Re: [Denemo-devel] hum on the mic input

[Nils Gey]

On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:05:20 +0100
Richard Shann <address@hidden> wrote:
 
> > The "standard" PCI card is the M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2469 which is ok 
> > for professional audio recording and off course Midi for a low price. 
> I think I could raise the cash for that, although it seems a bit
> overkill - I am not really interested in the sound quality - I never
> listen to recorded music much, I just play on musical instruments, and
> want to get more music scores to play. There are old printed scores from
> the museums available online now, and I have started mining them for new
> repertoire.

Well, I would not say its an overkill. If you are seriously in music one day 
you want to have this or that detail and then you have to get a better card 
anyway. The point is not the sound quality, its the latency. If you have large 
scores then you will get latency, especially when the music gets fast, lot of 
16th notes for example. If you want to actually record Midi signals, not just 
enter them note for note its highly important to have low latency. The timing 
is just better with a good card. And if you want your playback to sound good, 
for example with orchestral samples, then you need a good card anyway.

> Can you send a link to a site that lists linux comaptible midi stuff?
> Thanks for your help.
> Richard

First place is the ALSA Database: http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/ . 
For the midi chain the only thing that matters is the soundcard. 
If you have not a laptop I really suggest a PCI card since its just better and 
mostly cheaper then USB. I do the research for good cards from time to time an 
the M-Audio Delta Audiophile 2469 beats them all.

One thing that has not been mentioned yet is the linux distribution or the 
kernel. There are some good Audio Distributions out there. 
Ubuntustudio(Ubuntu), 64Studio(Debian) and Jacklab/JAD(OpenSuse) (all in 32bit 
and 64bit) all have a real time kernel compiled in and a preconfigured JACK 
System where you can connect all the programms together and route midi and 
audio streams without latency loss between them. If you want to develop Denemo 
to more Midi then you might want a proper Enviroment, which are these 
Distributions.

Nils