written by: john
Welcome to the new Developers Forum at Eigenlabs. This is the place to discuss the Open Source release of EigenD, ask questions about working with it and share your ideas. If it is your first time here, it's a good idea to have a look at the Developers Wiki Page where you'll find guidelines about how to download the code, our Contributor Agreement and other useful information.Welcome to the new Developers Forum at Eigenlabs. This is the place to discuss the Open Source release of EigenD, ask questions about working with it and share your ideas. If it is your first time here, it's a good idea to have a look at the Developers Wiki Page where you'll find guidelines about how to download the code, our Contributor Agreement and other useful information.
John
Hi.
Great news that EigenD is now open-sourced. I'm hoping to build this on Linux - should this be possible right now?
Thanks.
Hi fourcheeze
I believe that most of EigenD builds fine on Linux (we in fact run a version of it on Linux on our factory calibration jigs). If you want to use it to make noise though there will be some work to do - the USB drivers need to be made low latency (this is only possible for Alpha and Tau right now, we don't have the time to sort binaries out for Pico I'm afraid, not yet anyway) and the audio I/O needs writing. I don't think it's a dramatic amount of work. Jim has a pretty good idea about what needs to be done for this, I'll ask him to post some comments here.
John
Hi John,
I'll certainly have a go building it and see where that takes me.
I think it would be amazing for the Eigenharp if it did run on Linux. I'm not sure if you are familiar with devices like http://www.raspberrypi.org/
but I think the idea of being able to use one of those instead of a Mac would be a huge bonus to the appeal of the instrument and make it all so much more portable, not to mention giving you a whole new range of accessories to sell.
Thanks,
Richard
Hi Richard
The main downsides of running it on Linux right now is the inability to run AU's or VST's easily, although I do believe that this may be possible with Wine these days, after the usual amount of configuration hell. My main desktop machine runs Ubuntu but I have to confess that all my studio kit is Macs running Protools, Sibelius or Logic. Every now and then I have another go with Linux, have a day of horrible problems then give up. Music for me isn't about the technology, so any problems tend to drive me mad very quickly. It's been a year or so since the last time I tried though, so maybe its time to have another go.
There are a lot of neat little devices like the one you llnked to, I myself have a number of little ARM boards here running Linux, but none of them are likely to have the raw horsepower to run EigenD unfortunately. You need at least 2G of RAM and a fast processor to get the most from it, and this is still beyond the capabilities of most low cost devices, although this will likely change over time.
I'd love to see EigenD running well on Linux though, please keep us posted as to how you get on. Jim was actually thinking he'd add support for the binary components in to the distribution at some point, so its possible that the Pico could be made to run well too.
John
Hi John,
I'm also a bit of a split personality between Linux and Mac. I started using exclusively Linux (as opposed to Windows) in 1999 right until I was seduced by a Macbook a few years back. However my day job is looking after Linux servers and there are always a few Linux machines around the house doing bits and bobs and I'm always looking for ways to use it more.
I have to confess that I don't know much about the architecture of VST and AU and so I don't know what would be required to have them running on Linux - up to now my computer music experience has been mainly recording from keyboards onto hard drive with a bit of MIDI thrown in. A quick google has found things like http://www.loomer.co.uk/ so maybe there is some hope.
I can believe that most available ARM processors might not have the juice to run eigenD - but what about other low-ish power boards such as http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=69 ?
Anyway, to get back to the matter at hand, I haven't quite got around to building EigenD on Linux... yet. Hoping to try later on this week if the rest of life allows. If I get stuck I'll post in a new thread rather than continuing to hijack the welcome message!
Cheers,
Richard
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