Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[Smithy]

I've put together a Pup based on the Three Headed Dog, which seems very stable and has good support for sound cards.

Might appeal to any Puppy users that mess around with MIDI keyboards, circuit benders and possibly Jimmy Page/Prince/Bert Jansch/Slash/ emulators


Must add that I have not programmed this Puppy or anything, but just put things together and stress tested them, (the ASIO and the plugins and the apps). But at least there are some pdf manuals in there for the music progs


Long Live The Pup!

[sheepy]

[gcmartin]

[RSH]

[Smithy]

Thanks for the messages guys, I am on the case.

[Smithy]

Okay,

An update on the music2go Puppy Linux, based on Playdayz Three Headed Dog.

I have tested out on a netbook in addition to a desktop comp, and everything looks and works as expected as regards the music apps.
Amazing that the Three Headed Dog Puppy even sorted out the touchpad on startup, I remember previously having to alter settings to get that click working on various pups.

It has the latest wine from the very reliable Green Dome source, and a few extra files shoved in to make sure everything goes as planned.

And thanks go to Smokey 01 for sorting out a bit of Puppy Space for it to reside in

It doesn't look like much work was done compared to the incredible work of the Puppy Programmers, but it was for me!
(whoever made Retrovol and the multiple sound card wizard needs a knighthood ).


Might take a day or so to get your head round Podium, but it seems worth it as it just feels very reliable but it is a bit fussy on the plugins.
Now whether that is a problem with the plugin writers or the ruthless Danish hosting application itself remains to be seen
The MIDI recording side is very good and tight, as is the Multitrack Audio Recording.

I was going to shove a grand piano in there, but it would start to nudge up to 450mb which is getting a bit daft as a starter pup. I didn't come here for Vista.
There was just one thing I missed in Synth 1, I forgot to assign the soundbanks (6 banks of cool sounds). All you need to do is hit option on the front of Synth 1 and look for them in the Synth1 folder, then they will all be there assigned.

Anyways, hope anyone that likes to lay down a lick or two finds it intuitive, largely hassle free and enjoyable.
And who knows, someone might feel inclined to remaster an even leaner digital audio pup

[darkcity]

This is a great idea, what to you feel about whether a realtime kernel is useful for musix software?

[Smithy]

Well I am not too sure, but I thought that recent kernels sort of automatically have realtime within them already to some extent.
Maybe the big guns know more about this aspect.

But the most important thing I would say is vital in a little music distro would
be stability..and..stability!

I think Ardour may be getting some decent MIDI capability soon, and I would
think that might be better than using Wine, even though wine says it uses very very little overhead. (1% of cpu time).

But is Ardour now 800mb or so?
EDIT: I think that is a developers version.

[darkcity]

going to start recording using puppy soon. would be good to have a muso pup supported by the community ; -)

[Smithy]

Yes I guess it would dark city,

but at least this music pup is piggybacked cheekily off the Playdayz Luci in the sky!
So his updates and stuff will work in it (did try the update, but I didn't find anything wrong with the original personally).

It was also done so that it could be moved into another pup if the ALSA develops, it's already moved on to 1.0.25, fixing a few probs with soundblasters and other things.

If you need a few tips or tricks as regards using this pup, I will be knocking around.

One thing I did notice, is that I have to start Podium first, and then start the Jack and Jack transport second, a bit weird but hey..

As I mentioned, I get latency of around 5 secs (for realtime recording with an amp or effects) and then can back off latency to 46secs or so for when mixing lots of tracks.

And you can also add Audacity or other apps if you were used to using that, I very much liked that prog for its multitrack recording, but if you have a look in Podium, you will see it has an outstanding audio editor built in.

[darkcity]

downloading music2go ; -)

what hardware are you using?

how can I test latency?

[darkcity]

On the webpage maybe include a link to this thread and/or iso

[Lobster]

How exciting. Could this be the start of Puppy Linux the musical?

[Smithy]

Oh yep, forgot about linking to the puppy forum and Smokey's place, will do it soon.

At the moment, on a little netbook amilo mini, standard gma 950 graphics, realtek, nothing groundbreaking.
alc sound, and emu tracker pre external.
Original testing machine athlon xp 2400 1gb ram, nasty via chipset

To test the latency, open the Jack,
1.assign your soundcard on the right hand side, should give the name of your soundcard(s).
2. adjust period to 2 or 3
3. try to get down to 128 for pretty low latency, options should be 1024, 512, 256, 128, 64 etc.
4.Try ticking realtime if you want.
5.After doing that Quit Jack. Then Restart Jack to get the new setting to "take". Then quit it again.
6. Boot up Podium.
7.Get to the mixer/arrangement screen, you should see a latency figure underneath every volume fader, as per pic on my website.
8.Load up a drum machine or synth, play it, if the delay is still too much, then go back to Jack and adjust until you are happy with the latency.

dark city,
Remember that latency is only a big deal if you are trying to record in realtime with effects and you have no direct way of monitoring the source,i.e an external mixer etc. It is just that sometimes an effect that you are using influences the way that you play, so it is then vital to get low latency so that you don't lose your marbles, not to mention your timing!



Lobster, you hum it and I"ll play it!

[darkcity]

Puppy Linux the musical part 2 ; -)

I tried M2Go and it works on quick boot up test

(no internet, but having problems with that anyway in 528)

My machine is Athlon 64 2Ghz haven't test latency yet.

--

I notice most of the software is run through WINE, have you tried linux native alternatives?

some are listed here-
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/home.php
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/PackageList

reference
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudioPreparation
---

going to try adding Audacity later ; -)

nice work