"Unable to cache sample" error in live editing mode

You're new to the LinuxSampler world? You don't know where to start and nothing works? Here's the place to ask for help.
Post Reply
camobrite
Newbie
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 12:28 am

"Unable to cache sample" error in live editing mode

Post by camobrite » Mon Jun 22, 2009 5:49 am

Hi again, I've been continuing to have problems with loading new samples into instruments running in linuxsampler. I am using Debian Lenny and the latest linuxsampler source code from the CVS. This problem is partially explained in this thread. I am able to load wav samples into new instruments with gigedit in stand-alone mode and save the instruments to .gig files. However, when I load those files in qsampler, first I get the following popup dialog:

Channel 0
Some channel settings could not be set.
Sorry...

Then, when I try to edit the instrument live in qsampler, I get the following messages on the console if I load a new sample and try to drop it in a key group:

Adding sample /home/bsmith/documents/samples/TR909/lowtomdm/LT3DA.WAV
Drop received sample "LT3DA"
Unable to cache sample - maybe memory full!

There is no sound from the keygroup where I dropped the new sample, but the rest of the instrument plays fine. However, it's frustrating not to be able to add new samples to instruments in live editing mode. Any advice?

-camobrite

User avatar
cuse
Developer
Posts: 366
Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:07 pm
Location: Germany

Re: "Unable to cache sample" error in live editing mode

Post by cuse » Sun Jul 05, 2009 1:01 pm

camobrite wrote:Then, when I try to edit the instrument live in qsampler, I get the following messages on the console if I load a new sample and try to drop it in a key group:

Adding sample /home/bsmith/documents/samples/TR909/lowtomdm/LT3DA.WAV
Drop received sample "LT3DA"
Unable to cache sample - maybe memory full!

There is no sound from the keygroup where I dropped the new sample, but the rest of the instrument plays fine. However, it's frustrating not to be able to add new samples to instruments in live editing mode. Any advice?
Yes, this is not a bug though. Whenever you drop in a new sample, you have to save the .gig file in gigedit to disk before being able to hear the new sample(s) with LinuxSampler in live mode. The root cause of this problem is that the gig format uses one single monolithic file for articulation informations AND samples. So when you add new sample(s), the .gig file has to be enlarged and the whole file structure to be changed (since you still want to be able to stream those new samples directly from disk, right?). Those file modifications can be quite time consuming on large .gig files and disturb the playback of the sampler engine in the meantime. That's why gigedit performs this update of the actual file only when you explicitly request it with "Save".

As a workaround we could tell the sampler to stream those new samples directly from the source files which were just added, but this would require quite some effort for this to work correctly and I'm not sure if its really worth it ATM. Since the upcoming 2nd engine of LinuxSampler will most probably use separate sample files and thus solve this issue anyway.

Post Reply