Tiny PC project

[boneless]

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum, I'll start straightaway with a question to ask you.

I play in a band, and I am using zynaddsubfx as main synth of choice at the moment.
I must say that there are very nice synths on Linux, really, many of them commercial-grade.
Now, I was thinking of building a tiny (let's say rackmount) PC to use as a synth or as a music machine in general.

I'd get a small case or a rack unit, insert a tiny motherboard in it, a old, but fairly powerful CPU (maybe a laptop one), not much RAM really (it is not really necessary for synthesizing stuff, maybe more if I'm sampling stuff), let's say 1GB, a reasonable PCI audio interface (single stereo channel as well, although I'd like a decent input), a small solidstate HD, let's say 4GB, a small power supply and maybe a laptop battery.
I'd also put a MIDI in and a MIDI out port, 4 USB ports (but 2 can do), a VGA port, an Ethernet port and ideally, a very small LCD screen and a touchpad.

Then:

- I'd install a very lightweight distro, ie Xubuntu, with most daemons turned off.
- I'd be looking to a very fast startup time, let's say 30 secs.
- I'd plan to use a single-user setup, it is really not necessary a multi-user setup for this "thing".
- I'd plan in extensively using LASH, so I wouldn't need to do all the stuff I usually do (open JACK, open Zyn, connect MIDI and audio, open other synths, ie. ghostess with sineshaper, nekobee, hexter, whysynth, etc. or, with a higher RAM amount, do everything in Rosegarden or a similar sequencer, preferably something that would work on a small LCD).

I know that a laptop would probably do the job (I actually use a laptop at the moment), but I'd like to have MIDI ports, and a small, durable and reliable box to use just for this. I'd use an EeePC, but they come with Atom CPUs, which I think are underpowered for what I need.

Do you think it's possible to do something like this?

The nicest thing would be a coder that would collaborate with me to do a GUI that would work for the small LCD screen, and I'd release the project specs and everything, but I'm probably asking too much

[studio32]

Hi,

Welcome!

Maybe this could help you:
http://www.restivo.org/blog/archives/debianrules
http://www.restivo.org/blog/archives/ne ... h-progress
http://restivo.nfshost.com/projects/eee/

[raboof]

I know that a laptop would probably do the job (I actually use a laptop at the moment), but I'd like to have MIDI ports, and a small, durable and reliable box to use just for this.

I've been thinking about something like this

I'd use an EeePC, but they come with Atom CPUs, which I think are underpowered for what I need.

Given the good results Ken's having with the Eee, that might give a good head-start: getting an Eee and fitting it into a more rugged box along with a MIDI interface. I wonder how hard that'd be.

[studio32]

I often read the comment, why Eee and not a more powerful laptop?

[Claudio]

I figure if it's for MIDI control and you're using some software synths, you should do just fine with the Atom CPU. Not sure if soft synths under GNU/Linux take advantage of the Hyperthreading found in the Atom, but consider this: if the software synths can run decently under a Pentium 4 CPU with HT, what makes the Eee or any Atom-based system any different?

The only considerations would be if you want to deal with the SSD drives or get one with a regular hard drive. Unfortunately, the only netbooks out there now with standard hard drives come with Windows, but if you don't mind paying the MS tax and wiping the HD with a GNU/Linux distribution, then you could do that. Of course, you would have to be mindful of any movement that could affect a standard hard drive. The SSDs don't have this problem, but you do have to deal with the amount of writes to them compared to a standard hard drive.

[MattKingUSA]

I figure if it's for MIDI control and you're using some software synths, you should do just fine with the Atom CPU. Not sure if soft synths under GNU/Linux take advantage of the Hyperthreading found in the Atom, but consider this: if the software synths can run decently under a Pentium 4 CPU with HT, what makes the Eee or any Atom-based system any different?

The only considerations would be if you want to deal with the SSD drives or get one with a regular hard drive. Unfortunately, the only netbooks out there now with standard hard drives come with Windows, but if you don't mind paying the MS tax and wiping the HD with a GNU/Linux distribution, then you could do that. Of course, you would have to be mindful of any movement that could affect a standard hard drive. The SSDs don't have this problem, but you do have to deal with the amount of writes to them compared to a standard hard drive.

Hey Claudio, how many read writes do you get on an SSD in a netbook?

[boneless]

Thanks for the replies.

Anyway, I think an Atom-powered PC may be underpowered since I'd even like to use the multitimbral capabilities of zynaddsubfx, plus I might use sequencers and MIDI loops as well, maybe using more instances of zyn, or a loop playing in zyn and something else played on another synth.
I have tried with my laptop, an (old) 1.40Ghz Celeron M, and it struggles.
Since an Atom isn't supposed to be a very powerful PC (after all, it's aimed at small, power-saving devices, not really at performance), I fear that I wouldn't be able to use it live. I'd like to have some overhead as well.
I was looking at more powerful PCs actually, an old dual core for example (BTW, does anyone know if the softsynths on Linux take advantage of multicore PCs?).

An alternative to my "small and rugged box" would be a tablet PC, so it would only take the space of a vertically-placed LCD screen, which would also avoid all the problems related to having a small screen.

[Claudio]

I figure if it's for MIDI control and you're using some software synths, you should do just fine with the Atom CPU. Not sure if soft synths under GNU/Linux take advantage of the Hyperthreading found in the Atom, but consider this: if the software synths can run decently under a Pentium 4 CPU with HT, what makes the Eee or any Atom-based system any different?

