[LAU] Aeolus, synthesized pipe organ

[Stephen Doonan]

Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds extremely
"real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and full-bodied.

I imported a MIDI file of Bach's Sinfonia to Cantata 29 into Qtractor,
then connected the MIDI output of Qtractor to Aeolus, then played back
the MIDI data while simultaneously recording the audio output of Aeolus
responding to that MIDI data, back into Qtractor. Then I pressed some of
Aeolus's stops while the file was playing and recording. I exported the
audio as an OGG-Vorbis file directly from Qtractor. Here it is (no
post-processing, no normalization, no editing nor effects at all) for
anyone interested:

http://flytrapranch.com/lau/aeolus_bach_sinfonia_cantata29.ogg

What an amazing sound Aeolus has. Thank you so much, Fons (Adriaensen).
It makes me want to buy this (if I had the money)--

3-manual MIDI organ keyboard
http://www.midiworks.ca/products/product_details.asp?productid=1&categoryid=22
(I wonder if the stops just beneath the keys can be easily programmed in
Linux to correspond with stops in Aeolus)

--and this--

MIDI organ pedalboard to standard specifications
http://www.midiworks.ca/products/product_details.asp?productid=25&categoryid=22

Steve

"Life does not give us a reason to live; we do." :-)

[Paul Davis]

Post by Stephen Doonan
Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds extremely
"real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and full-bodied.

of course Fons will tell you that Aeolus does a bad job with the noise
component that actually contains more energy in a real pipe organ than
the stuff you hear! he seems to consider Aeolus seriously unfinished.
occasionally, Fons is actually wrong though :) Yay for aeolus ...

[The Other]

Post by Stephen Doonan
Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds extremely
"real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and full-bodied.

Thanks for the file, Stephen. I'd seen Aeolus before but didn't pursue
it because I didn't know how to use it or what it sounded like.

Upon hearing your file, my first impression was of my grandmother's
pedal-pump organ (not a pipe) that she had in her house. That wind-up
(Leslie organ type of effect) in the bass register reminds me of not
pedal-pumping the organ at a constant rate. Ah, nostalgia.

Thanks Fons, Stephen, for this introduction to Aeolus.

Best,
Stephen.

[Fons Adriaensen]

Post by The Other
Upon hearing your file, my first impression was of my grandmother's
pedal-pump organ (not a pipe) that she had in her house. That wind-up
(Leslie organ type of effect) in the bass register reminds me of not
pedal-pumping the organ at a constant rate. Ah, nostalgia.

There are some more recordings you can listen to at

<http://www.kokkinizita.net/linuxaudio/aeolus/index.html>

Ciao,

P.S. You are right Paul - it *is* unfinished work !

[Stephen Doonan]

Post by The Other
Thanks for the file, Stephen. I'd seen Aeolus before but didn't pursue
it because I didn't know how to use it or what it sounded like.
Upon hearing your file, my first impression was of my grandmother's
pedal-pump organ (not a pipe) that she had in her house. That wind-up
(Leslie organ type of effect) in the bass register reminds me of not
pedal-pumping the organ at a constant rate. Ah, nostalgia.
Thanks Fons, Stephen, for this introduction to Aeolus.

The file was fun to produce because I could play with Aeolus's stops
while the MIDI file was playing, catching those on-the-fly adjustments
in the final recording.

If one listens to aeolus with studio monitor (audio reference) speakers,
it sounds like an ideal recording of a great masterwork organ, without
of course the creaks and groans, whistles, hisses, clicks and other
mechanical noise such an organ might have (or have developed with age).

Aeolus is an awesome program that makes me anyway, a lifelong piano
player, now have an interest in learning to play organ (to develop
skills to play a multi-manual keyboard and pedalboard).

Steve

[david]

Post by Stephen Doonan
Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds extremely
"real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and full-bodied.

Me sad. Installed v0.8.1-1 from Debian repository, it tries to start,
but nothing happens, no display comes up, etc. Just an hourglass pointer
spins for awhile. :-(

[Darren Landrum]

Post by david

Post by Stephen Doonan
Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds extremely
"real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and full-bodied.

Me sad. Installed v0.8.1-1 from Debian repository, it tries to start,
but nothing happens, no display comes up, etc. Just an hourglass pointer
spins for awhile. :-(

Try starting it from the command line and see if an error message appears.

Unless, of course, you already tried that, then never mind.

-- Darren

[david]

Post by Darren Landrum

Post by david

Post by Stephen Doonan
Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds
extremely "real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and
full-bodied.

