On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:59 AM, Rui Nuno Capela <rncbc(a)rncbc.org> wrote: Yes! I just got the DB-60XG yesterday, and today it's plugged into a Dynex DX-SC51 running on Fedora12 alongside qxgedit and rosegarden. Oh, and the qchord works beautifully with it too. (It never sounded so good, with the ability to warp out the sounds via qxgedit). qxgedit works well but needs a few features: (or I need a clue). (1) Can qxgedit "read" the db50xg values so as to set all it's dials and voice presets to whatever is currently setup on the DB50XG card? (There's probably no "dump" on the card, right, is there even a MIDI output??) (1.1) Alternately, is there a way to extract the sysex/control information from an XG MIDI file (e.g. if I want to copy the "voicing" of an existing song) so that qxgedit can be set to edit the values that are playing? (1.2) Another alternative -- have qxgedit "track" sysex/control changes from the ALSA midi source. I.e. if I sent rosegarden output to qxgedit input, the presets should set to whatever's in the track, and the dials should track whatever changes are going on in the track.... from their given positions "riding" the playing midi file, they can be grabbed, which overrides what they're "reading" and instead outputs a midi change. (2) A way of hooking it up to a control surface (but then again, maybe there's so magic I missed in hooking up the ALSA midi in of qxgedit??). SInce there's so many things to control, a way of automapping s.t. you can click-and-hold a control, while jiggling a slider on the control surface. Once that's done, you've bound the slider to the qxgedit control parameter.... (3) Feature request -- support for db60xg's analog input (e.g. for vocoding, or using voice to modulate parameters) http://www.studio4all.de/htmle/main96.html http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-21634-175.html W/r/t the db50xg: can see now why people like these so much ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_XG ) They sound great! It's like a Yamaha keyboard without the keyboard and for only $20.00! Plus I can now listen to http://www.megatrade.ru/Russian/Midi.html in their full glory (had to test it out, now that I have something that'll play XG... doh, but why did I listen to that stupid Boney-M remix??). ............ I hope the db60xg lasts, as one of the chips on there runs quite hot (they claim the board draws 2w -- and it's all going to one chip). .................................................................. The main issue/disappointment I have is with the $5.00 Dynex dx-sc51 soundcard I have the db60xg plugged into (because it has a wavetable header for the db60xg). There's no way to get all this glorious XG'ness out to SPDIF. And there's no obvious way to record the sound output from this card -- other than looping back 1/4" stereo analog output back to the line-in. Alas the lack of working SPDIF out on this card, as well as decent HW-in routing options makes it impossible to send the output of this card through the mixer and out to SPDIF. I can make SPDIF output the noises from the microphone when SPDIF0 is set to "H/W In 0" or "H/W In 1" but no other sound sources come out of SPDIF including the main PCM output. I wish Envy24control worked on this card as it lacks input->output routing for monitoring. Finally, Linux itself doesn't like this card much despite the statement on http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Ice1724#Dynex_DX-SC51; The first issue is this: (the chip is actually a Via 1723 "tremor" not the Via 1724 available in the Audiophile 196 and ESI Maya/Juli@.... ice1724: No matching model found for ID 0xc3140517 ice1724: Invalid EEPROM version 1 Attempting to fix this in /etc/modprobe.d with a "model=" setting is not possible: http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/sound/alsa/ALSA-Configuration.txtli… "revo51, revo71, amp2000, prodigy71, prodigy71lt, prodigy71xt, prodigy71hifi, prodigyhd2, prodigy192, juli, aureon51, aureon71, universe, ap192, k8x800, phase22, phase28, ms300, av710, se200pci, se90pci, fortissimo4, sn25p, WT192M, maya44" -- no dx-sc51. The card comes up as: The second issue: there's no way of getting SPDIF output working with this card. In jack, the card shows up as two channels in, and two channels out. In alsa, aplay -L gives: front:CARD=ICE1724,DEV=0 ICEnsemble ICE1724, ICE1724 Front speakers surround40:CARD=ICE1724,DEV=0 ICEnsemble ICE1724, ICE1724 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers ... iec958:CARD=ICE1724,DEV=0 ICEnsemble ICE1724, ICE1724 IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output But none of them work. Any suggestions anybody??? Googling indicates this issue is somewhat pervasive, and affects a few cards, and nobody indicates a good solution. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=990351 seems the most promising. Once I get the soundcard PCM out working properly. I'll also need to understand how that output is routed to the db60xg's analog input. Although I guess I could put my RMS Multimeter on the appropriate pins on the db60xg and see if they're getting a test tone sent to the PCM... -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=200469896509&Cat… Niels http://nielsmayer.com

