Linux music/audio applications on TC

[helander]

I have been building TCE:s for a few audio/music packages

    * lmms
    * qsynth
    * vmpk

Are there anyone in the TC community that are interested in helping out to extend this collection of audio/music packages?

I have experimented a bit with suitable kernels (built and tested) for this task and my last build is the latest RT kernel available (2.6.29-rc8-rt2).

In addition to adding TCE:s for various audio/music applications, there are a few system related tasks to deal with as well:

     * adding PAM support to TC (this is required in order to be able for non-root users run applications with RT priorities). Until this is fixed you should run as root in order to get full RT characteristics from the system.
     * Improve ALSA configuration at startup. There are a couple of use cases I would like to see implemented, that would make it significantly easier for non-Linux-experts to use the system.
     * I tried to build a TCE for jack-audio-connection-kit, but compilation fails and given traces at various sites on the Internet, it is likely that the only remedy would be to upgrade the gcc version. So we probably need an upgraded compiletc.tce to fix that. Since most Linux audio packages today depend on Jack, this should be done sooner than later.

The applications I have built so far works fine without Jack. Actually do not run LMMS with Jack byt directly on ALSA, it does not work well with Jack anyhow. Qsynth works well directly on ALSA but you are limited to a single engine (Jack allows you to have Qsynth with multiple engines).


Kind Regards

/Lars
 

[mikshaw]

One of these days I was planning to build Audacity and moc, but please don't rely on that...others here know how (un)reliable I am with finishing my plans =o)

[helander]

OK, once it happens please let us know.

I have fixed the Jack problem by using the next generation Jack (Jack2/jackdmp) instead.
It built fine using the current tools and seems to run also. This version is better in many aspects and eventually I would have migrated to it, now it happened sooner than later . I have been running Jack2 and Jack(1) on different distros for some time and to me they look equally stable so I see no real issue here (yet at least).

So added to my list is now
          * jack (Jack2)
          * qjackctl

Now that i have jack, i can rebuild qsynth to become jack aware. I should also be able to build other jack enabled applications.

/Lars

[tobiaus]

One of these days I was planning to build Audacity and moc,

those are the two audio apps i care most about too... i was enjoying mp3blaster in ubuntu but since it seems less likely to be in tc, i've switched to moc.

[markc]

I'd be very interested in build a few apps too, like qtractor for one, and maybe have a go at kdenlive if it will build without kde libs.

I'm a TC newbie so where are your packages available from?

[tobiaus]

I'm a TC newbie so where are your packages available from?

you can download them from the appbrowser (then it will download the deps too) or one file at a time from the main page on this website. if you  from http to ftp you can look at the .dep files too, which tell you what other extensions the file you just downloaded needs. (thankfully the dep files are not recursive, download one it tells you everything you need to know.)

[markc]

@tobiaus: thanks for the pointer but I must be missing something obvious to everyone else, and I presume you mean these links at this repo, but I can't for the life of me find anything to do with "jack"?

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/tce.html
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/tinycorelinux/tcz.html

[tobiaus]

the only thing you should find there is the files you see in appbrowser. if there's something called "jack" in the appbrowser but not the downloads page, report it. the only time there's ever been something on the forum that was supposed to be in the downloads but wasn't, there was an .info file posted on the forum.

if there's nothing called "jack" in the downloads page, or the appbrowser, or listed on the forum with an ".info" file quoted, it simply hasn't been added to tc yet. granted there are two downloads pages (change http to ftp) but i think helander was talking about something he'd like to add, not something that's already there.

[markc]

@tobiaus: thanks for the clarification. The reason I asked @helander for where his packages are, and/or any scripts used to build them, is because I need jack as a baseline for my own distro and I didn't notice it in the appbrowser so I pounced on this thread when I saw it.

I only installed TC 24 hours ago so I have a lot to learn as far as building extensions and remastering so checking out any packages... I mean extensions, and build scripts would be very helpful.

[helander]

Sorry if I created confusion. The packages I have built are only available on my own computers at the moment. I am a newbie to TC myself and I learn each day. If the TC community at some time would be interested in adding "my" packages to the official TC repositories that works fine with me. Meanwhile I can make my tce:s and also kernel+initrd and some configuration hints available from my own web site. At this point the packages are not available at my site, but once they are I can announce it here (if that does not violate any forum rules.

In case you most urgently want some packages, please send an e-mail request to lehswe@gmail.com.

BTW. Since the 2.6.29 kernel has been officially released and there is also a first official RT patch for it, I have built a new kernel (2.6.29-rt1) and it seems to work fine.

/Lars

[tobiaus]

it's better form probably to submit your tce to be added rather than just link to it here, but people are already willing to email requested tce's that don't meet the quality control (or license) criteria of the repository. i'm thinking of an earlier skype extension. they found a way to do it that honors the license though, therefore it's in the repository again, as a download script.

[nickispeaki]

Are there anyone in the TC community that are interested in helping out to extend this collection of audio/music packages?
I have experimented a bit with suitable kernels (built and tested) for this task and my last build is the latest RT kernel available (2.6.29-rc8-rt2).
     * Improve ALSA configuration at startup. There are a couple of use cases I would like to see implemented, that would make it significantly easier for non-Linux-experts to use the system.
Kind Regards

/Lars
 

Yes!
I am interested in helping out to extend this collection of audio/music packages!

How did you make it? Please, give me a step-by-step instruction. I'm a newbie in TC.

I want to have sound on my Acer Aspire. I use now LinuxMint.

[tobiaus]

although it's probably twice the size, mplayer (of all things!) that is, curaga's nodeps version, is twice the size of moc but also plays flv files.

i wanted moc because i just wanted a simple thing i could feed a list of mp3 and ogg files too with &exit to close the term and let it play (or run it from vt.) when there's no video, mplayer actually suits my purposes quite nicely, and if you run it from vt, it will even play the sound from videos without opening a window

i used it in tc yesterday and i've replaced moc with it in xubuntu. that means i shouldn't need to use vlcplayer either. (thanks curaga)

for putting music together, i've always wanted something like lmms, i thought the closest thing linux had was hydrogen (it's just drums.) it's massive and complicated, but someday it would be very cool to use.

[mikshaw]

i thought the closest thing linux had was hydrogen (it's just drums.) it's massive and complicated, but someday it would be very cool to use

I really enjoy playing around with Hydrogen.  Nothing else I've used in Linux comes close to my favorite music application either, FL Studio (Fruityloops).  Wired *looks*  better, but so far I have had no luck using it....never successfully compiled and the only binary I've tried crashed constantly.

I just wish Hydrogen was built with a lighter gui toolkit.  Alas, Qt is probably going to eventually be used for everything.

[tobiaus]

Alas, Qt is probably going to eventually be used for everything.

i hope not. as long as there are truly light apps like jwm, there will need to be truly light toolkits. do you really think gimp will eventually use qt?