The wait is almost over

August 28, 2013 jeremyaudio, automation, falktx, fundamental, linux, lv2, parameters, plug_in, plugin, yoshimi, youtube, zyn, zynaddsubfx1 Comment

For years users have been asking for a ZynAddSubFX or Yoshimi plug-in with a GUI for Linux. It seems the wait is almost over thanks to the great work of Filipe Coelho aka falkTX.

ZynAddSubFX-LV2 Test #1 (Qtractor)

According to falkTX work on the plug-in is almost 90% done. Parameters can be restored too as the following video shows.

ZynAddSubFX-LV2 Test #2 (Ardour)

Apparently the developer of ZynAddSubFX is working on exposing all parameters so in the future it should also be possible to automate Zyn’s most relevant parameters. Needless to say this stuff is still highly experimental so use at your own risk. I’ve done quite some tests and the plug-in keeps up well, also if you use many of them within a project (I’ve tested with a project with about 15 ZynAddSubFX-LV2 instances). But this doesn’t mean the plug-in doesn’t have any flaws, closing its GUI could crash your DAW for instance. Further tests should reveal all the obvious bugs so everyone, get that code and test it! Build instructions can be found in the aforementioned forum thread.

Many, many thanks to falkTX for making this possible!

Carla on the Raspberry Pi

July 26, 2013November 8, 2015 jeremyarm, aubio, audio, carla, chroot, dssi, falktx, gig, host, kxstudio, ladspa, linux, linuxsampler, linuxvst, lv2, pi, piem, plug_in, plugin, rasbian, raspberry, raspberrypi, repository, rpi, sf2, sfz, vst, zynaddsubfx19 Comments

Last week I managed to get Carla running on my RPi. Carla is a really nice plugin host that supports the most important plugin frameworks available for Linux (LV2, DSSI, LADSPA and VST) with some awesome extra features like a built-in ZynAddSubFX synth and support for SF2, SFZ and GIG files. The latter didn’t work until yesterday but I managed to compile LinuxSampler (which is needed by Carla in order to be able to load SFZ and GIG files) for the RPi with the help of Paul Brossier aka piem from the Aubio project.

I just wrote him a mail:

Hello Paul,

I’m trying to package LinuxSampler for Raspberry Pi but I’m running into an issue when compiling which fails with a message related to RTMath.h. After some googling I ended up here:
http://bb.linuxsampler.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=514#p3156
So I started scouring the interwebs and found this:
http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/linuxsampler/news/20050806T210205Z.html
Where there is a reference to a possible fix. But the diff.gz that contains the patch is untraceable. I know this announcement is almost 8 years old but do you think you still have the diff or maybe an idea what changes you made to the code?

Thanks in advance and keep up the good work with Aubio!

Best regards,

Jeremy Jongepier

And guess what, he replied almost instantly! He gave me some pointers where to add some extra code and even though I’m not a coder I started trying things out. But then I stumbled upon actual patches to resolve this issue. I needed both the ARM and atomic patch and after applying those LinuxSampler compiled flawlessly in my Raspbian ARM chroot. The few lines of code I cooked up myself were almost identical so I got quite far actually. I should really pick up learning how to code, I think I’d learn fast.

So after compiling LinuxSampler I could rebuild Carla against the freshly created LinuxSampler libs. Installed the deb on my RPi and loaded some SFZ’s. It all worked like a charm. Carla is like a Swiss Army Knife, I’m really starting to appreciate this piece of software. Kudos to falkTX! And thanks to Paul Brossier for responding so quickly and helping me to get on the right track.

Carla running on the Raspberry Pi

Open AV Productions: Fabla

July 11, 2013 jeremyaudio, drumkv1, fabla, haaren, harry, linux, lv2, openavproductions, plugin, sampler, samplv1, sorcer2 Comments

Who recalls the times when Linux audio users were craving for a sampler LV2 plugin? Soon we will have even more choice besides drumkv1 and samplv1, enter Fabla! No idea what Fabla stands for but it sure looks fablalous.

