Thank you for your answers.
I think i need to add a little foreword before
answering myself, because i always come here to say
"hello guys, this or this doesn't work".
So, first i want to address you many thanks and
congratulations for a project which is nonetheless
good ( in fact excellent will be more appropriate, but
i also want to preserve you to be swollen headed ;-)
), but useful.
I am not a user of Linuxsampler ( that said, i like to
play some blues piano pieces, using Rosegarden to
drive a midi partition ), this was a gift for my son
while i had no money ( nor any room ) for a true
piano. Obviously this is not the real thing, but the
approximation is more than convincing. Beyond the
sound's quality, the reliability is impressive. The
'piano' is running hours after hours without any
glitches ( or pop, or click ).
The setup is simple, a celeron processor with 2giga of
ram ( no dedicated disk, the disk is even a 5400 rpm
one ), RHEL4 ( no real time ) and Linuxsampler 0.4.x,
PMI grandioso Bosendorfer with PMI 'holy grail piano'
add-on ( hammers sounds, release and sustain ), and
Pori Concert Hall IR for convolution reverb (
www.acoustics.hut.fi/projects/poririrs , i recommend
this one, particularly the binaural release, which is
free for non commercial usage ) via Jconv ( 0.1.0 ).
The 'sound card' is the embedded Intel AC97 which
delivers 5ms latency at 48Khz/16bits. Latency is the
main point for live playing, and clearly you must be
under 8ms for this kind of usage, 10/11ms is too slow,
you can feel/ear the delay. What is amazing is the
sound produced by the AC97 ( something like a 1$ chip
for a motherboard factory ), plug an electric guitar
in it and you will be surprised how much the 'little'
thing could act as a warm amplifier, and i mean _warm_
The only 'limitation' is 144 concurrent voices, going
over 80% CPU produces clicks and pops, and Jconv eats
a permanent 10% of CPU ( which is very good ).
Now back to the main topic.
1/ The distro used is Scientific Linux 5.1 ( please
read RHEL5.1 ), and the QT4 version released with it
is QT 4.2.1. PLease note that this is an add-on over
QT 3.3.6, which is the 'main' QT on RHEL5.
2/ Is QT installable under RHEL5.1: technically yes,
but practically no
I had tried two ways to do it.
The first one was to download the FC8 rpm source ( FC8
also support QT 3 and 4 at the same time, which is no
more the case starting from FC9 / QT4 only ), modify
it because of xorg dependencies, and then install.
Dismissed because of the dependencies ( Mesa/Glut, the
'devel' package is changed between RHEL5 and FC8, and
NAS sound system option ).
The second one was to download the tar.gz sources
(GPL) from Trolltech: 'unable to change directory'
with FTP, and 'source not found' with HTTP. This is
not very serious ;-)
Anyway, whatever would be the solution:
a/ this will drive QT4 out of the automatic security
updates
b/ the whole stuff will need to be done at every QT 4
minor upgrade ( requested by Linuxsampler )
c/ the choice for RHEL5 is driven by stability
considerations, and upgrading this kind of library
doesn't look as a good idea
d/ QT is too much buggy and ugly ( matter of taste ),
qjackctl and qsynth also have a lot of problems, and i
don't want to spend time on such library
...which leads to the answer: upgrading QT will not be
done
So far, what could be the answer ?
1/ asking to Linuxsampler team to downgrade. While an
ideal world might be: libraries releases fixed on the
lowest of Debian stable / RHEL, this seems to be
irrational for the current QT4, which clearly needs
some strong debugging from Trolltech, aka developers
need to upgrade
2/ investigating the workaround given by Rui Nuno
Capela. A good idea, but how long this will stand for
( i mean what about QT 4.4, 4.5, ... )
3/ keeping Qsampler on the 0.2.1.2 release, while
upgrading the other packages. This will not stand
forever ( i estimate one year )
4/ switching to another distro: no way. More, the only
one for which i will switch is Debian stable, aka the
same problems with QT4. The overall 'spirit' is: if
one thing must go to the garbage, the distro or
Linuxsampler, this will be Linuxsampler without a
moment's hesitation. Nothing here is geared toward
Linuxsampler, even useful this is not a priority,
period
5.a/ dropping Qsampler in favor of Jsampler. I think
this is the solution, even if Jsampler currently needs
to be polished for a CVS install
5.b/ stopping Linuxsampler upgrade, and maintaining
the 0.5.1.1 release. Why not? the Linuxsampler engine
itself ( i mean the part involved in sound production
) doesn't appear to be changed, and for piano live
playing, current functions are sufficient
6/ dropping the whole Linuxsampler in favor of a
Windows/Gigastudio/GVI stack. Again: why not? with
Gigastudio release 4 ready to go out with the morphing
technology, this seems to be a good idea although a
different kind of story
7/ dropping the whole Linuxsampler in favor of a
complete piano/keyboard stack ( for sample: Yamaha,
Rolland, Casio and so on ). Main advantages are: the
instrument is fired up in less than one second, the
keyboard is better than an usb master keyboard, and
you don't need to carry a computer ( and speakers )
for playing piano. Obviously a radically different
story
In conclusion, i will choose between 5.a or 5.b.
Best regards
--- Rui Nuno Capela <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, February 18, 2008 10:33, Christian
> Schoenebeck wrote:
> > Ouch, yeah, those properties were introduced with
> Qt 4.3, so it seems you
> > have an older Qt version. We could check if there
> are alternatives, to
> > make it compile on older Qt4 versions as well, but
> not sure if it's worth
> > it, since especially Qt4.2.x is extremely buggy
> and Rui would probably add
> > the attribute "ancient".
> >
> > What distro are you using and is it hard for you
> to upgrade to Qt4.3?
> >
>
> there's one "simple" way to make it build on qt4 <
> 4.3: edit the .ui by
> hand (not using designer) and colapse "topMargin",
> "leftMargin",
> "topMargin" and "bottomMargin" properties into one
> single "margin".
>
> it's a damn fault of the trolls (now nokian?) in not
> making qt designer
> backward compatible, specially on silly changes that
> just don't stack
>
> byee
> --
> rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
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