SequencerForum: Multimedia Topic: Sequencer started by: blip Posted by blip on June 12 2007,10:08
Hi Can anyone recommend a good audio / midi sequencer to use in DSL ( I can install Muse but I can't see it on the menu). Thanks Posted by Juanito on June 12 2007,10:26
Installing something will not neccessarily produce a desktop icon, you will probably need to look in /usr/bin or sbin, usr/local/bin or sbin, opt/bin, etc to find the file to execute to run your program. Posted by blip on June 12 2007,10:45
Thanks mate. I'm sure asking a lot of questions at the moment!
Posted by blip on June 12 2007,22:59
Well amazingly ( I don't know how I did it but I just starting clicking!) I've got muse and qsynth installed....(qsynth is the front end for fluidsynth) ! I think it was more of a question of luck than anything I knew I was doing. I did get into quite a muddle! I realise that (doh) I had been using DSL v 2.4 ...with the oldstable and things seem to install ok! Today I downloaded DSL 3.3 and I couldn't get anything to work....(ie I couldn't install fluidsynth )... I am so pleased so see Muse working. I will post more when I understand what I'm doing! Posted by blip on June 12 2007,23:02
Please can anyone explain how I might create an icon on the desktop to launch Muse? Thanks
Posted by mikshaw on June 13 2007,01:50
plop your icon image into /home/dsl/.xtdesktop and then start up the icon tool (desktop menu: Desktop->Icontool).Click the "add" button Select your icon file Fill in the blanks ("full path" is the path to the muse executable) Click "ok" Posted by blip on June 16 2007,14:48
Thanks Mikshaw....Well after much ado I've got Muse installed and running and Fluidsynth. I've looked in the Muse properties and it's playing through Alsa. However it is not playing through my USB midi! I've a Soundblaster and it's sending the midi through that. When I try to select a different midi interface ( ie my Edirol UM-1EX) it's not an option. But Muse is definitely using Alsa. Does anyone know how to tell Alsa how to get it to start taking input/output from my Edirol UM-1EX? I've a feeling I got in a muddle last time and assumed the Edirol was ok in Alsa but maybe it's not..... Here's what fluidsynth looks like running in alsa, and below I did a modprobe snd-usb-audio and lsmod as you might see what's wrong - thanks again all! BTW everyone I am using DSL 3.3 now - I was just in for more headaches using 2.4 and everything seems to be working in 3.3 Here's what my lsmod fluidsynth: warning: The sample rate is set to 44100, the synthesizer may be out of tune fluidsynth: warning: Requested a period size of 64, got 65 instead fluidsynth: ALSA driver: Using format s16, rw, interleaved fluidsynth version 1.0.5 Copyright © 2000-2002 Peter Hanappe and others. FLUID Synth comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the COPYING file for details. SoundFont® is a registered trademark of E-mu Systems, Inc. [/home/dsl]# modprobe snd-usb-audio [/home/dsl]# lsmod Module Size Used by Not tainted snd-usb-audio 38720 0 snd-seq-midi 3296 0 (autoclean) snd-seq-midi-event 3184 0 (autoclean) [snd-seq-midi] snd-seq 39536 0 (autoclean) [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event] mousedev 3832 0 (unused) hid 22372 0 (unused) input 3168 0 [mousedev hid] snd-mixer-oss 11280 0 (autoclean) snd-ens1371 11456 0 (autoclean) gameport 1388 0 (autoclean) [snd-ens1371] snd-pcm 57504 0 (autoclean) [snd-usb-audio snd-ens1371] snd-timer 15044 0 (autoclean) [snd-seq snd-pcm] snd-page-alloc 5584 0 (autoclean) [snd-pcm] snd-rawmidi 12512 0 (autoclean) [snd-usb-audio snd-seq-midi snd-en s1371] snd-seq-device 3716 0 (autoclean) [snd-seq-midi snd-seq snd-rawmidi] snd-ac97-codec 40012 0 (autoclean) [snd-ens1371] snd 