Slashdot Mirror

Nothing rigorous that I've found. I've seen some things like a Mac user posting on a forum asking why Cubase was hitting harder on OS-X than Windows along with screenshots of the overall load meters that it has, but little in the way of details on methodology.

While I haven't done extensive looking, I haven't come across anything and it is something I'm interested in.

Sadly, there seems to be little interest in testing. People who own PCs can't really test it, outside of building a hackintosh, and Mac users are not very interested in testing particularly since many of them have a real need to believe their money was well spend and do not wish to do something which might challenge that idea.

If someone gave me the hardware and software I'd love to try it, but I own only a PC, and the DAW I use (Sonar) is Windows only.

The only thing I can point to with some newer data is a Sonar benchmark, conducted by their lead programmer, showing improvements in Windows 8 vs Windows 7. They found basically an across the board improvement, with no code recompile http://blog.cakewalk.com/windo... . Now that says nothing of cross platform (as I noted, Sonar is Windows only anyhow) but does indicate that MS continues to improve Windows' performance with regards to intensive time critical tasks like audio.

I totally agree on Sonar. There tends to be a lot of "fan-boi-ism" that comes with the Pro-Tools crowd, or even the Logic crowd. Nothing wrong with either application, both are great, but they are not, repeat NOT, in any way, special or superior to many of the other commercial DAWs. I'm running Cakewalk X1 Producer, and I have to tell you, I can't imagine using anything else. Now, admittedly, I've been using Cakewalk's stuff for years, so I'm used to their particular workflow, but I defy anyone to point me to any capability that their DAW of choice has that Sonar doesn't.

If you're reasonably serious (and it sounds like the poster is), I would suggest starting with at least Sonar Studio (which is their mid-grade option). There's nothing wrong with the basic package, it just lacks some features that you're going to want. You can also go with Producer and get everything you could want and more, but at just over $500, it may be more than you're wanting to spend if the software it new to you.

As for a program for musical notation, check out Notion. I use it and I love it, and it is only $99 (much more affordable than Finale. Now keep in mind, like Finale, these packages don't really come with powerful Virtual Synths/Virtual Orchestras, so the "sound" you're going to get it going to depend on what you choose to use as the virtual instrument. If you're talking about orchestral stuff (and given that you're needing notation, I'm going to assume you do), there are many choices, and the good ones aren't cheap. You can go for East-West Quantum Leap, or Vienna Symphonic, or East-Wests's Complete Composer's Edition, and never look back, but it's gonna be expensive.

If, however, you want one that sounds really quite good, and is a little easier on the wallet, give a listen to Miroslav Philharmonik. The strings, winds, brass, and percussion all sound quite good, in my opinion. The choirs leave a little to be desired, and some of the woodwinds could be more crisp, but overall, for $149, I think it's a good deal.

A strong second on the Pro Audio end here. I know this is a well worn topic that we've all re-hashed several times (much like the often discussed Photoshop vs Gimp topic), but there just isn't anything available on Linux that is going to touch what's available in the Pro Audio world for serious musicians and composers. As far as trying to get Sonar Producer X1 to run under WINE, there's just no way anyone can deal with the performance hit, I don't care what kind of system you're running, or how fast your Audio Interface is. Once you've got some major virtual instruments loaded, and you're making your system really work, there's just no way any kind of virtual machine is going to be able to work for you. Not trying to start another flame war, but I have to say this is definitely one of the reasons that I keep one of my computers on Windows 7 64 Bit.

But, I will say that my other computer is my own hand built server running Debian, with a nice little installation of Ampache which I can recommend highly if anyone wants to stream their own MP3's to themselves at work or to share with their friends/family.

