Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Recommendations for audio software needed
From: LinuxMedia (linuxmedia4_AT_netscape.net)
Date: Sat Jan 10 2004 - 13:05:09 EET
>>> Rosegarden does need JACK for audio, yes. If you only want MIDI
>>> and notation -- and when I say MIDI I include the ability to
>>> drive ALSA soft synths such as Timidity, qsynth or Fluidsynth --
>>> then you can build it happily without JACK or run a JACK-built
>>> version without running jackd. >>> Rosegarden does need JACK for audio, yes. If you only want MIDI
>>> and notation -- and when I say MIDI I include the ability to
>>> drive ALSA soft synths such as Timidity, qsynth or Fluidsynth --
>>> then you can build it happily without JACK or run a JACK-built
>>> version without running jackd.
Although (and correct me if I'm mistaken) doesn't Rosegarden (I'm
talking about Rosegarden-4) allow syncing with other programs via
jack_connect? I know that JACK can be challenging and I know that
jack_connect is still new (I think). And so the question would be "what
multitrack recorder to sync it up to"? I know that ecasound is (not) for
the "average user", but now there's "TKeca" which is a front end to
ecasound (see the links below).
Since this gentleman is asking about software I'll explain ecasound and
the gui front end "TKeca". Ecasound is a command line multi-track
recorder and effects processor that has many other features (too many
to mention and I would probly leave some out). It's very stable,
powerful, no-nonsense command line progam that you can use "TKeca" as
the gui interface (links below). I've used TKeca and it is very strait
forward and (like ecasound) pretty stable. TKeca starts up quickly and
is pretty intuitive and easy to use.
I'm not sure if ecasound is difficult to set up or not because I've been
using it for so long that I know a lot about how it does it's business.
But I can tell you that I've *never* had a problem compiling the
program. If I install the (stated) dependencies, it always compiles and
installs correctly (unlike a lot of programs). And you don't (have to)
install some of the programs that ecasound uses (unless you want) I'm
talking about the progams that do things like converting to mp3, or
converting a midi file to a WAV (via timidity soft synth). So there's a
bunch of program that you (may not) even need when installing ecasound.
I found that just recoding WAV's is the best because you can do
"seeks" with them anyways ("jump" to a specific time in the song, or
proper fast forward or rewind functioning). File formats like mp3 don't
allow for proper "seeks" (and possibly maybe not even fast forwarding or
rewinding). TKeca takes advantage of all this. And there's no extra
components (other programs) to install just to record WAV tracks.
Ecasound (and therefor TKeca) take advantage of the LADSPA effects plug
in system. So the user can put 4 effect on any track at any time. The
sliders to adjust the effects work in real time. In other words, you can
change the depth of a reverb effect as you track is playing so that you
hear the changes in real time.
The only thing that I can say negative about TKeca is that it doesn't
monitor the effects as you record. But when you stop recording and play
a track, you can add up to four effects per track.
TKeca also has a "roll-in" mechanism. It allows for specified amount of
seconds of playing before the actual recording starts. Another words, If
you record (for instance) the vocal part that goes "My big legged momma
loves a man that aint me" and you sang out of key on the word "momma".
Well you don't want to just press record over the part that needs
fixing, because it's too abrupt. Most people would like to hear the
parts that leads into the spot that needs recording over. It will
"pre-roll" into the specified part you want to record over. And when it
gets to that part, will start recording at that point only.
On the last version I tried, the roll-in mechanism worked, but you had
to start from the beginning of the song. I hope that was fixed in the
latest version.
I only used some basic parts of the (new) version of TKeca, so I can't
vouch for it completly. But I would be glad to be of assistance if you
want to install both of those programs.
This email is getting long. But I wanted to share some of my experiences
with muse. It not only has several "built in" soft synths, but two
(perticulary) will provide a complete set of sound. There's actually two
soft synths in the "first" catagory of soft synths. I'm talking about
soft synths that use sound fonts. They are "fluidsynth" and "Fluid". I
don't know if these programs are related, but I did a "side-by-side"
comparison of the sound of both of them and found that "fluid" sounded
much better than "Fluidsynth". And if you download the sound font
"FluidR3 GM.SF2" from the link below, I think you will be happy with
what you find. It is 141 Megs but it's worth every bit of download time
because they are "sterio panned" "real" instruments. The "end users"
don't even have to worry about doing any panning. I put a couple of
intruments on a few tracks and they were panned beautifully together. I
really like this font.