29988 0 (autoclean) [snd-usb-audio snd-seq-midi snd-se q-midi-event snd-seq snd-mixer-oss snd-ens1371 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-rawmidi snd -seq-device snd-ac97-codec] unionfs 68800 7 af_packet 13544 0 (autoclean) nls_cp437 4348 0 (autoclean) ext3 64452 0 (autoclean) jbd 46516 0 (autoclean) [ext3] nls_iso8859-1 2844 1 (autoclean) ntfs 50944 0 (autoclean) msdos 4684 0 (autoclean) agpgart 42660 0 (unused) 8139too 13736 1 mii 2240 0 [8139too] crc32 2816 0 [8139too] cfi_cmdset_0001 24760 1 (autoclean) jedec_probe 9072 0 (autoclean) gen_probe 1792 0 (autoclean) [jedec_probe] ich2rom 1876 0 (unused) mtdcore 2404 1 [ich2rom] chipreg 860 0 [jedec_probe ich2rom] hw_random 2700 0 (unused) serial 52100 0 (autoclean) usb-midi 16700 0 (unused) soundcore 3428 3 [snd usb-midi] pcmcia_core 39840 0 thermal 6564 0 (unused) processor 8976 0 [thermal] fan 1568 0 (unused) button 2508 0 (unused) battery 5888 0 (unused) ac 1824 0 (unused) rtc 7036 0 (autoclean) cloop 39204 2 ieee1394 183076 0 usb-storage 61696 0 usb-uhci 21644 0 (unused) ehci-hcd 16392 0 (unused) usbcore 57600 1 [snd-usb-audio hid usb-midi usb-storage usb-uh ci ehci-hcd] ataraid 6180 0 ide-cd 28512 0 ide-scsi 8816 1 [/home/dsl]# Posted by Juanito on June 16 2007,15:28
My guess would be that alsa has correctly identified both your soundblaster card and your midi device but you need to tell it which one to use.I am not in front of a DSL machine at the moment but I seem to remember that if you look somewhere like /proc/asound/cards, you will see which devices alsa has identified. Once you see what alsa has called your devices, you can use that to identify them or you can try something like "aplay hw:0,0 filename" or "aplay hw:1,0 filename" to figure out which is which and enter that as the inerface for fluidsynth to use. Posted by blip on June 16 2007,16:02
Thanks for your quick response Juanito. When I look at /proc/asound I have a number of entries:Audio PCI/ UM1/ 5 bytes card0/ 5 bytes card1/ (0 bytes) - all the rest are 0 bytes oss/ seq/ cards devices modules pcm timers version how can I tell which is hw:0 or hw:1? Posted by Juanito on June 17 2007,04:38
In emelFM, highlight the items (eg cards) and then choose "view" from the right-click menu or enter (for example) "cat /proc/asound/cards" from a terminal window.
Posted by blip on June 23 2007,12:51
Sorry i've posted stuff all over the forums about Muse and Fluidsynth. I didn't realise at the time it would encompass so many things!I'll stick to what I've found out so far trying to get Muse and Fluidsynth working. I'm nearly there but also nearly ready to give up! Muse does seem to hang when playing around with Audio settings. I have to keep killing it. I added a fluidsynth instance within Muse which seemed ok but when I tried to remove it Muse hangs. Also Muse can hang when you are playing music - it just keeps playing music and when you try to stop it it wont stop. After a while of killing Muse/restarting the OS seemed to get a bit clogged up ( or Alsa is I'm not sure) so I have to do a reboot. I think it's ok if you have a Soundblaster, but I'm struggling with USB midi. I will persevere, but maybe it's better to admit defeat and use a Music Distro....it's been challenging trying to get it all working. If anyone else has any luck or is interested in giving it a go please post here...I am still interested in trying to crack this nut. What I will say is that Muse doesn't seem to present any trouble when Alsa isn't on..it's just when it plays through Alsa things just keep hanging or you need to keep rebooting if something goes wrong. MMMMM..... Posted by jpeters on June 24 2007,07:02
Remember how easy all this was with an Atari ST?
