> ludicrously difficult to set up. Laptop + low-latency Linux + Ardour + QLC+...
This resonates [sorry] with me. Linux sound today seems painfully reminiscent of Linux X-Windows 20 years ago. There's a lot of painful voodoo, competing control systems and legions of mostly out-dated forum threads of dead-ends, anecdotal advice, misinformation. I'm hoping that the next Ubuntu Studio will Just Work on the laptop that I have put aside for it and that I won't have to waste more time in the Pulse/Alsa/Jack soup.
I was aware of Guitarix but have not yet played with it. My youngest is learning electric and we've got to the point where we can play together, with me pounding out the bass line on an old classical we had lying around(!). That is a blast but I wasn't really intending to become a bassist. If I were to pick up an electric guitar to fool around on, can Guitarix drop me down an octave and make me a pretend bass player? (I had a quick poke around the Guitarix wiki, couldn't see anything). There must be DAW processing plugins to do this, but I'd really like to be live. Are there other solutions? (apart from buying more instruments I mean...).
Oh, and I love this:
> So I bought a 3D printer and became a CAD guy, I guess
"I had a hard problem to solve... so I... casually nuked it" :)
I've had a lot of success using kxstudio
Along with cadence to manage Jack and alsa and Catia/Claudia for managing studios and ladish sessions.
It can be installed on top of an existing Ubuntu based system without much trouble and after setting it up it works flawlessly for me. I've been using this setup for a few years now.
>legions of mostly out-dated forum threads of dead-ends, anecdotal advice, misinformation
I completely agree with this. Any guide that still recommends qjackctl or manually fucking around with alsa and midi bridges should be completely disregarded. There's zero reason to need to do this any more and there hasn't been for at least half a decade now.
It's really too bad, honestly the flexibility offered by Jack and the huge range of audio software on linux allows for workflows I'd never been able to do on windows. It's pretty much the entire modular linux philosophy applied to making music and it's closest i've come to the same kind of workflow you get with hardware equipment.
Just fiddling around with different plugin routings can give you some pretty cool sounds that can be patched into any Jack aware software you have.
I know Linux fairly well from a server standpoint, but I tried to do some audio stuff recently and couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
BTW, I'm not using any of guitarix's cab sims. Instead I purchased a commercial license to professionally-shot proprietary cab simulation IRs which make all the difference in terms of tone quality. That metal portion of the demo is all about the cab sims.
I know you specifically asked for other options, but everyone reading this: grab a used bass from craigslist or a pawnshop! Something like an older Peavey will do just fine. A decent instrument can be found for a hundred bucks (or less!) and you can always flip it again later.
Any guitarist should fiddle with a bass from time to time. It will make you see the known tunes from the other POV and appreciate some nuances you've never paid attention to.
The scale length on the Mikro bass is only about 28-29 inches so coming from a “real” bass guitar it feels barely any bigger than a Stratocaster. I carry mine in an old Strat gig bag and it fits fine.
Note that from a cursory look at the links, there hasn't been updates since 2018, and the KS project never launched.
It's realtime raspbian. Headless ardour (lua implementation). A mix of guitarix and other amp sims. Proprietary cab sim IRs. Various other effects packages like rkr, ardour-native plugins.
Person speaks to alexa, alexa calls a series of lambdas (basically the not-yet-public API), and sends MQTT messages to the device which is tied to the user's Thingamagig account which is linked to their Alexa account.
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/tree/rpi-4.19.y-rt
Let me know if you have any other questions.
I am curious about the latency of this setup, having used jack and Ardour in the past for recording. I would be very surprised if this rig yields a latency below a couple dozen milliseconds, which, at least for me, is absolutely unbearable when playing guitar.
Even with a dedicated DSP, effects processors in the early 2000's (like the otherwise excellent Vox TonelabSE) greatly struggled with latency issues.
With a video skill like this, I can submit APL documents and then long-running commands to make it keep "doing something" throughout the playback. There is a limit to how long you can command it to "delay" but I think it's more than 5 minutes or something.
I haven't tried it, but for non-video skills I've read that you can play silent audio for a period of time to keep the skill open.
Janky, for sure.
"do x"
vs
"Alexa, do x"
vs
"Alexa, ask AppName to do x"
The first is when the skill does a thing and then immediately starts listening again. The blue bar is already there and you don't need to say "Alexa".
