Re: [LAU] rosegarden 1 system 0

On Saturday, December 17, 2011 03:42:57 AM david did opine:

> gene heskett wrote:
> > On Friday, December 16, 2011 09:10:48 PM Bob van der Poel did opine:
> >> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 3:53 PM, Brett McCoy <idragosani@email-addr-hidden>
> >
> > wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 4:01 PM, gene heskett <gheskett@email-addr-hidden>
> >
> > wrote:
> >>>> On Friday, December 16, 2011 03:55:40 PM Brett McCoy did opine:
> >>>>> Do you get the same lockups if you have Rosegarden send MIDI to a
> >>>>> softsynth like Fluidsynth or ZynAddSubFX?
> >>>>
> >>>> As the reboot recovery here is about a 20 minute process due to
> >>>> e2fsck'ing about a terrabyte drive, and I get all my custom stuff
> >>>> I've been running for years restarted, I hadn't tried that. Its
> >>>> default software synth is timidity, so I haven't even installed
> >>>> these two listed above. Are you implying that an unserviced IRQ
> >>>> from the sound card might be at the bottom of this dog pile? If
> >>>> so, how would one go about determining that?
> >>>
> >>> I don't know what could be causing the issue. You need to see if the
> >>> same problems happen when the hardware synth is not being used. If
> >>> no lockups occur when Rosegarden plays back to Fluidsynth or
> >>> another synth, then see if you get the same lockup when another
> >>> MIDI sequencer sends MIDI to you hardware synth. If so, then the
> >>> problem is your audio hardware. Is the hardware a PCI card or
> >>> built-in on the motherboard?
> >
> > PCI
> >
> >> I can add that when I used the MIDI ports on my Audiophile PCI card
> >> I'd get total system lockups all the time :) I now use the el-cheapo
> >> USB->Midi interfaces and have never had a problem with them. The
> >> audiophile lockups were over different computers and several
> >> different Ubuntu installs. Never figured out what was going on ...
> >> just decided to use the USB thing and not worry.
> >
> > Potentially at the cost of some latency, plus I understand that USB
> > can re- order packet sequences. As long as they get there, I don't
> > imagine that as being a huge problem though, as long as the note off
> > doesn't get there before the corresponding note on.
>
> No help whatsoever, but have had no lockups with RG 11.11.11 running on
> Aptosid (a stabilized Debian Sid) using Audiophile card and a USB=MIDI
> cable working with Yahamaha external keyboard. Using MSI mobo with
> quad-core Phenom II (2.2GHz) 4GB RAM, using jack2.
 
So we majorly miss-match only in that I'm using the GM synth on the Audigy2
Value card, where your output is a usb-midi rig of some sort, driving the
Yamaha.

To my troubleshooting mind, that points strongly toward an unserviced PCI
IRQ. I'll see if I can get something rigged to reroute it through
fluidsynth. The one test I made using timidity, it worked but the voices
didn't impress me all that much, and it was using about 40% of all 4 cores.

> Have never tried to use the Audiophile's MIDI ports. Most MIDI ports are
> just glorified serial ports, don't know what the Audiophile uses since
> their output port also includes SPDIF. Can't imagine why a serial port
> would freeze a machine.

A seriel port using the 6551, that is very easy to do because that chip is
severely drain bamaged in how it does hardware flow controls. OTOH, it only
freezes that comm channel most of the time, not the whole machine.

Wouldn't spdif be a PCM output, after whatever synth was used?
 
> I don't use timidity - have never in years of Linux use been able to get
> it to work. Qsynth/fluidsynth works, so I really haven't tried to make
> timidity work.

Every distro it seems, emasculates it somehow. My first experience using
timidity was 8 or 9 years ago, and at that time it included an on-screen
keyboard image that showed the key motions as if it was a player piano, and
a mouse click and hold on a key actually played that note from whatever GM
instrument it was assigned to be. I haven't seen that 'plugin' in years.
To do that on a 400 mhz single core machine was to me quite impressive, but
that is what I made my first linux install on, RH5.0 in early 1998.

> Hard freezes like that sound like hardware driver or hardware problem,
> possibly IRQ/mobo problem.

That has been my experience also.

> I don't know PCLOS - does it use PulseAudio? I always remove PA on audio
> systems.

No pulse on pclos. One of the reasons I like it. :)

Thanks David.

Cheers, Gene

-- 
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