21 Jul
2005
21 Jul
'05
12:50 p.m.
Message: 10
Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:26:03 +0200
From: Wolfgang Lonien <wolfgang(a)lonien.de>
Subject: [linux-audio-user] hi list...
To: A list for linux audio users <linux-audio-user(a)music.columbia.edu>
Message-ID: <42DF945B.80001(a)lonien.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
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Hi LA users,
after approx. a 20-year-break as a musician, I decided to get some MIDI
equipment and do something more fun with all these computers.
And wow it seems hard. I still remember someday when I bought my first
MIDI stuff and started with DOS - so this was pre-Cubase & Co, and
everything worked fine with some soundblaster and the Y-cable.
Things have moved on a little. :)
Now I am reading since days about low-latency, tried both the live and
the install of DeMuDi, configured an older companies' laptop (Asus with
P3-750) to make use of my MidiSport2x2, and since then I'm fuddling
around with jackd, alsa, rosegarden4, muse, and all the like.
The latencies are horrible. Ok; it's UNIX/Linux, and that is meant for
more than one person, I know, but I didn't assume it to be *that* hard.
What sort of latency problems are you having?
Remember, latency is only a monitoring issue, and should never affect
timing of audio to midi etc on playback.
If the laptop and soundcard just aint gonna play nice with jack at low
latencies whatever you do then use the direct analog monitoring in the
sound cards mixer for monitoring while recording audio rather than
software monitoring.
Softsynth latency can't be got round this way, but if your midi keyboard
has some sounds built in, you can record listening to them, and then
play back the midi parts with whatever softsynth you like.
So I'm greeting all members of this list, and since I'm obviously a
(rather old, I know) "newbie", don't kill me because of the questions I
might ask here.
Oh, andd thanks to all the authors of these great & free applications -
as well as all the others who are writing good articles about them. Life
is fun again ;-)
cheers,
wjl aka Wolfgang Lonien
from Bremen, Germany
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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21 Jul
21 Jul
3:46 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
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philicorda wrote:
> Things have moved on a little. :)
How true... :-)
> What sort of latency problems are you having?
I have xruns in Alsa, qjackctl is reporting something about 40+msec of
latency, and even the metronome in Rosegarden isn't steady, esp. after
the screen starts scrolling while recording. Playback of some downloaded
MIDI-only file is also not acceptable.
cat /proc/interrupts says:
CPU0
0: 38765931 XT-PIC timer 0/65931
1: 13071 XT-PIC i8042 0/13071
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 0/0
3: 37813 XT-PIC 0.0 1/37811
8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 0/1
9: 1318079 XT-PIC acpi, yenta, yenta, uhci_hcd:usb1 0/18079
10: 36863 XT-PIC Allegro 0/36863
14: 408326 XT-PIC ide0 0/8326
NMI: 0
LOC: 0
ERR: 0
MIS: 0
while I write this mail - IRQ3 is gone when I try to make music, because
then I 'cardctl eject' the wireless card...
> Remember, latency is only a monitoring issue, and
should never affect
> timing of audio to midi etc on playback.
Hmmm here everything is nice until I hit that 'record' button. Oh and I
try to do MIDI only for a start, no fancy audio stuff.
> If the laptop and soundcard just aint gonna play
nice with jack at low
> latencies whatever you do then use the direct analog monitoring in the
> sound cards mixer for monitoring while recording audio rather than
> software monitoring.
Hmmm - you mean kill all audio connections in qjackctl? Yep; btdt...
> Softsynth latency can't be got round this way,
but if your midi keyboard
> has some sounds built in, you can record listening to them, and then
> play back the midi parts with whatever softsynth you like.
No, my MIDI keyboard is just a keyboard and doesn't produce sounds. The
MIDI out goes to a Roland SC-33, and the headphones are inserted there.
So 'recording' for me means only MIDI-on/off events. I expected *that*
at least to work.
cheers,
wjl aka Wolfgang Lonien
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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22 Jul
22 Jul
1:49 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
Wolfgang Lonien <wolfgang(a)lonien.de> writes:
everything is nice until I hit that 'record'
button
It would help if you described your system, both hard and soft, to be
able to help you.
