[SOLVED ;-) ] Myriad of problems....

[transmogrifox]

You should be able to operate at 128 frames per period if RT is enabled and everything is well otherwise. This will get you down to 5ms latency at 48000 sample rate.

As for Vocoder, I wonder if you're doing it backwards or something ... ?

Zynaddsubfx-> Rakarrack In_1 and In_2
Voice -> Rakarrack Aux

Wet/Dry mix to 0.
Muf to approx 10 for good vocoder effect. Ring default is 0 to get it going.

Also make sure master FX% is set to 100%. That's the master wet/dry mix.

Maybe something else worth doing is load the internal Preset "Vocoder 1" before you activate the vocoder. At the moment it seems the FX in git are not loading a default preset, and maybe there are some weird things in memory for those parameters. I will need to review this and make sure everything is getting a default when loaded...

I have uploaded a video to demonstrate how it works for me...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geJQpabZGZQ

A bit crude, but got the job done.

[dchurch24]

Firstly, I am astonished just how patient, friendly and helpful you all are; I truly am in awe!

Secondly, thanks for the vids (to all that posted), the last one is exactly how I'm setting it up, but sadly, my output sounds nothing like it does on the vid. I am putting the voice into Aux and the two outs from Zyn into the two ins in the vocoder, then the outs from the vocoder to the system outs.
I get a 'effected' Zyn and normal voice. I tried reversing them in case I had them the wrong way around, and then I get an effected voice, and normal Zyn.

I'm almost certainly missing something, I'll have another play tonight (time willing) to try and find what it is

Rakarrack seems to be quite stable for me now - not quite sure what I did, but it didn't really seem to have much to do with the two effects mentioned earlier, as I can put those back on and it won't crash. Odd.

Linux sampler seems more stable now too, quite high latency sometimes (it varies, some notes will sound immediately, and others take .5 second or so to sound). I'll try changing the frames to 128.

Thanks for your time, all of you, I'll post up what I find out tonight!

[autostatic]

Linux sampler seems more stable now too, quite high latency sometimes (it varies, some notes will sound immediately, and others take .5 second or so to sound).

Sounds like the infamous MIDI jitter issue. Try using JACK for MIDI instead of ALSA. And lowering the number of Frames/Period should definitely help as this will reduce the jitter too. I'm using 64 Frames/Period and hence practically no jitter.

And did you try changing the Priority of JACK already? It was set to 1 while it is better to leave it default (which is 50) or raise it to about 70.

[dchurch24]

Hi, it's better with Jack rather than Alsa for midi, but still a little jittery. I'll continue playing.

I did raise it to 70 and it's much better - something about it feels more stable, although I can't put my finger on it.

After watching you video on youtube, I can't wait to get the Vocoder working.

I'm going to book a week off work soon so I can learn and play

It seems I pop into my 'studio' after work around 5.30, I think I've been up there for an hour, but in reality it's 1am! This stuff eats time

[transmogrifox]

Hummmmm... It really sounds like maybe you have things going to other sources...where maybe there is some playback to another place that is coming onto the speakers...or maybe Wet/dry mix on vocoder not set minimum? Maybe I said set to '0' above, but really I think it is -64, all the way to the left. That setting removes any of the uneffected mix from the output...maybe was only my error in explaining. Watch my video in full screen to get a better view of the settings I was using on the Vocoder. I didn't zoom in at all, so things are a little small at normal YouTube size.

Enable Rakarrack, and do as you were. Then turn the output volume of Rakarrack all the way to zero. If you still hear ZynAddSubFX or the mic coming through then you have it interconnected somewhere else and some of the uneffected dry signal is going around Rakarrack into somewhere else.

I am finding the output volume of vocoder often needs to be greater than 100 for the vocoder to be audible, or at least more than barely audible for most input signals.

Make sure the VU bars on the Vocoder for the Aux input are bouncing into the Yellow.

Make sure Wet/Dry mix is set to zero, unless you want some "dry" mixed onto the vocoded signal.

Have "Q" set somewhere between 65 and 80 to start.

Read the help (F1 key), browse to "Effects", then to "Vocoder".
To improve diction on the Vocoder, you can set the number of bands to 128 and Downsample to 22050 in the settings. This will be a good balance between good diction and CPU usage... 32 bands is the default, while you can also go down to 16 bands in the settings if that number of bands is acceptable and you want to save the processing for something else.