The only considerations would be if you want to deal with the SSD drives or get one with a regular hard drive. Unfortunately, the only netbooks out there now with standard hard drives come with Windows, but if you don't mind paying the MS tax and wiping the HD with a GNU/Linux distribution, then you could do that. Of course, you would have to be mindful of any movement that could affect a standard hard drive. The SSDs don't have this problem, but you do have to deal with the amount of writes to them compared to a standard hard drive.

Hey Claudio, how many read writes do you get on an SSD in a netbook?

There are a number of pages out there on the Internet that talk about it. From what I've gathered, you can last a long time before the SSD actually reaches the number of writes it can ultimately take, but it varies in how you set up your filesystems. I have the 20 GB (4+16) Eee PC 901 with Xandros. I put Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04a6 in place of Xandros and set up the 4 GB SSD as / and the 16 GB SSD as /home. Both are formatted ext2 and I don't have a swap partition set up. I imagine that it slows down on some spots during use because of the lack of swap, but not having swap prevents me from wearing out the SSDs too early. It's quite usable this way, but I wouldn't recommend it for audio or MIDI usage. Of course, if you have a standard hard drive in the netbook, then none of this applies and you can set it up as you would any other PC.

It's still too early for me to tell how much life is left on these drives, so I can't give you exact information. But the information on SSDs in general is out there.

I still do think these Atom CPUs are powerful enough to handle what you can throw at them, provided you have a standard hard drive (so as not to worry about write limits) and a lot of RAM (these can only take about 2 GB since Atom is a 32-bit processor). Mind you, they won't be able to match a dual-core, 64-bit CPU with gobs of cache, but I imagine they can do well enough. This is why devices like the Indamixx Laptop exist.

[boneless]

SSD drives for me aren't a concern anyway.
What I want to do with the PC doesn't need intensive I/O. Since all I want to do is to use softsynths and sequencers, and only marginally use samplers (I don't really have the need for sampling, actually, it's just an added plus I'd like to have), that's why I'm actually looking at a powerful PC.
The following sample has been done using two instances of zyn and rosegarden as a sequencer:

http://www.gospel.bo.it/albums/userpics ... nippet.mp3

and CPU usage was close to 90% on a 1.4 GHz CeleronM w/ an Echo Indigo IO PCMCIA card. Especially SUBSyn patches are CPU-intensive (although all I did was using PADSynth and loads of effects), and I don't really want to be limited by the hardware.
But then again, if you tell me that the Atom really compares in power with a Pentium 4 for example (I know CPU clock is an "obsolete" spec, but still, a 1.6GHz CPU aimed at UMPCs and netbooks really doesn't make me feel comfortable ), and that it would certainly be able to, let's say, deal with three or four softsynths playing at once (it probably will never happen, but I like some overhead, as I said), then the Indamixx looks really interesting.

[Claudio]

SSD drives for me aren't a concern anyway.
What I want to do with the PC doesn't need intensive I/O. Since all I want to do is to use softsynths and sequencers, and only marginally use samplers (I don't really have the need for sampling, actually, it's just an added plus I'd like to have), that's why I'm actually looking at a powerful PC.
The following sample has been done using two instances of zyn and rosegarden as a sequencer:

http://www.gospel.bo.it/albums/userpics ... nippet.mp3

and CPU usage was close to 90% on a 1.4 GHz CeleronM w/ an Echo Indigo IO PCMCIA card. Especially SUBSyn patches are CPU-intensive (although all I did was using PADSynth and loads of effects), and I don't really want to be limited by the hardware.
But then again, if you tell me that the Atom really compares in power with a Pentium 4 for example (I know CPU clock is an "obsolete" spec, but still, a 1.6GHz CPU aimed at UMPCs and netbooks really doesn't make me feel comfortable ), and that it would certainly be able to, let's say, deal with three or four softsynths playing at once (it probably will never happen, but I like some overhead, as I said), then the Indamixx looks really interesting.

I haven't tested with my Eee PC 901 only because of the fear of wearing out the SSD. I was just going on logic since basically the Atom brings back a lot of what the Pentium 4 had, but without the drawbacks of the Netburst technology. So it's possible that it could handle what a Pentium 4 could, and maybe then some since the Pentium 4 CPUs at comparable speeds were more than likely first gen (which REALLY sucked) or second gen, and none of those had symmetrical multithreading support (aka "Hyperthreading," which I assume might help a bit).

AnandTech has an in-depth article with the intricate details of the Atom CPU.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in ... spx?i=3276

As far as more than maybe two soft synths, you're probably right on that. If you're going to do stuff that intensive, then the Atom might not be for you. Unfortunately, you won't find many netbook-like portables out there using the Core 2 Duo. They'll either be bigger than a netbook or more expensive (or both).

[boneless]

The thing is that I may want to tweak filter settings and the such live, so I can't really bounce the output of the synths on disk and just play the .wav, plus I may want to play loops and then switch loops live with MIDI control, or then again adjust tempo, for example...
With a not very powerful PC, I might be restricted in making loops and using CPU intensive sounds, I don't really want to compromise (very much).

Then again, I understand that the guys at Indamixx can make custom stuff (ie. more powerful), for a fee of course, but I might be prepared to pay for it.

[Maxfischer]

I just joined this site like ten minutes ago. I Installed Hexter on Juanty Ubuntu. Its awesome and now I am hooked.
Whats funny is I want to build the same project "Rack Synth" I already have a
Roland s-330 (1u) for the Drum sampler w/ tons o samples on "floppy" hahaha( Luv it)
a Tascam Patch bay (1u)
and now I am fashioning a linux soft synth rack space.
I am really interested in the quick start up time your mentioning.
Disabling un-needed Daemons?
Xubuntu?