/[svn]/web/trunk/www.linuxsampler.org/windows.html
ViewVC logotype

Contents of /web/trunk/www.linuxsampler.org/windows.html

Parent Directory Parent Directory | Revision Log Revision Log


Revision 1595 - (show annotations) (download) (as text)
Tue Dec 18 22:03:33 2007 UTC (16 years, 3 months ago) by schoenebeck
File MIME type: text/html
File size: 16856 byte(s)
- updated trouble shooting section of the Windows HOWTO

1 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
2 <html>
3 <head>
4 <meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
5 http-equiv="content-type">
6 <title>LinuxSampler For Windows</title>
7 <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
8 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="libgig/css/content.css" title="content" media="all">
9 </head>
10 <body>
11 <h2><center>LinuxSampler for Windows &nbsp; <img src="gfx/logos/windows.png"> &nbsp; HOWTO by Benno Senoner&nbsp;</center></h2>
12 <br>
13 <center>December&nbsp;13th,&nbsp;2007</center><br>
14 <div style="background-color: #F4F4FF; margin: 1em 3em 1em 3em; padding: 1em 1em 1em 2.2em;">
15 <a href="#intro">1.&nbsp; Introduction</a><br>
16 <a href="#requirements">2.&nbsp; Requirements</a><br>
17 3.&nbsp; Installation ...<br>
18 <a href="#install_w_inet">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;3.a&nbsp; with Internet Connection</a><br>
19 <a href="#install_wo_inet">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;3.b&nbsp; without Internet</a><br>
20 <a href="#using">4.&nbsp; Using the Applications</a><br>
21 <a href="#setup_midi">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4.1&nbsp; Setting up MIDI Input</a><br>
22 <a href="#setup_audio">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4.2&nbsp; Setting up Audio Output</a><br>
23 <a href="#load_samples">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4.3&nbsp; Loading Samples</a><br>
24 <a href="#save_session">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;4.4&nbsp; Saving a Sampler Session</a><br>
25 <a href="#houston">5.&nbsp; Installation Troubleshooting</a><br>
26 <a href="#docs">6.&nbsp; Detailed Documentation</a><br>
27 <a href="#bugs">7.&nbsp; Bugs, Problems and Feature Requests</a><br>
28 <a href="#contact">8.&nbsp; Contact</a><br>
29 </div>
30
31 <a name="intro"></a>
32 <h3>1.&nbsp; Introduction</h3>
33 The LinuxSampler development team is happy to announce that
34 LinuxSampler, the most advanced free, open source sampler finally runs on
35 MS Windows too. More information will be added here soon, so check back frequently.<br>
36 <br>
37 For now the sampler supports the Windows Multimedia Extensions System (MME)
38 for MIDI input and ASIO for audio out. This means it currently runs only
39 as a standalone application. A VST interface will follow soon, along with
40 a network module to run multiple sampler slaves distributed on Windows or
41 Linux machines (Linux provides better performance) all controlled from a
42 Windows box i.e. running the VST sequencer.<br>
43 <br>
44 LinuxSampler is implemented as a client/server application. This means
45 the sampling engine (the server / backend) runs
46 independently from the GUI (the client / frontend). Sampling engine and
47 client can be run on the same box or on different machines too, connected
48 over the network.<br>
49 <br>
50 The MS Windows version provides all the features of the Linux version
51 (except of the instruments DB feature yet) since it is built from the
52 same source code base. This means when new features will come out the
53 Windows version will usually provide the same feature set as the Linux
54 version. This was made possible by the very modular design of both
55 low level, operating system functions and flexible audio / MIDI driver
56 system.<br>
57 <br>
58 The Windows version comes as a self extracting .exe file which will
59 install all the necessary modules to run both the server ( linuxsampler.exe )
60 and the GUI client. It installs 2 GUI clients:
61 <ul>
62 <li>One is <b>QSampler</b>, a light-weight frontend based on the
63 cross-platform Qt4 GUI toolkit with native OS GUI widgets</li>
64 <li>Another is <b>JSampler "Fantasia"</b>, a Java based GUI client called,
65 providing a modern skin-based user interface</li>
66 </ul>
67 At the moment JSampler is more advanced than QSampler as it implements all
68 the functionality present in the LinuxSampler engine. Due to the Java
69 virtual machine however it occupies a bit more RAM than the
70 QSsampler GUI (around 30MB or so) and takes a bit longer for startup,
71 but on a 1GB+ RAM box the difference should be negligible.
