Reply by groovy

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Re: Chromebook + Pianoteq

Thank you, kalessin. Not impossible, that the small dimensions of those devices play a role. But I more like the wishful thinking :-), that chromebooks have less of those design flaws, because they are build with multimedia-consumers in mind and audio is important for many nowadays.

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

Last edited by groovy (01-10-2014 18:42)

Reply by Mossy

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Re: Chromebook + Pianoteq

The worse design flaw of this Acer C720 Chromebook ... it can't open all the way 180 degrees to lie flat.  That makes it very unwieldy to use on an acoustic piano (to display scores -- not to run Pianoteq).

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.

https://soundcloud.com/mossy456/

Reply by groovy

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Re: Chromebook + Pianoteq

Mossy wrote:

... 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

http://s14.directupload.net/images/141010/i4zjsvaz.jpg

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.

Last edited by groovy (11-10-2014 08:05)

Reply by groovy

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Re: Chromebook + Pianoteq

It is a good idea to inhibit the powersavings of Chrome OS to avoid unwanted sleep states. It can be done by starting 'croutonpowerd -i &' in the guest (for example I put it in my .config/openbox/autostart).

cheers

Last edited by groovy (14-10-2014 07:18)

Reply by groovy

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Re: Chromebook + Pianoteq

I have not used the chromebook since a long time (Pianoteq was v5.1.4 the last time), it is just my “backup-pianosystem”. But yesterday I wanted to start PTQ and it failed with “No Chromium OS X server is available” :-/

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

Last edited by groovy (19-08-2015 21:08)

Reply by groovy

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Re: Chromebook + Pianoteq

groovy wrote:

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".

Last edited by groovy (20-08-2015 19:54)