Me sad. Installed v0.8.1-1 from Debian repository, it tries to start,
but nothing happens, no display comes up, etc. Just an hourglass
pointer spins for awhile. :-(

Try starting it from the command line and see if an error message appears.
Unless, of course, you already tried that, then never mind.

No, hadn't tried that. Just did, it reports "Warning: memory lock
failed." Don't know what it's trying to lock, but this isn't an RT
kernel here. Anyway, got things figured out and it makes lovely sounds!

[Stephen Doonan]

Post by david
Me sad. Installed v0.8.1-1 from Debian repository, it tries to start,
but nothing happens, no display comes up, etc. Just an hourglass pointer
spins for awhile. :-(

See if the intructions at the following URL help-- :-)

http://www.geocities.jp/midi_organ_net/aeolus/

Steve

[david]

Post by Stephen Doonan

Post by david
Me sad. Installed v0.8.1-1 from Debian repository, it tries to start,
but nothing happens, no display comes up, etc. Just an hourglass
pointer spins for awhile. :-(

See if the intructions at the following URL help-- :-)
http://www.geocities.jp/midi_organ_net/aeolus/

Thanks, Steve. That gets it working. Methinks that if it requires JACK,
it should return some message indicating that if it doesn't find JACK
running.

Anyway, was able to play MIDIs from Rosegarden to Aeolus, plus able to
play from my keyboard to Aeolus. Cool! Lovely sound! I really need to
install an RT kernel here, though - 45-52% CPU usage and many xruns ...

[Fons Adriaensen]

Post by david

Post by Stephen Doonan
http://www.geocities.jp/midi_organ_net/aeolus/

Thanks, Steve. That gets it working. Methinks that if it requires JACK,

Jack is the default. You can use ALSA with the -A option.

Post by david
it should return some message indicating that if it doesn't find JACK
running.

It will try to start Jack in that case (this may be removed in
future releases). If you start Aeolus in a terminal it will
usually report if anything goes wrong.

Post by david
Anyway, was able to play MIDIs from Rosegarden to Aeolus, plus able to
play from my keyboard to Aeolus. Cool! Lovely sound! I really need to
install an RT kernel here, though - 45-52% CPU usage and many xruns ...

Aeolus also accepts MIDI over Jack if you have that enabled.

Make sure you're running Jack and Aeolus in RT mode. In many cases
that's enough to avoid xruns, even on a standard kernel (but YMMV).
45% CPU is on the high side. On my six year old 2G P4 it Aeolus
rarely goes above 15%, and quite less on average.
You also get a too high CPU estimate from Jack/Qjackctl if not
running realtime.

Ciao,

[david]

Post by Fons Adriaensen

Post by david

Post by Stephen Doonan
http://www.geocities.jp/midi_organ_net/aeolus/

Thanks, Steve. That gets it working. Methinks that if it requires JACK,

Jack is the default. You can use ALSA with the -A option.

Post by david
it should return some message indicating that if it doesn't find JACK
running.

It will try to start Jack in that case (this may be removed in
future releases). If you start Aeolus in a terminal it will
usually report if anything goes wrong.

Thanks, Fons. It reported these warnings, then went on to start JACK:
Warning: memory lock failed.
Warning: can't run midi thread in RT mode.
Warning: can't run model thread in RT mode.

Post by Fons Adriaensen

Post by david
Anyway, was able to play MIDIs from Rosegarden to Aeolus, plus able to
play from my keyboard to Aeolus. Cool! Lovely sound! I really need to
install an RT kernel here, though - 45-52% CPU usage and many xruns ...

Aeolus also accepts MIDI over Jack if you have that enabled.

Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?

Post by Fons Adriaensen
Make sure you're running Jack and Aeolus in RT mode. In many cases
that's enough to avoid xruns, even on a standard kernel (but YMMV).

When I set JACK to use the "Realtime" parameter (through QJackCtl), JACK
wouldn't start. How do you set Aeolus to run in realtime mode?

Post by Fons Adriaensen
45% CPU is on the high side. On my six year old 2G P4 it Aeolus
rarely goes above 15%, and quite less on average.
You also get a too high CPU estimate from Jack/Qjackctl if not
running realtime.

Wouldn't surprise me, but the frequent xruns and (skip) messages JACK
reports, and a couple of times messages from Rosegarden reporting it had
run out of realtime resources to play make me think my laptop isn't up
to your P4. 1.5GHz Celeron M, the P4-based Celeron that has far too
little on-chip cache for the P4 design. It's effective throughput is
closer to that of a 1GHz old-style Celeron than a 1.5GHz chip. Plus this
laptop has the junk Intel video and audio. Xruns improve slightly if I
minimize programs that are updating the display, so who knows?

