Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 · Introduction 1.1 · Authors 1.2 · Document History 1.3 · Contact Information and Resources 2 · Questions & Answers 2.1 · Why do I get "Cannot access memory at address 0x706f6e6d" when running BEAST in gdb? 2.2 · Why doesn't my synthesis network produce any sound? 2.3 · Why can't I get the synthesis networks to work? 2.4 · Why do I see BEAST-WARNING **: strange, can't find any plugins, please check .../plugins on startup? 2.5 · Why can't I get BEAST to load my .mp3, .aiff, .something sample files? 2.6 · Why does BEAST sometimes crash with a segmentation fault on startup? 2.7 · Why doesn't BEAST 0.4.0 play songs from earlier versions? 2.8 · What is a .bse file? 2.9 · What are the minimum hardware requirements for BEAST? 2.10 · BEAST crashes upon creation of new synthesis networks? 2.11 · How do i get MIDI to work? 2.12 · GCC/G++ crashes or leaks or hangs when compiling BEAST 2.13 · Unwanted signal distortion when using multiple tracks 2.14 · What platforms are supported? 1.1 AuthorsThe main author of BEAST/BSE is Tim Janik.
A list of the various contributions is given in the
About box of BEAST. 1.2 Document HistoryThis FAQ was written by Tim Janik.
Initial markup was done by Dave Seidel, until
Alper Ersoy implemented
a new markup parser for BEAST documentation. Around the
0.4.1 release, the docs got migrated to texinfo format.
After the 0.6.6 release, the documentation system was rewritten, so
all docs inclusing the FAQ got migrated to doxer format. 1.3 Contact Information and Resources
2.1 Why do I get "Cannot access memory at address 0x706f6e6d" when running BEAST in gdb?Some versions of gdb have problems figuring dynamic plugins, we can only hope
that this is going to be fixed some time soon. Newer versions of gdb may
already figure what's going on with the plugins if you simply restart BEAST
within gdb.
UPDATE: This problem has not been reproduced with gdb versions newer than 5. 2.2 Why doesn't my synthesis network produce any sound?There are various possible causes for this. First, make sure you have
BEAST correctly installed and accessing your sound card by running
one of the synthesis tests in the ./test/ subdirectory.
For custom synthesis networks, make sure you have something noisy (e.g.
the audio output of an oscillator) hooked up to a PcmOutput module, and
have the network's "Auto Activate" parameter (on it's "Parameters"
notebook page, section "Playback Settings") enabled. 2.3 Why can't I get the synthesis networks to work?This is probably a plugin loading problem, most synthesis networks
require plugins and won't work if there are any problems loading/finding
them.
BEAST loads its plugins from some common installation directory. It therefore
needs to be properly installed before you can make use of its plugins. Simply
starting it from within the build directory is not sufficient. 2.4 Why do I see BEAST-WARNING **: strange, can't find any plugins, please check .../plugins on startup?See previous item. 2.5 Why can't I get BEAST to load my .mp3, .aiff, .something sample files?Import functionality for foreign sample types is always being worked on, but due
to the sheer multitude of formats out there chances are that a specific format
is not yet supported.
However, sample file loaders have much improved in the last versions, and at
this point exist for Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio 1.0/2.0/2.5 Layer I/II/III,
RIFF/WAVE, and .bsewave (BSE multi sample format) files. 2.6 Why does BEAST sometimes crash with a segmentation fault on startup?This was due to a bug in the X Keyboard extension. BEAST tries to figure the
country specifics of the keyboard layout, using the XKB extension. Apparently,
there are some allocation problems in XkbFreeKeyboard() or XkbFreeClientMap()
in libX11, which can cause random crashes. Usually BEAST will run fine when
restarted.
UPDATE: Recent versions of XKB seem to have fixed this problem. 2.8 What is a .bse file?
BEAST stores saved data in BSE files. These files can hold
everything associated with a project, such as the definition of
synthesis networks, songs with their notes and tracks, and even complete music
sample files. Except for raw sample data, the contents are stored
in a human readable text form using lisp syntax. The textual file
contents may even be manually edited, as long as the binary
appendix used to store wave data doesn't get corrupted.
The recommended mime type image for BSE files looks like this: 2.10 BEAST crashes upon creation of new synthesis networks?
BEAST uses the
GnomeCanvas Library
to display synthesis networks. That library has a malicious redrawing bug
in versions up to (including) 2.2.0.1 triggering an assertion if the code
is compiled with debugging output, which looks like: GnomeCanvas-ERROR **: file gnome-canvas.c: line 3509 (gnome_canvas_request_update_real): assertion failed: (canvas->idle_id != 0) aborting... This issue got fixed with version 2.2.0.2, so users encountering crashes with BEAST upon creation of synthesis networks will need to upgrade their GnomeCanvas Library to at least 2.2.0.2. 2.11 How do i get MIDI to work?
BEAST comes with a test/midi-test.bse file in the test/ directory
of recent releases, it works out of the box with properly setup MIDI drivers
and MIDI pianos. Setting up MIDI drivers can be a tough task on its own but is
beyond the scope of this FAQ and is already taken care of by
The Linux MIDI-HOWTO,
which provides good descriptions and further links to related documentation. 2.12 GCC/G++ crashes or leaks or hangs when compiling BEAST
Recent versions of BEAST make use of C++ templates pretty heavily.
This allowes us to greatly simplify some code portions (for instance
the plugin implementations), but it's also a stress-test for the
compilers out there. So people encountering problems compiling C++ code
in BEAST should try to upgrade their compilers as a first meassure. 2.13 Unwanted signal distortion when using multiple tracks
The signal output of a song's tracks in BEAST are added up before they are
routed to the sound output driver. If this added-up signal exceeds the maximum
amplitude supported by the output driver (usually the machine's sound card),
the output values are clipped to the supported range, causing the audio signal to
encounter distortion of varying amounts, depending on the signal utilization
of the channels.
In the current version (0.6.2), the distortion can be circumvented by adding a
post-processing network to songs which attenuates the incoming signals (left and
right). The Quick Start Guide has a section detailing the setup of postprocessing
networks.
For future versions, a mixer is already in development, which will allow to
handle this situation in much more flexible and adequate ways. 2.14 What platforms are supported?
Beast is mainly developed under Linux and has been ported to some BSD versions.
The Download page of the Beast website links
to the available packages and source code repositories for the various supported
Linux and BSD variants. Some effort also went into a Windows port, more details about the state of which can be found on the Windows port wiki page. Other operating systems are currently not supported, but the project is always taking patches and looks for new volounteers. So to start a new port, simply write your patch and contact the mailing list and developers. |
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