This project is a Linux MIDI Synth library based on the Sonivox EAS Synthesizer published by Google on the Android Open Source Project. It is a real time GM synthesizer without needing external soundfonts, using embedded samples instead. It consumes very little resources, so it may be indicated in Linux projects for small embedded devices.
A multiplatform alternative fork of this project can be found here: multiplatform-sonivoxeas.
The library uses ALSA Sequencer MIDI input and PulseAudio output. Complete compile-time dependencies are:
- Qt5/Qt6, http://www.qt.io/
- Drumstick 2, for ALSA MIDI input. http://sourceforge.net/projects/drumstick/
- PulseAudio, for audio output. http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/
Just to clarify the Drumstick dependency: this project requires Drumstick::ALSA, but Drumstick does not depend on this project at all. There is a Drumstick::RT backend that includes the Sonivox synth as well, but both projects are independent regarding this synthesizer.
The project directory contains:
- cmdlnsynth: Command line sample program using the synthesizer library.
- guisynth: GUI sample program using the synthesizer library. See the screenshot above.
- libsvoxeas: The Linux synthesizer shared library, using ALSA Sequencer and PulseAudio.
- sonivox: The sonivox synth library, forked from the AOSP source files, as a git submodule. It is used as a fallback if the sonivox library external dependency is not found at configuration time.
Remember to use git clone --recurse-submodules when cloning the repository to populate the working copy with all the sources, including the submodule's. If you forgot to do that, then you may need to git submodule update --init --recursive afterwards. This is only for people cloning the GitHub repository, because the submodule is not included in the released tarballs.
Use your favorite IDE or text editor with the source files. My preference is QtCreator: https://www.qt.io/ide/ To build, test and debug you may also find QtCreator interesting. You may also use CMake (>= 3.9) to build the project instead of qmake.
Copyright (C) 2016-2024 Pedro López-Cabanillas.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
This project includes code from the Sonivox EAS synthesizer, Copyright Sonic Network Inc. 2006. Sonivox EAS belongs to the Android Open Source Project. It has been forked from the official repositories:
https://github.com/pedrolcl/sonivox
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
The Android robot is reproduced or modified from work created and shared by Google and used according to terms described in the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution License.