(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi Smithy.

Ardour5 5.12 (created in BionicDog from Bionic repositories) running in Studio2Go with real time kernel - playing the 24-track-recording project of Ardour (recorded in Ardour5 5.12 under Win10).

Good stuff, so I take it you got the firewire interface up and running well? I think I prefer recording now in puppy than win, it's less glitchy and simpler. But not for mixing. The mixer in qtractor is a bit of a donkey..

No Firewire checked so far. I will make some tests on Firewire mixer tonight, on the computer in my rehearsal room (there's the Helix MK2 Firewire mixer installed).

At home I'm using Qtractors mixer rarely - just to have a good pre-mix when composing. For audio mix-downs I'm using Jack Mixer and Audacity.

Ah right, got it, firewire mixer. That'll do the job.

Hi Smithy.

Ardour 5.12 is pretty cool.

When starting Ardour and choosing e.g. the template for recording session I can start a project with 18 audio tracks and choose the Phonic Helix Board 24 Firewire MKII as recording/sound device.

After the project is created/loaded all channel inputs are connected to the Phonic Mixer channels. Though, I can't try recording a multi-track session tonight, as the drum kit isn't yet completely ready for a use and no microphones are connected.

But within the next week I will be able to give it a try.

Unfortunately Ardour doesn't recognize the 2nd Phonic Board which is connected to the 1st Phonic Board. Cubase 5 and up allows to record 32 tracks that way.

Never mind, if multi track recording will work for the 16/18 tracks of the 1st Phonic Board.

Hi RSH, was having a look at your and Revolverve threads in Multimedia section. Good stuff going on there.

I was reading the Revolverve thread and you were trying to get Qtractor to
mix down your audio and midi tracks?

If you hit: EDIT/TRACK/EXPORT TRACKS/AUDIO
Then you will get a dialogue offering where to export the mixdown wave track, (I usually save outside the Qtractor folder, like in Downloads or somewhere)
AND what buses you want to be included in the export (you could just click on MASTER).
Also the range of the mixdown, the whole session length, or a loop, whatever.
Then hit OK and it will render the mixdown including any midi (internal synths, LV2, VST etc) NOT Sure about external MIDI synths though.
And yes Cadence needs a little FORCE Restart now and again I notice!
Always seems to recover though eventually
Anyways, hope this helps if that was what you were trying to do?

I've been trying out this DSP Brickwall Limiter, Seems very transparent on the audio, and could save a track from possibly peaking into distortion on occasion.
Not tried the LADSPA plugin yet, but the win vst version is working well.
Flash, could you remove that other post on Loudmax please, I accidently hit the wrong button.
Further info here:

https://loudmax.blogspot.com/

Hi, I’ve put Fred’s / Tizen YouTube Player/ Downloader in the Smokey repository.
There were a couple of icons missing in the deeper layers, like send comments.
I think I found all the missing ones, with Fred’s help and the pet also changes some of the general information
Dialogues in Puppy from the shocking red warning triangles to a more mellow green info box.

The icons changed are Dialogue-error, information, question, stop, warning, help-about and nb
In pixmaps puppy, in case you like the original ones.

Hi, I’ve put Gnome Maps in the Smokey repository.
It uses Open Street Maps.
To work it, grab the world with your mouse and move it where you want to look at, then middle mouse will zoom in down to street name level. 45mb download.
I think the maps can actually be downloaded and incorporated into the app, but at the moment it uses the internet to get the maps, doesn’t seem to use horrendous gigabytes though.

Might work with other pups around 17 or 18, but not tested.
http://www.smokey01.com/Smithy/Artful%2 ... e-maps.pet

I’ve noticed that if playing videos of 30 mins or more in SMPlayer, the audio stream starts to screw up over the usb bus, possibly also the standard alsa bus. Forcing the cache in the app should help if you come across this. Depending on how much ram you have of course

Well here is a nice little app for the terminally lazy, or if you don’t want the hassle of loading up Qtractor or other music apps just to test out a plugin.

This is Nanohost by Tonebytes. It is a little host for vst instruments and plugins. This is the 32 bit version. There is also a 64bit version. Basically you load a vst and play. It will also record your output if desired as an audio file.
In the config, you select your soundcard, I would suggest you start up Jack Control (Cadence) first, then you can use the wineasio driver which will give lower latency, but other options are available.

From what I can tell it is pretty stable, remembers configs that you save (automatically too!) and is an all round versatile little app.
Loading multiple plugins would be a cool update. I’ve set it to go into root/vst, so if you throw plugins in there, they will show up without having to browse all over Linux.
Tone 2 also makes some fantastic synths that you can purchase.

This is Alsaplayer.
An interesting feature set that no other linux media player has.
Realtime features include looping, play in reverse, semitone and microtone adjustments on the fly. Realtime CPU scheduling.
Jack output as well as Alsa. Not bad for a 750k pet.

