Linuxsampler Issues on Xubuntu 18.04

[Torte]

Hello to all!
I hope I'm in the right Sub-Board??

I'm using Xubuntu 18.04. LinuxSampler 2.1.1, Qt Version 5.9.5.(Synaptic), Gigedit 1.1.0 using libgig 4.1.0 (Synaptic)

I have two/three issues with Linuxsampler under Xubuntu 18.04:

After starting Linuxsampler I get the message:

Code: Select all

Registered instrument editors: 
Registered internal effect systems: LADSPA
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic2.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic3.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/cmt.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic0.so'
Registered internal effects: 288
Starting LSCP network server (0.0.0.0:8888)...OK

It seems like the plugins woudn't be loaded.

Second issue:
After loading an Instrument:

Code: Select all

Channel 0

Some channel settings could not be set.

Sorry.

At last (Third Issue):

If I press Edit on a loaded Instrument, Gigedit (I've already installed) gives the message:

Code: Select all

Make sure you have an appropriate instrument editor like 'gigedit' installed and that it placed its mandatory DLL file into the sampler's plugin directory. 

Code: Select all

Instrument editing is not supported for this instrument format

It's a SFZ Format

Maybe someone can help out or could fix that Bugs..??!!

Thanks!
Chris

[cuse]

After starting Linuxsampler I get the message:

Code: Select all

Registered instrument editors: 
Registered internal effect systems: LADSPA
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic2.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic3.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/cmt.so'
ERROR: unable to find ladspa_descriptor() in '/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic0.so'
Registered internal effects: 288
Starting LSCP network server (0.0.0.0:8888)...OK

It seems like the plugins woudn't be loaded.

Those mentioned 5 of your LADSPA plugins were not loaded, yes, whereas 288 other LADSPA plugings were loaded successfully though.

Every LADSPA plugin DLL must provide the function ladspace_descriptor(), which provides the most fundamental information about the LADSPA plugin to LADSPA host applications. If that function is missing, then the plugin obviously can't be loaded by the host application (i.e. LinuxSampler):
https://www.ladspa.org/ladspa_sdk/ladspa.h.txt

To make this clear: the sampler does not ship LADSPA plugins by itself. It just looks at standard locations of potential LADSPA DLLs and tries to load them into the sampler. Probably those 5 LADSPA plugins are 32 bit (only) DLLs vs. 64 bit sampler binary. You can check that easily from the command line, e.g.:

Code: Select all

file /usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so

Because a 64-bit application can only load 64 bit DLLs, a 32-bit application only 32 bit DLLs.

Second issue:
After loading an Instrument:

Code: Select all

Channel 0

Some channel settings could not be set.

Sorry.

Normal, just ignore it.

At last (Third Issue):

If I press Edit on a loaded Instrument, Gigedit (I've already installed) gives the message:

Code: Select all

Make sure you have an appropriate instrument editor like 'gigedit' installed and that it placed its mandatory DLL file into the sampler's plugin directory. 

Code: Select all

Instrument editing is not supported for this instrument format

It's a SFZ Format

Maybe someone can help out or could fix that Bugs..??!!

Also normal, not a bug. We currently don't have any instrument editor for the SFZ format, we only have one for the gig (Gigasampler/GigaStudio) format. If you want to modify sfz instruments, you need to do that with a text editor at the moment. Since the SFZ format is text based and quite easy to adjust with text editors, there was so far no real motivation to develop a graphical editor specifically for it, or to provide a LinuxSampler binding for already existing third-party SFZ editor applications. If you want to write a binding, that would be appreciated! Here is the relevant API to connect third-party editors with LS:
http://svn.linuxsampler.org/cgi-bin/vie ... iew=markup

[Torte]

Thanks for your reply!

Some Information from the Terminal:
For Example:

Code: Select all

$ file /usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so
/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=f9b0ef6f5e7f089c13dae691f976a9436f98d29d, stripped

Code: Select all

$ file /usr/lib/ladspa/cmt.so
/usr/lib/ladspa/cmt.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=f30c0e864b32d93d1b18d37878f8b9ed7cd96841, stripped

I guess the plugins are 64-Bit but won't be loaded anyway. Always the same plugins, I posted above.

