Bad Audio Quality

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bntser
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:18 am

Bad Audio Quality

Post by bntser » Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:30 am

The audio quality is terrible when I use LinuxSampler. Is there a way I can increase latency? I don't need realtime speed, I just want to make high-quality audio files out of midi recordings, so it doesn't matter if the latency is several seconds. My computer is a quadcore with 8 GB of ram, so I don't understand why my computer is having trouble keeping up. In the FAQ, there was somthing mentioned about a realtime kernel, but I'm not so sure if it's safe or not, especially since the FAQ was written before Linux 3.x.

I'm using LinuxSampler with the Fantasia frontend on Ubuntu 11.10. I complied everything from source, and removed libgig 6 from my system before starting.

varpa
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Posts: 63
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:15 pm

Re: Bad Audio Quality

Post by varpa » Tue Apr 03, 2012 8:14 pm

Latency is controlled with Jack. As far as I know there is no batch method of running linuxsampler. However, I doubt that is your problem. What kind of samples are you using? There was an important bug fix for "voice stealing" which affected SFZ and SF2 playback in mid-February so that could be an issue. I don't use Ubuntu, but I get the impression that it is not very good for pro audio OOTB. It is recommended to install kxstudio repos to get better performance (or use AVLinux which is my preferred distro). Does audio work OK with other Jack applications in your set up or is it a linuxsampler-specific issue?

bntser
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:18 am

Re: Bad Audio Quality

Post by bntser » Thu Apr 05, 2012 11:35 pm

I'm trying to use the Maestro Grand .gig file from the download page. I tried to use a smaller sample to see if the size of it affected anything, but it doesn't. All other audio programs and synthesizers work fine.

A weird thing happened a few days ago; it worked perfectly ONCE and I have not been able to make it work since.

I guess I'm just not sure how the program settings work. What should be the steps for setting up? I'm just adding the audio card, midi device, and then the instrument, all with defaults. I tried to adjust the sampling rate to match my Jack Settings, and adjusting Jack to match the default sampling rate, but neither did any good. Do you think you could explain what the settings mean?

I use LinuxSampler as a plugin for Sonar Home Studio 7 on Windows, but I have no problems (same PC, though). I don't really want to install another distro just for audio, because I might as well just use Windows, then, since I only using Windows for audio anyway.

bntser
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:18 am

Re: Bad Audio Quality

Post by bntser » Thu Apr 05, 2012 11:50 pm

By the way, this is the output code from running LinuxSampler

Code: Select all

LinuxSampler 1.0.0
Copyright (C) 2003,2004 by Benno Senoner and Christian Schoenebeck
Copyright (C) 2005-2009 Christian Schoenebeck
Detected features: MMX SSE SSE2
Automatic Stacktrace: Off
Creating Sampler...OK
Registered sampler engines: 'GIG'
Registered MIDI input drivers: ALSA
Registered audio output drivers: ALSA
Loading instrument editor plugins...OK
Registered instrument editors: 
Starting LSCP network server (0.0.0.0:8888)...Thread: WARNING, can't mlockall() memory!
OK
LinuxSampler initialization completed. :-)
And here is the error when I add a audio device.

Code: Select all

ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1401:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card

bntser
Newbie
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:18 am

Re: Bad Audio Quality

Post by bntser » Sat Apr 07, 2012 5:24 am

To make things even more strange, the program is working all of the sudden :? It's totally unpredicatable.

varpa
User
Posts: 63
Joined: Thu Dec 09, 2010 8:15 pm

Re: Bad Audio Quality

Post by varpa » Fri Apr 27, 2012 9:49 pm

I know Ubuntu typically works poorly with Jack out of the box. I recommend using the kxstudio repository to add linux audio programs to Ubuntu (though I actually use linuxsampler on AVLinux and it works great). When you built linuxsampler did you install in /usr or /usr/local? If you are overwriting an earlier version you have to be careful not to end up with several different versions of the libraries on you system which will typically lead to problems. Probably kxstudio comes with a more recent SVN of linuxsampler which will be better than what you built.

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