Re: [Lmuse-user] Newbie: Midi needed for muse or how to use muse??

[Rocco <roc...@ne...>]

 >> I am quite new in making music with a computer. In the
 >> last couple of days I tried to play a little bit with
 >> muse (0.6.3 on SuSE8.2). got some questions:

 >> 1. When I start muse, every five seconds I got the
 >> message: "ALSA: Capture xrun: read/write error in
 >> state 2: Success" What does this mean?

 > It does probably mean that you are not running muse
 > with realtime performance enabled and/or that you
 > don't have a patched kernel. To achieve best performance
 > you need to install a kernel with a lowlatency patch
 > enabled.

I just wanted to add a few things (for what their worth). I've been 
using SuSE (since) version 6.4 and they have always been careful to set 
things up to work will with audio (right out of the box). I know 
(practically) *nothing* about low latency patches and such things. And 
maybe that's because SuSE has taken care of it. It's just a guess, but I 
  know that audio has worked pretty well right out of the box for the 
different versions of SuSE I've used.

Which leads me to the one approach that seems to eliminate a lot of 
problems for me when I'm working with audio. That is... when I'm working 
with a new program, I *always* run it (and work with it) as "root user". 
And I run as root with (whichever program I'm trying to get to know) for 
a *long* time. This is because running as root provides a big step 
towards running the program in the most ideal environment *first*. Once 
I know how the program is *supposed* to work, then I take the steps to 
get it to run correctly as a "normal user".

As the person mentioned in this email, one of the biggest things that 
you will hear about is "running with realtime scedualing" (I hope my 
terminology is correct). It's another subject that I'm not qualifide to 
speak on. I just know that (for most audio progams that I run) there is 
an option to run with "real time scedualing". And I beleive you can only 
do this if you have root privlidges (running as root user or suid 
root... which is another story). And I know (in my simple minded 
approach) that the progam runs better if I use this feature. For 
instance... doesn't Muse take advantage of this (feature???) by running 
with the -R flag (as root user)?

I hope I haven't added more confusion. But I would suggest to run muse 
as a root user (until you're really, really familiar how it works), with 
the -R flag. And be careful not to do something that will mess up you 
system (root user can change any aspect of the computer... unlike a 
"normal user"). For instance, you can delete every file on your computer 
if you wanted to if you're running as root. And the beautiful part is 
that you only would have to issue one (short) command to do it (hehe).

Oh yea... I can't remember how SuSE 8.1 does it... But ***shut off*** 
the aRts server. I know with SuSE 9.0 you go to ---> Control Center ---> 
Sound & Multimedia ---> Sound System ---> (un)check "Start aRts 
soundserver on KDE startup" (disable it). I would then reboot if you 
really want to make sure it's disabled. Having aRts running seems to 
conflict with other things (again... a subject I'm not qualified to 
speak on... but I know it will conflict with other things).

 >>3. I do not have a Jack server. What impact on the program does this
 >>have?

Jack is great (and I think) it will be the future. But
you're new and have a lot of issues in front of you. I
would suggest to just not mess with jack at the moment.
Get to know Muse (and other programs that don't (require)
you to use jack). Then as you get familiar with how things
work, learn how jack does it's business. I run tons of
music software on linux and have only used jack a few times.
And I'm getting things running together pretty well. Of
course, jack keeps improving and they even have included a
"transport" feature that allows (transport aware programs)
to sync with each other. But just keep it simple for now
and get to know muse without jack. It's a worthy progam to
"get to know'.

I would love to tell you how to shut the aRts server off for every user 
and even when you reinstall (so you don't forget to do it when/if you 
reinstall SuSE again). But I'm sure you have your hands full with being 
a linux/audio newbie. We'll save that for later.

Hope this helped...
Rocco