The other advantage of the softsynth "Fluid" (instead of "Fluidsynth")
is that once you load a soundfont into "Fluid" and then save muse's
configuration, the soundfont will load automatically into "Fluid" when
you start muse again. I could'nt get "Fluidsynth" to do this. I had to
reload the font every time I started the program. And if you want to
make this easy on the end user, you may want to use the "Fluid" soft synth.
The second catagoy of softsynths that come with it are the buzzy
"synthy" sounds that are electronically produced. In fact the "vam"
softsynth has an interface for some pretty good control over the sound.
And not only can you move sliders in real time to get all kinds of cool
"buzzy" sounds while your playing, but I even was able to use the
sliders on some already pre-recorded midi tracks as they were playing.
So you have real intruments and you have buzzy (synth sounding) intruments.
I get the impression that the "live recoding" capababilities (using a
microphone and "real" instrument as opposed to midi recording) isn't
very good at this time with muse. And that's why I suggested TKeca. And
if you can find a midi recorder that syncs with jack_connect, then you
have the best of both worlds.
Actaully, here's a bunch of links...
The "FluidR3 GM.SF2" sound font...
http://inanna.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~swh/fluid-unpacked/
ecasound home page...
http://www.eca.cx/welcome.html
TKeca download page...
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=63518
While we're on the subject of programs built on top of ecasound. This
next one is an "effects box" (my terminoligy) that uses all the
functionality of ecasound. It's called Ecamegapedal...
http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecamegapedal/
I think these are good programs. And if you have the patience, if you
get jack running well, it opens up the possibility of using jack_connect
to sycronize programs. I (think) that there's (not) a lot out there that
takes advantage of it. One of my biggest hopes was to install the latest
version of the "Hydrogen" drum machine because the version that came
with SuSE 9.0 doesn't have the jack transport functions (for
syncronizing with other programs). I spent a whole night satisfying all
the dependencies. It built without a hitch, but it just wont start up
properly. I'm now using Hydrogen 0.8.0-80 (that came with SuSE 9.0
distribution) and I really like it. Maybe I just don't have a lot of
experience with linux drum machines, but these are the first good drum
samples that I've heard. I've never been satisfied with any drum sample
that I've heard prior to using Hydrogen. And you can get "drum kits"
online (I haven't downloaded any yet). But Hydrogen is not only easy to
use, but the manual is easy to understand also.
You know, I really avoided jack because it just added another layer of
problems. But I connected Hydrogen up to it and the latency (the amount
of time from pressing the keyboard to the time the sound came out)
disappeared. And I was using the lowest buffer size when (not) hooked up
the jack and couldn't get good response time until I hooked it up to
jack. In fact I get immediate responce time.
There's a program called qjackconnect that allows for a point and click
connecting of programs and devices when using jack so you don't have to
go into the shell and type cryptic command to hook up programs and
devices (and then not hook up correcty after all the effort). And since
I'm speaking of connections. The one that hooks up things like your midi
keyboard to synths (and things like that) is called "kaconnect". What I
like about it, is that it not only shows (in the windows) what there is
to connect together but (for me) it makes it easy to understand how all
these cryptic things actually work. And (I'm assuming) it will make
"aconnect" (command line program that kaconnect runs) easier to
understand when it comes to adding it into scripts so that these devices
will automatically connect apon starting up programs. Prior to
kaconnect, I couldn't visualize what a 65:0 or a 192:0 was (or why there
was a 65:0, 65:1, 65:2 and... 65:3). Both kaconnect and qjackconnect
puts them in front of you in two boxes ("from" ports and "to" ports).
You just connect them with mouse clicks.
I'm becoming a bit long winded, but what I'm trying to say is, you could
get along well without jack, but I'm just wondering if (after a while)
it will become difficult to (not) use jack. I know that some of the
newer versions of programs I've seen are building as "jack only" apps.
