[Wolves] kernel suitable for multimedia?

[Adam Sweet]

--- Mo Awkati <mawkati at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I've sorted Hydrogen, sound is back. Forgot to say
> that I use SuSE 9.2 which has been prefectly fine
> with other things and all of the apps (Rosegarden
> Fluidsynth, JACK etc) are included on the dvds, so I
> am not installing from source. 
> 
> Mo Awkati <mawkati at yahoo.co.uk> wrote: Hi
> 
> I have been trying to use some sequencers eg
> Rosegarden and Hydrogen. I am trying to create my
> own backing tracks when I play the electric guitar (
> I am not a good player at all but I enjoy having a
> go!!). I am having trouble to get Rosegarden to work
> a soft synthesiser namely Fluidsynth and that does
> not seem to work, then I found out that I have to
> install a soundfont which is foxing me, then I have
> to make sure the JACK daemon is working and it seem
> to refuse to work from the CL or the GUI app,
> although it is installed correctly etc etc. Hydrogen
> was working ok until suddenly is started refusing to
> start the audio driver. I can still play CDs and use
> Audacity so I don't understand what the problems
> are. 
> 
> I read somewhere that the kernel my be the issue, if
> so any suggestions for a distro with a kernel that
> will work audio apps well?

Hmm... It gets murky in these waters. I don't think
that your kernel will be the cause of the problems
with the soft synth. I don't know what that problem
could be. Kernel issues related to sound are down to
the fact that most kernels have an audio latency
problems. This means that you record something and it
plays back a few milliseconds out of synch with what
you recorded along  to. Another problem is what are
called xruns and there are 2 types:

1) A buffer underrun happens during playback, when
your sound card tries to read data from the buffer,
but your software has not yet filled it.
2) A buffer overruns happens during recording, when
your sound card tries to write data to buffer, but
your software has not yet emptied it.

Neither of which are good news, they lead to gaps in
your audio.

The remedy for this is to build a kernel that contains
real-time pre-emption patches, which is non-trivial if
you've never done it before. However as I said, this
isn't likely to be your problem at this stage. I've
only just started dipping my toes into the water with
Linux audio recording and I don't know a great deal
yet.

However, a very good website is
http://ubuntustudio.com/wiki despite being Ubuntu
specific, should help guide you in the right way and
looks like it explains sound fonts.

I can't help explain why some of your apps don't work
I'm afraid. Myabe launch them on the comand line and
see what kind of output they produce when you do what
won't work for you.

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