[Fons Adriaensen]

Post by david
Warning: memory lock failed.
Warning: can't run midi thread in RT mode.
Warning: can't run model thread in RT mode.

You can probably have an almost xrun-free system.
You don't need an RT patched kernel for this.

Look at the file /etc/security/limits.conf, and
verify if you have some lines there similar to

@audio - rtprio 99
@audio - nice -10
@audio - memlock 400000

Instead of @audio there could also be '*'.

If you don't have these, add them (you must be
root to do this). The nmber after 'memlock'
should be something like 80% of your RAM size.

Verify if you have an 'audio' group. If not, create
it. Make sure your are a member of this group.

In Qjackctl's setup, enable realtime and set
priority to e.g. 60. Also enable 'memory unlock'.
Make sure you use a raw ALSA device (normally hw:0).
To be on the safe side, set frames/period to 256
and periods/buffer to 3. Try later if things work
with 2 as well.

You should now be able to run jackd in realtime
mode. The three warnings from Aeolus should be
gone as well, and with a bit of luck also most
of the xruns.

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?

You have to enable this, it's in the lower left corner
of Qjackctl's setup window. Don't know if Rosegarden
will like this.

Ciao,

[Stephen Doonan]

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?

How is your MIDI keyboard physically attached to your computer?

Is your MIDI keyboard set to transmit MIDI data (instead of being set to
"local control" which sends its MIDI data only to its own internal tone
generator, etc.)?

Steve

[Nigel Henry]

Post by Stephen Doonan

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?

How is your MIDI keyboard physically attached to your computer?
Is your MIDI keyboard set to transmit MIDI data (instead of being set to
"local control" which sends its MIDI data only to its own internal tone
generator, etc.)?
Steve

It probably already is, but may be worth looking in /sbin/lsmod to see if
snd-seq-midi is loaded. Saying that though, when you open Qjackctl, it will
complain if that module isn't loaded, saying "midi ports not available", or
something like that.

The above is related to my experience with my usb midi keyboard.

Nigel.

[david]

Post by Nigel Henry

Post by Stephen Doonan

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?

How is your MIDI keyboard physically attached to your computer?
Is your MIDI keyboard set to transmit MIDI data (instead of being set to
"local control" which sends its MIDI data only to its own internal tone
generator, etc.)?
Steve

It probably already is, but may be worth looking in /sbin/lsmod to see if
snd-seq-midi is loaded. Saying that though, when you open Qjackctl, it will
complain if that module isn't loaded, saying "midi ports not available", or
something like that.
The above is related to my experience with my usb midi keyboard.

Mine, too. ;-)

[david]

Post by Stephen Doonan

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?

How is your MIDI keyboard physically attached to your computer?

Emu MidiXport.

Post by Stephen Doonan
Is your MIDI keyboard set to transmit MIDI data (instead of being set to
"local control" which sends its MIDI data only to its own internal tone
generator, etc.)?

My keyboard automatically switches to transmit mode when it detects a
MIDI connection. Simply having the adaptor plugged in is enough to
trigger that.

[l***@ballen.fastmail.fm]

Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?
--------------------------------

Something I've noticed in the most recent qjacjctl is that there are now tabs for midi and for alsa connections. The devices that formerly showed up as midi now show as alsa. Is that possibly the issue?

Also, I tried a new sequencer called non-sequencer which showed up in the midi tab and I couldn't figure out how to connect any inputs or soft synths as output. This might be a better question for the non-sequencer group. OTOH, what is the alsa/midi tab difference?

[Rui Nuno Capela]

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes? --------------------------------
Something I've noticed in the most recent qjacjctl is that there are
now tabs for midi and for alsa connections. The devices that formerly
showed up as midi now show as alsa. Is that possibly the issue?
Also, I tried a new sequencer called non-sequencer which showed up in
the midi tab and I couldn't figure out how to connect any inputs or
soft synths as output. This might be a better question for the
non-sequencer group. OTOH, what is the alsa/midi tab difference?