So I finally gave in and did the research nessesary (and it was painful)
I was wondering if this would be a good time for us to use this
situation to get this gentlman up and running with jack. Maybe we can
all just "push thru" and get him set up. That way we can have a thurough
conversation about setting up jack. I'm sure I'll learn a lot also. It's
not that jack is that complex. It's just finding the information
nessesary. You know... "were is the information... is it relivant to
what I'm doing... what is this other aspect they are talking about... do
I even need it... where can I find that information..."
Rocco
Although (and correct me if I'm mistaken) doesn't Rosegarden (I'm
talking about Rosegarden-4) allow syncing with other programs via
jack_connect? I know that JACK can be challenging and I know that
jack_connect is still new (I think). And so the question would be "what
multitrack recorder to sync it up to"? I know that ecasound is (not) for
the "average user", but now there's "TKeca" which is a front end to
ecasound (see the links below).
Since this gentleman is asking about software I'll explain ecasound and
the gui front end "TKeca". Ecasound is a command line multi-track
recorder and effects processor that has many other features (too many
to mention and I would probly leave some out). It's very stable,
powerful, no-nonsense command line progam that you can use "TKeca" as
the gui interface (links below). I've used TKeca and it is very strait
forward and (like ecasound) pretty stable. TKeca starts up quickly and
is pretty intuitive and easy to use.
I'm not sure if ecasound is difficult to set up or not because I've been
using it for so long that I know a lot about how it does it's business.
But I can tell you that I've *never* had a problem compiling the
program. If I install the (stated) dependencies, it always compiles and
installs correctly (unlike a lot of programs). And you don't (have to)
install some of the programs that ecasound uses (unless you want) I'm
talking about the progams that do things like converting to mp3, or
converting a midi file to a WAV (via timidity soft synth). So there's a
bunch of program that you (may not) even need when installing ecasound.
I found that just recoding WAV's is the best because you can do
"seeks" with them anyways ("jump" to a specific time in the song, or
proper fast forward or rewind functioning). File formats like mp3 don't
allow for proper "seeks" (and possibly maybe not even fast forwarding or
rewinding). TKeca takes advantage of all this. And there's no extra
components (other programs) to install just to record WAV tracks.
Ecasound (and therefor TKeca) take advantage of the LADSPA effects plug
in system. So the user can put 4 effect on any track at any time. The
sliders to adjust the effects work in real time. In other words, you can
change the depth of a reverb effect as you track is playing so that you
hear the changes in real time.
The only thing that I can say negative about TKeca is that it doesn't
monitor the effects as you record. But when you stop recording and play
a track, you can add up to four effects per track.
TKeca also has a "roll-in" mechanism. It allows for specified amount of
seconds of playing before the actual recording starts. Another words, If
you record (for instance) the vocal part that goes "My big legged momma
loves a man that aint me" and you sang out of key on the word "momma".
Well you don't want to just press record over the part that needs
fixing, because it's too abrupt. Most people would like to hear the
parts that leads into the spot that needs recording over. It will
"pre-roll" into the specified part you want to record over. And when it
gets to that part, will start recording at that point only.
On the last version I tried, the roll-in mechanism worked, but you had
to start from the beginning of the song. I hope that was fixed in the
latest version.
I only used some basic parts of the (new) version of TKeca, so I can't
vouch for it completly. But I would be glad to be of assistance if you
want to install both of those programs.
This email is getting long. But I wanted to share some of my experiences
with muse. It not only has several "built in" soft synths, but two
(perticulary) will provide a complete set of sound. There's actually two
soft synths in the "first" catagory of soft synths. I'm talking about
soft synths that use sound fonts. They are "fluidsynth" and "Fluid". I
don't know if these programs are related, but I did a "side-by-side"
comparison of the sound of both of them and found that "fluid" sounded
much better than "Fluidsynth". And if you download the sound font
"FluidR3 GM.SF2" from the link below, I think you will be happy with
what you find. It is 141 Megs but it's worth every bit of download time
because they are "sterio panned" "real" instruments. The "end users"
don't even have to worry about doing any panning. I put a couple of
intruments on a few tracks and they were panned beautifully together. I
really like this font.
The other advantage of the softsynth "Fluid" (instead of "Fluidsynth")
is that once you load a soundfont into "Fluid" and then save muse's
configuration, the soundfont will load automatically into "Fluid" when
you start muse again. I could'nt get "Fluidsynth" to do this. I had to
reload the font every time I started the program. And if you want to
make this easy on the end user, you may want to use the "Fluid" soft synth.
