# New Pro Audio on Gentoo Documentation!

## audiodef

I just finished a new document for creating a professional audio workstation using Gentoo. Please check it out at http://audiodef.com/gentoo/proaudio/ProAudioForGentoo.htm and let me know your thoughts, comments and suggestions. I wrote it in OpenOffice and simply saved it as an HTML file, so it' ain't pretty, but it's functional. 

Anyone interested in testing this document, please let me know. I ask that any testers start from complete zero. 

Mods: Please do not move or merge this thread. It is a multimedia topic, and I'm not attempting to duplicate the pro-audio applications production thread. It is also not "unsupported software", as this topic involves Gentoo itself. This is here for a very specific purpose that will get lost or hidden if moved or merged. Thank you.

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## keenblade

Very nice. I wish there was such a doc when I set my audio station years ago.

The first thing I see, there is need for a specific partitioning scheme for audio workstation.

Eterm unfortunately does not support unicode and the devs has no interest adding the support. So it is useless for lots of languages. But there is rxvt-unicode, I think which is perfect for the purpose. It has even text based tabs if you need. And you can open as many of terminal and they will use the same resources. 

And for the window manager, I get the best results with icewm. It even use less resources than fluxbox here. You may mention about icewm, too.

Gnome or KDE related flags are about to be removed from desktop profile and will have their own profiles.. Portage told me that.

Zynaddsubfx was always too unstable for me. For the reason there is "yoshimi" in portage based on Zynaddsubfx. yoshimi does it well on Linux.

For audio related packages, there is a need for more suggestions like media-sound/laditools (I think better than qjackctl) and media-sound/ladish for session management for jack apps (once you use it, you will appreciate). Also media-sound/hydrogen for drum machine.

And the "title" tag is empty for the doc page. So bookmarking is no fun without a nice title name.

I'll add more when time permits.

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## audiodef

Hopefully other people will find it useful.   :Cool: 

I have NEVER been able to compile zynaddsubfx. It's good to hear it's not just me going crazy. I'm going to try yoshimi. 

I'll add your suggestions to the document. I'm going to try icewm, rxvt and laditools myself. 

I also plan to pretty up the document over time, including a TOC and anchor tags. If it goes well, maybe evermind over at proaudio will officially adopt it.

EDIT: Yoshimi was 404 all over the place when I tried to emerge it. I'll have to look at the ebuild and fix it.

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## xaviermiller

Hello,

What about to add it to the pro-audio Wiki ?

I find a little bit comfusing the need to go to different sites to get the right info  :Wink: 

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## keenblade

 *XavierMiller wrote:*   

> Hello,
> 
> What about to add it to the pro-audio Wiki ?
> 
> I find a little bit comfusing the need to go to different sites to get the right info 

 

Yes, that'll be great at pro-audio Wiki. After the doc reaches to a level of formatting, I hope it will get places there.

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> Yoshimi was 404 all over the place when I tried to emerge it.

 

Use the yoshimi in pro-audio. The portage one needs a version bump to yoshimi-0.056, since the old sources are deleted from sourceforge.

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## audiodef

That's why I created this document - because the info necessary to create a pro-audio Gentoo machine was scattered. 

Once I get more people to provide comments, I want to find a permanent home for it and be able to maintain it. The pro-audio wiki sounds like a good place for that, so thanks for the suggestion.   :Cool: 

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## audiodef

Ah, I didn't look closely at the output of eix when I searched for yoshimi. I dropped it into package.keywords. Portage is still looking for it.   :Razz: 

But I did emerge icewm. I'm in it now. I have to say I like it. I really like fvwm but I'm not crazy about the config files therein. Icewm's much better. It even has the alt-tab OSD Fluxbox lacks, which is nice. Not to mention the control panel. All for less resources? Sold!

EDIT: Yoshimi is still 404ing. Maybe somebody moved something. It should be an easy fix, though.

EDIT EDIT: Fuck me Freddy if programs running in icewm don't seem faster than they do in Fluxbox!   :Shocked:  I'm suitably impressed.

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## audiodef

 *keenblade wrote:*   

> 
> 
> For audio related packages, there is a need for more suggestions like media-sound/laditools (I think better than qjackctl) 
> 
> 

 

Where is laditools? I don't see it in the overlay.

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## keenblade

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> Where is laditools? I don't see it in the overlay.

