LinuxMusicians

42low wrote:Why should you use that ladish? Especially if is said it's old and no more supported. Keeping such software running is asking for problems.
Ladisch? Sound routing? Why not use Jack? Or simply alsa?

I plug in my midi-keyboard. And dedicate it to a wanted track within DAW and other music software. That's all i do and it all works fine out off the box.
That's why i never understand why some have to explore all kinds off deep technical ways and a lot off hard coding and so on. I almost always plug in en never hardcode and it works. I really don't understand.
I think that if you experiment to much it eventually will disturb somewhere. But that is/was with win to.

This is a good question. The short answer is: because things are confusing. Documentation is all over the place, there's a lot of dead projects that you don't even realize are dead, there's a lot of overlap between programs that you might think serve different purposes; there's a lot of programs that people swear by and I think "oh neat I should try this out" but then I can't even figure out what it's for or how to use it; there's a lot of confusing names.

But your steps confuse me. You say "why not use jack or simply alsa".

Well first: I am using jack, but you need a way to interact with it. I assumed that cadence and qjackctl were the two main ways to go about it. I can't, as you say, "just plug and it works out of the box", I need to set up jack, I need to tell jack what plugin to connect with the keyboard, etc. Ladish was just a tool in cadence that looked the most comfortable for the job.

So for example, you plugin and turn on your midi keyboard, and you want to play around with synth sounds. How do you tell the synth which device to use?

I recently reinstalled arch so I'm going to use this as an opportunity to have a clearer understanding and a more comfortable setup.

I'm a bit confused. Isn't LADISH used by Claudia currently? As LADISH is outdated shouldn't Claudia be used then?

lilith wrote:I'm a bit confused. Isn't LADISH used by Claudia currently? As LADISH is outdated shouldn't Claudia be used then?

I find it confusing as well. Claudia is a ladish front end. If ladish is outdated, isn't Claudia as well? And if that shouldn't be used, doesn't that just throw out cadence as a whole?

I'd suggest to forget about Jack, ladish and all of that stuff. Jack is a great tool but can be a bit fiddly to setup. Simply use a recent version of Ardour in ALSA mode. Plugin your Keyboard, create a midi track with your favourite softsynth and set the input to your midi device. It's really easy and the Mixbus/Ardour-Team have really created something that's just as usable for Audio as the alternatives on Windows or MacOS.

singforme wrote:I'd suggest to forget about Jack, ladish and all of that stuff. Jack is a great tool but can be a bit fiddly to setup. Simply use a recent version of Ardour in ALSA mode. Plugin your Keyboard, create a midi track with your favourite softsynth and set the input to your midi device. It's really easy and the Mixbus/Ardour-Team have really created something that's just as usable for Audio as the alternatives on Windows or MacOS.

Yeah I'm really, really tired of dealing with jack.

In the course of last night, I've had my computer frozen by it, couldn't figure out how to connect my midi keyboard to qsampler (even following tutorials), couldn't get the PA bridge to work, now it does but for some reason it plays them with no sound and in slow motion. I don't know if I have bad luck or how other people do it.

EDIT:
I tried. Managed to set up musescore with alsa, got the midi keyboard to input notes and got sound to come out. Problem is sound doesn't come out from any other applications until I close musescore.

So I guess I'm stuck with jack, or might as well give up entirely on linux music and try with a windows vm. Both those possibilities fill me with dread.

I'm astonished you are having so much difficulty here. Can you give us a run-down again on your kit? That's, hardware, Distro and applications.

singforme wrote:I'd suggest to forget about Jack, ladish and all of that stuff. Jack is a great tool but can be a bit fiddly to setup. Simply use a recent version of Ardour in ALSA mode. Plugin your Keyboard, create a midi track with your favourite softsynth and set the input to your midi device. It's really easy and the Mixbus/Ardour-Team have really created something that's just as usable for Audio as the alternatives on Windows or MacOS.

This is heresy, but I agree 100%!

People who work with JACK all the time think it's so logical and easy. But for all the benefits we attribute to JACK, it is a huge barrier to getting started. Need evidence? Look in these forums. So many posts here are new members trying to get started like yama. Despite all the offers to help, they often give up and disappear forever. It's almost always confusion related to setting up JACK.

Just use Ardour or Mixbus with ALSA if your workflow allows it. Everything just works. Plugins all work, and most/many tools that you would want to connect with JACK are available as plugins. MIDI devices are properly named and detected. No audio system bridges, no hassle. Just get right to making music.

I didn't even know this was possible until recently. It's awesome. I hardly ever post here anymore because I don't need to troll the forums looking up how to fix things.

