Re: [Denemo-devel] Midi-status

[Nils Gey]

I think I've got it.

The audio-feedback is connected to it.

Denemo now requires JACK. If jackd is not present Denemo starts it itself (I 
recommend to deactivate this and instead give a warning and only leave 
non-audio/midi features avaible).

The nature of JACK is that it does not allow any use of the audio-driver while 
its running.

But Denemo tries to use /dev/dsp /dev/sequencer which is blocked by JACK. If 
that happens my system goes crazy (instead of a crash). 

And now I remember: In Debian it crashed at this moment. Now here in Arch it 
does not crash but produce these weird sounds.

I don't know how to deactiate this crash. Unchecking the Audio feedback and 
deleting the two values /dev/midi and /dev/sequencer is not the solution.

I reommend to get rid of support for people without jack. Not for complete 
Denemo, but for the audio-part. Then --enable-jack can be the standard.

It will mean greater compability and better cross-platform-support, too. And 
Denemo will loose dependencies like portaudio and can completly rely on JACK.



Nils



On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:32:42 -0500
Jeremiah Benham <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Thu, 2009-03-12 at 17:28 +0100, Nils Gey wrote:
> > I totally forgot:
> > 
> > Midi-In *is* working, but the strange hardware-noises are still there. So I 
> > can put notes in via midi!
> > 
> > I don't know if I should get an audio-response and what is needed for that. 
> > Maybe thats the reason. 
> > Can I deactivate the audio-response somehow?
> 
> Try turning off plyaback entered notes immediately in preferences. See
> if that fixes it. 
> 
> > 
> > And why are there still the two fields in Denemo options with 
> > /dev/sequencer and /dev/midi. Isn't this legacy now?
> 
> Thats for people who don't compile with --enable-jack
> 
> Jeremiah
> 
> > Nils
> > 
> > On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:10:24 +0100
> > Nils Gey <address@hidden> wrote:
> > 
> > > First report on midi. I just write what I noticed. I am sure you probably 
> > > know most of these already. 
> > > 
> > > I compiled Denemo with --enable-jack. Latest git.
> > > 
> > > Then I start my jackd, after that Denemo.
> > > Denemo shows up as input and output client. The output has voice 1, which 
> > > is the first staff.
> > > 
> > > Creating new staffs, with a custom name "test", shows a new port in 
> > > QJackCtls 
> > > [+]Denemo
> > > 
> > > Renaming of the staff has no effect. It stays the the old one for jack.
> > > 
> > > With these two staffs, "voice1" and "test", deleting the first one 
> > > results in the deletion of the qjackctl port and leaves only "test", 
> > > which is fine. Creating a new staff (create new staff above) does not 
> > > create a new jack-port.
> > > 
> > > Creating a new staff with an existing name ("voice1") does create the 
> > > staff but not a new jack-port.
> > > 
> > > I loaded an existing .denemo file with four voices and they show up 
> > > correctly as four ports.
> > > 
> > > Quitting Denemo leaves no traces. Everything is fine.
> > > 
> > > Now to midi-in:
> > > For the midi-in testing I used the software jack-keyboard to avoid any 
> > > hardware and/or alsa-bridge related errors. 
> > > 
> > > I remember I got it working once, a few weeks ago, but today there was no 
> > > success at all:
> > > 
> > > Like I said Denemo creates an in-port "denemo" on startup. If you connect 
> > > jack-keyboard to it and send notes nothing happens in Denemo. I know this 
> > > is an expected behaviour, but in fact this is not the right behaviour and 
> > > confusing. If there is already a midi-in port I (as an uninformed user) 
> > > don't see why its not possible. See the suggestions below for that.
> > > 
> > > So I choose Input->midi input from the menu. The dialog pops up (which is 
> > > sooo ugly with my WMII window manager because its stretched over the 
> > > whole screen).
> > > In QJackCtl I now see a second in-port named denemo-01. I am sure this is 
> > > a known bug. 
> > > If I connect to the new "denemo-01" it automatically switches to the 
> > > first "denemo" port. So connecting to denemo-01 is not possible at all. 
> > > 
> > > Now comes the freaking part. To avoid confusion: I am some 80% sure this 
> > > is related to my system and not to Denemo. I encountered something like 
> > > this already with the Video-Lan-Player but I don't know what it is right 
> > > now.
> > > 
> > > Status: Midi-in is now activated, I see two denemo-in ports in jack and 
> > > have connected the jack-keyboard to the "denemo" in-port (btw. same 
> > > results with my hardware-keyboard via alsa-bridge).
> > > 
> > > If I send a note now my systems totally freaks out and my hardware(!) 
> > > makes constant freaking noises which changes if I send another midi-note. 
> > > It sounds a bit like a dial-up modem and it sounds very very unhealthy.
> > > To be clear: I don't mean my audio-hardware! And its not the pc-speaker. 
> > > It sounds like scratching or somethings going wild. Maybe harddrive, 
> > > maybe some fan... I don't know. 
> > > 
> > > The source of this is Denemo. The sounds are going on until I close 
> > > Denemo. Cutting jack-connections, stopping jack or other software has now 
> > > effect.
> > > 
> > > Like I said I believe this is only my system, but there is some error 
> > > nontheless. Other software works fine with midi-in/out and routing. 
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Suggestions:
> > > 
> > > 1) Make --enable-jack default on. Give a warning to the console if jackd 
> > > is not started, but let Denemo run. Its a common thing to restart the 
> > > client(Denemo) if you want to have jack in the end. I never saw a 
> > > "reconnect on the fly" function in any Jack-app that works flawless (like 
> > > starting the software anew)
> > > 
> > > 2) Prevent staffs with the same name at all. Every staff, which means 
> > > "jack-port" here, should have a unique name. This should have nothing 
> > > todo with lilypond staff names. The printout-names should be allowed to 
> > > be different from the internal/jack-name and should be allowed to be 
> > > non-unique.
> > > 
> > > 3) The midi-in behaviour is not optimal. I expect sending midi-notes to 
> > > Denemo as a standard task. So I suggest to get rid of the midi-in dialog 
> > > (enharmonic range etc.) as a popup and leave it as a preferences tab.
> > > In case of enharmonic and key-related behaviour it would be better to 
> > > look at the actuall staff-keysigns.
> > > 
> > > 4) Also I suggest to open the Midi-in port right from the start. Maybe 
> > > use lash indepently from a lash-project (don't know if thats possible) to 
> > > remember the last midi-in connection and try to recreate it. Of it was 
> > > the midi-keyboard its likely that its still there. Then you can do an 
> > > autoconnect, instructed by Denemo.
> > > 
> > > 5) This creates a situation where Denemo constantly listens to midi-in, 
> > > which is a good solution in my eyes. To prevent accidental use of the 
> > > midi-in feature (like putting a dish or some heavy notation on the 
> > > keyboard, which is a real live situation) I suggest a switch in Denemo 
> > > which reroutes all midi-in signals to /dev/null, but which does not cut 
> > > any connections. Its just a bypass.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > So far...
> > > 
> > > Nils
> > > 
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Denemo-devel mailing list
> > > address@hidden
> > > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/denemo-devel
> > > 
> > 
> > 
> 


-- 
Nils Gey <address@hidden>