Its because he already was. Zappa was one of the original pro-tools users, before his death

I don't think that's correct. According to this article with Dweezil talking about updating the famed "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen",:

The studio had accumulated not just an extensive vault of tapes, but a considerable collection of analogue hardware too. "Frank had several machines — I don't know if we have some of the earlier machines he recorded on. We have the Studer 24-track and we have three of the two-track machines. They all have different head stacks, and we even have a five-track head stack that was made by Paul Buff when Frank had a studio in Cucamonga — the Studio Z in the early '60s. We're curious to see if there's a way to get a machine to work with that head stack. It was before multitrack — Paul invented this thing and made it work, but I have never seen it in use. We found it in a box!"

I'm not saying Frank never used Pro-Tools, but it sounds like analog hardware was his primary focus.

Incidentally, it's a misconception among non-musicians that Pro Tools is the best/standard. There are several Pro Audio level DAWs out there that are just as powerful. My personal favorite is Cakewalk's SONAR, but that's just me.

There's lots of software that is pretty much exactly like GarageBand.

Cakewalk - Sonar
Propellerhead - Reason
Steinberg - Cubase
Magix - Samplitude

Image-Line - FL Studio ... can even do most, if not all of what GarageBand does.

That's right, the entire Vista failure was all me. I told Microsoft if they didn't give me 100 million dollars I would run around the entire Internet making millions of accounts, posing as folks in all walks of life having Vista problems, just to destroy them. Should have paid me,huh?

But seriously, it ain't like I'm the only one. In fact if you look up Vista horribly slow you'll see that Yahoo finds 2,580,000 hits for that phrase, and for Vista crashes? A whopping 52,700,000. That should tell you there is trouble in your paradise. So maybe instead of accusing someone of spreading FUD, maybe you might think about those figures. Unless you do think I managed to write all those web pages by myself, in which case Microsoft better give me my money or I will do the same to Win7. MWAHAHAHA!

There are tons of ways to edit MIDI files directly via GUI or API. My favorite is Cakewalk, but there are plenty others out there. Cakewalk actually started out as a MIDI editor, and evolved into recording live audio much later. Their professional line for audio production is called SONAR, which I still use frequently. Their consumer line is called Music Creator.

Are not in the same ballpark as far as polish, consistency, printed manuals and a general sense of finishedness goes ... But they are well on par (if not superior) in terms of functions. They are all miles ahead in terms of expandability compared to the existing big name applications.

I would disagree with that. None of those programs would compete with huge behemoth DAWs like Cubase or Logic or Pro Tools in terms of features. Do any of them come with Beat Detective (Pro Tools)? What about Space Designer, or a Hammond B3 emulation or Ultrabeat (Logic)?

Ok, let me give an example of Logic Pro, because that's what I use and most familiar with. Do any of those programs listed match up in terms of functions?
specs
effects
instruments
sound library

And for me, expandability is the ability to use the widest range of plugins that would affect my mixing and recording work. Linux does not yet have that for me.

one minor area where open source audio apps absolutely kills the big name commercial apps is the online community - the users, experienced musos, and the developers are all one and the same people.

The online community for the big name programs is much much larger, simply because more people use those programs. I get plenty of help with whatever question I have at those forums. I post at bigbluelounge.com (which is even listed on the Apple website), but I also lurk at the DUC and logicprohelp.com. Look at some of the forum topics, some have well over 30,000 posts.

Big Blue Lounge
Logic Pro help
the DUC - Digidesign Pro Tools forum
the LUG (Logic Users Group)
Cubase forum
Sonar forum
Ableton Live forum
just to name a few.

some of the audio tools are actually good enough and stable enough right now for live performance in front of real paying audiences.

I agree, but that's still very limited usage compared to what a big-name DAW is capable of doing.

open source audio is not better or worse than commercial audio apps - but it is different enough in a worthwhile way.

I'm sorry to say this, but right now it is definitely worse and it's going to be like that until Linux DAWs are used professionally at the highest levels of the music industry. One indicator of the lack of popularity of Linux DAWs is the coverage in music production magazines, such as Future Music, Computer Music, Sound on Sound, MIX, EQ and Virtual Instruments, although this is changing. CM has a dedicated Linux section, albeit only two pages worth. This is at the moment though, so who knows what will happen in the future. But even in 2007, many mixing and mastering engineers still refuse to use Pro Tools or anything computer based. Most of the others who do use DAWs don't solely mix in the box and use a buttload of outboard hardware.

