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Re: [fluid-dev] Major degradation in sound quality & cpu usage going fro


From: Aere Greenway
Subject: Re: [fluid-dev] Major degradation in sound quality & cpu usage going from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10
Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:24:58 -0600

David:

I finally succeeded in building FluidSynth under Ubuntu Linux 11.10, and installed it. 

The version 1.1.3. works fine on Ubuntu 11.10,  Even on a 933 megahertz machine.  The sequence that fails to play on version 1.1.4, plays all the way through, even using JACK.  Admittedly, there were a fair number of under-runs, but the release level has so many under-runs that it stops, and various voices keep dropping out for measures at a time. 

This was played with the polyphony configured at 64 (which has been for me, a good way of reducing overhead).  None of the voices cut out at all using FluidSynth 1.1.3. 

By building these Debian packages, it gives me a work-around for using Ubuntu 11.10, but I am concerned with the future direction of FluidSynth, which is unusable in its present released form.  It won't even play the demo-music any more, and I can't recommend it. 

If it would be helpful, I can supply a MIDI file (which can be played using pmidi) which will demonstrate the problem.  Simple sequences don't seem to trigger the problem. 

Thanks for helping me with this work-around, and please let me know how I can help in getting the problem solved I reported solved. 


Sincerely,

Aere Greenway


On Mon, 2011-10-31 at 04:52 +0100, David Henningsson wrote:
2011-10-30 16:08, Aere Greenway skrev:
> David:
>
> I made a determined attempt to do what you asked, but was 
> unsuccessful.  This is disappointing, since if I had been successful, 
> it would have given me a temporary work-around for the problem, while 
> the actual problem is being fixed.
>
> On my first attempt to build it, it reported it needed a number of 
> packages before it could do the build.

Oh sorry. Please use the following command:

sudo apt-get build-dep fluidsynth

It will download all build dependencies automatically (well, if there 
aren't any problems, as pointed out below).

>
> So I painstakingly installed each of the packages listed.  The 
> installation of one of them required that qjackctl be removed, which 
> is an essential part of the software I use.  So I will have to 
> un-install the package that required this when/if I am able to 
> successfully build fluidsynth.
Hmm. There is some stuff in the packaging that switches between jack1 
and jack2, when you install the development package...I wonder if Debian 
got all the packaging pieces right in that process...
>
>
> As I installed these missing packages (using Synaptic Package 
> Manager), there were three of them that could not be found (are not 
> available) in the Ubuntu distribution:
>
> liblash-dev | ladcca-dev    libsndfile-dev
>
> It appears that the first two are an either-or requirement.

Libsndfile-dev has been replaced by Libsndfile1-dev (so just install 
that one instead). With some research it seems like the liblash-dev has 
been completely removed [1], so you can do the same edit to debian/control.

In short, this was not as easy as expected, sorry for putting you 
through this, but hopefully you learned something in the progress. :-)
>
> I currently have all of the possible software sources (including 
> source packages) enabled.
>
> I attempted to build it again anyway, but it reported the above three 
> packages are missing, and would not do the build.
>
> So do you have any ideas of how to get around this problem in building 
> the earlier version of fluidsynth on my machine?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Aere
>
>
> On Fri, 2011-10-28 at 07:12 +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
>> On 2011-10-28 03:09, Aere Greenway wrote:
>> >  David:
>> >
>> >  I downloaded the source for the older level of FluidSynth, but didn't
>> >  know how to build it.
>> >
>> >  But I remembered the file structure in Unix (and Linux), and looked for
>> >  the executables in /usr/bin.
>> >
>> >  I use qsynth (which uses FluidSynth). On finding it in the Ubuntu 11.04
>> >  system, and in the 11.10 system, I substituted the different executables
>> >  in each system, and what I found was surprising, from the symptoms I had
>> >  observed.
>> >
>> >  First, the old version (from 11.04) of qsynth on Ubuntu 11.10 also
>> >  failed. The new version (from 11.10) on 11.04 worked fine.
>> >
>> >  I therefore conclude that the cause is in Ubuntu 11.10.
>>
>> Ok, so this is completely wrong. First, FluidSynth's main functionality
>> is in a library (.so) file, so you have not changed FluidSynth by just
>> moving the executables. Second, while ABI breakage is quite rare these
>> days, subtle library differences can still make moving files between
>> distro versions fail. Recompiling the program on the distribution you
>> want to run it on (or in pbuilder, but that's a separate story) is both
>> easier and gives correct results.
>>
>> Here is a mini-howto for how to do that on Ubuntu. Let's assume you have
>> a directory ~/fluidsynth-code, you are in Ubuntu 11.10 and want to
>> compile FluidSynth 1.1.3. First download the source, e g from launchpad
>> by going tohttps://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/fluidsynth, click the
>> arrow for the selected version, then click to save the files ending with
>> ".dsc", ".debian.tar.gz" and ".orig.tar.bz2".
>>
>> Then execute the following commands:
>>
>> cd ~/fluidsynth-code
>> dpkg-source -x fluidsynth_1.1.3-3.dsc
>> cd fluidsynth-1.1.3
>> dpkg-buildpackage -b
>>
>> This will create files named "fluidsynth_1.1.3-3_i386.deb" and
>> "libfluidsynth1_1.1.3-3_i386.deb" in the ~/fluidsynth-code directory.
>> (Or amd64 instead of i386, if that's what your machine is running.)
>> There will also be a libfluidsynth-dev_1.1.3-3_i386.deb", but you don't
>> need that right now. Now run
>>
>> cd ..
>> sudo dpkg -i fluidsynth_1.1.3-3_i386.deb libfluidsynth1_1.1.3-3_i386.deb
>>
>> ...to install you new packages. After that, just restart qsynth or
>> whatever program is using fluidsynth, and test.
>>
>> To return to the distribution supplied version again run "sudo apt-get
>> install fluidsynth libfluidsynth1"
>>
>> >
>> >  Perhaps the path-lengths with interrupts locked out are too long.
>> >  Perhaps something is causing problems by other means.
>> >
>> >  What I notice on 11.10 (also with the old version of qsynth), is that
>> >  everything seems fine until I try playing one of my sequences with many
>> >  parts, and many simultaneous notes. Within about 30 seconds, things 'go
>> >  bad', and stay bad. After that point, even simple sequences play poorly.
>> >  Even playing notes on the keyboard is bad.
>>
>> This sounds similar to a bug fixed a while ago, here:
>> http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/fluidsynth/changeset/435/trunk/fluidsynth/src/synth
>>
>> // David
>
> -- 
>
> Sincerely,
> Aere
>
[1]
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=pkg-multimedia/fluidsynth.git;a=blobdiff;f=debian/control;h=13cf37b3e22fdc0a40be62ea1fb9bd0a5254046b;hp=aa490c6b1e3714180419465afaab3cd570f33a93;hb=661c45754a118e9a634d0f2f2b7f95831be85188;hpb=8c57cebd4d3f8e544718073052f19729302c3f94 


-- 

Sincerely,
Aere

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