--
Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a
http://www. s t n m
irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact
[sip|iax]: e e
jid:b0ef@ n n
2:52 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
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Esben Stien wrote:
Wolfgang Lonien <wolfgang(a)lonien.de> writes:
Oh oh - sorry I didn't do that until now. Ok:
An ASUS L8400 laptop with P3-750 and 384MB RAM, integrated graphics S3
Savage (tested with savage or vesa driver)
A M-Audio Midiman MidiSport 2x2 USB-MIDI interface (which should work ok
- - Dave Phillips from linuxjournal.com uses that same interface)
A hardware MIDI keyboard (evolution MK-149)
A Roland Sound Canvas SC-33
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 'Sarge' with additional repository from DeMuDi
'stable', Kernel 2.6.12-3-multimedia-686 with realtime capabilities
enabled, Alsa 1.0.8-7, jackd 0.99.51-1, rosegarden4 1.0-1, alternatively
muse 0.7.2pre1-0
No .asoundrc (maybe that is the cause?); jackd is started with -R -d
alsa or with jackstart from qjackctl.
It helps a wee bit if I use Fluxbox instead of Gnome, as does using Muse
instead of Rosegarden.
The lags and timeouts (xruns) start being worse when the screen starts
scrolling in Rosegarden/Muse.
In the company I tried a dry run (without the MIDI interface) on an ASUS
nforce2 machine with more or less the same results, tho there it helped
to break the audio playback connection in qjackctl and leave the capture
connection only (tho nothing was connected to the sound input). But that
same test failed on the laptop here.
The interrupt used for USB is heavily shared with 2 yenta sockets (don't
even know what they're good for, I assume the cardbus (PCMCIA)?) and acpi:
CPU0
0: 4702299 XT-PIC timer 0/2299
1: 3432 XT-PIC i8042 0/3432
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 0/0
3: 2370 XT-PIC 0.0 0/2368
8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 0/1
9: 35917 XT-PIC acpi, yenta, yenta, uhci_hcd:usb1 0/35917
10: 229763 XT-PIC Allegro 0/29763
14: 49090 XT-PIC ide0 0/49090
And lspci says:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1988
Allegro-1 (rev 12)
0000:00:06.1 Communication controller: ESS Technology ESS Modem (rev 12)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
0000:00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)
0000:00:0a.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86C270-294 Savage/MX-MV
(rev 12)
Is that information enough? I have no idea how to prevent that interrupt
sharing - the BIOS offers a 'UNIX/other' mode instead of 'Win98/ME/NT'
(I think that is the Plug&Pray of other machines), but switching to
'UNIX' makes things even worse.
cheers,
wjl aka Wolfgang Lonien
everything is nice until I hit that
'record' button
It would help if you described your system, both hard and soft, to be
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11:15 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
Last Friday 22 July 2005 05:52, Wolfgang Lonien was like:
Esben Stien wrote:
aadebug can be useful for system stats.
Wolfgang Lonien <wolfgang(a)lonien.de>
writes:
Oh oh - sorry I didn't do that until now. Ok: everything is nice until I hit that
'record' button
It would help if you described your system, both hard and soft, to be
able to help you. An ASUS L8400 laptop with P3-750 and 384MB RAM,
integrated graphics S3
Savage (tested with savage or vesa driver)
A M-Audio Midiman MidiSport 2x2 USB-MIDI interface (which should work ok
- Dave Phillips from linuxjournal.com uses that same interface)
A hardware MIDI keyboard (evolution MK-149)
A Roland Sound Canvas SC-33
Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 'Sarge' with additional repository from DeMuDi
'stable', Kernel 2.6.12-3-multimedia-686 with realtime capabilities
enabled, Alsa 1.0.8-7, jackd 0.99.51-1, rosegarden4 1.0-1, alternatively
muse 0.7.2pre1-0
Very similar to the system I'm running. I only get MIDI timing problems when I
max out my CPU (more than a dozen simultaneous parts in Rosegarden).
Have you read all of this:
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsFaq
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsTips
No .asoundrc (maybe that is the cause?); jackd is
started with -R -d
alsa or with jackstart from qjackctl.
