Drumstick Libraries 2.7.1 Released

Drumstick is a set of MIDI libraries using C++/Qt idioms and style. Includes a C++ wrapper around the ALSA library sequencer interface: ALSA sequencer provides software support for MIDI technology on Linux. A complementary library provides classes for processing SMF (Standard MIDI files: .MID/.KAR), RIFF MIDI (.RMI), and Cakewalk (.WRK) file formats. A multiplatform realtime MIDI I/O library and a GUI Widgets libraries are also provided for Linux, Windows, and Mac OSX.

This is another sonivox related release. Please see: https://github.com/pedrolcl/sonivox

I didn't want to make the sonivox dependency mandatory, because there may be good reasons for an user to avoid building drumstick with all its features. A final user may be interested in FluidSynth output only (which is also an optional feature) or even using ALSA sequencer only, without any soft-synth at all.

But what is a legitimate choice for a final user may be a questionable restriction for a distribution, because you may not know all use cases of your users. In this case, SonivoxEAS is the default Linux output for drumstick-vpiano and VMPK, because I think that any user installing those programs the first time should be able to hear sound by default, without needing to configure/investigate about MIDI or SoundFonts. Otherwise, there will be many users complaining that their Linux virtual pianos do not produce any sound!

On the other hand, until now the sonivox library sources were embedded inside the drumstick source tarballs, and statically linked to the SonivoxEAS backend. This was against most Linux distros packaging policy. Providing an standalone shared library instead, the issue has been fixed.

Changes in v2.7.1:

• Fixed ticket #45: the sonivox library dependency (for the SonivoxEAS synth backend) is optional, and easily forgotten by 3rd party packagers. The build system configuration now fails with an error message if the sonivox library is missing unless the cmake variables USE_SONIVOX and USE_PULSEAUDIO are set to OFF. Same failure with the FluidSynth backend and the variable USE_FLUIDSYNTH, and the ipMIDI Network backend and USE_NETWORK.
• Fixed underlinking in some RT backends.

Compilation minimum requirements for all platforms:

• C++11 compiler
• CMake 3.14
• Qt5 >= 5.9 or Qt6 >= 6.2 (with Qt6Core5Compat library dependency for Drumstick::File)

Feature dependencies (for some platforms):

• ALSA (Linux only)
• PulseAudio (Unix)
• D-Bus (Unix)
• Sonivox (Unix)
• FluidSynth (All platforms)

Copyright (C) 2009-2022, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas License: GPL v3 or later

Project web site https://sourceforge.net/p/drumstick

Online documentation https://drumstick.sourceforge.io/docs/

Downloads https://sourceforge.net/projects/drumstick/files/2.7.1/

Dog days releases

It's hot weather these days here at Barcelona! It is also time for releases...

A new synthesizer library has been released on July 28, 2022: Sonivox. This project is a fork of the Android Open Source Project 'platform_external_sonivox', including a CMake based build system to be used not on Android, but on any other computer Operating System. Google licensed this work originally named Sonivox EAS (Embedded Audio Synthesis) from the company Sonic Network Inc. under the terms of the Apache License 2.0.

This is a Wave Table synthesizer, not using external soundfont files but embedded samples instead. It is also a real time GM synthesizer. It consumes very little resources, so it may be indicated in projects for small embedded devices. There is neither MIDI input nor Audio output facilities included in the library. You need to provide your own input/output.

Until now, the "eassynth" Drumstick::RT backend included the sonivox library sources, compiled and statically linked. Now, the build system search for an external sonivox library like any other dependency, and dynamically links the shared library when found.

Please find here the source tarballs.

There are two other projects/prototypes that use this library in my portfolio. They embed it as a git submodule, or find it as an external dependency:

• Linux-SonivoxEAS. I've already blogged about it several years ago.
• multiplatform-sonivoxeas with Drumstick::RT MIDI input and Qt Multimedia audio output.

I prefer to have all the code in a single place, avoiding duplication. But it is not only my personal convenience, Linux users would have a single copy of the library installed in their systems, which will be easier to patch or replace by the distribution vendors when needed. Of course this would be not possible if their only choice is to install the applications as an AppImage, or a Flatpak.

The other release today July 31, 2022 is Drumstick 2.7.0

A brief summary of changes for this release:

• ticket #44: removed sonivox library sources from the source tree. The Sonivox library is an external dependency.
• ticket #43: Drumstick::RT dummy plugins now include its own configuration dialogs.
• ticket #42: Drumstick::Widgets - fixed piano designer plugin to show more properties.
• ticket #41 Drumstick::Widgets: Option to use subscript octave designation.
• Drumstick::ALSA registering SequencerEvent with qMetaType.
• Drumstick::RT FluidSynth plugin updated with changes in fluidsynth 2.2.8
• Utils: vpiano uses the subscript octave designation option.

Compilation minimum requirements for all platforms:

• C++11 compiler
• CMake 3.14
• Qt5 >= 5.9 or Qt6 >= 6.2 (with Qt6Core5Compat library dependency for Drumstick::File)

Feature dependencies (for some platforms):

• ALSA (Linux only)
• PulseAudio (Unix)
• D-Bus (Unix)
• Sonivox (Unix)
• FluidSynth (All platforms)

Downloads

VMPK 0.7.0 released

It has been a while! First of all: thank you very much for the million downloads of VMPK! It happened in 2016, but I wasn't paying attention at the time. I didn't post any article around that event, neither released a new VMPK version since that year, so let's cover both things.

