freebirth synthesizer and sequencer

[bob]

Hi,

I really like this synth/sequencer, Freebirth (http://freebirth.sourceforge.net/) - its quite different to other synth/drum machine software I've tried (I haven't tried many, though), its not very polished and lacks features, but the actual synth part is really good and for some reason I like the feel of it.
Has anyone else used this?

I am trying to figure out how to capture the sound from this program and would appreciate some advice.
I am very inexperienced and its likely I'm missing some basic knowledge that would make this obvious, but I'll ask anyway.
The program has no inbuilt way of saving/opening files.
It doesn't use JACK, as far as I can tell.
I found these instructions in a readme file that was installed with the freebirth package:

To record a song to a wave file, open a sound-mixer (e.g. aumix, alsamixer)
and select the appropriate channel to record from. Make freebirth play, then
record the sound with another program (for instance:
ecasound -i /dev/dsp -o recording.wav ).

I'm not sure I fully understand this, but I tried what I thought this means and had no success. I have basic onboard sound (on a laptop) - Intel HDA Realtek ALC268 - and it has Line in, Microphone and Internal Microphone - I'm pretty sure internal microphone is the one to use but I tried recording from each of them. I had no success, the best I managed to record was heavily clipped noise, which made me wonder if it was just being amplified too much, but I had no success playing with/turning down the gain levels either.
If anyone understands these instructions and is able to dumb them down for me, i.e. explain how to "select the appropriate channel to record from" using alsamixer -- I would be really grateful.
Another thing-- in the Ubuntu "Sound Preferences" applet, under the Applications tab, where there would usually be details of applications outputting and recording audio, freebirth is not shown. Maybe this is not relevant, this is just because freebirth is not using PulseAudio but is talking directly to ALSA? (I'm using Ubuntu Lucid Lynx, which comes with PulseAudio as the main sound server, I think).
Just trying to get my head around all the hookups, sorry if there's some basic things here I should know but have missed.

Thanks for any thoughts or instructions.

[varpa]

I tried the freebirth with ecasound capture and it did not work for me either. My general comment is that even if this worked it is an extremely crude way to capture sound. I'd recommend using the Hydrogen drum machine which can do much, much more than freebirth, which appears to be an abandoned project. With Hydrogen you can route audio with Jack and record it in any number of applications. You probably can load freebirth's sound sample into Hydrogen if you want to.

[bob]

You're right, there's JACK software that does the job so much better. I just need to take the extra time to set it all up. Good idea to import the samples.
I have discovered seq24, zynaddsubfx, amsynth, etc which can also combine to do anything freebirth can do, plus more.
As for recording freebirth, I did find a way but I'm ashamed to say (many times cruder than the other method mentioned): connect my soundcard out to mic in with a 3.5mm cable and record . Who needs JACK?

[didgewind]

i have never been able to run it. I am using ubuntu natty, and tried with and without jack running. The message it shows when i type 'freebirth' is the following:

Unable to open audio device.

any idea why is this?

xxx