 

in ladi overlay.

```

layman -a ladi

```

Edit : I've just emerged media-sound/yoshimi-0.056 from pro-audio fine. did you update overlay with?

```

layman -s pro-audio

```

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## audiodef

I synced and got yoshimi to start compiling, but compile failed.   :Crying or Very sad: 

No overlay called "ladi" shows up with layman -L ladi.

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## keenblade

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> 
> 
> No overlay called "ladi" shows up with layman -L ladi.

 

Does this work?

```

layman -o http://www.marcochapeau.org/files/downloads/overlays.xml -a ladi

```

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## audiodef

I found http://repo.or.cz/w/ladi-overlay.git, which has that same command. It still said that there's no overlay called ladi. 

Did the audio gnome steal it?

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## keenblade

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> I found http://repo.or.cz/w/ladi-overlay.git, which has that same command. It still said that there's no overlay called ladi. 
> 
> Did the audio gnome steal it?

 

Hmm try this:

```

cd /var/lib/layman

git clone git://repo.or.cz/ladi-overlay.git ladi

```

Ad be sure to have something like this in /var/lib/layman/make.conf

```

/var/lib/layman/ladi

```

and if not there already something like this in /var/lib/layman/overlays.xml

```

  <repo priority="50" quality="experimental" status="unofficial">

    <name>ladi</name>

    <description>The Linux Audio Desktop Integration overlay</description>

    <homepage>http://ladish.org/wiki/ladi</homepage>

    <owner>

      <email>marco@marcochapeau.org</email>

    </owner>

    <source type="git">git://repo.or.cz/ladi-overlay.git</source>

  </repo>

```

Then "layman -s ladi" should work with some complaining.

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## audiodef

Thanks! That seems to be working. 

Why doesn't ladi show up with a layman -L?

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## McGruff

A few comments:

(1) Audio apps work very well on low-powered systems. For example, on my single-core Athlon 3000 with 1.5gb ram, I can run Ardour, Hydrogen, Rosegarden and Zynaddsubfx together with a couple of dozen tracks/buses in Ardour (maybe more: haven't tried). I don't apply FX to ardour tracks which probably helps.

(2) Recommendations for hard drive setups? Not sure what sort of gains are available here. I use three disks: one for OS-apps, one for data, one for scratch/backups, all on separate channels.

(3) Is ext4 supported by system rescue CD? If not, I'd recommend ext3 instead otherwise you're stuffed if you ever need to fix something.

(4) Should we recommend XFS for audio file partition because of its large file performance?

(5) I'd add more apps to the list of basic programs. You wouldn't want to list every audio app under the sun, but I'd definitely add:

media-sound/hydrogen

media-sound/hydrogen-drumkits

media-sound/zynaddsubfx (also mention yoshimi and explain the difference so user can choose)

media-libs/zynaddsubfx-banks

media-libs/zynaddsubfx-collection

media-libs/zynaddsubfx-extras

// plugins:

http://gentoo-portage.com/Search?search=ladspa

// play sound fonts in rosegarden:

media-libs/fluidsynth-dssi

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## keenblade

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> Thanks! That seems to be working. 
> 
> Why doesn't ladi show up with a layman -L?

 

Nice that worked. There seems to be a bug in layman.

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## audiodef

 *mcgruff wrote:*   

> 
> 
> (1) Audio apps work very well on low-powered systems. For example, on my single-core Athlon 3000 with 1.5gb ram, I can run Ardour, Hydrogen, Rosegarden and Zynaddsubfx together with a couple of dozen tracks/buses in Ardour (maybe more: haven't tried). I don't apply FX to ardour tracks which probably helps.
> 
> 

 

I meant VERY low-powered systems, like a single Celeron 1 GHz processor with 250 MB RAM. Yours sounds like a good machine for audio. 

 *mcgruff wrote:*   

> 
> 
> (3) Is ext4 supported by system rescue CD? If not, I'd recommend ext3 instead otherwise you're stuffed if you ever need to fix something.
> 
> 

 

It sure is!

 *mcgruff wrote:*   

> 
> 
> (4) Should we recommend XFS for audio file partition because of its large file performance?
> 
> 

 

If you dig up some data on that, I'll include it in the list of recommended file systems. Maybe we can have a pro-con chart for comparing file systems against audio performance. 

