best or good strings?

Telover · Post by **Telover** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 3:23 pm

Hi all,
I'm looking for a nice strings to play via keyboard. I'm a newbie so I might ask very silly questions.
I know the East West, it's awesome, but beside the very high price it must used via Wine, so it's not for me.
I use Ardour and I would like to use a strings not standalone but via keyboard inside Ardour.
Any suggestion?

ssj71 · Post by **ssj71** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 5:32 pm

well, first, its challenging to make really realistic strings from a keyboard, the mechanisms for expression are so different. But if you are just trying to get something comparable to whats on other keyboards I'd look into the no budget orchestra, its about as good as you can get for free. see viewtopic.php?f=50&t=16618

Telover · Post by **Telover** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 7:53 pm

Thanks alot ssj. Well I meant playing it with the keyboard, than editing in Ardour.
The important thing is it's not a fake sound orchestra. East West is awesome, of course it's awefully expensive but you get something professional. I'll give the no budget a look.

Michael Willis · Post by **Michael Willis** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:23 pm

There are a few good free options, depending on what you're looking for. The already mentioned No Budget Orchestra is excellent. Here are two others worth consideration:

VSCO2 Community Edition: http://vis.versilstudios.net/vsco-community.html

Virtual Playing Orchestra: http://virtualplaying.com/virtual-playing-orchestra/

Edit: I just realized that we have also been conversing on the Ardour forums! If you're interested, I have been putting together an Ardour template for Virtual Playing Orchestra. Right now it's not really useful for other people, but I'm wanting to simplify it and minimize the number of dependencies, such that other people can use it.

Telover · Post by **Telover** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 9:55 pm

Lmao, right Michael.
I checked no budget and is good, the only problem is being an aweful noob, I don't know how to make this things play.
I sa the .sfz files but I dont know if I just can make a sfz folder in my system and copy them there. I guess it would be too easy.

Michael Willis · Post by **Michael Willis** » Thu Jan 19, 2017 10:13 pm

The easiest way to load SFZ samples is probably to use Carla, which lets you simply find an SFZ file and load it. If you are not already using the KxStudio repos, please go to http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Repositories and follow the instructions that say "You can install it manually by running this"

Once you have the repos, then you can install Carla:

Code: Select all

sudo apt install carla-git

If you want to load many SFZ files, Carla is not efficient, it uses a lot of memory per SFZ file (the reason is that it uses 1 instance of LinuxSampler per SFZ file). In that case it is more efficient to use linuxsampler-vst plugin in Ardour, which can handle 16 SFZ files per instance, but that is more work to set up.

Telover · Post by **Telover** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 11:02 am

Holy ****. Folks, it's a hell of a job to being able getting an orchestra.
At first I installed KXStudio, then I went for Ubuntu Studio which I prefer.

ssj71 · Post by **ssj71** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 4:06 pm

you can put the sfz files wherever you want. Carla is a good suggestion for how to get started. Just use the browser to find the .sfz file and drag it into the plugin window in carla and it should load it up. You might want to set carla to use the alsa audio backend if you aren't familiar with JACK, just to get started.

It probably seems daunting, but we all had to start somewhere. SFZ and samples provide a lot of capability and thus require a bit of learning. Just be patient and google a lot. We'll help where we can.

j_e_f_f_g · Post by **j_e_f_f_g** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 4:45 pm

Telover wrote:hell of a job to being able getting an orchestra

That will change when I finish the NBO plugin.

KXStudio, then Ubuntu Studio

No. AVLinux.

Michael Willis · Post by **Michael Willis** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 5:11 pm

Telover wrote:Holy ****.

Keep calm. Like I said, I'm working on an orchestra template for Ardour. My goal is that when it is finished, other people should be able to just open the ardour project and have an orchestra ready to go.

The only dependencies should be Virtual Playing Orchestra, Maestro Concert Grand, Linuxsampler-vst, and whatever reverb plugin I settle on. I'll have instructions about where to put the virtual instruments, and the plugins should just go in the usual place(s) that the package manager puts them.

EDIT: j_e_f_f_g beat me to it, looks like we're both working on alternate solutions to this. Hopefully one or the other will work for you.

Telover · Post by **Telover** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:08 pm

Guys, thanks alot for the answer. If you need a newb tester, just let me know.
Today, miraculously, I was able to try the Loomer strings but I don't like it, it's too artifact. I tried it as standalone, if I had to play it and record it in Ardour, I don't even know where I had to start from and how.
Don't get me wrong, everybody doing something open source has my unlimited admiration. I wish I was able to program.
But if one wants to try a product that it's more or less, I'm not saying like East West, just to name one, but a minimum realistic, that's the stuff to compare to.
Jeff what do you mean with AVLinux? I wrote that at first I installed KXStudio but since I didn't like much, I went for Ubuntu Studio.
If there wasn't any problem, I would have kept regular Ubuntu and installed a low latency kernel, but it seems that Ubuntu Studio it's better in that sens and has less problems (even though I had several errors with Ubuntu Studio that I never had with regular Ubuntu).
Can I install Carla even without having KXStudio? Or it must run together with the whole package?

Michael Willis · Post by **Michael Willis** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:19 pm

You'll find around here that people get extremely passionate about their particular Linux setup. AVLinux seems excellent from what little experience I have with it, but it's not the only answer. With enough patience and tinkering, you can more or less turn any Linux into a decent audio workstation. I'm using a modified plain vanilla Ubuntu 16.04 (Oh! The horror!) because I don't want to force everybody at my house to deal with an unfamiliar audio-specific linux.

Can I install Carla even without having KXStudio? Or it must run together with the whole package?

You don't have to have KXStudio proper, you just need to use KXStudio's repositories, which I (and others) have successfully done with Ubuntu Studio in the past. Just follow the directions I linked you to, and then install the carla-git package, and you will be able to use Carla in Ubuntu Studio.

With that said, once either I or j_e_f_f_g are done with our respective projects, you should be able to use either one without needing Carla at all... Carla is just a plugin host that makes it easy to load an SFZ file (among many many other things). It is a fantastic app, but you don't have to use it to successfully write music on Linux.

varpa · Post by **varpa** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:33 pm

kxstudio packages can be installed on any Ubuntu or Debian distro: http://kxstudio.net/
AVLinux is a debian testing based distro that uses kxstudio: http://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

Telover · Post by **Telover** » Fri Jan 20, 2017 6:55 pm

Thank you varpa.
Actually I installed Ubuntu Studio also because I work alot with photography, and since US has several programs already installed, I use that.

Michael Willis · Post by **Michael Willis** » Sun Jan 29, 2017 1:38 pm

Telover, my project template is now available:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16691

It's still in the early stages, so any feedback would be very helpful.

LinuxMusicians

best or good strings?

best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?

Re: best or good strings?