third world county

Everything works, now, just not as I want it to. The last remaining bugaboo is midi–both playback and input from an external controller. Yes, it “works” now most of the time (though some input problems still exist in Encore under WINE–problems that offer an “interesting” puzzle (“May you live in interesting times” sort of interesting, a bit… ). I may adventure further and dispense with the midi-to-serial cable and try getting a midi-to-USB cable working on that issue… though, of course, the USB-midi interface might well bring issues of its own.

Big midi problem: soundfonts. The SBLive! card I added to take the place of the nVidia chipset sound supposedly has its own midi patches (and in Windows it had proved to be nearly OK in that regard, but only nearly, so I used something else for generating sound–for one, I have a nice Roland SD-35 standalone synth I could use with the midi-to-serial under Windows… just not so far under Ubuntu *sigh*). Nope. Only midi output (or input of any kind) I’ve been able to get so far is with some weird “connections” using Timidity. Can’t just use the sound card (not that I particularly want to) or and external synth, and loading a nice Roland-based sound font seems un-doable, so far.

And all that’s quite apart from the input/controller issues.

Other folks seem able to do this, though, and what man has done, man can aspire to. But this is worse than using midi in the bad old days of DOS. Muuuch worse. Oh, I suppose if one simply wanted some midi “boops n bops n bangs n booms” and such like, it’d be OK, but when a frickin’ piano doesn’t sound anything like a piano but like some tin-eared doofus thinks a piano sounds like, midi’s broke as far as I’m concerned.

Easier in Windows? Heck, it was orders of magnitude easier in DOS.

But my midi gripes aside (and do note, midi does work most times, just poorly, very, very poorly–but OOB midi experience, even in “Ubuntu Studio” is pure crap, and that’s speaking highly of it), everything else works well. Heck, now that I know where the proper controls, files, etc. are hidden (not where one might think *heh*), if a major update of a non-video-related component trashes my video driver setup yet again, it’s a few simple clicks and commands typed to fix that. Maybe one reboot, if things are sent drastically south.

Once I got it through my head that the barebones setup I fleshed out to make this computer what I wanted did NOT include DVD drives that knew what the heck a “region” even was, even DVD playback became a simple “insert the disk” pleasure. (*thumps self on empty noggin* )

And despite the fact that Ubuntu was literally built by many, many different committees (though nobody would say that any more than they’d say, “Look! The emperor has no clothes on!” *heh*) and is sort of a horse that looks/acts like a camel at times (e.g., no central hardware management that does even what the rather crippled Device Manager does in Windows), on a pre-setup Ubuntu box, the proverbial Aunt Tilly would never know about the humps and spitting; it’d just look like a horse to her. Her browser would work; CDs and DVDs would just play; Email would be in her inbox; emailing a OpenOffice document (saved as a Micro$oft Office file for those still in Redmond’s greedy grasp) to her nieces and nephews would be as easy as in Windows, etc.

I guess, after getting midi working really right, all the time, the next thing I need to start doing is looking at writing the Linux equivalent of batch files, starting perhaps with a script to make some midi things load at boot, rather than having to go back and make all sorts of connections, etc., manually. Every. Single. Time.

Update: Found a better way, already. Dispense with the silly idea of programs that need Jack, etc., installed and running and actively “connecting” ‘em. Such a thing is all kludge, anyway. Rosegarden, for example, actually stinks*, compared even to the cheapo sequencer, PowerTracks Pro available for Windows use. Sure, running such things in WINE doesn’t allow for running multiple sound/midi-related programs at one time, but the way PTP handles midi files, wav, etc., files easily–even allowing folks who find piano roll sequencing needlessly overcomplecated by offering simple notation-based sequencing, while I’ve not been able to find any such thing in Rosegarden, well, who needs external apps “connecting” Rosegarden, Lilypond, etc.? (What’s with piano roll sequencing, anyway? Never did get its usability/functionality, except for peope who just can’t make the smaller effort of learning a standard music notation system that’s far more useful and more nearly universal. Sure, for MTC or SMPTE timings with video, etc., piano roll can be useful, but that’s really about it. And if one wants to do that, it’s muuuuuch easier to just play in a standard score and tweak from there. For anyone who bothered to learn how to read music to begin with, that is.)

[*Yeh, you might think "stinks" is kinda harsh when talking about "free" software, but software that won't even run w/o an external helper app is kinda lame. And Rodegarden isn't alone in the Linux midi world in that regard. Lame.]

Heck, Encore is an exceptionally powerful notation program (far, far, FAR surpassing anything I’ve seen from Lilypond, Muse or whatever) that also does a commendable job with midi data (a few “tweaks” with a sequencer, perhaps–a good enough reason for using something cheap and competent with a simple interface… like PowerTracks Pro Audio, for lil finishing touches to midi files created with Encore). In some cases you really do get what you pay for, and free software like every single solitary Linux composition/notation program I’ve found yet just cannot in any way compare with a $400 piece of polished, professional-use quality piece of software like Encore**. Of course, upgrades are a real $$Pain, but the last real version upgrade for Encore before this year was 10 years ago, so… it amortizes out pretty well. *heh*

So, easier than messing with Jack, et al: work on getting PTP working along w/Encore in WINE. (Yeh, still no decent midi input w/Encore in WINE using a midi keybard/controller… yet. Yet. It’ll come, I’m sure.)

Oh, one nice thing running Encore under WINE: printing to file (until recent micro-upgrades in Encore, it meant saving the file as an EPS file) had spotty success. The PDF printer driver built into Ubuntu just works, though. That’s nice for sharing printable scores (sharing midi files of scores has always been easy).

Oh, and then there’s that useless USB-IR remote/sensor stuff I either need to configure or replace, but that’s not Ubuntu’s fault as much as it is peripheral makers who hide their device specs so no one can write drivers for ‘em.

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**And yes, I know Encore’s not the only really good notation software. Finale is quite good, although when I first tried using it more than 15 years ago it was a bloated thing that was an endless exercise in frustration and I didn’t like its music fonts, spacings and a few other features. Of late, Sibelius has shown itself to be quite capable, too. But Encore’s always been super easy, fast and has always produced gorgeous scores for me, so…