On Wed, 9 Oct 2002 09:37:32 +0100 Steve Harris <S.W.Harris(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: Ok, but he said that has little linux experience, and I don't think that compiling program from CVS is straightforward for a newbie... (in fact I just tried to compile Muse from CVS and compilation failed due to a relocation error: /opt/kde3/lib/libkio.so.4: undefined symbol: unregisterStaticDeleter__7KGlobalP18KStaticDeleterBase) However, good to know that Muse can do that I'm sure that it will be a "must" for every linux user, but for now it's not so stable and too difficult to get "up and running" for us simple users (I use the one that comes from SuSE, but never succeed to compile it myself). Ciao

and what of rosegarden? can't that use softsynths via an alsa virtual midi driver? http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/rosegarden (when i used vst on windows for a bit in 1999 i had to use virtual midi cables to connect it to the 'generator' softsynth FWIW) - matthew

Hi, Steve Harris hat gesagt: // Steve Harris wrote: Doesn't RedHat 8 default to the new 3.2 g++ compiler? I wonder, if CCRMA packages would run with a libqt, that might be compiled with g++ 3.2... ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__

don't achieved I am not averse to using two separate apps for audio and midi. I'm already planning to use Ardour for audio. If it could do midi as well, that would be fabulous, but since mention of such features are scarce on the Ardour website, I don't expect much right now. Two separate apps would do me just fine, though. The real problem is the need to find good sounds to be powered by the midi, though. Softsynths, wavetable synths, samplers... right now I use several VST instruments: Model-E (a minimoog emulator), The Grand (a very realistic piano), B4 (emulates the Hammond B3 organ) and the Cheez Machine (emulates the Arp Solina). So I only use midi to emulate real instruments... and unless I go with iiwusynth and soundfonts (a perfectly useable, but sorely inferior solution, if you ask me), there's really no alternative. I am currently faced with having to decide whether to enjoy the benefits of open source software, or stick with the best tools for the job... I was hoping that someone on this list might be able to point me to solutions that help narrow the gap in ability, particularly in software synths. I've referred to this page many times in the past, and while it is certainly a useful list, it tells me little about how well the various programs work from a new convert's perspective. Thanks for the link, though - it's been a while since I've taken a look there. :) Thanks! I am looking forward to it. I just hope that development in this area comes along fast enough to be useful to me. :)

On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 05:07:01AM -0500, Sage wrote: There was talk a while back about a sampler-in-progress (EVO?) which would (does?) support Gigasampler files, so you could buy a Gigapiano disk and use it in linux. For the others, not sure. There are various interesting emulators if you dig around: e.g. there are some emulator patches for Pd, though I dont' recall which synths; and Bristol looks interesting, though I don't know if it supports jackd yet: http://freshmeat.net/projects/bristol/?topic_id=249 -- Paul Winkler "Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is made - today!"

On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 11:29:54 -0500, Sage wrote: The author decided to start again, Evo was just a proptype. There are some samplers inside Spiral Synth Modular. - Steve

On Wed, 2002-10-09 at 18:17, Paul Winkler wrote: yeah, good luck getting jack to work! are there any useful docs for getting it to work satisfactorily (ie *not* root *and* with realtime?) ive been thinking about this a lot lately. need to check out the xine and mplayer code, to see how to load dll's like that. even if it was, i dont think it would be such a great idea. using jack instead of plugins is bound to incur greater overhead (?). surely a ladspa - vst things would be more suitable? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

Is there anyway I can make my Midi Output sound like something other than a cheap toy keyboard. I'm a musician and would very much like to explore the world of Midi but can't get past the horrible tones. Will I have to have an external box or can the situation be rectified with a quality midi sound card? Chaz Worm (Kiser) - Singer, Dawghouse Bass Earth, Worm and Fire - "the funniest punk-bluegrass band in eastern KY" http://www.mp3.com/ewf ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Harris <S.W.Harris(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> To: <linux-audio-user(a)music.columbia.edu> Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 2:21 PM Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Advice for new users? setup

On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 05:23:53 -0400, Chaz Kiser wrote: Have a look at IIWU synth. http://www.iiwu.org/iiwusynth/ - Steve

