Re: [linux-audio-user] Rewrite sfxload for native ALSA

New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Rewrite sfxload for native ALSA
From: Mark Constable (markc_AT_renta.net)
Date: Wed Dec 03 2003 - 08:08:22 EET


On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 11:24 am, LinuxMedia wrote:
> > I anyone aware of ANY non-OSS tool to load soundfonts into
> > an SBlive card ?

> This is another example why I try to avoid hardware synthesis and go
> with software synthesis. There's actually two (main) reasons for this...
> For one, some of the sound cards have a limit on the size of sound fonts
> You can load... and for another reason, what happens if I want to set up
> the same "studio" (that I've worked tirelessly for years to set up) on
> someone else's computer and they don't have hardware synthesis
> capabilities? I would have to learn more "stuff" when (instead) I could
> just set up the software synthesis that I know (and have tested)?

I agree with you in principle but in the case of sfxload, it is
a small program and the excercise would be useful for learning
more about ALSA... and other SBlive folks, I think, could also
find it useful if they want to move away from OSS completely.

I'm just not willing to tackle it on my own but I would like to
dive in if 1 or 2 other people could treat it like a team effort
mainly for the learning experience. ALSA seems to somewhat lack
the "spirit" that surrounds Gentoo users and usage.

> I don't know... maybe I'm always thinking in terms of being able to set
> up "audio studios" for other People. The irony is that I haven't set up
> one computer for a friend yet (I've offered though).

I feel very much the same and would love to see some sort of
"reference" system evolve where out of all the fine apps that
are becoming highly usable, by mere mortals, that some guide
as to which ones are most suitable would really help new users.

My thoughts are to try and create a reasonable piece of music
that *I* find listenable and not too embarrasing, mainly so there
are no copyright issues, and create some oggs then write up
(heh, sure pal) a HOWTO and how I created the end result (that
will never be "ended" because it could always be reused and
re-released as another version).

So if another, perhaps novice, x-alsa user out there can relate
to this particular piece of music then they can simple follow
a step-by-step guide as to how it was created... with access to
all the parts that went into creating this particular piece.
Just simply follow the outlined procedure and get to see and
hear how a reasonably sophisticated (from a novices point of
view) ALSA system is glued together... actually gets hands on
without having to pre-understand it all... THEN when they start
to RTFM these fine folks might have a chance of making sense of
the sparse FMs that do exist.

And yes, in and around this could evolve the idea of some
"reference" set of of apps and utilities... especially some
reference SoundFont so I/we/them/they can hear the same set of
sounds.

Actually, above and beyond any interest in sfxload I'd REALLY
like to see some co-op effort on some reference soundfont. I
was about to start on reorganising Timidity guspats but I now
lean towards putting the effort into an sf2 soundfont instead.

--markc


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Wed Dec 03 2003 - 08:06:31 EET