Fabla by Open AV Productions uses the same release model as used with Sorcer recently. Instead of a year it took 9 days to push back the release date of Sorcer and hopefully the same thing will happen with Fabla. I’d love to get my hands on this plugin so I’ve done my part to speed up the release date.

Edit: Fabla has been released within 8 days!

Bricking the UG802 Android TV stick

June 20, 2013 jeremyandroid, audio, custom, finless, irq, jack, jack1, jackd, kernel, linux, pi, raspberry, raspberrypi, rk3066, rom, rpi, stick, tv, ug802, usbLeave a comment

Pulled out my soldering iron, soldered a reset button and a switch to boot into recovery on the PCB and connected my UG802 clone/revision to my TV. Nothing. lsusb. Crap, it boots in flash mode. Let’s try reflashing the whole bloody thing. Well that works so the NAND is not defective or anything. Reboot. Nothing, lsusb still reports the device is in flash mode. So I removed all my soldering efforts which I really regretted because it was quite nicely done given my poor soldering skills and tried again. Still nothing. Arrrggghhhh. Enjoyed a cold Warsteiner and let it rest.

Today I brought the device with me to the office. Hooked it up to a Windows machine, ran the ROM flash tool from Finless’ custom ROM package for this device and powered it up. I was greeted with the most ugly Android boot animation I had ever seen. But at least the device works again so thanks Finless!

So now I can move on again. I had Jack1 running on it so it should be possible to turn this device into a very cheap, yet powerful alternative to do real-time, low-latency audio. Compared to the Raspberry Pi JACK already consumed way less CPU (12% on the RPi compared to 2% on the RK3066 device with the same JACK settings) and I noticed the device has some more IRQ’s so if I could get all of those threaded that should give me some more flexibility to get everything working in a more stable way. I did have to disable WiFi otherwise the whole USB stack crashed after starting JACK. Also tried with an external WiFi dongle, same issue. I can even generate xruns when pressing keys on an attached keyboard. So it’d be really nice if I had serial console access to this thing. But I’ll figure that out too. And maybe the USB part of the kernel can be tweaked to improve things on the USB level.

New notebook: minor issues

June 17, 2013 jeremybto, card, cardreader, clevo, dkms, horus, notebook, reader, realtek, system76, udisksLeave a comment

“My keyboard seems a bit loose on the lower left side, is that something that could be fixed?”
“We’ll take a look at it, should be no problem.”

So I paid a visit to BTO again, had to be at a Horus meeting anyway, and within 15 minutes the tech guy returned with my notebook from the workshop.

“Could you try it out?”
“It’s perfect, no loose spots anymore, what did you do?”
“Oh, I just replaced the keyboard with a new one.”

He just replaced the keyboard with a new one. Now that’s what I call service. With any mainstream brand you will have to do without your notebook for at least 3 weeks and in the worst case they’ll start nagging the faulty keyboard is not a warranty case. Not at BTO. Fixed within 15 minutes, ready while you wait.

At the Horus meeting one of the items on the agenda was “Jeremy’s new monster notebook”. Did I really have to show off my notebook? Yes I had and soon 2 or 3 people were like I’m going to get a BTO too and told me I should become a sales rep. More on the Horus meeting in a separate blog post.

I did find out the card reader doesn’t work. But fortunately System76 apparently uses Clevo parts too so after installing their dkms package the reader immediately started working as the udisks package already contains the needed udev rule for this card reader.

Ardour with video and LV2 MIDI plugins chaining support

June 15, 2013 jeremyardour, audio, gareus, hka, horus, linux, lv2, midi, qtractor, robin2 Comments

Got so absorbed hacking my UG802 that I completely missed this: https://community.ardour.org/node/7219

So not only can you add video to your Ardour project but now it’s also possible to chain multiple LV2 plugins that accept MIDI. The video support is the great work of Robin Gareus and it was actually a presentation on this functionality that got me acquainted with the Linux Audio meetings at the HKU almost 3 years ago. So yes, he’s been working on it quite a while so I assume it works well.

I have actually never worked with Ardour, I’ve always used Qtractor. But maybe it’s getting time to check out Ardour too, especially now that the MIDI part is stabilizing.

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