bb.linuxsampler.org

Hey guys, i'm looking for an alternative to gigastudio (now that it's history), i just found out about linuxsampler from a GS forum. is linuxsampler a viable professional alternative to gigastudio? i currently have 3 giastudio XP pro machines running GS3 to cover my orchestral pallet and control them from DP on a PPC.
can you run 8 ports (or more) of 16 midi channels on a single pc?
do .gig files work seamlessly or do they need tweaking?
how about large libraries and large .gig files?
will it work with midi over lan?
is it reliable enough to run many hours a day without downtime?
What are the hardware requirements?

Thanks for your help

Greg

Note that I'm a GNU/Linux user and answer this from my Linux/JACK centric view.

Greg wrote:Hey guys, i'm looking for an alternative to gigastudio (now that it's history), i just found out about linuxsampler from a GS forum. is linuxsampler a viable professional alternative to gigastudio?

I would say yes. But your mileage may vary, it depend on what you require. E.g. the DEF and PRF filters isn't implemented simply because nobody have managed to reverse engineer them.

Greg wrote:i currently have 3 giastudio XP pro machines running GS3 to cover my orchestral pallet and control them from DP on a PPC.

If you use dedicated machines to run Gigastudio/LinuxSampler then it might be worth migrating them to GNU/Linux. The best way in that case is to install a specialized distribution like Studio64 or JAD. You can always make the system dual boot to start with.

Greg wrote:can you run 8 ports (or more) of 16 midi channels on a single pc?

That shouldn't be any problem running under GNU/Linux using either JACK MIDI or ALSA MIDI.

Greg wrote:do .gig files work seamlessly or do they need tweaking?

GIGs should sound the same with LinuxSampler as with Gigastudio. Great care has gone into trying to match the sound and filters as closely as possible.

Greg wrote:how about large libraries and large .gig files?

LinuxSampler support loading large libraries (over 2GB) split into .gx* files. However, gigedit can't edit and save such libraries why keeping Gigastudio around for editing (if needed) can be a good idea.

Greg wrote:will it work with midi over lan?

It depend on what MIDI over LAN solution you will be using. I haven't had the opportunity to set up and test such a system.

Greg wrote:is it reliable enough to run many hours a day without downtime?

Yes. At least on GNU/Linux, especially if you run on an dedicated box.

Greg wrote:What are the hardware requirements?

LinuxSampler can run on pretty much anything that can run JACK in realtime mode (like GNU/Linux with a RT PREEMPT kernel). The hardware (RAM and HDD primarily) depend on how many voices you will be needing. Generally you can expect better polyphony with LinuxSampler compared to Gigastudio on the same hardware.

Thanks for your responses Anders, they're very helpful. i'm excited by the possibility that this could work for me and a lot of other people.

I'm currently using the Music Lab MOLCP3 midi over lan, seems to work ok since i upgraded all the windows computers to gigabit (the PPCs already gigabit), but i don't know if it supports linux

All of my gigastudio pc are dedicated, they don't need to do anything else. They are P4 3.2 ghz, P4 3.0 ghz, both with 2 gb ram and rme hdsp9652 card. The 3rd is a P3, but the second drive bus just died and i'll be rebuilding it with a better motherboard. what system would you recommend that would run either or both GS and linuxsampler? does linuxsampler support and take advantage of multiple core processors, etc.? how much ram can it use?

That P3 machine has an echo gina24 card. when i upgraded the other machines a while back i had to change out for hdsp9652 cards, i could never find a gina driver that worked with GS after upgrading motherboards. any known issues with linuxsampler and echo gina24 or should i just replace it anyway, the rme is a better card?

Without any knowledge of linux, would i be getting in over my head?

thanks for your help.

Greg wrote:I'm currently using the Music Lab MOLCP3 midi over lan, seems to work ok since i upgraded all the windows computers to gigabit (the PPCs already gigabit), but i don't know if it supports linux

Not familiar with it, so I'm of no use here.

Greg wrote:All of my gigastudio pc are dedicated, they don't need to do anything else. They are P4 3.2 ghz, P4 3.0 ghz, both with 2 gb ram and rme hdsp9652 card. The 3rd is a P3, but the second drive bus just died and i'll be rebuilding it with a better motherboard. what system would you recommend that would run either or both GS and linuxsampler? does linuxsampler support and take advantage of multiple core processors, etc.? how much ram can it use?

How much RAM do you got?

I guess on a 32 bit system the limit is 2 GB (somebody correct me?) On a 64 bit system you don't have to worry about that, if you have a motherboard that can take 16 GB then you can use pretty much all of it.

AFAIK, Linuxsampler doesn't specifically take advantage of multiple core processors. On GNU/Linux the separate threads are run as regular processes, thus possibly balanced between cores, so I guess that there are a limited advantage of having multiple cores. (I'm having a dual core processor, but then I run both sequencer and sampler on the same machine so it pays off anyway.)

Greg wrote:That P3 machine has an echo gina24 card. when i upgraded the other machines a while back i had to change out for hdsp9652 cards, i could never find a gina driver that worked with GS after upgrading motherboards. any known issues with linuxsampler and echo gina24 or should i just replace it anyway, the rme is a better card?

For serious use on GNU/Linux, Linuxsampler doesn't interact directly with the soundcard but go through the JACK server which in it's turn use the ALSA drivers. So if a card (or chipset more specifically) is supported then JACK and Linuxsampler will run fine.

I know for sure that RME is well supported by ALSA. There's support fore some Echo cards as well.

Greg wrote:Without any knowledge of linux, would i be getting in over my head?

If you start out with a specialized distribution like Studio64 or JAD it shouldn't be to difficult (so you don't have to apply the RT PREEMT patch and compile the kernel yourself the first thing you do). But I would recommend that you make them dual boot system to begin with, if possible, for your own sake, unless you want to dive into it head first. (I'm just saying to cover my own ass... )

Or just migrate one machine, maybe that P3, as a test.

Hey Anders, thanks for all your help. This is definitely worth giving it a good try, I like the dual boot idea and starting with just one pc, feels like safer way to check it out. Now, on to rebuilding a computer to run GS and Linuxsampler...

Take care, Greg