The price is, the cras volume-slider is dead then (of course) and I have to start a separate mixer in the crouton guest. At the moment I simply start a second window with the alsamixer:

sudo startxiwi xterm -e alsamixer -c1

... it is not necessary to start the alsamixer from the guest-system. On the chrome command-shell the alsamixer is available directly, so it can be used from there. You can start Pianoteq by sending it in the background with " -b" and then adjust the volume with alsamixer on the returned command-shell:

chronos@localhost/$ sudo startxiwi -b /home/alice/Pianoteq\ 5/amd64/Pianoteq\ 5
chronos@localhost/$ alsamixer -c3

"-c3" stands for card 3 for example, if that is the index of your audio-card listed by "aplay -l".

Searching the web shows, that Google replaced the GUI subsystem X11 in one of the hidden updates with something own called “Freon”.  So my access with host-x11 in crouton must fail. But the crouton-developers were busy and built a nice new integration, that is simpler than before and makes use of the Chromium windows.

I’d like to share my first steps to make use of “xiwi”:

First I updated my crouton guest-environment. Instead of “-t x11” I updated to the new target “-t xiwi”:
 
sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -u -n jessie -t xiwi
#It is a Debian Linux (Jessie)

Xiwi has to be glued to the App “crouton integration” which can be installed with one click in the chromium browser from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/deta...nbcgkbijom

I can start an instance of Pianoteq directly from the chrome shell then with:

sudo startxiwi /home/alice/Pianoteq\ 5/amd64/Pianoteq\ 5

A normal window or tab with PTQ inside appears on the chrome desktop. By default PTQ is using chromes integrated audioserver “cras”. Which is nice, so chromes volume-slider can be used as usual (also the symbol-keys).

But … cras is again slower on my Acer than direct hardware access, so I decided to stop the audio server before I start PTQ with ...

sudo stop cras

… and choose the direct soundcard access in PTQ’s devices.

The price is, the cras volume-slider is dead then (of course) and I have to start a separate mixer in the crouton guest. At the moment I simply start a second window with the alsamixer:

sudo startxiwi xterm -e alsamixer -c1

The wonderful Pianoteq v5.3.0 is running again on my chromebook with 48 kHz, 64 samples (1.3 ms).

cheers

links:
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/wi...%28xiwi%29

cheers

... it can't open all the way 180 degrees to lie flat.

We need a new category of notebooks ... flatbooks ;-)

My Acer chromebook 11 (cb3-111) has a very wide angle, but not enough to look like an open songbook.
Personally I wouldn't like anything smaller, than DIN A4 for displaying sheet-music, and just chord progressions would fit on an ebook-reader. A cheap 17" TFT connected to the HDMI of the chromebook would do it to me.

But I agree it would be nice to have a 180° chromebook and not to pay for a Lenovo Yoga. I will open my chromebook soon and take a look at the display-hinge.

cheers

PS: I removed the 12 screws, but I could not open the cb3-111 easily and don't want to damage it. Eventually I will try it again, when I can find instructions on the Internet.

Wonder if there's any instructions on hacking the hinge.  Considering how cheap this thing is, I sorta don't are it's no longer under warranty.

And chromebooks are fairly new hardwares and designs, maybe the companies have learned their lesson with noisy (signal and fan) and hot "buggers" of the last decade.

For a while I used a 7 year old Lenovo T61 for Pianoteq. Although it has an onboard-soundcard from reputational 'Analog Devices', I stopped using it because I couldn't get the fan quiet enough. Just for interest I measured its output-impedance this evening and came to around 60 Ohms:

T61: 344 mV -> 123 mV => 59 Ohm

cheers

Yes, me too. - Can you name a device, you had noise-problems with?

As I said, I have yet to find a 'good' device. I used to have a Google Galaxy Nexus (made by Samsung): eek. I have an S4 now: a bit better, but barely. I have a small Asus tablet (MeMo 7"): ouch. My current main PC is an i5 Win8 tablet (Acer W700): yikes.

My old Cowon D2 mobile audio player behaves like a dream compared to the S4... and the S4 is anything but 'cheap' hardware after all (even if I bought it after the S5 came out). And that Acer tablet is so bad I even hear the noise through the desktop speakers. To use this for Pianoteq is unthinkable, so I use my Zoom R24's audio device.