Audio tab = jack audio clients and ports;
MIDI tab = jack midi clients and ports (only in qjackctl >= 0.3.x);
ALSA tab = alsa sequencer midi clients and ports (former MIDI tab on
qjackctl <= 0.2.x).

byee

[Fritz Meissner]

Post by Rui Nuno Capela
Audio tab = jack audio clients and ports;
MIDI tab = jack midi clients and ports (only in qjackctl >= 0.3.x);
ALSA tab = alsa sequencer midi clients and ports (former MIDI tab on
qjackctl <= 0.2.x).
byee

I'm having difficulty understanding what the difference is between jack
midi clients and alsa sequencer midi clients. Could you possibly give me
some examples of which programs will show up as jack clients and which
as alsa sequencer clients ? Does it make a difference to the way one
uses them, or the facilities that jack offers them? In other words, what
is the reason for having separate tabs ? Can one not connect a jack midi
client to an alsa sequencer port then ?

Sorry to be bombarding you with questions, but in the absence of
documentation, it seems to be the only way to get an understanding of jack.

Fritz

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi,

Post by Fritz Meissner
I'm having difficulty understanding what the difference is between jack
midi clients and alsa sequencer midi clients.

hehe :) .

ALSA just is a driver layer. Formerly, it has been (ab)used to in- and output
audio as well as MIDI. Which is not the job of a driver IMHO.

JACK has been introduced as a low latency *audio* driver, but it *didn't*
support MIDI. Thus we ran audio via JACK but MIDI via ALSA sequencer.

Weird enough? Yes, it is. So meanwhile JACK finally supports MIDI besides
audio. If you want to, ALSA sequencer MIDI clients are just deprecated.

Post by Fritz Meissner
Sorry to be bombarding

as an organist, I never read the verb "bombarding". Sounds very cool,
though ;-) .

Post by Fritz Meissner
you with questions, but in the absence of
documentation, it seems to be the only way to get an understanding of jack.

Phew, you're damn right. Maybe you'll be the first one who puts the things you
earned into some wiki page for documentation purposes :) .

HTH & best regards,

ce

[Fons Adriaensen]

Post by Christoph Eckert

Post by Fritz Meissner
I'm having difficulty understanding what the difference is between jack
midi clients and alsa sequencer midi clients.

ALSA just is a driver layer. Formerly, it has been (ab)used to in- and output
audio as well as MIDI. Which is not the job of a driver IMHO.
JACK has been introduced as a low latency *audio* driver, but it *didn't*
support MIDI. Thus we ran audio via JACK but MIDI via ALSA sequencer.
Weird enough? Yes, it is. So meanwhile JACK finally supports MIDI besides
audio.
If you want to, ALSA sequencer MIDI clients are just deprecated.

Rather ideological and not very informative IMHO.

To understand how all this fits together you need
to know the following.


1. The bottom layer: ALSA audio and ALSA raw midi.

On most (nearly all) linux systems these are the
drivers handling audio and midi devices respectively.
A program can use these directly, but then it is
limited to connecting to hardware devices only.



2. Interconnecting applications and hardware: Jack
and ALSA midi sequencer.

Jack can interconnect audio programs that are written
to use it to each other and to an audio card. To talk
to the audio card Jack uses the ALSA driver in mose cases.
This is what you see in the 'AUDIO' tab in qjackctl.

The ALSA midi sequencer does the same for midi. It can
connect applications to each other and to physical midi
interfaces (raw ALSA ports). This is what you see in the
'ALSA' tab of qjackctl.



3. Jack midi replacing ALSA midi sequencer.

Using the ALSA midi sequencer can be hard (for a programmer)
and also it has had serious problems with timing, mainly
because of lack of high-resolution timer support in Linux
until recent times. This has resulted in the development
of midi-in-Jack, which can (almost) be used as a replacement
for the ALSA midi sequencer. It has its pros and cons. This
is what you see in the 'MIDI' tab in qjackctl.

Currently the two midi routing system coexist, and this
leads to some confusion.

In qjackctl you have three options for midi-in-Jack:

1. 'None' - this means that Jack will not use any ALSA
midi devices. Applications that use midi-in-jack
(e.g. Aeolus) will still show up in the 'MIDI' tab,
but you can't connect them to any physical ALSA midi
ports, only to other apps (if there are any other).

2. 'Raw' - this means that Jack will grab the raw ALSA
(hardware) midi devices, and convert them into Jack
midi ports with rather useless names. The same devices
are still shown in the 'ALSA' tab, but you will notice
you can't connect them there anymore - they are usually
supporting only one client, and Jack has already taken
them. This means that applications that only support
connecting to ALSA midi sequencer can't be connected
to physical midi devices anymore. In the dreams of the
Jack midi developers, such apps will soon cease to exists,
and if that happens the 'raw' option is the normal one to
use.