 *mcgruff wrote:*   

> 
> 
> (5) I'd add more apps to the list of basic programs. You wouldn't want to list every audio app under the sun, but I'd definitely add:
> 
> 

 

I never intended this document to deal with specific programs beyond what you need to have a low-latency, realtime kernel system that won't crap out on you while working on audio. That whole section was just to get a n00b started. Expanding that particular section can end up being a giant tome in its own right. I think the pro-audio production applications thread takes care of that fairly well.

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## bluedid29

Hello audiodef   :Cool: 

Thanks for your documentation very complete : http://audiodef.com/gentoo/proaudio/ProAudioForGentoo.htm

I try to translate in french   :Wink: 

Sorry, my English is very poor and I am a newbie on Gentoo ! (I am a musician   :Laughing:  )

Bye

BlueDid   :Cool: 

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## NeddySeagoon

Moved from Multimedia to Documentation, Tips & Tricks.

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## audiodef

*zap*

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## NeddySeagoon

audiodef,

The OP uses a mix of both supported and unsupported software and supported and unsupported methods.

Therefore it belongs here or in Unsupported Software, along with Pappys Seeds.  

Multimedia is for posting multimedia related problems to get help.

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## audiodef

*zip*

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## NeddySeagoon

audiodef,

I'll refer you to this page for forum definitions.

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## pappy_mcfae

As long as your page is on display, it matters little from whence it arises. I was upset when my seed threads didn't wind up in networking and security, but unsupported software. Considering that thread is sticky, has two volumes, going on three, and is well visited, I wouldn't care if it was placed in "off the wall."

Cheers,

Pappy

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## audiodef

I changed the file from HTML to PHP so I could make stuff easier for me to work with. So please go to the link in my sig instead of the link given at the beginning of this thread.

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## pappy_mcfae

Good stuff. I will add a link to that page on mine in the near future. I'm going to start working on the "Above and Beyond" page in the next week or so. You have a place reserved on my new plaque seed.

Cheers,

Pappy

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## audiodef

Awesome!   :Very Happy: 

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## pappy_mcfae

de nada!

Cheers,

Pappy

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## keenblade

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> Thanks! That seems to be working. 
> 
> Why doesn't ladi show up with a layman -L?

 

Found out, it seems we need to add "remote lists of overlays" manually. Just add the second line to /etc/layman/layman.cfg file:

```

overlays  : http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/overlays/repositories.xml

       http://www.marcochapeau.org/files/downloads/overlays.xml

```

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## keenblade

audiodef and pappy_mcfae, thank you both for your color themes that does not strain eyes while reading your docs.

It is like watching stars at midnights, very comfortable, rather than trying to see something up under sunlight. 

Awesome.

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## audiodef

I added that line to layman.cfg but the ladi overlay still doesn't show up in layman -L. Did I miss something?

Ladi has a version of jack-audio-connection-kit I don't want to use but that emerge wants to use to upgrade. How do I prevent that from happening? The ladi version forces the ieee1394 flag off. 

Thanks for the compliments. We aim to please.   :Cool: 

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## keenblade

 *audiodef wrote:*   

> I added that line to layman.cfg but the ladi overlay still doesn't show up in layman -L. Did I miss something?
> 
> 

 

I guess the line needs to be tab delimited, like in my previous post. Try copy and paste from it.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Ladi has a version of jack-audio-connection-kit I don't want to use but that emerge wants to use to upgrade. How do I prevent that from happening? The ladi version forces the ieee1394 flag off. 
> 
> Thanks for the compliments. We aim to please.  

 

I think you need to adjust the order of PORTDIR_OVERLAY in your make.conf for that. How is yours now?

Mine is:

```

source /var/lib/layman/make.conf

PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/overlays/keenblade ${PORTDIR_OVERLAY}"

```

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## audiodef

I'm curious about the answer to this person's post myself. If he or someone else figures it out, I think it might be a useful part of the documentation. 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-823818-highlight-.html

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## audiodef

 *keenblade wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I guess the line needs to be tab delimited, like in my previous post. Try copy and paste from it.
> 
> 

 

That worked. Thanks!

I'll keep your suggestion about the order of overlays in mind. All I have is the source for layman right now, but I inevitably end up with my own custom overlay, so this will be good to know.

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## pappy_mcfae

The page is looking good.

Cheers,

Pappy

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## audiodef

 *pappy_mcfae wrote:*   

> The page is looking good.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Pappy

 

Thanks!   :Cool: 

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## RealNC

Please edit your first post and use the correct link?

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## luke123

you have to replace *.htm by php

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## audiodef

I've updated this guide. Link's in my sig.   :Cool: 

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