Posted by Juanito on June 24 2007,17:50
I did some playing about with alsa and usb and found that, once I loaded snd-usb-audio, alsa recognised a usb headset without me doing anything in particular:
Where the 0 = hw:0,0 and 1 = hw:1,0 etc and AudioPCI, headset, etc are the alsa device names. Do you get something like this when your usb midi device is connected and snd-usb-audio is loaded? Note, to test things you can use xmms: right-click on the player and chose options/preferences choose the alsa output plug-in click on configure/user defined enter "hw:headset" or "hw:2,0" [in my case] click OK, then try to play something Posted by jpeters on June 24 2007,18:07
I didn't see "0 = hw:0,0" anywhere in the code sample. Am I going blind, or is it somewhere else? EDIT: Juanito, have you ever been able to get linux to both monitor and record simultaneusly? For some reason, programs like Audacity have this capability only in the windows versions. Thus, there is no way to record streaming media (i.e., the recording functions are knocked out whenever a streaming media connection is running). Posted by blip on June 24 2007,19:19
I'll try that again Juanito. I can see my midi interface in asound/cards but I'm not sure what to select in the dev folder - midi00, midi01 - there's loads of dev devices! I don't own a usb audio/midi interface - it's only midi...buy my Creative labs card is showing in alsa as device 0....I'll try to play some sound again through it and report back. There's something a bit flaky about Muse and Alsa ...maybe...I'm still playing around. All I know is that I'm having to Kill Muse every now and then....when you switch it off from Alsa it plays fine....I remember using Jack control panel in another distro...you could switch off / on Alsa or the soundsystem if there was a problem but I'm not sure how to do this in DSL using command lines. It's a shame 'cos I've almost got this going....it would be such a nice little setup if it would work. I'll report back after some more experimenting. Yes Jpeters, I owned an St and Falcon...I regret not having them at times as Cubase was very simple and midi incredibly stable. I will be dammed if I don't get this all working in DSL! It will be great if it does...usb stick in any pc....on the move.... Posted by Juanito on June 25 2007,03:50
No, but then I'm not sure I know what monitor means in this context... It could be that you need to unmute an input somewhere - did you have a look at the mixer controls for your card and midi box? You should be able to see them with "alsamixer -c 0" and "alsamixer -c 1" or similar. Maybe you could post the output from "cat /proc/asound/cards" Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,04:52
I'm referring to the inability to record streaming media. If connected to internet radio, for example, loading audacity will generate an error initializing the i/o layer. If audacity is loaded, connecting to streaming media yields an error regarding the soundcard being blocked by another program. It's not a soundcard issue, since I have no problem recording streaming media on the same computer with windows loaded. I thought it might be a linux issue, since when researching the audacity docs I think I read something about only the linux versions not being able to monitor what was being recorded. I should try the windows version of audacity; I don't have another app to compare with audacity running on dsl yet...... EDIT: Yes, as I suspected. No problem running the windows version of Audacity and recording streaming media.....same computer, soundcard. Posted by lucky13 on June 25 2007,11:33
What inability? That's not a Linux issue. There may be an issue related to audacity, but not to Linux. I don't know how the audacity extension was compiled and if there was anything left out, but I have a hunch that's where the issue may lie. Many applications can rip streaming audio when running Linux: I have cron set to record news feeds every morning using streamripper. Have you tried it yet? Edited to clarify. Posted by mikshaw on June 25 2007,14:50
Are you talking about The Linux version of Audacity in general, or specifically about the myDSL extension? I never tested internet stream recording for the extension, mainly because I wasn't aware that Audacity had that feature.As far as its ability to monitor what was being recorded, i guess that would depend on what you mean by "monitor". You mean audacity outputting sound while it's recording? I don't see what the point would be, unless you're altering the audio *while* it's being recorded....which doesn't sound logical to me. Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,15:33
Audacity.uci can't record streaming media; neither can the audacity optained using apt-get for reasons cited above. The "monitoring" issue unique to linux was something noted in the docs that led me to believe that it might not work with other distros either, being a "basic editor." re: streamripper: where do you find the URL (complete with port). The general URL on the browser doesn't work, and the "file name" found in xMMS's playlist isn't what it wants. Posted by curaga on June 25 2007,15:53
Yes it can.. At least it should:< http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=recording&i=streaming > Maybe try a newer version? Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,17:02
Yea, and look at what's available for debian, ver.1.2.3, "a fast, cross-platform audio editor." There's a more sophisticated version available for Suse linux (1.3.3), although a later version for debian in testing. I'm guessing that getting it all working requires lots of resources.
