LMMS?

[Len Ovens]

More LMMS stuff. Reading what docs I can find seem to indicate that
stability problems have been fixed since .3.* and ubuntu has .4.10 (latest
is .4.13 which I seem to have from kxstudio ppa) I don't know if debian
has a later version and a sync request should be done (speaking of which
could someone do a sync request for Ardour? I can't as my netbook has
problems right now).

LMMS does seem to have latency problems with pulse (which it will of
course default to) and works fine direct to ALSA or jack. (not tested, but
from docs)

The only listed problems with Jack are the normal "operator doen't know
jack" kinds of problems (failing to hook outputs to to a card).

LMMS is not designed to record audio and has no way of doing so. Syncing a
voice track recorded somewhere else is left to the user. This is not IMO
well documented, but on the other hand does not seem to have been a
problem with our "test subject" :)

Speaking of sync... None of the docs I read (FAQs included) even mention
syncing LMMS to anything else. By anything else I mean: Jack transport,
time code, MTC, MMC etc. I also don't see anything that would indicate it
generates any of these things.

Import and export: I would like to see this explored. Is there an upgrade
path? Does LMMS export .mid files or something that another sequencer can
deal with? I suppose midi out could be recorded on another sequencer, but
without sync, the extra work required to fix that could be a problem. Does
it export those automated chords it creates? Obviously samples would have
to be dealt with differently. After more checking, Export types are wav
and ogg. No midi. I am not even sure there is midi ouput, the docs talk
about getting an external KB working but not an external synth. In any
case each track is setup for in/output separately. It's internal file
format does not seem to be something standard either.

Speaking of samples, there are reportedly problems importing *wav files as
samples. Hmm, isn't that the most obvious lossless file format? Use FLAC.
MP3 files are not supported... but maybe that is a good thing :)  Wav
files at least should be tested.

Hmm, I seem to have been running LMMS with jack as output. Starts Jack on
it's own. Jackd set with -p 128 shows a number of xruns with LMMS sitting
idle. (I haven't looked at why)

For those of you who are still with me at this point. None of these points
are particularly bad or good. They are things to remember if a user asks
questions. Should we include LMMS in US it would be good to remember that
this really is a standalone application. Not only is it not designed to
work with other applications, it really just doesn't have the facilities
to do so. For someone like myself coming from a Linux CLI background of
"app | app | app" etc. this is broken thinking. But then I have never
claimed to be normal or some approximation there of. From a windows pov
maybe this is normal.

-- 
Len Ovens
www.OvenWerks.net