for MIDI lovers: fluidsynth update

[Orcan Ogetbil]

fluidsynth-1.0.9 is available in Fedora's updates-testing repository.
This release comes with many improvements and fixes outlined in [1].
The most important improvement seems to be the new native Jack MIDI
driver. fluidsynth MIDI connections will now appear in qjackctl's or
your favorite jack controller's MIDI tab.

If you are interested to try out, please update with
# yum --enablerepo updates-testing update fluidsynth-libs

So far, I didn't encounter any problems with this new version with
fluidsynth using applications. If no problems are reported I will push
this update to stable repo in about 2 weeks.

Cheers,
Orcan


[1] http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac/wiki/ChangeLog1_0_9

[Orcan Ogetbil]

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  fluidsynth-1.0.9 is available in Fedora's updates-testing
> repository.
>  This release comes with many improvements and fixes outlined in [1].
>  The most important improvement seems to be the new native Jack MIDI
>  driver. fluidsynth MIDI connections will now appear in qjackctl's or
>  your favorite jack controller's MIDI tab.
>
>  If you are interested to try out, please update with
>  # yum --enablerepo updates-testing update fluidsynth-libs
>
>  So far, I didn't encounter any problems with this new version with
>  fluidsynth using applications. If no problems are reported I will push
>  this update to stable repo in about 2 weeks.
>
>  Cheers,
>  Orcan
>
>
>  [1] http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac/wiki/ChangeLog1_0_9
>  
It seems to me that the new fluidsynth is not that stable. I start
qjackctl which runs jackd (this is Fedora's jack 0.116.1-5) with
/usr/bin/jackd -R -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p1024 -n2 -Xseq
Then I start qsynth. As soon as I do this jack starts getting very
many xruns and in about 10 seconds qjackctl exits with a SIGKILL, also
killing jackd with itself along the way.

Now I start qjackctl once more and click on "Restart" on already
running qsynth. This time there are no xruns and jackd runs without
problems.

It's not desirable to use jack always with this workaround and I am
not pushing the package to stable until the issue is resolved.

Fernando, do you still develop jack? Do you know where the problem
might be? As soon as I downgrade to fluidsynth-1.0.8 these symptoms
disappear.

Orcan

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 23:11 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:29 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  > fluidsynth-1.0.9 is available in Fedora's updates-testing repository.
>  > This release comes with many improvements and fixes outlined in [1].
>  > The most important improvement seems to be the new native Jack MIDI
>  > driver. fluidsynth MIDI connections will now appear in qjackctl's or
>  > your favorite jack controller's MIDI tab.
>  >
>  > If you are interested to try out, please update with
>  > # yum --enablerepo updates-testing update fluidsynth-libs
>  >
>  > So far, I didn't encounter any problems with this new version with
>  > fluidsynth using applications. If no problems are reported I will push
>  > this update to stable repo in about 2 weeks.
>  >
>  > [1] http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac/wiki/ChangeLog1_0_9
>  >
>  
>  It seems to me that the new fluidsynth is not that stable. I start
>  qjackctl which runs jackd (this is Fedora's jack 0.116.1-5) with
>  /usr/bin/jackd -R -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p1024 -n2 -Xseq
>  Then I start qsynth. As soon as I do this jack starts getting very
>  many xruns and in about 10 seconds qjackctl exits with a SIGKILL, also
>  killing jackd with itself along the way.
>  
>  Now I start qjackctl once more and click on "Restart" on already
>  running qsynth. This time there are no xruns and jackd runs without
>  problems.
>  
>  It's not desirable to use jack always with this workaround and I am
>  not pushing the package to stable until the issue is resolved.
>  
>  Fernando, do you still develop jack?  
No, sorry, I don't...

>  Do you know where the problem might be?  
It would seem to be some sort of caching problem. That is, the first
time fluidsynth is starting up and reading the soundfont, the second
time the soundfont is already in memory. This should not happen, of
course, as the process callback in fluidsynth should not be doing any
file i/o directly (or be influenced by it). 

Is this happening with the standard Fedora kernel or the rt kernel?

What happens if you change the soundfont while fluid is running happily
the second time?

>  As soon as I downgrade to fluidsynth-1.0.8 these symptoms
>  disappear. 
-- Fernando

[Orcan Ogetbil]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>  On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 23:11 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> >
> > It seems to me that the new fluidsynth is not that stable. I start
> > qjackctl which runs jackd (this is Fedora's jack 0.116.1-5) with
> > /usr/bin/jackd -R -dalsa -dhw:0 -r44100 -p1024 -n2 -Xseq
> > Then I start qsynth. As soon as I do this jack starts getting very
> > many xruns and in about 10 seconds qjackctl exits with a SIGKILL, also
> > killing jackd with itself along the way.
> >
> > Now I start qjackctl once more and click on "Restart" on already
> > running qsynth. This time there are no xruns and jackd runs without
> > problems.
> >
> > It's not desirable to use jack always with this workaround and I am
> > not pushing the package to stable until the issue is resolved.
> >
> > Fernando, do you still develop jack?
>
>  No, sorry, I don't...
>
> > Do you know where the problem might be?
>
>  It would seem to be some sort of caching problem. That is, the first
>  time fluidsynth is starting up and reading the soundfont, the second
>  time the soundfont is already in memory. This should not happen, of
>  course, as the process callback in fluidsynth should not be doing any
>  file i/o directly (or be influenced by it).
>
>  Is this happening with the standard Fedora kernel or the rt kernel?
>  
This is Fedora kernel
2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64
I'll see what happens with the rt kernel.