New users would be well served by Ardour with ALSA and then move on to JACK once they get their footing and understand how everything works.

folderol wrote:I'm astonished you are having so much difficulty here. Can you give us a run-down again on your kit? That's, hardware, Distro and applications.

I managed to get linuxsampler running smoothly (and hence musescore), but I'm now hesitant of exploring other programs.

Hardware: just onboard soundcard, midiplus bk492 midi keyboard, nothing special.

Software: Arch linux, using cadence (i find qjackctl confusing), ardour, musescore, calf fluidsynth, qsampler, helm. I've tried a few more programs, such as Giada, but I was not able to find any live looping programs that satisfied me.

ufug wrote:

singforme wrote:I'd suggest to forget about Jack, ladish and all of that stuff. Jack is a great tool but can be a bit fiddly to setup. Simply use a recent version of Ardour in ALSA mode. Plugin your Keyboard, create a midi track with your favourite softsynth and set the input to your midi device. It's really easy and the Mixbus/Ardour-Team have really created something that's just as usable for Audio as the alternatives on Windows or MacOS.

This is heresy, but I agree 100%!

People who work with JACK all the time think it's so logical and easy. But for all the benefits we attribute to JACK, it is a huge barrier to getting started. Need evidence? Look in these forums. So many posts here are new members trying to get started like yama. Despite all the offers to help, they often give up and disappear forever. It's almost always confusion related to setting up JACK.

Just use Ardour or Mixbus with ALSA if your workflow allows it. Everything just works. Plugins all work, and most/many tools that you would want to connect with JACK are available as plugins. MIDI devices are properly named and detected. No audio system bridges, no hassle. Just get right to making music.

I didn't even know this was possible until recently. It's awesome. I hardly ever post here anymore because I don't need to troll the forums looking up how to fix things.

New users would be well served by Ardour with ALSA and then move on to JACK once they get their footing and understand how everything works.

The thing is I tried this and I ran into severe limitations within 2 minutes, when musescore with alsa wouldn't let audio come out of any other applications.

Hi Yama, can you specify why you want to have other applications playing sound at the same time? Maybe there's a workaround to your problem. When working with jack: Have you tried patchage or catia? They work ab bit like ladish but are more recent stable.

singforme wrote:Hi Yama, can you specify why you want to have other applications playing sound at the same time? Maybe there's a workaround to your problem. When working with jack: Have you tried patchage or catia? They work ab bit like ladish but are more recent stable.

Hi. Yes, I wanted to transcribe a track, so I play it with firefox or mpv and I pause, slow it down, frequently, meanwhile I play with the keyboard and write it down in musescore. I've figure out how to solve the issue with jack and I can do this, but like I said I'm weary of venturing into more advanced programs.

I've also been using patchage. I liked that ladish had sessions, and because I use cadence to start up jack, and because ladish is right there in the programs to open from within cadence, I woudln't have guessed that it's unmaintained. That is pretty odd, to keep a non-maintained program featured in what I assume is still maintained and recommended program such as cadence.

Have you tried Claudia? It might just do the trick. I think Ladish is not really used a lot in itself but Claudia / Catia could be the way to go.

https://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Applications:Claudia

yama wrote: I've also been using patchage. I liked that ladish had sessions, and because I use cadence to start up jack, and because ladish is right there in the programs to open from within cadence, I woudln't have guessed that it's unmaintained. That is pretty odd, to keep a non-maintained program featured in what I assume is still maintained and recommended program such as cadence.

Have you tried Claudia? It might just do the trick and it has sessions. I think Ladish is not really used a lot in itself but Claudia / Catia could be the way to go. In AV-Linux these work flawlessly.

https://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Applications:Claudia

yama wrote: I've also been using patchage. I liked that ladish had sessions, and because I use cadence to start up jack, and because ladish is right there in the programs to open from within cadence, I woudln't have guessed that it's unmaintained. That is pretty odd, to keep a non-maintained program featured in what I assume is still maintained and recommended program such as cadence.

yama wrote:I've also been using patchage. I liked that ladish had sessions, and because I use cadence to start up jack, and because ladish is right there in the programs to open from within cadence, I woudln't have guessed that it's unmaintained. That is pretty odd, to keep a non-maintained program featured in what I assume is still maintained and recommended program such as cadence.

Are you sure it's not Catia that you are using rather than patchage? There is a button launcher for it in Cadence (under Tools I think?).

singforme wrote:Have you tried Claudia? It might just do the trick and it has sessions. I think Ladish is not really used a lot in itself but Claudia / Catia could be the way to go. In AV-Linux these work flawlessly.

https://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Applications:Claudia

But Claudia is a Ladish front-end. This is why this type of thing is so confusing lol