Bounce Metronome on Linux using Wine

Wine compatibility for Linux

Bounce can now run under Wine on Linux. You don't need to do anything special. Just install it and nearly everything works.

Recomendations for Bounce on Wine under Linux

I tested it with KXStudio on Aaron Wolf's recommendation - if you haven't yet set up your linux computer for music, that's a great way to get started.

I just used the KXStudio iso to install Linux together with a whole bunch of music apps. To find that go to KXStudio Iso on their download page. You then need to burn it to a DVD if you want to install on a real computer, though if installing on a virtual machine you can install straight from the ,iso file.

The testing was done on a Windows machine using VirtualBox to run Linux, together with email correspondence with Aaron Wolf who uses it on a hardware Linux computer.

For the most accurate timing (important for a metronome), it helps to use wine rt. The low latency kernel might help as well.

Wine instruments for Bounce Metronome

If you don't use Wine much, you might not have any instruments installed under Wine to play the notes. To fix that, you can install qsynth if you don't have it already. Or any other soundfont player.

For the soundfont itself, then you want one of the larger GM synths. Fluidsynth is a good choice.

Qsynth set to use one of the larger Midi soundfonts gives you a Wine / Linux equivalent of the Midi soundcard synths on Windows sucvh as the Microsoft GS Wavetable synth.

This is useful especially for first time users of the software - as it lets you use Bounce Metronome "out of the box" for instance all the harmonic metronomes and such like will "just work" on Linux in the same way they do on Windows.

Then, you need to hook the midi output for Bounce Metronome through to QSynth and hook up the output of QSynth to your audio out.

If you have Jack installed you can use that to do the hooking up of audio.

Compatibility issues for Wine

Timing can be handled slightly differently in Wine under Linux. You might find the new busy waits option helps. You can find this under Tempo >> Tweaks for Timing Accuracy (Keyboard shorctut Ctrl + 261)

You can't export the 3D Bounce videos to file when it runs under Wine.

Also Bounce can't do edge smoothing of the graphics under Wine.

Don't know of any other major issues - the beta had various animation glitches for the 2D and 3D bounce - but these seem to be all fixed now.

Do contact me if you find any other issues - so I can update the test results - and see if they can be fixed. I'm at support@robertinventor,com

You can read my Wine test results here

You can read Aaron Wolf's post about Bounce Metronome Compatilbity on Wine to Linux Musicians here.