Chaz Kiser wrote: A simple and inexpensive solution would be to get another soundcard with better midi sounds. The Soundblaster Live! has it's shortcomings, but is a pretty decent sounding general midi generator, partly because of the fact that the sample banks are stored on your hard drive and so are not as limited in size as inexpensive on-board banks. There are plenty of these available on Ebay for ~ $30: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2059407539 This will change your computer from sounding like a toy keyboard to sounding like a medium priced synth. To go beyond this, I would go right to Csound, provided that your passion for shedding all limitations on sound creation but your imagination is strong enough to propel you up the learning curve. Tobiah

It seems to me another issue to keep in mind, is whether the softsynths can produce output better than 16bit/44.1khz (or 48khz). That's one of the nice things about all of the softsynths that Sage rattled off that work in Cubase SX. The last time I checked, SpiralSynthModular could not output any better than 16/44.1. I don't know if this is being worked on or not, or if I'm wrong altogether. As for many of the others, including Bristol, I can't find any reference to a final digital audio output spec on their respective websites. As far as plugins go, LADSPA set its specs as 32bit float, with no specification for sample rate, but I'm under the impression it can handle 96khz. So, if the host app handles audio in the same way (32bit float), then you can process all of your audio that way, then dither it to whatever final format the app can handle. (As an aside, an open source developer on the Mac had claimed to write a dithering algorithm in BASIC that tests and works better than Apogee. I will try to track this down again, and let everyone know where it is, if they are interested.) Although it can be argued that you don't need better than CD quality for your sources (some awesome recordings were made on first rev ADATs), some of us really like to push the envelope, and we also like the nice high quality we get from dithering down from 24 bits. Kinda like resampling a large image in GIMP or Photoshop to get a nice-quality lower-res one. Just my two cents, and my first post to this list. :) Regards, Darren Landrum "Consul" On Wednesday 09 October 2002 14:05, Sage wrote:

SSM should produce any samplerate you ask it to. Internally it's all 32bit float, the OSS output plugin converts that to 16bit int but someday we'll be able to ditch that plugin and leave it all to Jack. Dave

Paul, Thanks for the link. I downloaded and played a bit with Bristol here at my desk. This looks fun. My only concern might be whether the project has critical mass, but it sure looks like Nick has done an awful lot to get things rolling. Can't tell about the quality of the sounds, and his mouse driven interface requires you to turn off keys as well as turn them on, so I'll have to go put it on a studio PC and play around a bit. Fun! (And no compiling!! He supplies binary and source) ;-) As for GigaSampler and GigaStudio (GSt), it would be cool to have that sort of tool in Linux. I run GSt all the time and I can tell you from experience that GSt really wants to be on a PC that has nothing else going on on the PCI bus and has good, fast, dedicated hard disks to work well. GSt streams from disk and, generally speaking, doesn't not store too much if the library in memory. I've tried to run it along side other applications (Acid, Reaktor, PTLE) and haven't had much luck. It's a great tool with great libraries, but not as stable as anyone would like. A great candidate for Linuxland. That said, all the money in GSt is really in the libraries. The program and the machine don't cost much compared to the cost of the libraries. I've dropped a good deal of money there... Again, thanks for the pointer on Bristol. Cheers, Mark -----Original Message----- From: linux-audio-user-admin(a)music.columbia.edu [mailto:linux-audio-user-admin@music.columbia.edu]On Behalf Of Paul Winkler Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 6:55 AM To: linux-audio-user(a)music.columbia.edu Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Advice for new users? On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 05:07:01AM -0500, Sage wrote: midi, realistic There was talk a while back about a sampler-in-progress (EVO?) which would (does?) support Gigasampler files, so you could buy a Gigapiano disk and use it in linux. For the others, not sure. There are various interesting emulators if you dig around: e.g. there are some emulator patches for Pd, though I dont' recall which synths; and Bristol looks interesting, though I don't know if it supports jackd yet: http://freshmeat.net/projects/bristol/?topic_id=249 -- Paul Winkler "Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is made - today!"

On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 06:20:19PM +0100, nick wrote: i like that one. very simple, but correspondingly easy to tweak and you can get some real cool sounds from it. -- Paul Winkler "Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is made - today!"