72
73 <a name="requirements"></a>
74 <h3>2.&nbsp; Requirements</h3>
75 <ul>
76 <li>Intel Pentium4 or recent AMD processor (use
77 <a href="#old_cpu_workaround">this workaround for older processors</a>)
78 <li>Windows 2000, ME, XP or Vista</li>
79 <li><a href="http://www.gtk.org/">GTK+</a> (<a href="http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gladewin32/gtk-2.10.11-win32-1.exe?modtime=1175123376&big_mirror=0">version 2.10.11</a>)</li>
80 <li><a href="http://www.gtkmm.org/">gtkmm</a> (<a href="http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/gtkmm/2.10/gtkmm-win32-runtime-2.10.11-1.exe">version 2.10.11</a>)</li>
81 <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(Sun)">Java Runtime Environment</a> (<a href="http://www.java.com/getjava/">version 6</a>)</a></li>
82 <li>sound card with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Stream_Input/Output">ASIO</a> driver</li>
83 </ul>
84 <a name="asio_tip"></a>
85 <b>Tip:</b> For consumer audio cards which do not come with their own ASIO
86 drivers you can install <a href="http://www.asio4all.com/">ASIO4ALL</a> to be
87 able to use LinuxSampler with your soundcard.
88 We recommend to use version 2.7, perhaps on Vista 2.8beta1 works better but
89 we did not perform tests on Vista so we cannot tell it. Please let us know
90 about your results so we can share them here!
91
92 <a name="install_w_inet"></a>
93 <h3>3.a&nbsp; Installation with Internet Connection</h3>
94 Simply download the latest version of the LinuxSampler Windows installer
95 from the <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/downloads.html">LinuxSampler
96 Download Page</a>, execute the installer and follow the instructions. It will
97 automatically detect if the required software components are already installed.
98 If not, it will download them from the internet and install them on your
99 computer.
100
101 <a name="install_wo_inet"></a>
102 <h3>3.b&nbsp; Installation without Internet</h3>
103 First download the required components with a machine which has connection to
104 the internet:
105 <ul>
106 <li><a href="http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gladewin32/gtk-2.10.11-win32-1.exe?modtime=1175123376&big_mirror=0">gtk+ 2.10.11</a></li>
107 <li><a href="http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/gtkmm/2.10/gtkmm-win32-runtime-2.10.11-1.exe">gtkmm 2.10.11</a></li>
108 <li><a href="http://www.java.com/getjava/">Java Runtime Environment 6</a></li>
109 <li>and of course the latest <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/downloads.html">
110 LinuxSampler Windows installer</a></li>
111 </ul>
112 Transfer the downloaded files to the computer where you want to install
113 LinuxSampler and install them in the following order:
114 <ol>
115 <li>gtk-2.10.11-win32-1.exe</li>
116 <li>gtkmm-win32-runtime-2.10.11-1.exe</li>
117 <li>jre-6u2-windows-i586-p.exe</li>
118 <li>linuxsampler_20071207_setup.exe</li>
119 </ol>
120 The order is important, since the components depend on each other and would
121 otherwise try to download the missing component from the internet.
122
123 <a name="using"></a>
124 <h3>4.&nbsp; Using the Applications</h3>
125 Now that we installed everything, let's get wet and start the applications:
126 <ol>
127 <li>First start the LinuxSampler backend: Click on <i>"Start" ->
128 "LinuxSampler" -> "LinuxSampler 0.5.1 (backend)"</i>. A black console
129 window should immediately popup. It does what you think it does:
130 nothing ... yet ... because this is "just" the raw sampler, without a
131 user interface.</li>
132 <li>Now start a "frontend" application to actually control the previously
133 started sampler. For beginners and / or unpatient people, we recommend
134 you to use JSampler: Click on <i>"Start" -> "LinuxSampler" ->
135 "JSampler 'Fantasia' 0.8a (frontend)"</i>. This usually takes about
136 20 seconds or so until the application finally appears on the
137 screens.</li>
138 </ol>
139 </div>
140
141 <a name="setup_midi"></a>
142 <h3>4.1&nbsp; Setting up MIDI Input</h3>
143 Once the GUI opens, click on the left round button in the MIDI devices
144 tab.
145 At this point a window will open where you can create a new MIDI device.
146 Press Create. The window will close and the MIDI device will be created.
147 (MIDI Device 0 MME).
148 Now click on the right arrow which points downwards.
149 You can see that a MIDI device with a single Port (Port 0) was created.
150 Under Windows MME LinuxSampler always creates MIDI devices which are
151 connected to a single MME port.