It's worth making a ~/.asoundrc - I doubt whether that's the cause though.
It helps a wee bit if I use Fluxbox instead of Gnome,
as does using Muse
instead of Rosegarden.
Yep, it can also be worth disabling some services.
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsFaq#XrunsOverruns
The lags and timeouts (xruns) start being worse when
the screen starts
scrolling in Rosegarden/Muse.
For complex pieces it can be worth turning off the playback follow option and
various other bits of eye-candy in Rosegarden. It should run smooth for a
four-part arrangement on your system.
In the company I tried a dry run (without the MIDI
interface) on an ASUS
nforce2 machine with more or less the same results, tho there it helped
to break the audio playback connection in qjackctl and leave the capture
connection only (tho nothing was connected to the sound input). But that
same test failed on the laptop here.
The interrupt used for USB is heavily shared with 2 yenta sockets (don't
even know what they're good for, I assume the cardbus (PCMCIA)?) and acpi:
CPU0
0: 4702299 XT-PIC timer 0/2299
1: 3432 XT-PIC i8042 0/3432
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 0/0
3: 2370 XT-PIC 0.0 0/2368
8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 0/1
9: 35917 XT-PIC acpi, yenta, yenta, uhci_hcd:usb1 0/35917
10: 229763 XT-PIC Allegro 0/29763
14: 49090 XT-PIC ide0 0/49090
And lspci says:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP
bridge (rev 03)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology ES1988
Allegro-1 (rev 12)
0000:00:06.1 Communication controller: ESS Technology ESS Modem (rev 12)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02)
0000:00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)
0000:00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01)
0000:00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 03)
0000:00:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)
0000:00:0a.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 80)
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86C270-294 Savage/MX-MV
(rev 12)
Hmm, maybe worth disabling acpi in the BIOS? I don't really understand how USB
works. Which bit of hardware uses it? the keyboard?
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
25 Jul
25 Jul
6:09 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
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Hi Tim,
tim hall wrote:
So it must be the configuration on my part... I thought so.
Ok; I'll try that, too.
I diasbled not-used hardware in the BIOS, not-used services, and I start
the laptop without the PCMCIA WLAN card. Still... hmmm maybe I should
blacklist everything except PCI/USB? Or even turn off hotplug and try to
configure the USB port myself?
It gives me lags with just one piano track, or with Rosegarden's
metronome alone...
Last Friday 22 July 2005 05:52, Wolfgang Lonien was
like:
Hmmm ok - but 'apt-cache search aadebug' shows me nothing here... have
to google for that later (when back home).
Esben Stien wrote:
aadebug can be useful for system stats. It would help if you described your system, both
hard and soft, to be
able to help you.
Oh oh - sorry I didn't do that until now. Ok: [my hard &
soft]
Very similar to the system I'm running. I only get MIDI timing problems when I
max out my CPU (more than a dozen simultaneous parts in Rosegarden). Have you read all of this:
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsFaq
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsTips
yup; btdt - but without much success. What gives me headaches is that
the standard DeMuDi Live-CD or a clean install of it give me the same
lags as with my 'Sarge' with additional kernel/packages from the Agnula
repos...
No .asoundrc
(maybe that is the cause?); jackd is started with -R -d
alsa or with jackstart from qjackctl.
It's worth making a ~/.asoundrc - I doubt whether that's the cause though.
It helps a wee
bit if I use Fluxbox instead of Gnome, as does using Muse
instead of Rosegarden.
Yep, it can also be worth disabling some services.
http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/DocumentsFaq#XrunsOverruns The lags and
timeouts (xruns) start being worse when the screen starts
scrolling in Rosegarden/Muse.
For complex pieces it can be worth turning off the playback follow option and
various other bits of eye-candy in Rosegarden. It should run smooth for a
four-part arrangement on your system. Hmm, maybe worth disabling acpi in the BIOS? I
don't really understand how USB
works. Which bit of hardware uses it? the keyboard?
BTDT. No success. And the USB ports on that particular ASUS laptop are
used for a Logitech mouse (because I hate these touchpads) and the
MidiSport 2x2 interface to get in my MIDI events and to get them out to
the Sound Canvas again, which actually plays the whole stuff.
