[fluid-dev] Re: An evil screeching noise when playing

[Kimmo Sundqvist]

On Thursday 13 October 2005 23:53, you wrote:

> The rest of your problems are likely related to the 100% CPU usage.
> This is not normal behavior for FluidSynth.  Have you tried building
> from a tarball with just the default settings (don't enable anything
> fancy)?

I don't know how familiar you are with Gentoo linux's build system, Portage.  
It resembles the ports system of FreeBSD a bit.

So, I can type "emerge fluidsynth" and it will build Fluidsynth and all that 
it requires.  Fluidsynth 1.0.6 knows four USE variables that I can set either 
globally or in a per-package fashion.  Those are ALSA, Jack, SSE and Ladcca.  

Ladspa is, AFAIK. always enabled, and that is the decision of the Fluidsynth 
packager for Gentoo.

I had it build 1.0.6 with Jack, SSE and Ladcca disabled, and the screeches 
were there no more.  Using Unison.sf2 I can listen to music quite fine.  
Except that the CPU usage goes to 99% immediately after starting Fluisynth, 
even with no soundfont loaded.  Yet I experience no skipping in the sound, 
unless I try to read a defective CD at the same time.

Using the 22MB Merlin soundfont, the relative volumes of instruments are 
messed up, or some channels do not come through.  I don't know what causes 
the problem, but the soundfont works ok with Timidity.

As soon as I have time, I will narrow the problem down to one USE variable.  I 
remember doing this before, but couldn't remove the screech no matter what I 
disabled.  I don't know what has changed since then.

-Kimmo S.