LinuxMusicians

Posted: **Sun Aug 03, 2014 1:41 pm**

Hello everyone,

I'm a musician, relatively new to the JACK world.

I found this forum not long ago. It's full of resources, with a thriving community, and I'd like in some way, to be a part of it.

I already use MuseScore, and I was learning how to use it together with QSynth through JACK with some sf2 fonts.

I also compiled and installed linuxsampler and tried it with qsampler. It took me a long time to get it working (with Qsynth things are pretty easy, all instruments from the sf2 are loaded and it's ready to go), but finally I got it working (more or less) with a sfz soundfont (SalamanderGrandPianoV3_48khz24bit).

Somewhere I read that Carla is the best plugin out there, so I went out and tried compiling it.

I'm a Debian stable (Wheezy) user, and I prefer not to use external repositories (i.e. KXStudio's, which would make this very easy). When I need some program not in the Debian repos, I try to backport it, and if it isn't possible, compile it from source.

It wasn't possible to backport Carla package from the KXStudio's repos (on the other hand, Cadence suite was pretty easy to backport). Carla required some packages that aren't possible to backport at all (I don't remember right now, but they were things like fluidsynth-static, which don't make sense in my system).

So I had to compile it from source, cloning from git.

I installed the dependencies stated in INSTALL.md (compiled ntk and backported fftw3) and then compiled Carla without problems.

Although it found the sf2 and sfz soundfonts, and even though "make features" shows SF2 and SFZ support:

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$ make features
---> Engine drivers 
JACK:        YES 
ALSA:        YES 
PulseAudio:  YES 
CoreAudio:   NO   [MacOS only]
ASIO:        NO   [Windows only]
DirectSound: NO   [Windows only]

---> Plugin formats: 
Internal: YES 
LADSPA:   YES 
DSSI:     YES 
LV2:      YES 
VST:      YES 
VST3:     NO   [Windows and MacOS only]
AU:       NO   [MacOS only]

---> LV2 UI toolkit support: 
Gtk2:     YES  (bridge)
Gtk3:     YES  (bridge)
Qt4:      YES  (bridge)
Qt5:      NO   [Qt5 missing]
X11:      YES  (direct+bridge)

---> File formats: 
GIG: YES 
SF2: YES 
SFZ: YES 

---> Internal plugins: 
Carla-Rack:  YES 
ZynAddSubFX: YES  (with UI)

they aren't listed as plugins. This is some terminal output:

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carla-discovery::error::SF2 support not available - /usr/share/sounds/sf2/merlin_gold.sf2

I'm sorry if this isn't the appropriate place to ask these questions. I just hope you can point me in the right direction.

Any other suggestions or information regarding learning to use soundfonts and samplers/synths are welcome.

Posted: **Mon Aug 04, 2014 1:59 am**

Hello falkTX, thank you for making this software and helping out.

did you only install fluidsynth after building carla?

Of course.

hm, maybe the discovery got broken.
try to drag&drop the sf2 file.

Yes, I think this is the case. I dragged and dropped it from a graphical file manager (pcmanfm) and both SF2 and SFZ soundfonts worked. But they can't be loaded from the plugin list. If I refresh the plugin list, I see the message I said before:

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carla-discovery::error::SF2 support not available - /usr/share/sounds/sf2/merlin_gold.sf2

I checked the ~/.config/falkTX/Carla2.conf file, the Paths section looks like this:

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[Paths]
LADSPA=/home/maurinho/.ladspa, /usr/lib/ladspa, /usr/local/lib/ladspa
DSSI=/home/maurinho/.dssi, /usr/lib/dssi, /usr/local/lib/dssi
LV2=/home/maurinho/.lv2, /usr/lib/lv2, /usr/local/lib/lv2
VST=/home/maurinho/.vst, /usr/lib/vst, /usr/local/lib/vst
VST3=/home/maurinho/.vst3, /home/maurinho/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/VST3, /usr/lib/vst3, /usr/local/lib/vst3
AU=@Invalid()
GIG=/home/maurinho/.sounds/gig, /usr/share/sounds/gig
SF2=/home/maurinho/.sounds/sf2, /usr/share/sounds/sf2
SFZ=/home/maurinho/.sounds/sfz, /usr/share/sounds/sfz

But if I try to configure the paths from inside the GUI, something strange happens.

When I select GIG the list is empty.
When I select SF2, the directories listed are /home/maurinho/.sounds/gig and /usr/share/sounds/gig
When I select SFZ, the directories listed are /home/maurinho/.sounds/sf2 and /usr/share/sounds/sf2

I can't correct them. If I try to add or remove paths, the GUI does nothing.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or there is a bug here.

CarlaPlugins2.conf is empty, only says "[Plugins]".

Please help me with this.

Posted: **Mon Aug 04, 2014 6:25 am**

Oh, I'm sorry falkTX, I'm so tired I didn't read it correctly. I thought it said "before". Why wouldn't I know that if I'm compiling every program?

This thread has helped me to backport python3-rdflib and python3-liblo that were the only missing pieces of software I needed to fully run Carla.
It isn't possible to backport them from sid repos, they require a newer python3 version, which requires a newer gcc, and endless other newer packages.

I can confirm rdflib worked, because I no longer see the message about LADSPA-RDF being missing. But I don't know if liblo is working or not. In INSTALL.md it says that it is needed to run Carla-Control. But I have no carla-control binary, what is carla-control exactly?

Posted: **Mon Aug 04, 2014 9:12 pm**

I hope some day GIG, SF2, SFZ support for the plugin list will be readded.

Thanks for clearing things up for me and kudos to you for your work.

Posted: **Tue Aug 05, 2014 9:48 am**

There *is* GIG, SF2 and SFZ support right now, but you need to have fluidsynth and linuxsampler libs installed *before* building carla.

I didn't say there was no support. I see there is support, it works here, but only if you drag and drop it. I said:

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I hope some day GIG, SF2, SFZ support for the plugin list will be readded.

With the latest source from git, support for soundfonts in the plugin list isn't working (unless you drag and drop them). If you try to update the plugin list, you click refresh and get only but warnings as output in the terminal:

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carla-discovery::error::SF2 support not available - /usr/share/sounds/sf2/merlin_gold.sf2

And they don't get listed. This feature does work with version 1.2.4 (stable branch).

I hope I made myself clear.

LinuxMusicians

Carla won't accept SF2/SFZ soundfonts

Carla won't accept SF2/SFZ soundfonts

Re: Carla won't accept SF2/SFZ soundfonts

Re: Carla won't accept SF2/SFZ soundfonts

Re: Carla won't accept SF2/SFZ soundfonts

Re: Carla won't accept SF2/SFZ soundfonts