A musical question

[carlbeech]

Hi

Apologies if this sounds a little off-topic...

I regularly play a keyboard in a live-band, and I've been experimenting with midi - using my laptop connected to a midi keyboard, with software such as qsynth. A major problem (as we play live) is the latency between pressing a key on a keyboard and the sound actually being played - while 0.2 seconds doesn't sound much, its enough to throw off the tempo of the music being played.

I came across your distribution, and was wondering if running everything from RAM would help - especially if it was running a 'tiny' distribution, and potentially a low-latency / realtime kernel.

Can you comment on:
* Does porteus support USB midi?
* Is a low-latency / realtime option available (I spotted a 'realtime' option in another post, marked 'solved', so I'm assuming its available?)
* Would porteus be installable in an LVM based system (as an ISO) or have the ability to read LVM partitions?

For information, my laptop is: an i5, 8GB ram with SSD drive. I'm running Linux Mint 18.1, with low latency kernel. (and I'm running the qsynth and jack connections as realtime priorities). The whole drive is LVM based, but I can alter that around if need be, or I'm happy to experiment from a USB memory stick...
The soundfonts I'm using range between 200Mb and 1.2Gb, so would easily sit within the 8Gb RAM that I've got available.

Many thanks

Carl.

[francois]

There is nothing like trying it.

Porteus seems to be doing faster for kodi. I am no expert in music but have a look at this post on studioware viewtopic.php?f=39&t=4426

If some dependencies are missing have a try with slaxmax trick. An example here for kdodi missing packages viewtopic.php?f=49&t=4469&hilit=kodi+francois

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root@porteus:/home/guest# usm -d /var/log/packages/kodi

[carlbeech]

Hi

Thanks for the reply - not sure kodi was what I was thinking of - that appears to be a multimedia player similar to plex?

However, saying that the other link goes through to studioware - which looks like very promising - I'm using fludsynth and jack already in my mint setup :-)

I'll download and give it a go - I think I just wanted to ask if I'm totally barking up the wrong tree before expending a load of time

Many thanks

Carl.

[johnnyO]

Hi Carl.
Are you still trying to use Qsynth with Porteus?

I have a musical application I'm writing that uses jack and a synth, and I want to be able to run on a portable distro like Porteus. I am having trouble with the new 3.2.2 version though - the alsa sequencer device isn't available. I am making a post on that.

Just wondering if you were still working with Porteus and music.

[carlbeech]

Hi

I'm trying a number of different things - literally just had a breakthrough on my linux mint (18) installation, where I've been able to significantly reduce latency - (I think I had some of my settings for requesting real-time processing incorrect on my low-latency kernel) I was also trying out pianoteq 5 - very impressive - unfortunately I don't think I can afford the price tag :-(

I'm hoping to see if I can translate these settings in limits.conf to porteus - saying that, while I've been able to get porteus up and going on my laptop hard drive, I'm still working through basics (how to get modules downloaded and auto-open). So attempting to 'keep' changes to things like limits.conf (or get a low-latency kernel installed) I'm still trying to get my head around :-)

Saying that, I'm always happy to try to act as a guinea pig (assuming you're ok with being patient while I come up to speed!)

Cheers

Carl.

[francois]

not sure kodi was what I was thinking of - that appears to be a multimedia player similar to plex?

I was just mentioning that porteus seems to do a better job in terms of rapidity. I could have mentioned any other software. The second allusion to kodi was just to give you a cue about finding missing dependencies. I could have written:

EXAMPLE.
1.0 audacity
error output

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root@porteus:~# audacity
audacity: error while loading shared libraries: libwx_gtk2u_richtext-2.8.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

finding the missing dependencies:

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root@porteus:/home/guest# usm -d audacity

2.0 guitarix2
error output

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root@porteus:~# guitarix2
audacity: error while loading shared libraries: libwx_gtk2u_richtext-2.8.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

finding the missing dependencies:

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root@porteus:/home/guest# usm -d guitarix2

Or when studioware has been installed and selection of packages has been done:

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usm -d

[wread]

Have you tried LMMS?

[johnnyO]

Carl, about your questions:

>I came across your distribution, and was wondering if running everything from RAM would help
It's really the filesystem that's all in RAM, or could be if you start it that way. That doesn't really speed up the anything but file access.

>especially if it was running a 'tiny' distribution, and potentially a low-latency / realtime kernel.
I think you can install porteus with a custom kernel if you think that will help. If you are talking about the latency of qsynth itself, I think that is another issue. I think software synthesis has inherent latency.

* Does porteus support USB midi?
Sure.
* Is a low-latency / realtime option available
Custom kernel. Also, Jack Audio has realtime capabilities.
* Would porteus be installable in an LVM based system (as an ISO) or have the ability to read LVM partitions?
Should be able to read LVM volumes I think.

Porteus doesn't install on a hard disk like normal systems do. It throws some files into a partition, then boots somehow into a system where the root file system is in memory. I don't know how it would install in a LVM system. But I don't think it would be as an ISO. What you download from this site needs to be burnt into a CD first, then it can be installed into flash drive or hard drive.

JohnnyO