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 2:52 PM, Niels Mayer <nielsmayer(a)gmail.com> wrote: Solved!! Taking a clue from a different thread with a soundcard that costs 100x more and has 26 more channels... :-) . ( http://old.nabble.com/Is-it-possible-to-use-two-RME-cards-in-sync--to285130… ) I now won't need to buy another soundcard for my intended portable music computer as I can output to the "mains" over SPDIF, and monitor separately in headphones, all with a $5.00 soundcard! I'll save my money for later and get a decent quality external TOSlink->analog, which is all I'll need to drive the "mains" without fear of computer noise or ground-loops, which is IMHO the right way to get sound out of a computer driving a PA.... In qjackctl: Setup..->Settings: Interface: hw:ICE1724 ; Input: (default) ; Output:: multi" giving ~/.jackdrc: /usr/bin/jackd -dalsa -dhw:ICE1724 -r48000 -p128 -n2 -D -Pmulti -Xseq -zs -H -M In Jackd, this gives me two working inputs, and four separate outputs -- a stereo analog pair that I intend to use as headphone/cue monitor, and a separate SPDIF/Toslink digital output. The trick is the output "multi" is defined as ALSA "type multi" (see http://nielsmayer.com/npm-dynex-asoundrc.txt ) as: pcm.analog-hw { type hw card 6 } ctl.analog-hw { type hw card 6 } pcm.digital-hw { type hw card 6 device 1 } ctl.digital-hw { type hw card 6 } pcm.multi { type multi slaves.a.pcm "analog-hw" slaves.a.channels 2 slaves.b.pcm "digital-hw" slaves.b.channels 2 bindings.0.slave a bindings.0.channel 0 bindings.1.slave a bindings.1.channel 1 bindings.2.slave b bindings.2.channel 0 bindings.3.slave b bindings.3.channel 1 } ctl.multi { type hw card 6 } -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com

Niels Mayer wrote: The Q-Chord is quite interesting, and yes, I have one: http://www.qchord.net/ http://www.qchord.net/docs/qchord-manual.pdf ... alas half my strum plate is no longer working after taking it on a trip... (otherwise they're quite solid and I've had mine for years, including having kids "play" it). It's got some very weird midi mappings... basically you have to send it's midi to a GM Synth and it uses all GM channels simultaneously. Perhaps to prevent "midi overload" while strumming, it appears to send out its strum plate midi over three different channels.. so unless you have all those channels on the same voice, you get a very odd effect (which i guess someone might use to good effect... each string ends up playing a different sounding instrument). The worst part is you really can't turn off the "rhythm accompaniment" ... and even in "EZ-Play" mode (where the rhythm/backing crud is turned off and you can just play), it appears to output spurious midi anyways. Nothing that a little midi-filtering can't solve. I tried hooking this up to a Roland JP8000 to allow for some knob-twiddling while strumming, but it is truly a midi-mapping nightmare.---------------- Not encouraging news. My plan was to use the QC1 as a source for midi input into a sequencer, like Rosegarden 10 'Thorn'. On page 41 of the Qchord manual it shows Channels 14, 15, and 16 are the Strumplate. I would like to record in Rosegarden on those tracks with the QC1 shown as MIDI hardware input device 1 (my MIDI is going through the Audigy2 ZS Midi daughterboard with the Soundblaster MIDI/Game Port attachment/cables; yes, I still like the old reliable hardware from nearly 20 years ago. GRIN). I would set 3 different Rosegarden tracks to use (on the Recording Filters section of the Track Parameters pane) Channel 14, Channel 15, and Channel 16. I would set the Playback Paraments for those tracks to my sound modules (outboard Roland Sound modules.) Are you saying that the Qchord also sends out the 'rhythm accompanient' on those channels as well? The manual is stating that Channel 3 is Chord Plus (whatever that is), Channel 5 is Auto Chord 1, Channel 6 is Auto Chord 2, Channel 7 is Auto Chord 3, Channel 8 is Auto Chord 4, Channel 9 is Bass, and Channel 10 is Drums. On page 34 of the manual it talks about Selecting Additional Strumplate Voices (appears to be the standard MIDI voice layout, with 00 for acoustic piano0, 01 for piano1, etc.) I would think that one could select 25 for Acoustic Steel Guitar, hit the Strumplate, and only the Acoustic Steel Guitar voice would send a MIDI stream out through Channels 14, 15, and 16. If I had Rosegarden recording the MIDI on those tracks and playing back to my sound module, possibly I'd hear the Acoustic Steel Guitar through my Roland sound module's output. If Rosegarden wasn't sending in real-time the QC1 MIDI stream to the Roland gear, I assume I could always hear what I was playing through the speaker/headphones on the QC1 for monitoring purposes. Have you tried anything like that yet? And if you using QC1 in single voice mode (as described on page 34), can you still use the chord buttons to have the QC1 play an F chord (for instance), and then strum or pick on the Strumplate and have the Acoustic Steel Guitar stay in an F chord? Given the nature of my large hands with short, stubby fingers, I find it very difficult to cleanly play my Renaissance Lute. I've got a nice lute soundfont that I can load up into Rosegarden (or through another soft synth linked into Rosegarden if necessary). So I'm looking at the QC1 and Rosegarden as an alternative to my lute. Do you think this is something that is possible to do with the QC1? Thanks Niels, Stephen.