152 To select the MIDI input port you must click on the field located on
153 the left of PORT.
154 A combobox pops-up where you can select the Windows MIDI port.<br>
155 <br>
156 You can create an arbitrary number of MIDI input devices by repeating
157 the procedure above.
158 Each MIDI input device is connected to a single Windows MME MIDI port.
159 This means LinuxSampler has no limitation in terms of number of MIDI
160 ports.
161 Each MIDI device can be routed to arbitrary sampler channels.
162
163 <a name="setup_audio"></a>
164 <h3>4.2&nbsp; Setting up Audio Output</h3>
165 LinuxSampler currently only supports the ASIO driver model for audio output
166 on Windows. ASIO drivers ensure reliable low-latency operation and are
167 virtually available for any soundcard (see <a href="#asio_tip">
168 ASIO requirements tip</a>).<br>
169 <br>
170 Click on the left round button in the Audio Devices tab.
171 At this point a window will open where you can create a new MIDI device.
172 When creating the Audio device you can set several parameters:
173 <ul>
174 <li><b>CARD</b> : The name of the soundcard, in case you have multiple cards
175 installed. It will show the default value (first card found).</li>
176 <li><b>CHANNELS</b> : Number of audio output channels, can range from 1 to
177 maximum number of channels your soundcard supports. We recommend to
178 leave the default value which is the maximum number of channels your
179 soundcard supports.</li>
180 <li><b>FRAGMENTSIZE</b> : ASIO buffer size in samples. The card's default
181 value is shown. If you experience clicks and pops during audio
182 playback then initialize the audio output device with bigger values.
183 (better if it's always a power of 2:&nbsp; e.g. 256, 512, 1024)</li>
184 <li><b>SAMPLERATE</b> : Sets the samplerate. The default value is shown.<br>
185 </ul>
186 Now Press "Create". The window will close and the Audio device will be
187 created: "AUDIO DEVICE 0 (ASIO)" appears.
188
189 <a name="load_samples"></a>
190 <h3>4.3&nbsp; Loading Samples</h3>
191 In the middle of the screen below the volume slider, you see the sampler
192 channel strip pane. press on the round button located on the left.
193 This will create a new sampler channel. Click on "Load Instrument".
194 This opens a dialog which allows you to select an instrument to be
195 loaded in the sampler channel
196
197 (for information on how to use "orchestras" <a
198 href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/jsampler/manual/html/jsampler.html#USING_ORCHESTRAS">click
199 here</a>, but note: orchestras, a.k.a "instruments database" is not yet supported in this
200 first Windows version of LinuxSampler, but will certainly be on the next Windows release).
201
202 On the row&nbsp; "Select instrument from file" click on the orange icon
203 located on the right side. This opens a file dialog which allows you to
204 select a sample to be loaded
205 (currently only the GIG format is supported).
206 Select the sample to be loaded and then click on "Open".
207 At this point the fields Instrument file shows the filename.
208 You can click on the Instrument index and select the specific
209 instrument contained in the instrument file. Now press "OK".<br>
210 <br>
211 While it loads you see: "Loading" .. "90%" .. "100%" <br>
212 <br>
213 Once loaded, you see the Instrument's name: i.e.&nbsp;"FreePiano"<br>
214 <br>
215 On the left side of the sampler channel click on the arrow below
216 "Options".
217 This pane permits to set MIDI input device, port and channel and oudio
218 output channel.
219 Notice that under Windows MME the Port value is always 0.
220 So the only values you can change is "MIDI device" (normally 0 if you
221 created only a single
222 MIDI input device) and the MIDI channel (from 1 to 16).
223
224 <a name="save_session"></a>
225 <h3>4.4&nbsp; Saving a Sampler Session</h3>
226 Click on the 3rd icon from the left on the row where you see the round
227 icon with the LinuxSampler "S"-shape logo.
228 Now select the directory where you want to save the file to (extension
229 .lscp = <i>Linux Sampler Control Protocol</i>).
230 Enter the name and press save (add .lscp at end of file otherwise you
231 will not see it in the file-open dialog later, when you want to load it again).<br>
232 <br>
233 Next time you can load a sampler session by clicking on the second icon
234 from the left, then select a .lscp file in the file dialog and press "Open".
235 This will automatically set up the MIDI devices and audio devices,
236 create the sampler channels and load all the samples that were previously
237 loaded by you in the saved sampler session.