I was talking about the noise produced by the sound device itself.

Yes, me too. - Can you name a device, you had noise-problems with?

... I even can't stand the fan-noise of a laptop standing next to me while playing :-)

Just to be clear: I was talking about the noise produced by the sound device itself. You can hear all kinds of high-frequency stuff there, especially on modern mobile hardware. The price for highly-integrated design, I guess. But yes, fans can be quite pesky buggers, too. ;-)

At least all modern devices I know, ranging from smartphone and small tablet to i5 notebook, have problems with excessive noise. And I really mean excessive.

Fortunately I don't have these problems, as both netbooks are fanless and SSD equipped, which helps a lot I guess. But I know, what you mean ... I had an eeeBOX that was noisy as hell, intermittend chirps, hum, hiss ...

... I even can't stand the fan-noise of a laptop standing next to me while playing :-)

Btw, I guess I found the reason, why the headphone-outputs sound different. I measured the output-impedance today and found 59 Ohm for the Acer E3-111 versus 6.5 Ohm at the Chromebook CB3-111. The most good headphone-amps have a low impedance.

I hope, I didn't make a mistake, so here are my raw results:
I generated a 1kHz sine on each laptop with audacity and measured the voltage at the headphone-output once open and once bridged with a 33 Ohm resistor (ceramic). From the voltage-drop I calculated the output-impedance:

E3-111: 458 mV -> 165 mV => 59 Ohm
CB3-111: 385 mV -> 322 mV => 6.5 Ohm

@Mossy: Yes, there is a high risk, that someone unintentionally "recovers" a chromebook by pressing space . Google should stop that silly hurdle soon, if they want to be innovation-friendly not only on paper.

Interesting, that the guest-installation doesn't finish, when a chromium source isn't available. AFAIK the Google's audio-server CRAS is compiled from these sources (but should be disposable, when ALSA can be reached directly).

My wife powered the machine on, was puzzled by the initial screen warning that developer mode was one ... and pressed space which blew away the entire install.  (The message says press space to disable developer mode.)  The Google/ChromeOS stuff ... easy, log back in, sync and everything is back.

I haven't been able to reinstall Crouton yet because I currently am working overseas where many Google services are blocked ... one of them is the chromium source server needed to finish the setup.  Using the automatic proxy feature to download via VPN corrupts the Ubuntu packages (known bug in Ubuntu).  I'll probably have sync an internal chromium source server to finish this install.

Without measuring the headphones-outputs, a lot of reasons are possible. The ALC Output seems to have a slight roll-off in the bass and an overall leaner/thinner sound.

The byt-max has more mids and lower mids and a more real piano balance.  At the same time it is a bit clearer and transparent to my ears.

I like the sound-characteristics of both laptops and I'm sure, the differences could be easily measured (output-impedance, EQ). The byt-max98090 seems to be the more professional one, because it has many, many mixer items. For the moment I just wanted to share, that there are differences.

ciao

PS: Compared with the same 32 Ohm headphones Beyerdynamic DT 235.

The only command in my guest system is now:

$ host-x11 openbox-session

If a .config/openbox/autostart exists in the users homedir, then its content is executed. I filled it with ...

xterm -e alsamixer -c0 &
~/Pianoteq\ 5/amd64/Pianoteq\ 5 &

..., which opens a simple mixer-window for card0 and another window for Pianoteq. The volume is adjustable with arrow-up and -down yet.

cheers

Mutter seems to work the best but if you bring it to the foreground to kill it -- it just turns your computer off.  It's fine if you just leave the chroot and let the system auto-kill it.

And from what I can tell, touchscreen actions are being captured by Chrome's X server but none of the underlying window managers know what to do with it.  When I first start up Pianoteq, tap-to-click on the touchpad works perfect.  But the moment I touch the screen, tap-to-click is disabled and I have to press down on the mouse buttons first.  What this implies is the window manager received a touch signal that looked like "hold-down" and it's up to the desktop (Unity,Gnome3,etc) to interpret what to do.