A new version of Jack2DSSI, version 0.2, has been released. For those not in the know, Jack2DSSI is a DSSI plugin that can host Jack audio clients inside it.
It adds several fixes and compatibility options to make it even easier to use with your favorite Jack client. Check it out at the project page.
Jacktube v0.31 is out, which is a bugfix release, and it should be much more stable thanks to this. Check it out at the Jacktube homepage.
For a long time it annoyed me that certain Jack applications in Linux did not have a plugin version, so it could not be used inside a DAW without manual port routing and launch scripts, etc. Yoshimi is one example, and there are many commercial examples. While it would be possible to add plugin support for the open source variants, this is not possible for the commercial ones.
I wanted a more general solution, so for a while I’ve been working on a project to be able to use any Jack client as a plugin. The result is Jack2DSSI, which is a DSSI plugin that can host Jack applications inside it. So for example, if you want to use Yoshimi in your DAW project, but you don’t want to launch it manually every time you open the project, use the Jack2DSSI plugin instead. It will save together with your project1, and the plugin makes sure the Jack client is relaunched later.
Check it out on the project homepage.
1 Not everything is saved. See the Caveats section on the project page.
It’s been a long time since I last wrote about my wrist problems, or carpal tunnel problems. Well, I am happy to report that I have finally recovered! It wasn’t carpal tunnel at all, but a condition called “persistent somatoform pain disorder” (at least per my understanding), and curing it has been quite an undertaking. But I learned a lot along the way and in the hopes of helping others I have written an extensive log of both my history and the theory behind the disorder.
For several years I have played in a band that started at my old work place, but we only played at private venues at the time. Now we are making our move into the public, and we will be playing at Shamrock in Oslo on April 12th. The band is called Eight2Ten, and we play seventies-inspired rock, from The Doors to Pink Floyd, plus some of our own tunes.
My carpal tunnel problems have been less severe lately and I have gotten the chance to do some coding again! I will write more about that later.
In the meantime, for those who are not familiar with Jacktube, it is an open source audio/MIDI processor I maintain. Version 0.30 features a new plugin standard (DSSI), and many optimizations and bug fixes. Check it out at the project homepage!
Since the original dssi-vst project seems to have halted development, I have decided to fork the project, and dssi-vst-rt is the result: A VST plugin wrapper dedicated to providing real time performance from VST plugins.
I also made a more suitable project page for it, with instructions and download links. Check out the dssi-vst-rt project.
The most common plugin standard for audio is VST. The standard itself is not platform dependent, so it will work on any platform. However, in most cases, plugin authors will not bother to compile their plugins for any other platform than Windows (and possibly Mac OS). There are also a lot of license restrictions on the API, which means that Linux authors generally utilize other plugin standards.
I use Linux for all my work, and while Linux has a nice selection of plugins based on the LADSPA and DSSI plugin technologies, let’s face it: the selection just isn’t as big as on the Windows platform.
That’s where the nifty dssi-vst wrapper from Chris Cannam comes in. What it does is take a VST plugin, compiled for Windows, and wraps it in a Linux DSSI API, so that Linux applications can use it. It achieves this by using the Wine compatibility layer.
As I started using it I discovered that it had some shortcomings when it comes to latency, and I found it unsuitable for real time performance. However, I didn’t want to miss out on a lot of great VST plugins, so I started hacking on dssi-vst, and I came up with some patches that make it more real time robust. They should enable you to run VST plugins in Linux without experiencing any dropouts.
To get a hold of it, follow these steps:
That should give you access to VST plugins with real time performance!
Like I stated earlier, the original code comes from Chris Cannam’s excellent dssi-vst project. I have talked to him and he wants to get these patches into his “official” dssi-vst, but he is stressed on time, so meanwhile you will have to get it here.
It’s been a long wait, but finally after nearly twelve weeks of waiting, my Z7S Ztar has arrived. And even though I have only scratched the surface of its capabilities, I must say that it’s worth the wait. It’s strange to play it at first, but as a guitar player, it’s surprising how quickly one picks it up. In fact, the hardest part so far has been that the frets do not have logarithmic spacing, but instead are uniform across the entire fingerboard. Especially on the lowest frets, this feels unusual.
My copy of the instrument
So this baby will keep me occupied for a while! It’s too bad though, that I’m leaving for vacation today. I’ll have to endure another week without using it!
Ztar Z7S
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the ZTar is a great little invention (hopefully, at least) by the California based Starr Labs. It’s basically a MIDI-guitar, but like a keyboard, it has real keys, which are laid out in the traditional fretboard fashion (and yes, it does look a bit like a Guitar Hero guitar).
The great thing about the Ztar that separates it from other MIDI-type guitars, is exactly the real keys, which opens up the possibility of polyphonic “strings”, where each string can give you more than one note. As you can see from the picture, it also has strings for triggering notes, although you are not required to use them, so you can play the Ztar with both hands like a keyboard. For a guitar player like myself, this is an infinitely more tempting way of playing keyboard than playing an actual keyboard!
There are several reasons I have laid my eyes on the Ztar. Apart from the reasons mentioned, there is also the sad, but simple fact that with my persisting Carpal Tunnel problem, it has become impossible for me to learn the keyboard, even if I wanted to. Playing guitar has so far not triggered the same painful symptoms, and my hope is that the Ztar can be my loophole into the keyboard world without playing a real keyboard.
But I have to admit, the biggest reason is just that it’s damn cool, and it has so many settings to customize the MIDI output that you can get dizzy. For example, you can tune the fretboard to any tuning you want in the blink of an eye, or you can have different zones on the fretboard playing different instruments. You can even have tunings that are not possible on guitar, such as whole tones between each fret!
So for me awaits the agonizing time of waiting for this nifty piece of equipment, and California is a long way so it’s probably gonna take a while… Damn, regular guitar seems so boring now!