Automate: Another stage along the way!

Hey all,

Recently been quite busy hence the lack of posts, but today there's been an improvement in Automate. It actually works! :-)

It's quite a simple program, you input a MIDI Channel and CC, click in an automation line, and its gonna keep on repeating that line in CC's.

Mandatory Screenshot:

Currently you're to compile it yourself, but I'm looking into getting a PPA setup.
Ill keep yee up to date. :-)
-Harry

PS: This will be (publicly) announced & released eventually, for now it needs some reworking. (it sends its MIDI info every JACK frame, which is going to slow it down *a lot*.)

Summers over, projects on the go for the next months

Hey all,

Summer is almost over, the autumn is setting in, and I've had a break from programming on a regular basis. With new MIDI gear, fresh ideas, there's more reasons than ever to finish coding AutoMate.

Also my need for a very simple horizontal MIDI editor is being  worked on, using most of the code base of the vala looping project. I do intend to (eventually) bring these projects together, but for now each needs to mature more before being integrated.

For now, I'm going to relax into the college year, and see how much coding-time I can take without things getting out of hand.. :-)

Cheers, -Harry

Announce: PreHear *listen* to your samples

Hey all,

Its been a while, and I've been busy enough learning vala, writing
.vapi "binding" files, and just learning a bit more C in general.

But now for the fruit, a small handy little audio sample auditioner.
Currently it supports the JACK audio connection kit for audio output,
and will load any .wav, .au, or .aiff file you throw at it.

There are options as to play the whole file (play button),
play starting from position X (Play X), and to play from
position X, a duration of Y (Play X Y).

See attached screenshot for a "visual explaination".. and note the arrows
are a little sloppy.. I know! :-)

Getty link here: Link to Source Code download
Or get a built tarball here: Link to download

Cheers, -Harry

PS: Screenshot

Vala & Gstreamer

Hey All,

Yesterday I took the plunge to try and learn Vala. That's
not too bad as its based on C#, which has syntax like Java / C++.

Its a language designed around the GObject system that the Gnome
platform employs, and hence is a great language to use for that kind
of application development.

GStreamer (or GnomeStreamer..?) is a multimedia library that follows
the GObject style, and incorperates well with Vala & the Gnome platform.

All in all this should allow for "write-once, run-everywhere" programming,
while the performance should stay approximatly as good as when coding in
native C, because Vala gets compiled to C, and then the C sources are run
trough your C compiler of choice.. (gcc).

Ill let you know once I have something useful coded.. -Harry

Audio Experiences

Hey guys,

About time I actually posted what I'm working with. Its gonna be a long post, but it should provide an intresting piece, primarily because its all based on an Open Source Linux distro: Pure::Dyne.

So this is what me gear consists of:

 Two Tapco S8 monitors, provide a good flat response.
They're surprisingly loud for 120W RMS per side, and in a small room the bass will shake you.

 A Behringer B2092A subwoofer, 360 Watts RMS.. trough 2 8" backfacing cones in a semi-open design.. :-)

Driven by either the little
Phonic AM220 (left), or
the Soundcraft M12 (right).

Great thing about the M12 is it has direct-outs on each of the 12 channels. :-)

Witch are in turn fed signal by either the AudioFire 12, or the portable AudioFire 2.
Both do 24-96, but the AF12 goes right up to 192kHz...

The whole system is fed from an Acer TM 5720, which is a great laptop for Real Time work, as its got the firewire on the side, (Texas Instruments chip), and the Linux Kernel (2.6.x) recognizes it perfectly. This, teamed up with the FFADO firewire drivers for JACK, mean that there's a lot of audio possiblities around. :-)

On the "input" side, we've got the Akai LPD 8 midi controller (usb complaint), the Emu XBoard 61 (usb complaint too).

On the "fader side", there's a Frontier Design Alphatrack, which has support as an ALSA MIDI device trough a kernel module (bit of hassle, works well though).







The Software involved will be another post, But this is the hardware available to me at the moment.

Cheers, -Harry

Tutorials!

Hey all,

After some recent activity on the Linux Audio Development mailing list,
I've decided to put all my Gtkmm Widgets, JACK MIDI examples etc into
repositories on Github.

Here's the links:
Gtkmm Custom Widgets
JACK MIDI Examples

Keep in mind that they're by no means "the professionals way to do it".
Also keep in mind that it does work on my machine here, any problems,
please report them back to me. :-)

Cheerio, till next, -Harry

General Progress

Hey,

I've been hacking away in the last month or so on various little projects, amongst them being Luppp, AutoMate, some OpenGL madness and a little Python scripting. Currently figuring out how to use Jack Midi, of which the first tests worked out today...

Exams are almost over, and the Irish summer is about to kick in... :-)  Hopefully Ill get the opportunity to keep hacking on Luppp, I feel that its getting somewhere fun...

Also on me todo list is Arduino promotion, I'm going to get the Ethernet shield at some point, and use it to control Luppp via OSC. This should prove to be entrataining to build & use, hope that its gonna be easy!

-Harry