Linuxsampler on Debian,

Link to good samples/soundfonts at http://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/free_audio_data

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kbongosmusic
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Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by kbongosmusic »

So I've read that SF2 is getting outdated, perhaps SFZ, gig format are newer, perhaps offer more, like stereo?. So I have been interested in checking out linuxsampler. Generally I am favoring Debian testing now. It seems to offer only the qsampler gui, so I'd have to compile the rest or maybe look into possibilities of KX Studio repo, that it might offer a pre-packaged solution. Any thoughts? Maybe it's the odd non-commercial license twist on the backend that keeps it out of Debian. Couldn't that go in non-free?

It seems like not much development in last few years with fluidsynth. I loaded up some SF2 soundfonts I made long ago(piano, horn, drums). Unfortunately the recorded sounds I made are not high quality. So I'm more interest to know if there are superior sounds linuxsampler might provide. Funny it's called linuxsampler given it appears to be cross platform targeted(windows/mac too). A really top quality piano sound would be nice. Hydrogen seems to use it's own sample/soundfont? Maybe drums are special?
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Re: Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by eric71 »

With Debian testing, I'd definitely recommend using the kxstudio repos and installing Carla. Carla is the simplest way to load sf2 and sfz instruments, and it's available with lv2 and vst plugins, so it will work in any of the available Linux DAWs. Also check out the sf2 and sfz instruments provided at the AVLinux website: http://www.bandshed.net/sounds/

I've especially made good use of the Salamander drums and piano, as well as the B3 organ sfzin conjunction with the MDA leslie simulator. Lots of good sounds there.
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Re: Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by bluebell »

The sound quality depends on the sample quality. SF2 soundfonts can offer stereo and a good sound if the soundfonts are of good quality.

Linuxsampler can use sfz-Soundfonts which I like because their control file (*.sfz) can be edited with a text editor.

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kbongosmusic
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Re: Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by kbongosmusic »

Thanks for the tips. I do believe I need to try out KX repos. I was under the wrong impression that it was stale - no new release. But, I have read FalkTX shifting over to a more of a Deb pkg repo that attempts to be compatible with the varying needs(deb testing?, latest Ubuntu?).

I will give Carla a look. It certainly is overwhelming. I haven't really tried any plugin's yet. Kindof assumed they were strictly for audio effects, but I am learning they can contain full Synth engines, do MIDI, etc. So much to learn, so little time.

I did download a few of bandsheds samples, I think that is what lead me to think I needed Linuxsampler, I know he offers them in a few different formats, maybe I downloaded the SFZ files and then went looking for a player for these. I recently noticed maybe a few 'plugins' that perhaps offer SFZ/gig playing abilities. I text control file for SFZ sounds nice, better than a big binary blob(sf2?).
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Re: Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by kbongosmusic »

Just an update on what I have found.
I did add kxstudio to my debian 8-testing(stretch). This enabled me to install a number of newer applications that for whatever reasons is not in my Debian repository. The Carla app was able to act as midi host to play SFZ sound font wave files. I found the big Salamander piano SFZ, that sounded very nice. Having fun trying some from bandshell's SFZ collection(thanks for sharing!). Some of them very nice(cello comes to mind). kxstudio repo also gave me linuxsampler install, the qsampler associated GUI front end for it was able to make linuxsampler(that runs as a background process) play SFZ files as well. From what I can figure, Carla uses linuxsampler to play SFZ files. I does not run linuxsampler, I believe it compiles linuxsampler into it's app(don't see ps -e | grep linuxsampler). Very impressed with the Carla app, it's a nice gui app, I have access to patch/route plugins, audio, midi, etc, can play virtual keyboard for testing. Very nice. The qsampler appears very bare bones GUI front end, worked enough to route midi to and play. I didn't try the java based GUI front end, it looks like that is the more full featured one(no love on apt-cache search jsampler). Linuxsampler does offer a console/network command interface(lscp). A quick look at this showed it to be quite complicated. lscp is a console app that allows a terminal style interface to this. Running lscp give scary yellow ncurses terminal interaction. I found some sample scripts that show how to load sfz files using the lscp commands. Not investigated further. There is a Open Octave oomidi project that can use linuxsampler as backend library to play sfz files. So it appears linuxsampler is possibly the only app/lib that plays SFZ files(Someone correct me please!).

The SFZ format I really like. It is one text control file, simple, and then a collection of WAV files referenced in the text SFZ control file. Beautiful! I even found my old Crown Piano recordings I tried making sf2 files with a long time ago(going on 10 years I believe). My SF2 was not usable, but I played with making a new SFZ wave/sound/font out of it. Worked great! Edit raw recordings of key-notes with Audacity, cut them out into individual wave files, make a simple .SFZ text control file and it worked fine. I hope to post this as .SFZ out on the web soon once I work out a few bad notes. While it would be nice if I had newer stereo WAV recordings, using this old set was good enough for an intro to .sfz sound files.

I'm interested in scripted automation, so the lscp looked useful, but like I said had issues with rendering in my terminal. While the GUI's are nice at times, sometimes automation via scripting is the ticket, so I would like to see a simplified console app that could act as front-end to linux sampler.

I'm not sure I can highly recommend going the Debian Testing + kxstudio route, Debian Testing alone is not necessarily for the faint of heart. kxstudio is sort of an added complication, although I can only thank falktx for building these things and try to make them available to a wide audience. I would not have been able to try these new things without it(compiling and installing these things can be a challenge and very time consuming). But ultimately I still wonder why linuxsampler for example is not available in Debian repos. But in the end I'm sure it comes down to lack of resources to make these things happen, so I can not complain. If you want to live in the free world you have to get your hands dirty at times and help do some of the work to have nice pre-built repos of new shiny applications. Either that or buy a mac or pc and pay for your shiny toys. I'm trying to get to my roots and go back to Debian after years of Ubuntu binging, but I gotta admit Ubuntu puts together some nice easy to use out of the box solutions. I read somewhere a new Ubuntu Studio 16.04 is just coming out. Looking forward to giving that a spin on the old PC. I'm rambling again, Cheers ;)
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Re: Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by Lyberta »

I'm using Debian Testing + KXstudio repos exclusively and never had problems with it.
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Re: Linuxsampler on Debian,

Post by unhandyandy »

I'm new to samplers but not entirely new to linux audio. Is Carla a substitute for jSampler? Does it have it's own instrument db? I'm disapoointed to learn the import-directory function in linuxsampler is broken and I wonder if Carla is a solution to that problem.
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