The second is when the skill is still open but not currently listening. Takes a bit of hackery to keep the skill from constantly closing, namely, long-running APL commands.
The third is when the skill is closed and you're trying to get it to do something. I call this "deep launching" but it almost never works. Amazon has built an amazing system here, but the Alexa system needs work on recognizing skill names for deep launching.
My portable solution is an Intel Compute Stick coupled with a Vox AmPlug I/O for 24-bit/48KHz input, powered by a 10Ah powerbank. I use Bias FX 2, but one could use Amplitube or Helix Native just as easily. I attach these to my strap and it is completely out of the way when I'm playing. The whole setup on the hardware side cost me <$130, and in return I get the best modeling software can provide. It is however a pain to control.
Probably the "cleanest" portable solution would be the Boss Waza Air headphones. There are no wires at all!, and all modeling is done on the headphones themselves. At $400, they are on the expensive side though.
If one wanted a small amp, it is probably hard to beat Positive Grid's Spark, which can now be had for ~$200 and is also voice-controlled (a gimmick if you ask me). An even cheaper solution would one of Laney's Mini or MiniStack amps, which hook up to an Android or an iPhone that runs ToneBridge. That's a lot of effects and modeling for ~$60.
Also, you seem to know quite a bit about the market. Would you be willing to talk? Email me at cyrus@ my product's domain name.
If you can market this and produce it at scale I guarantee you'll sell millions of these things to the middle of the road guitar center learning to play guy. That demographic is fucking huge and probably represents 80% of the guitar based economy.
I would market it that way. I would market this as an easy fuss free interface for conjuring classic tones to learn and play with your favorite artists. If possible a Rocksmith style learn along feature would be amazing.
Really impressed with the simple interface, the apparent ease with which you dial up reasonably good jcm 800 and acoustic type sounds, and how the Alexa script seems to automatically dial in a tone to match the backing track.
Really well done. If you get it to market hit me up I guarantee I can sell these things.
How much work have you put into this so far?
But that's pretty challenging from an engineering standpoint and Alexa skills can't be controlled externally yet. I briefly added a footswitch and could get Thingamagig to cycle through the tones of a particular song with it, but the Alexa screen won't update on that "outside" information.
Amazon has said they'll consider it but my gut says that's way down the list of things they're trying to do.
Thingamagig understands the underlying composition which means it can automate tones, loopers, lights, cameras, etc. That need was the genesis of this project and that's where its going. Everybody else (including Spark, Fender Play) seems to think the playalong is the end goal, which is why they short circuit the hard work of building the composition library by integrating Spotify or whatever.
Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm right. Maybe we're both right. We'll see, I guess.
The main thing I'm wondering is whether there's a way to record with this (so here's my wishlist). Often I'll be practicing along to another song, or just noodling around, and I'll really wish I had recorded what I just played. Would be amazing if I could say, "Alexa, record that", or "Alexa, record the last 90 seconds".
Similarly: "Alexa, record this." (and then after X minutes if I forget to stop the recording / no input is detected Alexa asks if I still want to be recording).
"Alexa play a metronome at 80 bpm and record this". "Alexa, play the last track and record a new track" (gotta make this very clear so as not to confuse overwriting the original vs recording additional layers). Sync the recording folder w/ Dropbox so it's ready for my DAW. Save two streams: one clean of the raw guitar (so I can tweak to my heart's delight later), one with the applied effects.
I'm curious to dig into the tones more; a lot of apps are goodish but don't quite get it right. S-Gear is the best plugin I've found. Also, I'm a huge fan of the amPlug 2 line from Vox. $40 for really impressive tones via a battery powered gadget as big as a few matchboxes. Sounds great hooked up to speakers and good enough to use in recording. But they don't give you a lot of options in terms of effects.
Great project! Hope the above is useful — I'll be following along!
$2K (and an absolute steal at this price), high end DSPs, high end multichannel ADCs/DACs. Thankfully, lots of knobs and buttons, and no Alexa of any kind. Sounds amazing. I have one.
Reminded me also of the Jesusonic [0] FX processor, by Justin Frankel [1] of Winamp, SHOUTcast, REAPER, ...
The Wizard also include those simulators but the nice thing is it uses analog knobs. But you can program presets and the knobs will move back to the preset settings.
