KXStudio - Carla

[schivmeister]

Yes, sorry for the assumption; I thought you only needed to check for a required kernel version. I noticed some 'cp' in Klaudia, but that's all.

/boot/config-* is part of the FSH, but not mandatory I think (may or may not be provided). Arch Linux does not have them, for instance, but I don't know if that'd be a corner case or simply non-compliance. Anyway, probing the kernel config is a very good idea - you can forego assumptions and do strict checks for stuff eg. rt patch.

What most sane distributions should have is support for /proc/config.gz, so I suppose you can make that mandatory as a dependency, just as we assume existence of the 'lspci' command.

[spm_gl]

Yes, it does what it's supposed to, and works well.
A few things:
1. Could you implement a mouse behavior option for the knobs please? Trying to draw circles on a touchpad is really no fun. An option "linear vertical, linear horizontal, rotary" would be great.
2. A stereo link button for the two knobs would be nice. Often people will use them to make things narrower.
3. Now they really should be called pan, not balance, because they each act on a single signal.

For those wondering what two knobs are good for, take for example a cymbal, panned mid-way to one side (say 50% left), give it a really dense reverb, and using the dual-pan controls, place the reverb only slightly wider than the original signal (say 55% left and 45% left). It's still where it's meant to be in the mix, but suddenly becomes huge.

You were right regarding the mix knob, sometimes it really is useful. One problem however: Quite a few plugins have an internal wet/dry control (calf flanger, calf reverb, for example).

[DoosC]

OK, so here is an updated version for Carla and a proposal for Claudia :

The attachment carla+claudia.png is no longer available

The Carla icons makes sense, but it still looks like it's 2 separate applications...
I haven't finished the generic Carla UI, so this will have to change anyway.

I don't get the Claudia icon though...
Note that the Catarina, Catia, and Claudia icons should be very similar (pathbay + stuff), and Cadence should be a combination of these 3.

OK, so here is a rework of the last proposal. I kept attention to the purpose of each app and tried to add similarities beetween icons. You spoke about the other apps related to cadence, so they all have an icon now :

cadence-suite.png (36.92 KiB) Viewed 3466 times

The purpose here is to present the icons along each other but I think that could be used as a banner/menu on the KXStudio site (a little bigger).

So what do you think ?

[DoosC]

Latest version with minor additions :

cadence-suite.png (105.25 KiB) Viewed 3377 times

[DoosC]

I love them!
Many thanks!!!

You're welcome
That's my humble contribution to the awesome cadence suite. I hope it will keep improving, and gaining a lot of attraction once it is more publicly available

I need to put them in lower resolutions though, 48x48 and 16x16 at least.
Can you share the svg?

Just PM me your e-mail address, or a ftp or anything else where I can drop the icons in the usuals folders :
Cadence

• 16x16
  32x32
  48x48
  64x64
  128x128
  scalable
  + the main SVG

[DoosC]

Unless you don't want me to publish the svg (It's not mandatory), you can just upload those to mediafire and it's all good.
They will end up in the git repo anyway...

I'll check mediafire, never heard about it
e-mailing a simple zip file just seemed the quick and easy way to me
Of course it can be released publicly !
I don't know much about licensing so you can just put it in your git repo under the same licence as the rest of your project

[MrLove]

I must say I'm really impressed with KXStudio. I've been testing Carla now for a while and now I'm trying to compose and mix more in Linux, which is my main OS (since 2001 and I hate booting into windows).

Mainly I play around a little in Pianoteq native linux version to work on some ideas together with some initial vocal recordings in QTractor. After that I boot into windows and work in Cubase working on an instrumental idea (the midi features in cubase speeds up the productivity with track presets). Now with Carla I beleive that this second step could be replaced (track presets), but some of my softsynths (such as Tassman4) don't show all the presets in the browser, but the synth still works (Albino3 and Predator works fine), so I'll still boot into windows when I use them and import the audio files in QTractor.

When mixing I use Nebula (www.acustica-audio.com) a lot and it works with wine. This is like having the actual hardware sampled by 3rd-party developers inside your PC (the most expensive mixing consoles and so on). Nothing compares to it! The creator of Nebula have informed that he bought up IPP 7 for linux (the intel api they use), so maybe we'll se a native version soon!!!

Until the native version of Nebula comes (if it does) I may have to boot in to windows anyway when mixing as some Nebula libraries are recommended to run with the 64-bit version of Nebula.

My question is now if there is a 64-bit wine-rt version that could replace the 32-bit one in KXStudio?

I've seen that wine could be compiled with 64 bit but maybe this breaks something in KXStudio and the correct rt-patch has to be applied as well.

[DoosC]

A Carla related issue :
when I try to use IR LV2 with Carla, I get the following error :

IR: error: required LV2 features missing!

