Audacity, Zynaddsubfx, Seq24, Specimen And Porting, Z as a pocket music workstation? Options

[danboid]

zynaddsubfx - http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/

Is an amazing multichannel, realtime 'analogue' synthesiser with fx using an FLTK gui. Does CXX00 range, overclocked, have enuff processing umph to run this? I need to find out!

seq24 - http://www.filter24.org/seq24/

fantastic, slimline GTK MIDI sequencer

specimen - http://gazuga.net/

virtual sampler, GTK based

audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Great wave editor

So, the idea is we get these ported to pdaXrom for a neat litle portable music making machine! I presume I'd be able to even get a USB MIDI adapter working with my C3000 (when the pdaXrom port gets finished) for the icing on the cake? I'm pretty sure thought that seq24 and specimen need ALSA, is this a problem?

I'm new to the world of the Zaurus and cross-compilng, so I've got a few questions:

Can I run pdaXrom binaries under X/QT (under Cacko)?

How big of a performance hit is there when running stuff under X/QT as compared to pdaXrom?

Could I get a Debian ARM binaries for these and run them under X/QT or pdaXrom?

iWMMX - Is it only programs that were coded to use MMX that can make use of this or can any multimedia prog be compiled with iwmmx and see performance gains?

Thanks for your help!

dan

[Da_Blitz]

mmx code needs to be rewritten to take advantage of iwmmx tech, however you normally only need to add 2 letters to the frount of most instructions to make them work

intels idea was that there would be more programmers out there whowould prefer mmx from the x86 than some wierd new vectorisation stuff

the X/Qt stuff should work for all programs that depend only on X however there might be some problems with file/folders between the 2 distros that cause problems (tried installing a sharpRom program the other day and it thorgh up some problems than gave up)

[Meanie]

I'm new to the world of the Zaurus and cross-compilng, so I've got a few questions:

Can I run pdaXrom binaries under X/QT (under Cacko)?

How big of a performance hit is there when running stuff under X/QT as compared to pdaXrom?

Could I get a Debian ARM binaries for these and run them under X/QT or pdaXrom?

iWMMX - Is it only programs that were coded to use MMX that can make use of this or can any multimedia prog be compiled with iwmmx and see performance gains?

Thanks for your help!

dan

yes and no, older pdaXrom binaries can run on Sharp/Cacko ROM, but the newer ones can not because they are compiled for the newer pdaXrom kernel which is not compatible with the Sharp/Cacko kernel.

X/QT runs reasonably ok, but still uses Sharp/Cacko kernel which is not as fast as pdaXrom kernel, plus pdaXrom runs X natively vs X/Qt which runs it via Qtopia's framebuffer.

Debian arm binaries can run under X/Qt directly if they were compiled for glibc 2.2.2, however, many Debian apps now use 2.3.2 and won't run on Sharp/Cacko unless you chroot it or upgrade glibc to 2.3.2

There may be slight gains if compiled with iWMMX optimisation, but to really get more performance, the code needs to be changed to utilise the added instructions.

[gromituk]

Doesn't Audacity use WxWidgets, i.e. not QT?

[danboid]

Doesn't Audacity use WxWidgets, i.e. not QT?

Yes it does use Wx, I never said it used QT.

Anyone know if ALSA supports the Zaurus sound chipset? What is it? Its a shame the Z uses the same jack for mic and headphones, would've been great if it could do full duplex recording.

[ThC]

There is a performance hit in running X/QT as compared to pdaXrom because X/QT involves launching an X server while running Qtopia so you're allready using more cpu power an memory than pdaXrom which launches only the X server. Beside, X/QT uses a vnc server and a vnc client to connect you to the X server ... so you won't be able to use an application which need realtime input

[gromituk]

Yes it does use Wx, I never said it used QT.

No, but as the rest of your posting concentrated on QT, I thought you might not have realised this.

Its a shame the Z uses the same jack for mic and headphones, would've been great if it could do full duplex recording.

It can record and play back at the same time - but only in mono.

[phunkhy]

I had a look at these apps but seq24's ui has non-resizable dialogues exceeding 640 by 480. That means you will never see the whole of it. This is a killer IMHO.... pity.

There is a port of beast in the unstable section of pdaXrom but it's damned slow.

/phunkhy

[km2783]

I haven't seen this mentioned here...

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

Any hope? It requires Qt 3.x, don't we mostly use Qt/Embedded 2.x on a lot of the ROMs? Not sure on any sound requirements, either.

Just something else to toss out there...

[urielka]

i tired to compile this it need some other libraries like libogg and etc.
i hade a problem then coz i forgot qmake

[phunkhy]

Wow lmms looks promising.. But after the experience with beast I still doubt that the Z has got enough computing power... but let's try it.

I tried to compile it with the cross devkit. But I seems that there are problems with QT stuff:

CODE

In file included from audio_file_processor.cpp:64:
../../src/lib/embed.cpp: In function `QPixmap
  audiofileprocessor::getIconPixmap(const char*, int, int)':
../../src/lib/embed.cpp:68: error: `findEmbeddedData' undeclared (first use
  this function)
../../src/lib/embed.cpp:68: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only
  once for each function it appears in.)

But I'll keep on trying.

[danboid]

UPDATE

Cor- I can't believe its almost 5 years since I asked this question!

I now have zubuntu installed on my Z and milkytracker, which is in the ubuntu repos, works great as does USB MIDI via ALSA and I've even got specimen to run on top of JACK. I had to build specimen from source as the package in the armel jaunty repos didn't work at all for me but the specimen interface is very usable @ 640x480 without modification and I've got our KORG nanopad bus-powered USB MIDI drum pad/controller working great with it

BUT

I've so far been unable to get a clean sound out of specimen, despite much messing with alsamixer settings and jackd (-n , -p, -r) switches. If I play my wavs on the zaurus via moc, mpg123, vlc etc. they sound fine, but I always get a bit of crackle when they get played back via specimen/JACK. The kernel I'm using at the mo doesn't support CPU scaling so maybe if I was running at 600+ Mhz it may become usable?

Once we get JACK/specimen working OK, seq24 should be within reach. These apps combined with sweep and the Z becomes and nice pocket studio!