I've been a Mac user since 2006, and for good reason - nothing
compares to the build quality and attention to detail Apple puts into
its products. Still, I'm beginning to get this
half-sinking/half-exhilarating feeling that the next big thing is
Ubuntu (pronounced
oo-boon-too) Linux. And why not? After all, "Bunt" is free, yet
it offers much more functionality than a stock install of Windows - and
with none of the malware troubles. It's not quite Mac OS X, but it's
slowly getting there.
That said, I've been conducting a few experiments lately with Bunt,
as you may have already
read. This latest experiment involves a computer I was about ready
to donate to Goodwill, and it has been an eye-opener for me.
Holy Pentium III, Batman!
It might not look like much. Okay, let's face it, it isn't much.
This old PC is sort of a hand-me-down (long story), and at the time we
got it, it was a major improvement over our old Compaq. Sort of.
Up until last year, it was running Windows Me with free
abandon, giving me the BSOD or locking up completely (depending on the
mood it was in). Finally, I had had enough. Burning the first Bunt ISO
I could get my hands on, I installed Linux on the old beast and never
looked back.
Over time, that old PC has grown on me. I've added some new RAM
to it, taken from a pair of Power Mac G4s that my school was about to
recycle. I had two hard drives running in it (until the good one, an 18
GB Western Digital Caviar, died ). And it's had up to three optical
drives in it at once.
Unfortunately, the hard drive death left only a 10-year-old 4.3 GB
drive, which didn't bode well for its future.
Back down to the basement for a few months.
Recalled to Life
Besides my hobby of fixing up and maintaining computers, I make a
hobby out of playing and restoring my two electric organs: a tube-based
Conn 427M Caprice (circa 1962) and a solid-state Kimball 792 Swinger
(circa 1975). Of the two, the Conn is much more beautiful - built
solidly of real maple (I think). It also has a pleasant, mellow sound
that I just adore (although, to be fair, I am crazy about my
Kimball's built-in Leslie rotary speaker).
My Conn is in the first stages of major restorative work, involving
replacing several long-dead capacitors in the amp, replacing a set of
worn-out rocker tabs, and cleaning or replacing a nonfunctional
potentiometer in the swell pedal. In the midst of this, I decided to
experiment with the idea of giving the organ audio output, which proved
to be surprisingly simple - just hook the pedal cables to an
RCA-to-3.5mm adapter and bam, instant line out.
Then came the fun part.
I pity those of you who have never heard the opening riff from
Deep Purple's
"Smoke on the
Water". Jon Lord's Hammond B3, run through a straight amp, is a
classic sound that will be with us for quite some time. This sound,
known as "The Beast", is something I wanted to recreate with my Conn.
So, after much experimentation, I ran the organ's audio output through
several different computers. None of them, however, seemed to cut it -
the organ was just overwhelming their sound cards.
That's when I had an idea.
That old PC (which I've rather affectionately dubbed "The Box", and
which my family has rather unaffectionately dubbed "The ME") has a
decent sound card in it, so I decided to it a try. Sure enough, it
could handle the organ - and then some.
Rakarrack
Since Rakarrack is
cross-architecture (Intel, PowerPC, and so on), I will be reviewing it
formally later. Those of you who have Ubuntu on your Macs and want to
use it can thank the 1.2 GHz
iBook G4, which served as the PPC test platform for the
developer.
I'd settled on Rakarrack for my audio processor for two reasons:
because it was free and because it was the only guitar effects
processor in the Ubuntu repositories. As it turned out, however, the
binary version of Rakarrack and my old Intel Pentium III (Coppermine)
didn't want to play nice, so I had to compile it from code
. . . not fun.
Okay, the experience of compiling an app wasn't that bad. It only
took reading some short instructions (Rakarrack is relatively easy to
compile), a quick trip to the Terminal, and a few minutes of waiting
for The Box to do its thing, and in the end, it was so totally worth
it.
Rakarrack is a guitar effects processor, borrowing many of its
effects from another of my favorite Ubuntu apps, ZynAddSubFX. For its price
(free), it is incredibly powerful - its dozens of effects are capable
of both vast and subtle changes to any sound, and that served perfectly
for my mellow but otherwise bland Conn.
With Rakarrack, my organ can achieve a monstrously overdriven,
distorted guitar sound (this thing has some serious bite) or a soft,
shimmering chorus. Another click, and it can shake the room as a pipe
organ, as Rakarrack's Octivator effect turns my 16' Sub and Major Bass
into something like a 32' Bombarde.
The pipe organ effect is really powerful when I plug in my big
full-range Jensen speakers (picked 'em up for $40 at Goodwill, and they
can still blow you away) - my dad said he could hear the organ clearly
through the wall, from his car, while it was running in the driveway,
25 ft away. Wow.
I might have to take the whole setup to church some time for special
music.
The Fun Part
Ubuntu is great. Rakarrack is great. That old PC, with a few tweaks
and a few upcoming upgrades, will be really great.
What's not so great? CRT monitors in a small space.
That's where I had to get really creative. Since I don't have a
flatscreen to spare, at least for the moment, I had to come up with a
really neat alternative. My choice: my iPad.
Yes, the PC is now a semi-headless server, controlled via my iPad
with TeamViewer (my favorite
remote access app for iOS, Mac, Windows, and Linux - and possibly
Android too). Even when optimized for speed, it has a little bit of a
lag, but it's light on the CPU, and it does what I ask it to do.
This is really a great solution for a couple of reasons:
- Fewer power cables. At present, the whole organ setup
(without the big speakers - instead, the PC runs back into the organ
amp, playing through the organ's own speakers) requires only two power
cables - the organ and the PC. That's the quota for most socket
installations, so not having a monitor increases my mobility (which
isn't saying too much when one of your pieces of equipment is a 200+
lb. organ).
- It keeps the controls in the right hands. My younger
siblings would love to play with this setup, but there's more than one
way they could damage the organ or screw up the PC in the process.
Having my iPad as the monitor ensures that I am the only one who has
access to the most sensitive controls.
- Sheet music, anyone? The beauty of this setup is that my
iPad can leave TeamViewer without shutting down Rakarrack, so the organ
can keep on playing, minus me being able to change anything really
quickly. This is advantageous if I have sheet music stored on my iPad
that I want to read from.
- It just looks awesome! Seriously, I've got this old organ,
tubes glowing in the back, belting out hard rock riffs thanks to a
beat-up PC and an iPad. Does it get any better than this?
Conclusion
I'm in the process of trying to upgrade the PC while I'm restoring
the organ to its full functionality, and in the meantime I'm recording
some videos of how the whole setup works. The first of these went
online when I was still borrowing my brother's netbook, before I'd
compiled Rakarrack on The Box. If you're interested in seeing how this
whole process turns out, subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Austin Leeds is a Mac and iPad user - and a college student in Iowa.