I’ve uploaded the midi input and jack input sources if anyone wants to attempt a couple of compiles. GTK+ INTERFACE KEYBOARD CONTROLS
v Stop
x Play
c Pause
b Next Song
z Previous Song
g Seek Forward
a Seek Backward
f Forward Play
s Reverse Play
t Musical semitone +1. (handy for changing the key the song is played back in)
q Musical semitone -1.
h Speed Up one comma. (handy to tune the song instead of the guitar when playing at the same time as listening)
i Speed Down one comma.
r Volume Up
w Volume Down
l Loop
TERMINAL GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with
two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below.
Sound driver options:
-d, --device string
Select the specific device for the output plugin.
For the ALSA plugin, the default is "default".
For the JACK plugin, the default is alsa_pcm:playback_1,alsa_pcm:playback_2"

-o, --output [alsa|esound|jack|nas|null|oss|sgi|sparc]
Use the specified output driver.
-f, --fragsize #
Set fragment size in bytes [default=4096].
-F, --frequency #
Set the output frequency [default=44100].
-g, --fragcount #
Fragment count [default=8].
-r, --realtime
Enable realtime scheduling.
-c, --config <file>
Use the given config file for this session.
-h, --help
Print this help message.
-i, --interface <interface>
Use the specified interface instead of the default one.
-I, --script <file>
Specify the script to pass to the interface plugin.
-l, --startvolume <vol>
Start with this volume [default=1.0].
-p, --path <path>
Set the path alsaplayer looks for add-ons.
-q, --quiet
Quiet operation, no output.
-s, --session-name name
Name this session "name"
-v, --version
Print version of this program.
--verbose
Be verbose about the output.
--nosave
Do not save playlist content at exit.
Player control:
-n, --session #
Select session # [default=0]
-e, --enqueue file(s)
Enqueue file(s) in a running alsaplayer.
-E, --replace file(s)
Clears and queues file(s) in a running alsaplayer.
--status
Get some information about the session.
--volume #
Set software volume [0.0-1.0].
--start
Start playing.
--stop
Stop playing.
--pause
Pause/unpause playing.
--prev Jump to the previous track.
--next Jump to the next track.
--seek <second>
Jump to the specified second in the current track.
--relative <second>
Jump <second> seconds from current position.
--speed <value>
Set the playback speed with -10 <= <value> <= 10. 1.0 = normal speed -1.0=
normal speed backwards.
Be aware that alsaplayer respects your LOCALE.
That implies that the decimal point will vary accordingly. I.e.,with french LOCALE, a valid speed value is 1,5 and not 1.5.
--jump #
Jump to the specified playlist track.
--clear
Clear the whole playlist
--quit Quit the session.

Experimental options:
-S,--loopsong
Loop the file.
-P,--looplist
Loop the playlist.
-x,--crossfade
Crossfade playlist entries.

There is a network disconnect/ reconnect fix PET in Smokey's repository.
It was not functioning correctly when right clicking on the Network Icon on
the taskbar. As far as I can tell is now okay.

Good morning, here is Firefox 68 as an ADRV.
It can be used instead of the Light Browser by
replacing the ADRV with this one. (Maybe tuck the other one somewhere safe or rename it).
From what I can tell, it doesn't seem to need Apulse?
Sound seems to be playing fine on a pretty standard Realtek chip.
If anyone wants to hammer some sites and try breaking the browser and sound that would be handy
smokey01.com/Smithy/Artful%20ardvark/Browsers

Oops..
When updating the Firefox 68 through update, the links on the desktop
taskbar and openbox internet/firefox menu cease to function.
Little pet here will fix those links, even if there are more updates...
I noticed that 68.02 update is just 5 mb.

Here is a pet based on Barkin's neat Disable Firefox Updates, if required.
You will have to delete the distribution folder if you want it to ever update again.
And a few about:configs that maybe handy for some. Phone home stuff.

user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.archive.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.bhrPing.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.cachedClientID", "");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.firstShutdownPing.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.hybridContent.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.newProfilePing.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.previousBuildID", "");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.reportingpolicy.firstRun", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.server", "");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.server_owner", "");
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.shutdownPingSender.enabled", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.unified", false);
user_pref("toolkit.telemetry.updatePing.enabled", false);

@Smithy
You wrote:

When updating the Firefox 68 through update, the links on the desktop
taskbar and openbox internet/firefox menu cease to function.

Are these links that were there before and are now broken or are these new links that you are now adding for the first time. In other words, a kludge?
I ask because I have had this recurring problem and have narrowed it down to occurring whenever the update is from a minor release, say 67.0.4 to a major release like 68.0.0. The update works if one is updating within the same release, say 67.0.1 to 67.0.4 (These are fictitious release numbers). I have a bug report in at bugzilla.

No, it's because the Light Browser is in usr/local/lib/light/, so I wanted to follow the convention in this distro that Pebee set. Kludge, moi?

Hi, I've put up a slightly earlier version of Qtractor (0.831) in Smokey's Repository.
I think it might be a little better in the fiendishly complicated relationship
with Cadence, Jack Server and the QT5 libraries. Your mileage may vary, depending
on what computer, which way the wind is blowing etc..

There is a Firefox 71 ADRV in Smokey's Repository. http://www.smokey01.com/Smithy/Artful%2 ... /Browsers/

Sound still OK in both regular kernel ISO and James Bond's RT Kernel Version.
And here is a little pet that fixes the desktop taskbar link that looks for the
Light Browser instead of Firefox. Restart X after installing the pet.