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
BTW: I like your 'samsara' song.
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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11:32 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
Do the lags occur when you connect the MIDI input port directly to the
output with aconnect?
Regards,
Clemens
>The lags
and timeouts (xruns) start being worse when the screen starts
>scrolling in Rosegarden/Muse.
[...] And the USB ports on that particular ASUS laptop are
used for a Logitech mouse (because I hate these touchpads) and the
MidiSport 2x2 interface to get in my MIDI events and to get them out to
the Sound Canvas again, which actually plays the whole stuff.
11:58 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
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Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Do the lags occur when you connect the MIDI input port
directly to the
output with aconnect?
???
Until now I only used jackd. But help me on this: what's the use of
connecting MIDI in & out on the same device? I would produce a loop,
right? I'm sure I'm getting you wrong somehow...
But if you mean if I can "play" without lags: yes. I only cannot
"record" anything without...
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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12:15 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
I meant the input from the keyboard and the output to the SC.
Do the lags
occur when you connect the MIDI input port directly to the
output with aconnect?
Until now I only used jackd. But help me on this: what's the use of
connecting MIDI in & out on the same device? I would produce a loop,
right? I'm sure I'm getting you wrong somehow... But if you mean if I can "play" without
lags: yes. I only cannot
"record" anything without...
I guess you're recording the output of some software synthesizer?
Recording of either MIDI or the output of the SC shouldn't make any
problems.
What synthesizer do you use? How it is configured?
Regards,
Clemens
4:21 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
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Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
>>Do the lags occur when you connect the MIDI input port directly to the
>>output with aconnect?
I meant the input from the keyboard and the output to
the SC.
No lags/delays in that case. The Midisport interface has some hardware
MIDI-through switch, and it doesn't matter if I go directly
keyboard--->synthesizer or via USB bus - no lags, no delays. Only when
software (like Rosegarden) wants to play/record in the game, I have
horrible lags...
I guess you're recording the output of some
software synthesizer?
No - no audio recording on my side, only MIDI events...
Recording of either MIDI or the output of the SC
shouldn't make any
problems.
Until now, I didn't connect the SC's audio out back to the laptop. That
one goes directly into a stereo set... (amplifier/speakers)
What synthesizer do you use? How it is configured?
The Roland Sound Canvas SC-33, an older "instrument" (according to
today's standards, maybe not much more than a stand-alone external sound
card). It's configured to receive MIDI, nothing else...
cheers,
wjl
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26 Jul
26 Jul
5:09 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Then probably the program you're using to record MIDI does do some
processing that might affect the MIDI timing. Do you have the same
problem if you record with arecordmidi?
Regards,
Clemens
I guess you're recording the output of some
software synthesizer?
No - no audio recording on my side, only MIDI events...
5:37 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
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Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
Hmmm didn't try that yet - tho both Rosegarden and Muse show basically
the same symptoms. Muse is a bit "friendlier", but both are not really
usable for serious work with my setup. A lot of people are using just
these, so I guess it's my setup which is faulty/not optimal.
I'll take home a machine from work on which I try full default installs
of DeMuDi and the planet - and then maybe I see where the differences to
my setup are. I'll report about these experiences on my website maybe -
don't know how to give back to the community other than through that ;-)
Lots of thanks to all of you until then,
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Then probably the program you're using to record MIDI does do some
processing that might affect the MIDI timing. Do you have the same
problem if you record with arecordmidi? I guess you're recording the output of some
software synthesizer?
No - no audio recording on my side, only MIDI events... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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12:53 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Re: latencies
Last Monday 25 July 2005 09:08, Wolfgang Lonien was like:
I diasbled not-used hardware in the BIOS, not-used
services, and I start
the laptop without the PCMCIA WLAN card. Still... hmmm maybe I should
blacklist everything except PCI/USB? Or even turn off hotplug and try to
configure the USB port myself?
Ah, no that's going too far. As you say, you need USB.
Glad you liked the song :)
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
7063
days inactive
7068
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
12 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Clemens Ladisch -
Esben Stien -
philicorda -
tim hall -
Wolfgang Lonien