We currently don't have any instrument editor for the SFZ format, we only have one for the gig (Gigasampler/GigaStudio) format.

Same issue on GIG Samplelibrary loaded from https://www.linuxsampler.org/instruments.html (for example: Mellotron (one of the M400 Violins sounds, Mk II Violins, Cello, Flute, Woodwind, Combined Choir) (299 MB)). GIG-Library is loaded in Linuxsampler. Nevertheless same Error-Message as described above from Linuxsampler after pressing EDIT. Gigedit doesn't open.

Regards

[cuse]

Some Information from the Terminal:
For Example:

Code: Select all

$ file /usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so
/usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=f9b0ef6f5e7f089c13dae691f976a9436f98d29d, stripped

Code: Select all

$ file /usr/lib/ladspa/cmt.so
/usr/lib/ladspa/cmt.so: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, BuildID[sha1]=f30c0e864b32d93d1b18d37878f8b9ed7cd96841, stripped

I guess the plugins are 64-Bit but won't be loaded anyway. Always the same plugins, I posted above.

Try this:

Code: Select all

nm -D /usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so

That will list all symbols (e.g. functions) exported by the DLL (.so) file. If you don't see a line containing "ladspa_descriptor", then there is something wrong with this LADSPA plugin's .so file in first place. So if it does not contain the mentioned ladspa_descriptor() function, then I recommend you finding out the package name that plugin belongs to:

Code: Select all

dpkg -S /usr/lib/ladspa/ambisonic1.so

Then find out who's the package maintainer:

Code: Select all

apt show PACKAGENAME

And either contact the package maintainer directly by email or file a bug report on that xubuntu package to clarify the issue.

We currently don't have any instrument editor for the SFZ format, we only have one for the gig (Gigasampler/GigaStudio) format.

Same issue on GIG Samplelibrary loaded from https://www.linuxsampler.org/instruments.html (for example: Mellotron (one of the M400 Violins sounds, Mk II Violins, Cello, Flute, Woodwind, Combined Choir) (299 MB)). GIG-Library is loaded in Linuxsampler. Nevertheless same Error-Message as described above from Linuxsampler after pressing EDIT. Gigedit doesn't open.

When the sampler backend (LinuxSampler) starts, you should see on the terminal a line like this:

Code: Select all

...
Loading instrument editor plugins...OK
Registered instrument editors: 'gigedit'
...

If you don't see 'gigedit' there, then probably Gigedit is not installed at all yet. So probably you just need to install it:

Code: Select all

apt install gigedit

The thing here is, Gigedit can be used both as stand-alone instrument editor (that is without LinuxSampler at all), or of course in conjunction with LinuxSampler. And that's why Gigedit is almost always a separate package, not automatically installed with your LinuxSampler package that is. Also note that some distributions only provide gigedit, but not LinuxSampler. In that case they are also compiling Gigedit without the required LinuxSampler binding. So after you installed Gigedit, make sure that it installed its binding (a plugin .so for linuxsampler) under the directory /usr/lib/linuxsampler/plugins/. If you don't find a file there called something like "libgigeditlinuxsamplerplugin.so" then your Gigedit application was compiled without LinuxSampler support and hence without the required binding to work in conjunction with LinuxSampler.

[Torte]

Thanks for your enlightening words!

The Plugins seems to be the amb-plugins installed by synaptic. I don't know why these Package is installed on my System? Maybe because of Ardour??! I have to find out if I really need them. Moreover they don't have any GUI. And I guess they are not necessary for Linuxsampler. So I can ignore them.

The "libgigeditlinuxsamplerplugin.so" is missing in Gigedit, because the Application is installed by synaptic. So as you said, there is no Linuxsampler-Support by the Distribution I use. I have to compile Gigedit by myself, if I really need to edit Sample Librarys on the fly . Well, maybe it's fine to use it as a standalone App.

