretty much only works within the song
they are created though...
What I do when I add samples though is just to use drag&drop from the folder
where they are contained and arrange and split them as I see fit in the
arranger.
though ive never tried them really... i just like
to
make it all in a soft sampler) but if its needed then
ill use this as last resort...
or maybe should i buy an external harware sampler ???
any people with the same problem???
the second question:
2) how can i make 8th note shuffle in rosegarden
sequencer?? are there anyways to create offbeat
patterns??? this function is so important in my music.
I guess you can always do it by hand?
How do you do it in cubase?
the third and last question:
3) any one knows how to setup the dual head monitor
configuration? ive been trying to setup but failed...
i have both monitors showing the same screen... what i
really want is the Big Desktop extended in both
monitors so i can use a sequencer in one and another
program in the other... i think this is called
xinerama in linux... i just cant configure it...
I think this depends on the graphics card. You should try to dig up the
documentation for that particular driver.
For my ATI Radeon 9200/fglrx the configuration is (which might be generic, I
suppose):
Section "ServerLayout"
<..stuff..>
Screen "Screen0"
Screen "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
<..more stuff..>
thanks in advance (for the patience reading this mail)
but i really want to setup my studio in linux...
i only use windows for audio apps but i have to boot
another hd and i also want to fully dump win32... i
want to make music with open source tools...
I've been pursuing this goal myself for a number of years, and finally I can
do it without too much trouble :)
Good luck!
may be everthing is not as developed as in the
win
world but i am willing to accept drawbacks like having
to configure everything by hand (a typical musician
just want to use the tools and not worry about how the
configuration) and trying to optimize your work
(typically i just load as many vst synths as i need in
my song i usually dont worry about cpu load and
rendering everything to .wav ) im very excited about
this excellent apps growing up and getting more stable
like rosegarden and ardour... and being able to
compose music with the opensource philosophy...
ivan.
/Robert