On 10 Oct 2002 01:07:12 +0200 torben hohn <torbenh(a)gmx.de> wrote: Me! I like it. SpiralSynthModular is quite a bit faster, but I like the modular approach that gAlan uses for the GUI - assembling your own panel from component knobs and sliders. -- Myk __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

I like galan a lot too. I should really install one of the latest versions, I haven't tried it for a while. The only thing I didn't like was the seperate control and audio connection types - but that's one of the reasons I made SSM the way it is. cheers, Dave

FWIW: In SSM the whole frequency range maps from -1 to 1 - so an un amplified oscillator modulating another oscillator sweeps the entire range. This could be changed now, as the signals no longer get clamped to that range. It would throw off all the FM synth patches I have though :) On another note, does anyone use Beast/BSE? [http://beast.gtk.org/] It looks promising, but development seems to have been quite slow. Might be worth looking at for the people who were after a buzz substitute. Dave

Well it sort of worked about 2 years ago when I tried it last, but there wasn't much you could do with it back then. Looks like it's advanced somewhat in that time. I'm just suprised it hasn't been mentioned round these parts before. Another cool app I haven't heard mentioned is "Industrializer" http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~foxx/industrializer/index.html Dave

yeah you could go and get pissed then come home and you'll be really good at playing the keyboard regardless of which softsynth you use :) (sorry for OT nature of that audio solution) - matthew

Matthew Yee-King wrote: For the benefit of Americans who wonder about these things: Unlike in America, in England "Getting pissed" is not the same thing as "Getting pissed off". It means getting drunk/loaded/waxed/stoned/wasted/blasted/blitzed... well, you get the idea... ;) Ah, those subtle distinctions... Best regards, == Dave Phillips The Book Of Linux Music & Sound at http://www.nostarch.com/lms.htm The Linux Soundapps Site at http://linux-sound.org

On Thu, 10 Oct 2002 10:45:50 -0700 "Mark Knecht" <mknecht(a)controlnet.com> wrote: Works for me with galeon / mozilla. J.

On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 05:54:01PM +0100, Dave Griffiths wrote: Yes, this is the problem, the CV value is linear with frequency, not pitch (octaves). You define 0.0 to be a particular low frequency (say A0) and then every +1.0 over that doubles the freqency, 1.0=A1, 2.0=A2 etc. LFO's base frequencies are typically a few octaves down from ocilaotrs to maintain sensible voltages. Well, FM /is/ done with linear-by-frequency ofcourse, but I glossed over that ;) - Steve

On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 10:01:18PM +0100, Dave Griffiths wrote: Analogue oscilator modules have linear (for FM) and expoential (for normal modualtion) inputs. However, simple mathsy modules are useful too. I don't know if the linear inputs have a standardised scale. - Steve

--- Dave Griffiths <dave(a)pawfal.org> wrote: > > > FWIW: In SSM the whole frequency range maps from My BLOP plugins include a frequency modulator/shifter that takes a frequency value and a modulating signal, outputting the frequency modulated by +/- 1 octave per +/- "voltage" in the signal: output = freq * powf(2.0f, signal); Works fine for LFO type things, as well as making direct control of stuff like cutoff sound more natural. There's also simple add and product plugins for more basic stuff. - Myk __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

They send float CV values :) This means you can do some interesting things though, mix different sequencers together or lowpass filter the note CV to get portmento. Because the sequencer can also record audio as input, you can do generative composition by plugging multiple sine waves into a sequencer and record the events. You can actually use the sequencer as a kind of sampler - or vice versa, but I wouldn't recommend it :] I guess I'd just add the reverse, a evt2sig component, crazy though it sounds... Such is the fun of going from 1 thread to multithread. I feel your pain. I *think* the only thing that causes a malloc in the audio thread of ssm is loading a sample into the sampler. Which I need to put on a seperate thread anyway - as it's calling all the file handling stuff too. In principle yet, although actually the filters are set to only recalc their coefficients periodically. Midi message passing is actually on todo list (which will of course break the anything can be plugged into anything else rule - but will provide polyphony) Dave