Virtual Theatre Pipe Organs and Puppy Linux 4.0

[ggoodesa]

Hi all,

I'm working on a project to get Virtual Theater Pipe Organs (VTPO) running on LinuxSampler and so have put together an installer for Puppy Linux. Eventually we will be using jOrgan and Miditzer as front-ends to the VTPOs, but right now I'm just focusing on getting everything working.

Go to http://organs.110mb.com/PuppyLinuxSampler.htm to check out what's been put together so far. Comments, suggestions, etc. are very welcome

GrahamG
Johannesburg, South Africa

[Miditzerman]

Hi everybody,
I am one of a fairly large group of people who play Virtual Pipe Organs, both Theatre and Classical. These are really like organ simulators and play recorded real or synthesised pipe sounds in real time from a computer using MIDI keyboards or converted organ consoles. They play up to several hundred tones at a time depending on the stops selected so polyphony can be a problem.

I run a program called Miditzer, a free download from http://www.virtualorgan, which is a simulation of a 2 manual 10 rank Wurlitzer Theatre organ. At the moment there are approximatly 3500 people using this program, with more being added every week.

Miditzer was written for M$ Windows and uses the Creative soundfonts standard for the storage and playback of the sounds. Recently several things have started to happen. I and a few others have got Miditzer running in Linux (UbuntuStudio) using Wine with Qsynth to play the sf samples. Also some of our number have started using GigaStudio with Windows and recording much higher quality sound samples. Those of us using Linux have watched their progress and have been eyeing LinuxSampler and Qsampler and wondering if we can do the same. Now that Tascam have ceased production of GSO the Windows guys are watching us to see what we can do.

Added to this is the uncertainty over what M$ will do and whether the next generation of their OS will run what we have in the way of hardware and software and a Linux based system centred around LinuxSampler looks to be the way to go. If you add in the other VTPO projects as well as Miditzer, LinuxSampler could soon be looking at increasing it's user base by 3-4000.

My colleague Graham Goode and myself have already started with a CD-based distro using Puppy Linux that loads Wine, Jack, Qsynth and Miditzer and is available as a free download from http://prosites-allmanmusic.homestead.c ... Linux.html

This also works with my Delta1010LT 8channel soundcard, giving multiple sound sources and acoustic mixing of the sound.

The next stage is the LinuxSampler version which is available at
http://organs.110mb.com/PuppyLinuxSampler.htm as a Alpha tester. We need advice as to the best way to proceed. It is starting to make the right noises and I get the impression that it is much more stable than GSO. We do need a good reverb though and I understand that work is being done on a convolution reverb. Will this be built-in? What stage is that in at the moment and can we use it for testing?

Also we need VST drivers if that is possible.

Thanks to everybody for what you are doing this is exactly what we need.

Thanks for your time.

Regards
Russ Ashworth
Vancouver BC

[bartonbrass]

Graham is doing a good job, I just wish there was a screen so I could configure my max voices without compiling. I don't have a clue how to to that lol.

[ggoodesa]

Hi Russ,

Great post! We've got 5 testers in the group currently running the Puppy/LinuxSampler alpha at the moment, and I'm expecting more will volunteer once everything comes as a single burnable ISO. Although having everything installable from one PET file is pretty close to that already

The great thing about LinuxSampler is that it can run on Linux, Windows, and Mac - so whatever tutorials we write for using LinuxSampler in Puppy will be 'mostly' usable by Windows and Mac users as well. If the convolution reverb was done then it would be even more usable across the different operating systems. Hopefully I can get jconv working and we can use that until the wonderful developers of LS have time to build that feature in. A vote a thanks to all the developers for everything we have so far!

It would also be great to have the MAX VOICES configuration available in the Qsampler/Jsampler front-end so that we can tweak our settings to match our memory and CPU without having to recompile libgig and linuxsampler. I know most VTPO users are not even going to attempt a recompile.

Happy playing everyone!

GrahamG
Johannesburg, South Africa

[dahnielson]

Those of us using Linux have watched their progress and have been eyeing LinuxSampler and Qsampler [...]

Sorry if I sound like a broken record. But I just want to point out that JSampler/Fantasia is a better choice and first impression than QSampler until the latter catches up.

We do need a good reverb though and I understand that work is being done on a convolution reverb.