238
239 <a name="houston"></a>
240 <h3>5.&nbsp; Installation Troubleshooting</h3>
241 <ul>
242 <li>
243 <div style="background-color: #FFF2F2;">
244 <u>Problem:</u> The LinuxSampler backend application
245 (<i>linuxsampler.exe</i>) fails to start with an error message that
246 claims that a DLL file is missing (e.g. <i>libatkmm-1.6-1.dll</i>)
247 </div>
248 <div style="background-color: #F2FFF2;">
249 <u>Reason / Solution:</u>
250 It could happen that due to previous installations of Gtk+ and gtkmm
251 DLLs even after deinstallation leave some stale keys in the windows
252 registry which could fool the installer into believing that the needed
253 DLLs are already installed therefore skipping its installation which
254 will cause the sampler not being able to start due to the missing
255 DLLs. We recommend in this case to install gtk+ and gtkmm manually as
256 described above in "<a href="#install_wo_inet">Installation without
257 Internet</a>". Just install those mentioned Gtk+ and gtkmm versions
258 and then LinuxSampler should work correctly.
259 </div>
260 </li>
261 <li>
262 <div style="background-color: #FFF2F2;">
263 <u>Problem:</u> The LinuxSampler backend application
264 (<i>linuxsampler.exe</i>) fails to start with the error message
265 "<i>The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000001d). Click
266 on OK to terminate the application.</i>"
267 </div>
268 <div style="background-color: #F2FFF2;">
269 <u>Reason / Solution:</u><a name="old_cpu_workaround"></a>
270 This first Windows release of LinuxSampler requires at least an Intel
271 Pentium4 processor or a recent AMD processor. If you have an older
272 processor and get the error message from above, you can use the
273 following workaround for now:
274 <ol>
275 <li>Download and extract
276 <a href="http://download.linuxsampler.org/dev/win32_probs/ls686_20071207.zip">
277 these replacement binaries.
278 </a>
279 </li>
280 <li>Copy the 3 binaries manually in your LinuxSampler installation
281 directory (default installation directory:
282 "C:\Program Files\LinuxSampler"), that is overwrite the existing
283 binaries in the LS installation directory with the 3 ones from the
284 zip file.
285 </li>
286 </ol>
287 Use this workaround only if you got the mentioned error message,
288 because the replacement binaries will otherwise decrease runtime
289 efficiency! This is of course just a temporary workaround. We'll
290 address this issue with the next release of LinuxSampler (see also
291 <a href="https://bugs.linuxsampler.org/cgi-bin/show_bug.cgi?id=67">
292 bug report #67</a>).
293 </div>
294 </li>
295 </ul>
296
297 <a name="docs"></a>
298 <h3>6.&nbsp; Detailed Documentation</h3>
299 You find more detailed documentation about our software, i.e. about JSampler
300 or gigedit on our official <a href="http://linuxsampler.org/documentation.html">
301 LinuxSampler documentation site</a>.
302
303 <a name="bugs"></a>
304 <h3>7.&nbsp; Bugs, Problems and Feature Requests</h3>
305 Since the Windows port of LinuxSampler is very young, there could be several
306 bugs which we hope to root out soon.
307 Please report them using our bug tracking system:<br>
308 <br>
309 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://bugs.linuxsampler.org/">http://bugs.linuxsampler.org/</a><br>
310 <br>
311 Some bugs and problems I discovered so far:
312 <ul>
313 <li>when adding a channel there noises could occur while playing on other
314 channels</li>
315 <li>if you overload the sampler (CPU overload or disk overload) it
316 produces noises</li>
317 <li>when editing an instrument using gigedit, after saving it, it could
318 happen that LinuxSampler does not accept commands from the GUI anymore.
319 if this happens close the GUI and the LinuxSampler console window and
320 restart both.</li>
321 </ul>
322
323 <a name="contact"></a>
324 <h3>8.&nbsp; Contact</h3>
325 If you have questions or want to help us to improve the sampler,
326 subscribe to the <a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/developers.html">
327 LinuxSampler Developer's mailing list</a>. Alternatively, since I did most
328 of of the Windows porting, you can write me (Benno) directly about Windows
329 related issues. You can find my email address here:<br>
330 <br>
331 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.linuxsampler.org/developers.html">http://www.linuxsampler.org/developers.html</a>
332 <br><br>
333 That's it, enjoy!<br>
334 <br>
335
336 </body>
337 </html>

  ViewVC Help
Powered by ViewVC