>  What happens if you change the soundfont while fluid is running
> happily
>  the second time?
>  
When I select a different soundfont in the second run of fluidsynth,
nothing bad happens. Things continue to work properly.

Another test I have made is: I ran jackd without the -R (realtime)
flag. This time when I start qsynth, I get lots of xruns again but
this time qjackctl does not shut down and continues to report the
xruns.

Can you (or anyone) reproduce any of these results?

Orcan

[Orcan Ogetbil]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:42 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> >
> > Is this happening with the standard Fedora kernel or the rt kernel?
> >
>
>  This is Fedora kernel
>  2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64
>  I'll see what happens with the rt kernel.
>  
I tried all 2x2=4 combinations of latest Fedora 11 kernel, latest rt
kernel and jack, jack2. Same result :(
Where shall I report this?

Orcan

[PlanetCCRMA] Re: for MIDI lovers: fluidsynth update

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 02:39 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:42 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  > On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>  >>
>  >> Is this happening with the standard Fedora kernel or the rt kernel?
>  >>
>  >
>  > This is Fedora kernel
>  > 2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64
>  > I'll see what happens with the rt kernel.
>  >
>  
>  I tried all 2x2=4 combinations of latest Fedora 11 kernel, latest rt
>  kernel and jack, jack2. Same result :(
>  Where shall I report this? 
Probably upstream? I don't know if there's a mailing list. It does look
like a bug to me... it is strange that it happens only the first time. 

-- Fernando

[PlanetCCRMA] Re: for MIDI lovers: fluidsynth update

[Orcan Ogetbil]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>  On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 02:39 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:42 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
> > >>
> > >> Is this happening with the standard Fedora kernel or the rt kernel?
> > >>
> > >
> > > This is Fedora kernel
> > > 2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64
> > > I'll see what happens with the rt kernel.
> > >
> >
> > I tried all 2x2=4 combinations of latest Fedora 11 kernel, latest rt
> > kernel and jack, jack2. Same result :(
> > Where shall I report this?
>
>  Probably upstream? I don't know if there's a mailing list. It does look
>  like a bug to me... it is strange that it happens only the first time.
>  
I reported it upstream:
http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac/ticket/51

Then I located the problem yesterday. When I compile fluidsynth with
portaudio support, I get the xruns even if I don't use the portaudio
driver. Very weird indeed.

I checked both fluidsynth and qsynth code and I don't see how the
portaudio part ofthe code might affect jackd. Well, I modified the
fluidsynth package in Fedora and removed the portaudio support. I
don't think that this will make many users sad. Anyhow, I will see if
I can find a true solution.

Orcan

[PlanetCCRMA] Re: for MIDI lovers: fluidsynth update

[Fernando Lopez-Lezcano]

On Fri, 2009-07-17 at 17:12 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>  > On Wed, 2009-07-08 at 02:39 -0400, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  >> On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:42 PM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>  >> > On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:23 PM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>  >> >>
>  >> >> Is this happening with the standard Fedora kernel or the rt kernel?
>  >> >>
>  >> >
>  >> > This is Fedora kernel
>  >> > 2.6.29.4-167.fc11.x86_64
>  >> > I'll see what happens with the rt kernel.
>  >> >
>  >>
>  >> I tried all 2x2=4 combinations of latest Fedora 11 kernel, latest rt
>  >> kernel and jack, jack2. Same result :(
>  >> Where shall I report this?
>  >
>  > Probably upstream? I don't know if there's a mailing list. It does look
>  > like a bug to me... it is strange that it happens only the first time.
>  >
>  
>  I reported it upstream:
>  http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac/ticket/51
>  
>  Then I located the problem yesterday. When I compile fluidsynth with
>  portaudio support, I get the xruns even if I don't use the portaudio
>  driver. Very weird indeed.
>  
>  I checked both fluidsynth and qsynth code and I don't see how the
>  portaudio part ofthe code might affect jackd. Well, I modified the
>  fluidsynth package in Fedora and removed the portaudio support. I
>  don't think that this will make many users sad. Anyhow, I will see if
>  I can find a true solution. 
Wow, that _is_ strange. 

Anyway, no tears here, portaudio should IMHO just die quietly (anything
built using portaudio for audio support will make for a very bad jack
client - one sad example is audacity, I think portaudio has no concept
of audio interfaces that can be "dynamic").
 
-- Fernando

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 6 Jul 2009 23:11:16 -0400, Orcan wrote:

>  > [1] http://fluidsynth.resonance.org/trac/wiki/ChangeLog1_0_9
>  >
>  
>  It seems to me that the new fluidsynth is not that stable. 
For unknown reasons [yet] it doesn't fix audacious-plugins-amidi
either. Still sounds "bad" compared with the timidity plugin.