Code: Select all

add_plugin()
Features: (0)
Extensions: (1)
  # 0
   Type              0x1
   URI               http://factorial.hu/plugins/lv2/ir/gui
   UI_Type           http://lv2plug.in/ns/extensions/ui#GtkUI
   UI_Properties     0x0
   UI_Binary         /usr/lib/lv2/ir.lv2/ir_gui.so
   UI_Bundle         /usr/lib/lv2/ir.lv2/
   UI_PortNotifications: (0)
   UI_Features: (0)
----------------------------
init_plugin()
reload_plugin()
reload_programs()
Exec: carla-bridge-lv2-gtk http://factorial.hu/plugins/lv2/ir http://factorial.hu/plugins/lv2/ir/gui "/usr/lib/lv2/ir.lv2/" "/usr/lib/lv2/ir.lv2/ir_gui.so" osc.udp://pj-desktop:16419/Carla/0 "IR"
show_external_gui()
OSC info -> pj-desktop, 16419, : osc.udp://pj-desktop:16419/Carla/0
IR: error: required LV2 features missing!
Failed to init Gtk UI
OSC Message: /Carla/0/exiting
LV2 OSC GUI crashed
show_external_gui() - GUI timeout

Is it because of some missing features or am i running an outdated version (from KXStudio repos) ?

By the way, are going to release soon some updated version of the cadence tools in the KXStudio repos ?

I can see that the new web site is taking shape ! Good

[DoosC]

Yeah ! You working again on the Cadence tools is good news ! Rocks
Can't wait to see new things going into the KXStudio repos

[funkmuscle]

problems building latest git on Arch

[funkmuscle]

sweet, seems to be building now and yeeeeeeah, it's a lot of time...

[mgraham]

Carla is excellent (as are the rest of the KX Studio tools) - thank you very much for creating and maintaining them! I'm new to Linux audio, but I can't imagine it working very well without Claudia and Carla (i.e. having to make all those fiddly connections every session).

But with these tools, Linux is now finally getting to the point where (as they say) the OS is now the DAW.

Anyway, I'm trying to get some simple Windows VSTis to work with Carla. Currently, they do work via dssi-vst (and with load/save support, too - yay!).

But the UI suggests that Carla can also natively host Windows VSTs. Is that the case? My Windows plugins don't show up under Windows VSTI in the filter - only under DSSI.

Just in case the problem was that Carla couldn't find the plugin dlls, I copied them everywhere:

• ~/.vst
• ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/VstPlugins
• /usr/lib/vst
• /usr/local/lib/vst

Secondly, is there any possibility that in the future, Carla might automatically creating Jack MIDI/audio connections for plugins? E.g. for my current setup, I'd want it to make the following connections:

• connect plugin's MIDI IN to first unused QTractor MIDI OUT
• (for stereo plugin) connect plugin's Left Audio Out to Room Playback Left
• (for stereo plugin) connect plugin's Right Audio Out to Room Playback Right
• (for mono plugin) connect Audio Out both to Room Playback Left and Room Playback Right

Finally - how did Klaudia and Claudia end up with practically the same name even though they are completely different tools? It's confusing enough for a new user to keep everything straight...


Michael

[mgraham]

Windows VST support is simply not implemented yet. The discovery mechanism already works, but not the processing, so I've disable it for the time being (note that the last Carla version now has 'Windows VST' option disabled).

Well, that clears that up! I'll work with dssi-vst for now.

Secondly, is there any possibility that in the future, Carla might automatically creating Jack MIDI/audio connections for plugins? E.g. for my current setup, I'd want it to make the following connections:

• connect plugin's MIDI IN to first unused QTractor MIDI OUT
• (for stereo plugin) connect plugin's Left Audio Out to Room Playback Left
• (for stereo plugin) connect plugin's Right Audio Out to Room Playback Right
• (for mono plugin) connect Audio Out both to Room Playback Left and Room Playback Right

Sure, this can be done. Once I add a Carla options dialog, every little detail would be tweaked by users.

Awesome!!

Finally - how did Klaudia and Claudia end up with practically the same name even though they are completely different tools? It's confusing enough for a new user to keep everything straight...

Klaudia is one of my first tools, it only lists and starts applications, with a bit of ladish support there. Claudia is like an extension to Klaudia, as it completes the ladish support - giving you a full frontend to ladish. When you set the database mode to 'Klaudia' (see options, Database), the exact same GUI used in Klaudia (the app-list/launcher) will now appear when you add a new application in a ladish room/studio.
Basically Claudia is like "Klaudia v2.0".

Ohhhh! That makes total sense now! I don't know how I missed the Klaudia-style app launch feature. I think you should use the above paragraph as the Klaudia app summary on the KX web page


Michael

[lunkrat]

I have installed Carla and I can load plugins, but the rack does not have working "Show GUI" buttons. They are grayed out.

Is my system messed up?

[lunkrat]

Thanks for the quick support. I do get "Show GUI" on some plugins; I thought it was greyed for all of them, my mistake.

I remember more plugins having an external gui, like the Invada ones.