Posted by mikshaw on June 25 2007,17:35
1.3 is a development version. I opted to stick with the stable line for the mydsl package mostly because I didn't want to mess with Gtk2 or spend time trying to force Gtk11.2.6 was fairly recently released, but I have not yet packaged it for myDSL. It seems to have a serious problem with font display, but i haven't looked into a solution yet. In any case, the information from the link curaga provided should work regardless of the Audacity version. Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,19:19
nope.... I attempted to compile all the dependencies to get the latest version to compile, but it's beyond me (I think it needed a zip compresser for the help file or something plus a few headers in order to produce a make file). EDIT: got a little farther by commenting out the references to zip files in the configure program. "Make install" failed however, with other errors (cc command doesn't work) : ************************************ make -C lib-src make[1]: Entering directory `/mnt/hda3/Downloads/audacity-src-1.2.4b/lib-src' cd libnyquist && make make[2]: Entering directory `/mnt/hda3/Downloads/audacity-src-1.2.4b/lib-src/libnyquist' cc -c xlisp/extern.c -o xlisp/extern.o -g -DCMTSTUFF -O2 -DEXT -Inyqsrc -Itran -Ixlisp -Icmt -Isys -Isnd -Ifft make[2]: cc: Command not found make[2]: *** [xlisp/extern.o] Error 127 make[2]: Leaving directory `/mnt/hda3/Downloads/audacity-src-1.2.4b/lib-src/libnyquist' make[1]: *** [libnyquist/libnyquist.a] Error 2 make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/hda3/Downloads/audacity-src-1.2.4b/lib-src' make: *** [audacity] Error 2 ************************************** Posted by lucky13 on June 25 2007,20:26
RTFM < http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/tutorialconsole.php > Posted by lucky13 on June 25 2007,20:32
mikshaw
That can be done in streamripper by relaying to localhost, and without the drastic overhead (RAM) of audacity. Posted by lucky13 on June 25 2007,20:39
From the audacity site: Windows and Linux With most Windows and Linux audio devices, it is possible to record whatever sound the computer is currently playing, including internet radio streams. In the drop-down menu on Audacity's mixer toolbar, choose “Wave Out” or “Stereo Mix” as the input source. (The exact name may be different, depending on your computer's sound drivers.) When you press the Record button, Audacity will capture whatever sound is playing on your computer's speakers. Note that on Windows Vista, the “stereo mix” option must be chosen in the Audio I/O tab of Preferences, in the “Recording Device” dropdown. If this doesn't work on your computer, you can instead use a cable to connect your computer's “Line Out” (speaker) port to its “Line In” port, and use Audacity to record from Line In. Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,20:48
I did, thank you Didn't answer the question. Right clicking on Xmms doesn't give you the URL. Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,20:52
Simply not relevant. I read all that. The i/o layer is completely disabled if connected to internet radio. Try it. ......... Posted by lucky13 on June 25 2007,21:02
Yes, it does. And there are at least a couple ways to skin the cat. METHOD 1 Go to the playlist. Right click on the stream you're playing. Select "File info." METHOD 2 Go to the main player. Select "File info." Either provides you with a URI with port number. Posted by lucky13 on June 25 2007,21:11
I only use audacity in XP, for editing and not to rip streams. Streamripper is much lighter and easy to use; audacity is overkill for a simple task like ripping a stream. Posted by mikshaw on June 25 2007,21:23
A typical distribution with GCC would provide cc as a symlink to gcc. The gcc mydsl packages do not do this (although it would probably be a good idea). Simply creating the symlink yourself should fix this particular problem.
You can disable help as a configure option if you don't want to install zip (./configure --help | less). Posted by jpeters on June 25 2007,23:37
I'm playing internet radio right now. Either method yields: 00000&sid=69.181.148.180-1182814060288497&lid=807-usa&from=pls If I use Pandora (my favorite internet radio site) I don't get info from Xmms....maybe it uses Macromedia or something. Posted by lucky13 on June 26 2007,00:01
You should get a box like the one in the link below and there should be a box with the URI including port number on one line. That's the way it's always worked for me when streaming PLS files.< http://flamerus.tripod.com/xmms-fileinfo-2.png > Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,00:02
I tried "ln -s gcc cc" which didn't work. What is the best way to do this? Thanks. Lucky13: Your graphic isn't showing up on the link. Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on June 26 2007,02:49
You can also probably set the CC environmental variable... such as `export CC=gcc` Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,03:58
Thanks, Hats. Exporting didn't work, but dropping the link into the /usr/bin directory did. I initially created the link in the working directory, but that didn't cut it. It's been compiling for the last 20 minutes. I have no expectations....... Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,05:51
