LinuxMusicians

Hello, fellow muscian friends!

I am a newcomer here, with not-so-high Linux knowledge, but with a current idea in mind:

I am the proud owner of an old Asus EeePC, currently running under CrunchBang, installed by one of my friends.

The machine is a bit old, and was never actually powerful. 1GB RAM, 4 GB HDD + SDCard slot, probably 700 MHz Atom proc, and 7" Screen.

I guess such hardware doesn't allow Real Time Sound Processing, and I don't want to spend money on an external soundcard, that's why I would like to use it as a sampling/drum machine, with a sample-loaded SD Card and a USB controller such as Korg Nanopad. I have seen a few topics on the subject already, I'm just not even sure if this computer is powerful enough.

I don't like the idea of working with a laptop in a live situation, but in my case, such a small device would probably fit my needs really well.

I am not even sure of the distribution I could use.

I am not restrained to this idea, if you think I could do better let me know.

I am willing to learn more about how to handle music in Linux, if you think what I'm running after requires some additionnal information I would be glad to dive in !

Have a nice day, and pardon my poor english

Cheers,
Mikro.

Hi Mikro and welcome!

if you want to use this particular PC as a drum machine, then I suppose that you will need realtime capabilities. Unless I've misunderstood your post.

I haven't tried CrunchBang for a while, and I don't remember how lightweight it is. However, there are a couple of distros that are very lightweight, such as antiX and BodhiLinux. Both of these are small and allow you to install only the things that you need.

brian

Hi brian, and thank you for answering,

When I said my PC wouldn't allow real time sound processing, I meant by that that it would not handle an audio input signal.

The idea of using a USB controller is to play sounds when triggered by, say, a pad, in the case of a Nanokontrol. That way, there is no audio processing, just waiting for the triggers. In that sense, yes, this has to be real time, with as few latency as possible, but I won't need heavy processing like FFT or stuff like that. I'm using a looper on my pedal board, so my PC would just play the sound as I trigger them, and my looper will loop them to create a drum loop.

I hope I'm making myself clear enough...

Crunchbang is pretty lightweight, but it comes with many features I won't need anymore, browsers, messaging, and so on. I will check out your suggestions

Cheers,
Mikro.

Mikro wrote:Hi brian, and thank you for answering,

When I said my PC wouldn't allow real time sound processing, I meant by that that it would not handle an audio input signal.

The idea of using a USB controller is to play sounds when triggered by, say, a pad, in the case of a Nanokontrol. That way, there is no audio processing, just waiting for the triggers. In that sense, yes, this has to be real time, with as few latency as possible, but I won't need heavy processing like FFT or stuff like that. I'm using a looper on my pedal board, so my PC would just play the sound as I trigger them, and my looper will loop them to create a drum loop.

I hope I'm making myself clear enough...

Crunchbang is pretty lightweight, but it comes with many features I won't need anymore, browsers, messaging, and so on. I will check out your suggestions

Cheers,
Mikro.

ok; if I understand you correctly, you don't require audio-in control, just midi-in. I think your idea is good. As for the OS, you might be just fine with what you have already; perhaps just not working on-line when composing, and vice versa. I have an older PC at home that only has 1GB of RAM and I'm able to play synths in realtime with very little difficulty, so I don't see why you should have any particular problems. I would imagine that your PC is just as powerful as a drum machine, perhaps moreso..


brian

Hi,

I've made a mistake, I'm not going to use a Nanokontrol but a Nanopad2, which is a drumpad controller, while the Nanokontrol has faders and knobs and stuff.

But in both cases, yes, it's just midi-in and audio-out.

I've been fiddling around on the internet, uninstalled some programs that I won't need, and got Hydrogen, Alsa and Jack. Also, I configured the PC for a realtime audio processing, and Jack indicates 21 ms latency, with 512 samples and 48000 Hz, which could (almost) make this machine usable as a realtime audio processor... That's enough to get my motor running

Anyway, CrunchBang fits quite well to my needs, I'm currently waiting for the Nanopad to arrive And it's true that a drum machine probably has less hardware power than a small PC, since it doesn't have to run a full OS.

briandc wrote:I'm able to play synths in realtime

What program do you run to do this ?

Thank you for the advice,

Mikro.

Mikro wrote:Hi,

I've made a mistake, I'm not going to use a Nanokontrol but a Nanopad2, which is a drumpad controller, while the Nanokontrol has faders and knobs and stuff.

But in both cases, yes, it's just midi-in and audio-out.

I've been fiddling around on the internet, uninstalled some programs that I won't need, and got Hydrogen, Alsa and Jack. Also, I configured the PC for a realtime audio processing, and Jack indicates 21 ms latency, with 512 samples and 48000 Hz, which could (almost) make this machine usable as a realtime audio processor... That's enough to get my motor running

Anyway, CrunchBang fits quite well to my needs, I'm currently waiting for the Nanopad to arrive And it's true that a drum machine probably has less hardware power than a small PC, since it doesn't have to run a full OS.

briandc wrote:I'm able to play synths in realtime

What program do you run to do this ?

Thank you for the advice,

Mikro.

I just use the synths available in the repos in most cases, although some synths have updates that aren't in them. You can see some of the synths and their homepages on my site at www.amsynth.com . Jack is able to run them, although you probably need the a2jmidid file to get some connected correctly.

brian

I'm resurrecting an old thread here, but I just happened to come across it...

For the record, I achieve better latencies on my acer aspire one (n270 atom, 1,60GHz, 1GB RAM) than on my main laptop (t6400 2GHz, 4GB RAM) both on onboard soundcards.

I regularly use the netbook as a pedalboard for my guitar, it works without an xrun with jack settings to 64/3 48000 (4ms).

If I need some resource intensive effect, I just set it to 128 frames (8ms latency).