You can use JConv until LinuxSampler features a built in convolver. JConv is a JACK client application that read its settings from configuration files.

QJackCtl can run scripts on start up and shut down, so that applications can be run on startup and killed at shutdown. Example startup.sh script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
linuxsampler --instruments-db-location ~/.instruments.db &
jconv ~/IR/conf/church.conf &

And shutdown script:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh
killall -s INT linuxsampler
killall linuxsampler
killall -s INT jconv
killall jconv

LinuxSampler, JConv and system outs (or any other JACK client applications) can be connected together automatically using the "Patchbay" in QJackCtl (it's the "Patchbay" dialog, not the "Connections" dialog).

[sbenno]

max voices selection at runtime needs to be implemented (it is a sampler engine issue not a front-end issue).
VST is being implemented as we speak and releasing a VST plugin without runtime max voice selection does not make much sense as it greatly
limits flexibility so expect both features come out at the same time
nice that you are doing the organ stuff, I hope that LS can soon provide an free, easily installable and good sounding and stable virtual organ

[Roy Radford]

Hi, Everyone,

I'm another new kid on the block here! (A rather elderly 'kid' actually... Three-score years and ten in a few days time now... After that I'm living on borrowed time! )

I am also part of the team working on the Linux VTPO project, mainly in a testing role as I have only limited experience with Linux so far.

Many thanks to Graham and the Qsampler team for making this project possible.

My personal interest is slightly different from the rest of the VTPO group in that I am not a VTPO purist, trying to imitate a theatre pipe organ as closely as possible. I play a Technics organ, and want to include plenty of orchestral samples. This brings me to a major difference between Miditzer and jOrgan. Miditzer provides two possible organs, based on the Wurlitzer 216 or 260 pipe organs. It is simple to set up, but you can only use it 'as is'.

jOrgan is much more complicated to set up, but completely flexible, so more suitable for my purpose... Indeed, one member of our group has designed a 4-manual jOrgan disposition with some 400 stops, including many orchestral tones as well as a wide range of virtual pipes. As I usually put it, if Miditzer is an organ, jOrgan is more like a Meccano set for building any organ you please.

One other difference is Miditzer is basically a Windows program, therefore needs Wine. jOrgan is Java-based, so can run on any system with a JRE installed.

So far as I am concerned, adding convolution reverb to Qsampler would be the final nail in the Windows coffin. So far as I can make out, everything else I use WIndows for can be done under Linux.

The VTPO community works in very much the same spirit as Linux. Everyone contributes what they can to building projects, and the results are freely available to all who care to use them.

Have fun,

Roy.

[ggoodesa]

Hi Anders,

Thanks for that information. We'll be using Fantasia in the next alpha release (alpha03) of the Virtual Pipe Organ installer for Puppy. It is already included in alpha02 but the tutorials I have written have focused on Qsampler because that is what I have been most familiar with up to now.

The scripting information is exactly what I needed to get things working together smoothly! In the next couple of weeks we should have documentation for using Jack Rack with gverb, Jsampler/Fantasia, and hopefully jConv with enabled Patchbay settings. Then hopefully we'll get some good recordings of Virtual Theater Pipe Organs being played that we can post here as well

Kind regards,

GrahamG
Johannesburg, South Africa

[dahnielson]

I merged the two topics about Virtual Theatre Pipe Organs and Puppy Linux to avoid unnecessary duplication of information and discussion.

(Whohoo! My first action as a moderator! )

[Miditzerman]

I merged the two topics about Virtual Theatre Pipe Organs and Puppy Linux to avoid unnecessary duplication of information and discussion.

(Whohoo! My first action as a moderator! )

Hi Anders,
Thanks for doing that. The reason that I started a new topic is that the way we use software in the Virtual organ world is totally different to the rest of the recording/audio production world and I wanted the topic to reflect that so that anybody else on this forum who was interested could find us. Doing a project like this is a bit like doing a home improvement project in that you don't actually know what you want to do, how to make it work, what parts you need, what parts are available, how they fit together, what works best with what, and whether there will be a gap in the particular chain that you are trying to assemble.

We are very lucky to have Graham and he is doing a wonderful job. With the help of you guys here at LinuxSampler we are going to have some wonderful sounding Virtual organs very soon. Thanks.

Russ