The second catagoy of softsynths that come with it are the buzzy
"synthy" sounds that are electronically produced. In fact the "vam"
softsynth has an interface for some pretty good control over the sound.
And not only can you move sliders in real time to get all kinds of cool
"buzzy" sounds while your playing, but I even was able to use the
sliders on some already pre-recorded midi tracks as they were playing.
So you have real intruments and you have buzzy (synth sounding) intruments.
I get the impression that the "live recoding" capababilities (using a
microphone and "real" instrument as opposed to midi recording) isn't
very good at this time with muse. And that's why I suggested TKeca. And
if you can find a midi recorder that syncs with jack_connect, then you
have the best of both worlds.
Actaully, here's a bunch of links...
The "FluidR3 GM.SF2" sound font...
http://inanna.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~swh/fluid-unpacked/
ecasound home page...
http://www.eca.cx/welcome.html
TKeca download page...
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=63518
While we're on the subject of programs built on top of ecasound. This
next one is an "effects box" (my terminoligy) that uses all the
functionality of ecasound. It's called Ecamegapedal...
http://www.wakkanet.fi/~kaiv/ecamegapedal/
I think these are good programs. And if you have the patience, if you
get jack running well, it opens up the possibility of using jack_connect
to sycronize programs. I (think) that there's (not) a lot out there that
takes advantage of it. One of my biggest hopes was to install the latest
version of the "Hydrogen" drum machine because the version that came
with SuSE 9.0 doesn't have the jack transport functions (for
syncronizing with other programs). I spent a whole night satisfying all
the dependencies. It built without a hitch, but it just wont start up
properly. I'm now using Hydrogen 0.8.0-80 (that came with SuSE 9.0
distribution) and I really like it. Maybe I just don't have a lot of
experience with linux drum machines, but these are the first good drum
samples that I've heard. I've never been satisfied with any drum sample
that I've heard prior to using Hydrogen. And you can get "drum kits"
online (I haven't downloaded any yet). But Hydrogen is not only easy to
use, but the manual is easy to understand also.
You know, I really avoided jack because it just added another layer of
problems. But I connected Hydrogen up to it and the latency (the amount
of time from pressing the keyboard to the time the sound came out)
disappeared. And I was using the lowest buffer size when (not) hooked up
the jack and couldn't get good response time until I hooked it up to
jack. In fact I get immediate responce time.
There's a program called qjackconnect that allows for a point and click
connecting of programs and devices when using jack so you don't have to
go into the shell and type cryptic command to hook up programs and
devices (and then not hook up correcty after all the effort). And since
I'm speaking of connections. The one that hooks up things like your midi
keyboard to synths (and things like that) is called "kaconnect". What I
like about it, is that it not only shows (in the windows) what there is
to connect together but (for me) it makes it easy to understand how all
these cryptic things actually work. And (I'm assuming) it will make
"aconnect" (command line program that kaconnect runs) easier to
understand when it comes to adding it into scripts so that these devices
will automatically connect apon starting up programs. Prior to
kaconnect, I couldn't visualize what a 65:0 or a 192:0 was (or why there
was a 65:0, 65:1, 65:2 and... 65:3). Both kaconnect and qjackconnect
puts them in front of you in two boxes ("from" ports and "to" ports).
You just connect them with mouse clicks.
I'm becoming a bit long winded, but what I'm trying to say is, you could
get along well without jack, but I'm just wondering if (after a while)
it will become difficult to (not) use jack. I know that some of the
newer versions of programs I've seen are building as "jack only" apps.
So I finally gave in and did the research nessesary (and it was painful)
I was wondering if this would be a good time for us to use this
situation to get this gentlman up and running with jack. Maybe we can
all just "push thru" and get him set up. That way we can have a thurough
conversation about setting up jack. I'm sure I'll learn a lot also. It's
not that jack is that complex. It's just finding the information
nessesary. You know... "were is the information... is it relivant to
what I'm doing... what is this other aspect they are talking about... do
I even need it... where can I find that information..."
Rocco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Sat Jan 10 2004 - 18:09:22 EET