The Sirlab vocoder has volume and pan for each vocoder band. I have never used it so I don't know whether these functions are of great utility. There are other modules in Rakarrack you can use to emulate this functionality to a certain degree. As far as per-band volume goes, a person can use the Rakarrack EQ to balance the levels in a similar manner, to an acceptable level of contro. Even more shaping can be added with the Parametric EQ as welll. As far as panning a band, the "Shuffle" effect essentially is a 4-band EQ that more or less is what it does, is pan the EQ to the left or right. Just some ideas for adding a stereo dimension to the vocoded sound. Also you can feed different types of sounds into left and right channels....because left and right are processed separately, the Rakarrack Vocoder is essentially two Vocoders with the same "Formant" (voice) source, so you can put a different "carrier" (synth sound) into left and right channels to get some interesting stereo effects. You have to get it working for you in the most simple case, first

[dchurch24]

Ha ha ha - got it The formant was far too quiet to hear is all, once I turned up the pre-amp and fiddled a little, I heard that distinctive vocoded sound; I nearly fell off my chair!

Thank you so much guys! You seriously do the open source world an enormous credit! It wouldn't be what it is without people like you!

The only thing missing for me to make music now, is talent

Fantastic stuff - When watching (both of you) your videos on youtube, I could actually feel my heart rate speed up with excitement. A geek? Moi? Yes!

DAW stuff was one of the reasons I started looking for alternatives to Windows - I just couldn't get on with Cubase, and the interface for Pro-Tools had me scratching my head. I discovered Ardour on the web, then installed Linux so I could get at it, and since then all the other discoveries I've made have each amazed me (autotalent, rakarrack, ardour, ZynAddSubFX, etc... the list is long!)

I am so chuffed that this is all working.

Tell me which open-source project to donate to, and next pay day (in about two week) I'm donating as a way of saying thank you.

EDIT: How about $10 to Ardour, $10 Rakarrack & $10 to ZynAddSubFX?

[autostatic]

Woohoo, great that you got it going! And thanks for the props, definitely encourages me to do more video howtos. And I'm an end-user like you, so I'm on the donating side too. I donated to Rakarrack in the past and will do it again in the (near) future. But do as you please, seems like a good list to me.

[Capoeira]

welcome to linux-world dchurch24
once you got things working, they are working, and working, ......

[dchurch24]

...although, sadly, this may throw that sentiment into disarray!

Everything (apart from LinuxSampler, but then I'd given up on that as a lost cause) WAS working, but now every time I change the instrument in ZynAddSubFX it disconnects itself from Jack, meaning I can only use the default sound.

The only thing I changed since it was working last was the Frames/Period. I've tried changing that back to what it used to be, but Zyn still gets kicked from Jack on every instrument change.

EDIT: If I change the frames to 256, then it stays up when I change [some] instruments.

[autostatic]

Try Yoshimi, ZynAddSubFX is notorious for this kind of behaviour when switching banks. If you insist on using ZASFX then try raising the JACK timeout setting to 2000 or 5000.

[dchurch24]

Hi again!

Thanks for that, going to install it now, in the meantime, raising the timeout has handled that error.

PS. I notice you are in The Netherlands, are you near Oss? I work there quite a bit, if you are I might actually get to buy you that beer!

PPS. I think I'll persevere with ZASFX, compiling Yoshimi is a nightmare for unmet deps and the .deb file is insisting that Jack isn't installed.

[autostatic]

PS. I notice you are in The Netherlands, are you near Oss? I work there quite a bit, if you are I might actually get to buy you that beer!

Not near Oss, Ost is in the east, i live in the west (30 km from Amsterdam). So no beeries

PPS. I think I'll persevere with ZASFX, compiling Yoshimi is a nightmare for unmet deps and the .deb file is insisting that Jack isn't installed.

Which deb are you trying to install? I have Yoshimi in my PPA for both Karmic and Lucid: https://launchpad.net/~autostatic/+archive/ppa
And it has the default JACK packages as dependencies, unlike the debs from philip5 and falk-t-j iirc.

[dchurch24]

It was just a deb that I randomly found after searching google. I should have guessed to go straight to yours!

Yours worked straight away, although there are no instruments or effects; I guess I have to import them to a folder somewhere?

[autostatic]

Yours worked straight away, although there are no instruments or effects; I guess I have to import them to a folder somewhere?

No that's not necessary, somehow the root bank isn't updated correctly when you first start it. In Yoshimi select Yoshimi - Settings - Bank root dirs and click 'Add root directory...'. It should point to /usr/share/yoshimi/banks/

And it comes with a lot of extra instrument patches compared to ZynAddSubFX. I really dig the Will J Godfrey collection. And the Bass - 65. Dubstep patch of course

[dchurch24]

Ha - I bloody checked there too! It had the path in it. I took it out, added it again and there they were!

Thank you, again!