LinuxSampler for Mac OS X     HOWTO by Toshi Nagata 


January 6th, 2008

1.  Introduction
2.  Requirements
3.  Installation
4.  Using the Applications
    4.1  Setting up MIDI Input
    4.2  Setting up Audio Output
    4.3  Loading Samples
    4.4  Saving a Sampler Session
5.  Installation Troubleshooting
6.  Detailed Documentation
7.  Bugs, Problems and Feature Requests
8.  Credits
9.  Contact

1.  Introduction

The LinuxSampler development team is happy to announce the release of a new version of LinuxSampler of Mac OS X. More information will be added here soon, so check back frequently.

For now the sampler supports the CoreMIDI interface for MIDI input and jack for audio out. This means it currently runs only as a standalone application. An AU/VST interface will follow at a later stage, along with a network module to run multiple sampler slaves distributed on OS/X, Windows or Linux machines (Linux provides better performance) all controlled from a OS X or Windows box i.e. running the AU / VST sequencer.
Even though LinuxSampler presently runs only as standalone app, thanks to jack you can comfortably route the sampler's audio outs back into your sequencer.
LinuxSampler is implemented as a client/server application. This means the sampling engine (the server / backend) runs independently from the GUI (the client / frontend). Sampling engine and client can be run on the same box or on different machines too, connected over the network.

The Mac OS X version provides all the features of the Linux version since it is built from the same source code base. This means when new features will come out the Mac OS X version will usually provide the same feature set as the Linux version. This was made possible by the very modular design of both low level, operating system functions and flexible audio / MIDI driver system.

The Mac OS X version comes as an easy to install DMG file which will install all the necessary modules to run both the server ( bin/linuxsampler ) and the GUI client. For now it installs only the qsampler GUI client as JSampler, the sampler frontend written in Java requires Java 1.6 which is not available on OS X yet. Of course you can run JSampler on a Windows or Linux box connected over the network to your OS X box or you could try to run it in a windows virtual machine. We discourage running a virtual machine along with the sampler as both applicationes are very CPU and RAM hungry therefore the performance of LinuxSampler will be suboptimal.

2.  Requirements

3.a  Installation

  1. Install JackOSX (if you don't have it already).
  2. Download the latest version of the LinuxSampler Mac OS X installer from the LinuxSampler Download Page, and mount it on Finder.
  3. You will find a single folder "linuxsampler051-mac". Copy this folder to wherever you like (e.g. under /Applications).

4.  Using the Applications

The folder contains three items, "bin", "linuxsampler" and "qsampler".
  1. Start qsampler.app. The application launches, and you will see messages saying that linuxsampler is now running. After a while, you will also see that the JackPilot application (installed by the JackOSX installer) automatically launches showing the Jack server already running.
  2. Since CoreMIDI is sometimes too slow to respond when creating a new MIDI device. so you need to increase "Timeout" parameter in the Options:Server Settings to 10000 msec. (Added note on Jan 7, 2008: this value is now set by default)

4.1  Setting up MIDI Input

In qsampler click on the device configuration tab. Click on the MIDI devices icon and then on Create.

If you need multiple MIDI input device, set the "Number of ports" to 2, 3, ... before creating the MIDI device. The multiple ports will be accessible from other MIDI applications as "Linuxsampler_in_0", "Linuxsampler_in_1", etc.

(You should be able to create an arbitrary number of MIDI input devices by repeating "Create", but this feature does not work well yet.)

4.2  Setting up Audio Output

LinuxSampler currently only supports the jack driver model for audio output on Mac OS X. Click on AUDIO devices icon and then on Create.
You can of course save and load sampler session as LSCP files which will automaticall set up audio and midi devices and load samples into the channel strips.
  1. Connect audio ports: In the "Connections Manager" pane of JackPilot: linuxsampler --> Built-in audio: in1 & in2 or In the "Connections" window of qjackctl: linuxsampler --> coreaudio

    Intel Mac Note: to use built-in audio in Jack, you need to create an "aggregated device" by using "Audio MIDI Setup". Please look up Jack manual for details.
  2. Start MIDI Patchbay.app and connect your MIDI Input instance (probably your MIDI interface or USB-enabled keyboard) to the "LinuxSampler_in_0" MIDI Output

4.3  Loading Samples

Click on Add Channel. A dialog will appear. Select the GIG file you want to load, the instrument within the GIG file, Audio device, MIDI device, MIDI port and channel. Click OK.

5.  Installation Troubleshooting

TODO

6.  Detailed Documentation

You find more detailed documentation about our software on our official LinuxSampler documentation site.

7.  Bugs, Problems and Feature Requests

There could be several bugs in the Mac OS X version of LinuxSampler which we hope to root out soon. Please report them using our bug tracking system:

    http://bugs.linuxsampler.org/

Some bugs and problems we discovered so far:

8.  Credits

Thanks to Stephane Letz (Initial OS X port) and Ebrahim Mayat (OSX Howto fixes, testing, screenshots)

9.  Contact

If you have questions or want to help us to improve the sampler, subscribe to the LinuxSampler Developer's mailing list.

That's it, enjoy!