Thanks and Regards
Chris

[cuse]

I just looked at those LADSPA plugins myself. At least the packages from Debian ("Buster" / stable) correctly contain a ladspa_descriptor() function in each one of their .so files: https://packages.debian.org/de/buster/amb-plugins

So maybe just an issue with the xubuntu version of those packages you have there. However if you don't know what these plugins are doing, then you certainly don't need them. So yes, you might consider just removing them.

You can check whether there are packages installed on your system which depend on those plugins by:

Code: Select all

apt-cache rdepends amb-plugins

And no, LinuxSampler definitely does not need those plugins at all. In general you can use LinuxSampler without any LADSPA plugins. Support for LADSPA plugins by the sampler is rather a "passive" feature, which means the sampler more or less just scans for available LADSPA plugins on sampler startup, however mainly for the purpose to show the user which plugins are available. It is then up to the user to tell the sampler which LADSPA plugins to spawn and to assign to which sampler parts. The only exception here is the SFZ engine. Because the SFZ format is defined to have built-in support for EQs. So if you are loading some .sfz file which uses such EQ opcodes, then the sampler tries to load an EQ LADSPA plugin automatically to do that job.

On the long-term you probably won't be happy to use gigedit as stand-alone app. So I really recommend you to roll the gigedit .deb package by yourself by download the gigedit sources and then just doing

Code: Select all

dpkg-buildpackage -b

from the sources top level directory. That's a quite simple task to do nowadays. The Debian packaging scripts will tell you if and if yes, which packages you need to install for building Gigedit. And once the .deb file is built, you just install it with

Code: Select all

dpkg -i DEBFILE

The problem with Gigedit stand-alone is that you cannot edit gig instruments "on the fly" / live. Usually you want to immediately listen to your changes when you edit some gig instrument, for that task you need to compile Gigedit with LinuxSampler support. Plus many new features (e.g. LFO wave form preview and the instrument script editor) won't work without LinuxSampler support.

[Torte]

Thank you, cuse!

I've got linuxsampler from the KXStudio Repositories origanally. I cleand it all up and build the packages as explained by myself now. I build linuxsampler and the gigedit deb-Packages and "MAKE" the qsampler GUI. Gigedit was now accepted as Editor by Linuxsampler. GREAT! But I've always got an Audio and Midi Description Error, when I tried to load an Instrument. GIG, SF2 or SFZ, doesn't matter.. I don't know what I messed up, but I throw it all from my System now and reinstalled LS from KXStudio again. LS is working proper from KXStudio now. GUI from Synaptic, Gigedit as well from Synaptic - but now as Standalone again.

Regards!

[Torte]

So I tried a second time to install Linuxsampler.

With ALSA Driver it works fine and there is no issue (Linuxsampler, Qsampler and Gigedit). But with the JACK-Driver, Linuxsampler has a problem. You can not choose JACK-Driver at all in LS, although JACK is running in the background. The Error Messages apears: You can not load an Instrument (Err0) and "Midi-" and "Audio-" in/out gives an Error Message as well.. So you can not use Linuxsampler with JACK. That's very sad!!!

I guess it's a BUG!!! Isn't it???

[cuse]

You are very quick with claiming bugs.

No seriously, most probably your linuxsampler binary was simply compiled without JACK support. Once again, check the console output when linuxsampler starts. You should see these lines:

Code: Select all

Registered MIDI Input Drivers: ALSA, JACK
Registered Audio Output Drivers: ALSA, JACK

If you don't see JACK there, then it was compiled without JACK support.

Also when you compile linuxsampler, the configure script will dump a summary table of features it will compile with, including which drivers it will compile.

[Torte]

Okay, no BUG!

I will try to build the packages again, as soon I've got time.

Do I have to install a specific JACK-package before I build the LS-packages? Or how can I compile LS with Jack support? Sorry, I don't know much about these things. I'm just an enduser.

Also a question to qsampler GUI. ./configure says that I need the latest qt5 package. I installed the qt5-default package. It was accepted, but then I have the complete QT-Application on my computer. Which package of qt5 can I use instead?

Thanks and regards,
Torte