Download statistics

Born in 2008, this project is multiplatform from the beginning, with the goal of emulating a MIDI controller device on software; which means: producing (and consuming) MIDI events. The producing part requires another source of human triggered events: computer keyboard, mouse and touch screen events are supported and available on the three main target operating systems. But producing MIDI events without delivering them to a MIDI Synthesizer makes the program useless, with no sound output at all. This has been the experience of most new VMPK Linux users for years. Windows users have a software synth included in the operating system, installed and ready to use, so they may produce sound as soon as they install VMPK from scratch. But Mac and Linux users need to find and install first a suitable synthesizer. Mac OSX also includes a soft synth library, but it is not a ready-to-use service and needs to be activated by a third party software. It's not very hard to find and install, because Apple has always made MIDI users a niche for their products. Good for them.

I've been approached last year by Microsoft people to package and publish VMPK into their Windows Store for Windows 10. Probably the million downloads has something to do with it. I've tried the packaging part without technical problems thanks to the support of the MS Desktop Bridge team, but the store conditions were awful, arbitrary and unfair, so I am not willing to comply with them. This means that VMPK will be available only outside the Windows Store and there won't be an UWP or Windows Phone version either in the future. I don't want to speak about the Apple's App Store. To the hell with them as well.

Linux users have been often made hostages of their distributions and packagers. In theory, the package repositories of each distribution (equivalent to an app store) are made for easy discovery and install of all the software available for Linux, but this is not true in practice. Software integration from different unrelated sources is also the job of the Linux distributions, which they miserably fail as well. I mean that when saying hostages, because the packagers sometimes act as if they want to force their users to follow their own personal preferences, like the gurus of a sect: Jack is the chosen one!!! PulseAudio is evil!!!

More about that later. Let's listen an enlightening Linus Torvalds first:

OK Linus. I've released this time an AppImage package for 64-bit Linux. OTOH, I'm still using Subversion and not planning to migrate the source repository to Git anytime soon.

What I think it would be a good VMPK distribution? Well, first of all, the latest version should be available for install, optionally with some former versions available to choose if the users needs to compare something (like a bug resolved or introduced in the latest version). Second: main functions should be immediately available: the user must be able to simply get sound at once. For Linux, ALSA sequencer inputs and outputs must also be available without any other extra configuration. About network I/O: the Mac OSX and Windows operating systems automatically activate firewalls blocking this function but, as soon as VMPK starts the first time, the OS asks the user for permission to open the firewall for this software. Linux distributions that include an active firewall should listen and learn something here.

The latest VMPK release includes lightweight soft synths for Linux and Mac OSX, which were available as a Drumstick-RT library back-ends for some time. The Linux soft synth is Sonivox EAS, borrowed from Android OSP and ported to Linux + PulseAudio, which was already mentioned in another post.

It is the default output chosen by VMPK upon install, so you need to use PulseAudio if you want to try VMPK. Why the PulseAudio choice? Because it is the default Linux sound server in most distributions: Ubuntu, Fedora (Red Hat), OpenSUSE, etc. I know that there has been a lot of criticism among the Linux audio community about PA, but honestly: I can't care less about arguments that sound like fanaticism. Someone told me that: “many people in linux-audio avoid PA like the plague.” Well, I'm sure you know that many computer users avoid Linux like a plague, but I don't let a handful of haters to influence my decision of keeping VMPK available for Linux users. And at the end of the day, this is my personal project and I am who decide the road-map. This is also free software. If you don't like something or have good ideas to get it better, you may contribute with code or make your own fork.

Taking Back From Android

Android is an operating system developed by Google around the Linux kernel. It is not like any other Linux distribution, because not only many common subsystems have been replaced by other components, but also the user interface is radically different based on Java language running into a virtual machine called Dalvik.

An example of subsystem removed from the Linux kernel is the ALSA Sequencer, which is a key piece for MIDI input/output with routing and scheduling that makes Linux comparable in capabilities to Mac OSX for musical applications (for musicians, not whistlers) and years ahead of Microsoft Windows in terms of infrastructure. Android did not offer anything comparable until Android 6 (Marshmallow).

Another subsystem from userspace Linux not included in Android is PulseAudio. Instead, OpenSL ES that can be found on Android for digital audio output and input.

But Android also has some shining components. One of them is Sonivox EAS (originally created by Sonic Network, Inc.) released under the Apache 2 license, and the MIDI Synthesizer used by my VMPK for Android application to produce noise. Funnily enough, it provided some legal fuel to Oracle in its battle against Google, because of some Java binding sources that were included in the AOSP repositories. It is not particularly outstanding in terms of audio quality, but has the ability of providing real time wavetable GM synthesis without using external soundfont files, and consumes very little resources so it may be indicated for Linux projects on small embedded devices. Let's take it to Linux, then!

So the plan is: for the next Drumstick release, there will be a Drumstick-RT backend using Sonivox EAS. The audio output part is yet undecided, but for Linux will probably be PulseAudio. In the same spirit, for Mac OSX there will be a backend leveraging the internal Apple DLS synth. These backends will be available in addition to the current FluidSynth one, which provides very good quality, but uses expensive floating point DSP calculations and requires external soundfont files.

Meanwhile, I've published on GitHub this repository including a port of Sonivox EAS for Linux with ALSA Sequencer MIDI input and PulseAudio output. It also  depends on Qt5 and Drumstick. Enjoy!

Sonivox EAS for Linux and Qt:
https://github.com/pedrolcl/Linux-SonivoxEas

Related Android project:
https://github.com/pedrolcl/android/tree/master/NativeGMSynth