3. 'Seq' - this means Jack will convert *all* ALSA sequencer
ports into Jack midi ports. The original ones remain
accessible in the 'ALSA' tab.

Now Aeolus has both an ALSA midi sequencer port, and a
midi-in-Jack port. You will see Aeolus in both the 'MIDI'
and 'ALSA' tabs. If you use 'Raw', you will have to
use the Jack connection to connect Aeolus to a keyboard.
If you use 'Seq' you can make the connection in either
system.

Also if you use 'Seq' there will be two Jack-midi ports
for Aeolus: the Jack-midi port that Aeolus creates, and
a Jack-midi copy of the ALSA sequencer port of Aeolus,
shown as system:playback_#, with # some number.

Don't use the latter. What happens if you do that is that
the midi data from your keyboard will follow a rather long
route: Raw ALSA -> Jack port -> Jack port -> ALSA sequencer
-> Aeolus.

The most direct route is still the one in the 'ALSA' tab:
Raw ALSA -> ALSA sequencer -> Aeolus.



Ciao,

[Emanuel Rumpf]

Thank you for the detailed explanation Fons.

I have added it to the FAQ so it doesn't get lost, at:
http://apps.linuxaudio.org/faq/start

I hope that's ok.

Emanuel

[Christoph Eckert]

Hi,

Post by Fons Adriaensen

Post by Christoph Eckert
ALSA just is a driver layer. Formerly, it has been (ab)used to in- and
output audio as well as MIDI.

[...]

Post by Fons Adriaensen
Rather ideological and not very informative IMHO.

right, and IMO even confusing. Seems I should better shut up when it's time to
go to bed :) .

Cheers,

ce

[Arnold Krille]

Post by Christoph Eckert
Phew, you're damn right. Maybe you'll be the first one who puts the things
you earned into some wiki page for documentation purposes :) .

Not another one...

*Please* have a look at the documentation wikis/projects for linux audio out
there (especially the ones on *.linuxaudio.org) before creating yet another
one.

Arnold

[Grammostola Rosea]

Post by Arnold Krille

Post by Christoph Eckert
Phew, you're damn right. Maybe you'll be the first one who puts the things
you earned into some wiki page for documentation purposes :) .

Not another one...
*Please* have a look at the documentation wikis/projects for linux audio out
there (especially the ones on *.linuxaudio.org) before creating yet another
one.

+1

( see also wiki.linuxmusicians.com )

[Fritz Meissner]

Post by Arnold Krille

Post by Christoph Eckert
Phew, you're damn right. Maybe you'll be the first one who puts the things
you earned into some wiki page for documentation purposes :) .

Not another one...
*Please* have a look at the documentation wikis/projects for linux audio out
there (especially the ones on *.linuxaudio.org) before creating yet another
one.
Arnold

I'm a long way from the understanding I would need to write it up, but
Fons' post was a big step. I'll need to ask some more questions. The
last thing I would want to do is fragment the Linux audio info any more
- the current state has made it really difficult to find accurate,
non-outdated info. Every search gives you five answers, all different.
Even the UbuntuStudio wiki which started with great enthusiasm a year or
so ago is now outdated and incorrect. I suppose it's logical that audio
people would rather be creating than documenting, but I think the lack
of an authoritative, reliably up-to-date documentation has made Linux
audio inaccessible to many.

Fritz

Fritz

[david]

Post by david
Hmmm, the Jack I have here doesn't show any MIDI clients when I check
the MIDI tab. At least, it doesn't show my keyboard. That should be
listed as a client, yes?
--------------------------------
Something I've noticed in the most recent qjacjctl is that there are
now tabs for midi and for alsa connections. The devices that formerly
showed up as midi now show as alsa. Is that possibly the issue?
Also, I tried a new sequencer called non-sequencer which showed up in
the midi tab and I couldn't figure out how to connect any inputs or
soft synths as output. This might be a better question for the
non-sequencer group. OTOH, what is the alsa/midi tab difference?

Yes, all of my stuff shows up in the ALSA tab. Nothing in MIDI.

[Folderol]

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:42:24 -0600

Post by Stephen Doonan
Aeolus is amazing! A totally synthetic pipe organ that sounds extremely
"real" and beautiful, amazingly spacious, complex and full-bodied.

Well I just recently managed to get this working (64studio version). A
couple of times it barfed with a segfault, then suddenly it seemed to
work OK - no idea why.

It is an excellent synth, incredibly realistic. I think it will take a
long time before I understand how to fully utilise the beast though :)