GPO in Ubuntu

[mnde]

Hi,

Has anyone had experience of getting GPO to work with an Ubuntu Linux OS using Wine?

I have a Dell Latitude D810 laptop with 512MB RAM.

Under Win XP GPO worked fine, seemingly even with large orchestral MIDI files, although I knew that I ought to upgrade the RAM. Then one day the installed Safeboot security software locked me out after I forgot my password and I had to ask my brother to do a network install of Ubuntu.

I have reinstalled and reregistered GPO using Wine and it loads up fine, but comes up with the "memory low" message, and a quick load up of an instrument proved that it can't cope - stuttery sound all over the place. So the current setup is too memory intensive.

So, if I upgrade to 2GB RAM will it run just as well as under Windows? I'm trying to decide whether to keep Ubuntu you see. I've not tried installing Sibelius or a sequencer yet...

Thanks,

Mark.

[halvor]

For running a program like this directly under Wine e.g. "wine /home/myname/.wine/path/to/file/Kontakt2.exe" you have to install "wineasio" in order to make it work properly.

But you could also choose to install "dssi-vst" and then use the program "vsthost" instead ("vsthost /home/path/to/file/Kontaks2.dll").

[mnde]

Thanks for the advice Halvor. :)

I downloaded wineasio and Kontakt now works much better - with a USB keyboard attached, I can play GPO sounds with only a periodic dropout.

The next step is how to get Kontakt to work with one of the Linux sequencers e.g. Muse. Bear in mind I'm only just getting to grips with Linux commands... I've had no luck so far.

Under Win XP I had Midiox and Maple installed to help with MIDI connections... are there any Linux equivalents? I've tried playing around with settings in QT Jack Control interface...... ASIO Kontakt appears as a "readable client/output port", but basically I don't know what I'm doing.....

Is it any easier to work with dssi-vst and use vsthost to interact with Kontaks2.dll? It looked tricky to install compared with wineasio!

Thanks,

Mark.

[halvor]

You use QJackCtl for routing, e.g. connecting the outputs of one program to the input of another.

I haven't used "wineasio" much, but as far as i can see only the audio I/O is available directly in Qjackctl. I wasn't able to use the "Rosegarden" sequencer with the wineasio-KontaktPlayer2 even if the inputs and outputs of that particular program showed up in the midi config tab in KP2 (maybe other people have managed it, though ).

I have howewer used "vsthost" with great success alongside Rosegarden. It shows up in the "Alsa"-tab in Qjackctl, so you can connect the soundcard "midi-in" (e.g. keyboard) to the input of KontaktPlayer2. KP2 also shows up as an interface in Rosegarden and Muse so you can assign the different channels from KP2 to different tracks in the sequencer (remember not to set "Frames/Periods" too low in QjackCtl when launching all the programs or Jack might "die". Start out with "1024" or "512").

So I would definitely suggest installing "dssi-vst".

You probably need to install "liblo", "libsamplerate", "libsndfile" and "dssi" with the coresponding development packages (also "jack-devel") in advance for dependency reasons.

Note: you might encounter a quite severe bug in dssi-vst; If 2 or more channels plays the same note the notes get stuck until they are retriggered! The solution as far as I can see is to load each instrument in different instances of the KP2 player!:(

[RickH]

You use QJackCtl for routing, e.g. connecting the outputs of one program to the input of another.
...
So I would definitely suggest installing "dssi-vst".
...
Note: you might encounter a quite severe bug in dssi-vst; If 2 or more channels plays the same note the notes get stuck until they are retriggered! The solution as far as I can see is to load each instrument in different instances of the KP2 player!:(
I have successfully set everything up under JAD 1.0 (it's based on OpenSUSE). I noticed a bug in dssi-vst that prevented me from proper input. I was able to manually upgrade to a later version of both that and wineasio that I found through rpm.pbone.net though.

Let me tell you, life is fabulous with this setup. I have ALL my nki/nks libraries working with virtually no overruns. I don't bother with the Player - I just use Kontakt. The whole system just feels snappier.

I will say, though, that I had tried doing this in the past with other distributions without much luck. It 's not been until the release of JAD and Ubuntu Studio that things were so easy to set up.

R.
==

[Tony Monaghan]

This might work for you.

Download Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm/) Shareware but not crippled, please consider paying for it if you find it useful.

This installs under WINE quite well, RTFM especially the part about setting up any VST's. If WineAsio is installed it will use this although you may need to tell it first time you run it.

There will always be overhead running any windows app under WINE but Reaper is much easier to use than native Linux apps when it comes hosting VST's.

Have you installed the real time kernel and configured? You also might find this useful;

WineAsio + REAPER for linux beginners (http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=16786)

I'd be curious to know how you get on if you try this. There's more Garritan / Linux relevent news coming soon, watch this space...

[tfishbein82]

Download Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm/) Shareware but not crippled, please consider paying for it if you find it useful.

More correct:

Download Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm/) Shareware but not crippled, pay for it if you use it past the 30-day trial period; otherwise you are violating the license agreement and the law.

[Tony Monaghan]

More correct:

Download Reaper (http://www.reaper.fm/) Shareware but not crippled, pay for it if you use it past the 30-day trial period; otherwise you are violating the license agreement and the law.

Much obliged for pointing out the error.

[mnde]

OK - thanks for everyone's input.

I upgraded to 2GB RAM and it made no difference to Kontakt Player's performance. Still got the messages about Low Memory and experienced dropouts.

I've now installed Ubuntu Studio with the linux-rt low latency kernel and Kontakt seems to be working a little better. I still get the Low Memory message, but instead of dropouts I get a slightly crackly sound quality. This was me quickly trying GPO Steinway Piano (full) with just JACK Control and Kontakt running and using my Roland USB keyboard.

I've tried setting the "memlock" function in Ubuntu Studio Controls (currently 75%) and playing with the Frames/Period and Period/Buffers in QJackCtl... I currently have Frames/Period=128 and Period/Buffers=3 which gives a latency of 8 ms.

Any suggestions for what settings might work better? No time to fiddle around any more for now!

My system is:
Dell Latitude D810 with original soundcard (whatever that is)
Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid)
Kernel Linux 2.6.27-9-generic
GNOME 2.24.1

Memory: 2.0 GB
Processor: Intel Pentium M processor 1.86GHz
Available disk space: 17.3 GB
Using ALSA midi driver and wineasio

Cheers,

Mark.

[mnde]

An update to my last post:

I've now actually *read* the very useful HowTo guide to Wineasio + REAPER (thanks Tony) and found out I hadn't switched to the RT kernel... So I've done that now. I also followed the "studio setup" instructions in the above guide.

Now Kontakt is very quick to load up and there's no low memory warning. The GPO Steinway is also very quick to load! But although my latency is very low, the sound is still choppy. I've tried playing with the period/buffers etc in QJackCtl setup, and the quality gets noticeably better or worse depending on what I change.

I noticed that "Unlock Memory" was checked, so I unchecked it. Also I checked the "Realtime" box. I also tried lowering the sample rate from 48000 to 44100.

The best performance I've just achieved right now is
Frames/Period=256
Sample Rate=44100
Periods/Buffer=3
Latency= 17.4ms

The sound is now very good, with only a very occasional crackle. Is there something else I ought to try?

Now to see what happens when I try loading GPO sounds using a sequencer!

Cheers,

Mark.