I have version 1.2.4 up and running, with all the libraries installed. Same basic conflict with streaming media which needs to be shut down before audacity can function. This version still doesn't have the "wave out" or "stereo mix" options referenced on the audacity regarding it's ability to record streaming media. The older versions have no problem with streaming media on an XP. If anyone wants 1.2.4 I can post it. Posted by curaga on June 26 2007,08:29
Audacity options for which source to record from aren't from audacity, they're provided by the sound card driver.Please list all the options in the dropdown list (mic, line out etc) beside the record volume Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,09:33
Here's what's available in the dropdown menu:Line, Mic, CD, IGain, Line1, Phonein, Video Posted by mikshaw on June 26 2007,13:04
That may be a limitation of your audio device, but that's just a guess.I assumed you were compiling 1.2.6 or 1.3.3. The 1.2.4 version is already available in the uci section of myDSL (audacity.uci). Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,15:00
1.2.6 is not available for debian. I compiled 1.2.4 in case including all the libraries made a difference regarding the i/o layer conflict; it didn't. Given the same results on three linux machines that all work when booted with windows, I'll assume the problem is in the software/OS. Posted by lucky13 on June 26 2007,16:20
Well, try this. I took the shots playing local files but it works the same way... < http://lucky13.blogsavy.com/xmms-file-info/ > For a stream, you should get a standard URI with port, e.g., < http://12.34.567:8901, > where the file name is. Posted by curaga on June 26 2007,16:56
Use Line1. I just tried that (Xmms playing an mp3 - open audacity, record, worked) on my distro, though it has alsa, the name for lineout was Line1. Try that?Ps. It's 1.2.6 Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,17:26
The problem was that the URL needs to be put in quotes. Interesting...the downloaded file to connect with the station has a different URL (found by clicking the file's properties) . Now, if I can figure out how to get the URL of Pandora...just my luck..it's "INTERNET DAY OF SILENCE."...damn.... Posted by jpeters on June 26 2007,17:55
I get an host error when loading audacity if connected to streaming media ("error initializing the audio i/o layer, you won't be able play or record anything, isn't that just fantastic?") so there's no way it will record anything; good news that it's possible to get this working, though. I should try upgrading from 3.2 and using alsa.. Thanks for trying this out..... Posted by curaga on June 27 2007,09:37
Yes, maybe alsa drivers for your soundcard are better than OSS..
Posted by jpeters on June 27 2007,16:27
Or worse.......I booted up 3.4RC with "dsl alsa", dsl-loaded gnu utilities and alsa, and connected to kjazz internet radio; got a "couldn't open audio" error. I'll play with it some more, but guessing alsa doesn't support this soundcard.... Posted by Juanito on June 27 2007,18:25
If you try this with xmms, it will still try to use the oss drivers and you will need to manually change the settings to alsa...
Posted by jpeters on June 28 2007,06:05
If alsa is loaded, I get output errors no matter what output plugin is being used by Xmms. I'm using a Dell Latitude. (btw/ I don't expect linux to support every piece of junk that caters to MS)...... note: Streamripper is a real gem when you know the URL. Anybody know a linux equivalent of "url snooper?" (Pandora, etc., use embeded players; I'm checking out last.fm, which is supposed to direct the sound files to xmms). Posted by Juanito on June 28 2007,06:58
Hmm - I'm using a Dell Latitude D400 and I don't have any problems with alsa and xmms. I did modify the alsa extension, but only to add alsamixer, aplay, etc - I didn't touch the drivers Posted by jpeters on June 28 2007,07:58
Excellent; in that case, let's just trade laptops, and that should solve my problem. I'll be sending you a c610. Please email address. Posted by lucky13 on June 28 2007,11:24
You should be able to get a stream's URI the same way regardless of which player is embedded, i.e., by finding the file info. You can also right click on any page and scroll to "view page info" or some variation of that in any browser and get all the links contained on a page. Some streaming aggregation sites like shoutcast run their links through a database instead of directly so that's of little use -- you can either follow site links and get their stream URIs there or from XMMS. (I keep lists of various PLS streams I like and use scripts so I just have to click an icon or run it from cron.) Posted by jpeters on June 28 2007,20:55
For the few sites I've tried (kjazz, pandora), the media URLs listed in the browser's "page info" (firefox) don't work with streamripper, while the file.info in xmms (when available) does. Posted by jpeters on July 02 2007,07:33
I just tried loading alsa drivers onto my Dell Inspiron 1000; also didn't work. I booted with "dsl alsa," mydsl loaded alsa.unc and gnu utilities, and changed the default plugin in xmms to alsa. Attempting to load any sound file produced an output driver error. (same as on Dell Latitude C610). Posted by Juanito on July 02 2007,08:22
Do you have the same sound device(s)? Posted by jpeters on July 02 2007,15:02
The Inspirion 1000 has an Intel 32440mx AC97 audio controller, and the C610 has an ESS Technology ER1983S Maestro-3i PCI audio accelerator. Edit: Both are on the Alsa sound card driver list (May, 2007) < http://www.calel.org/pci-devices/alsa-device-list.html#Intel > |