[GLLUG] Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 PCI sequencer problems

[Charles Ulrich]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Scott Webster Wood <treii28 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I'm not even 100% sure the wavetable will be supported by the kernel
> driver.  Some of the dated comments I've seen on the ES1371 seem to suggest
> that it's first usage was on cards that did not have wavetable built in so
> whether or not it is supported seems to be a big question mark.  Without
> knowing specifically how the alsa-midi or the driver's implementation of it
> work, I can't know for certain if mapping to the device 16 port 0 is trying
> to send the data into the card's wavetable or if it thinks it is sending it
> to the joystick/midi-out port.  The data at least seems to be going
> somewhere, or at least it's not producing any errors.

Ah, yes, the MIDI port is what you're seeing in your aplaymidi output
and that's exactly where the MIDI data is being sent.

> As far as the soundcard, sounds like a good offer - it my be worth a trip to
> Lansing if for nothing else than something to play with.  I assume by E10k
> support that means soundfont support and that would definitely be something
> I'd like to play with more.

Emu10k1 is just the chip that the SoundBlaster Live cards are based
on. But yes, they all support sound fonts for MIDI.

> Ultimately I'm probably going to get some kind
> of a tablet-PC to work as a combination windows box and
> soft-synth-sound-module for that controller.  (so I can convert my existing
> laptop to mostly linux usage)  When I got the M-Audio I was originally
> thinking I'd get something like a sound-canvas or other GM module for it,
> but it seems the industry trend is sampling devices that take the VSTi stuff
> or a PC with similar support.  Laptops unfortunately don't seem to have the
> VSTi hardware support as an option (at least not in any I've seen yet) and
> if I were to start gigging, I wouldn't really want to have to haul a damn
> desktop around - besides, the touch screen would be a nice feature for doing
> VSTi effects and for the monitoring/selecting of the soft-synth options.
> SW

If you're buying new hardware and are thinking about going the
proprietary route, take a look at the iPad. It has a ton of music
software available these days. I believe you can get a MIDI and audio
interface for it, so all you have to do is hook up a keyboard or
whatever, buy one of the zillion instrument or synthesizer apps, and
start playing. Some of the DAWs for iPad look like they are pretty
full-featured. One of the blogs I follow, Synthtopia
(http://www.synthtopia.com/) has a lot of posts on iOS audio tools.