AFAIK, unfortunately, native plugin support is virtually zero on Linux. Yes, there is the Linux VST standard, but that still requires companies to recompile their plugins for that, as a Linux VST plugin does not use the same binary as a Windows VST. You can run Windows VSTs under Linux, but that involves a lot of playing around with WINE and JACK and other things which most musicians don't have the time, and more importantly, the technical ability to set up. I mean, it's hard enough

You might not need 4 CPUs, but people that run this kind of software do:

Cakewalk SONAR 6

This is the kind of software where even today's fastest systems can run out of steam. It needs huge amounts of RAM and as much CPU processing as you can possibly give it. And it already takes full advantage of 4 cores.

Some people do more than just browse the internet and write emails.

I've been a amateur drummer for 25 years, and have tried a few software packages, but here are the ones I actually find useful.

Under Windows, for overdubbing wav and midi I mostly use Cakewalk (warning: link contains annoying self-playing music). I use the cheaper Home Studio. They have a real product differentiation problem as Sonar is the expensive product, and then they market or bundle cheaper versions that may cover your needs just fine (its hard to tell from the product descriptions which features are grayed out). I use Cakewalk because the Windows drivers can be used in a very low-latency mode, and I always have a Windows laptop kicking around. I have not liked the scoring side of Cakewalk.

Also under Windows, I have used Sibelius (version 3 and 4). It is a phenominal scoring program that produces great looking sheet music. This is the only thing I do with a PC that I think is really better than without the PC. If you score with a program that plays back what you've written via midi, you can correct many mistakes on the fly. Sibelius is unfortuately still phenominally expensive for my uses, and I've never purchased it (nor has anyone I know).

Under linux, the equivalent of Cakewalk is Rosegarden. It is very impressive at the moment. Building it is a royal pain for me. It doesn't use your standard autotools driven make, it uses Scons (not in my distribution). Scons requires a Python module that's not available in the stable version of Python. Hey, people writing free software can use whatever they want, its just a shame some people won't try their product because of the barrier to entry. I've had latency issues with Rosegarden + JACK which I think can be sorted out but I have to decide if I want to run the tools as root or pull in the whole SELinux overhead + realtime module (no different than Cakewalk in Windows -- it does not work well as non-admin). Rosegarden's scoring is coming along but not quite there for me.

For scoring under Linux, I'm using Lilypond. Lilypond is phenominal, but many won't like it because its markup-based (like writing Latex). You have to go through the compile cycle to view what you've written, and dump midi to hear it. Fortunately for me, rythym section music is very repetitive. The quality of printed music it can produce is unmatched. I'm sure more programs will start using Lilypond as a processing back-end.

My aim was to set-up a simple DJ'ing system using only laptops for live music at a local student dance event hosted by the SCI catering to an audience of about 150. With no prior experience with mixing software , or for that matter, DJ'ing basics, I started out looking up on the net, tried out a few, and learnt as I used.

I really liked, and finally used, Sam Party DJ. It offers a full-featured trial, has an easy, configurable UI, and two virtual decks to easily organize playlists and mix and crossfade tracks. Ideally, it's good to have two sound cards, to be able to listen to one track (on headphones) while you play the other. It can use Winamp playlists to load tracks and has auto and manual modes and a plethora of features like beat matching, tempo increasing (without making vocals sound like smurfs) etc.

If open-source is your cup of tea, try Mixxx. It's not as polished, and has a steeper curve (or so it felt to me), but might serve your purpose.

I was planning to write-up a small blog-post or doc on this but never got enough motivation. If you want, I'd be glad to write-up something and put it on my home page.

Of course, if you are instead looking for software/equipment to mix/record your own tracks, you might want to use something like Project 5 from Cakewalk. You might also want to get yourself a MIDI controller or a keyboard, if you want to create real music. :) I use a Yamaha PSR-295. And then, of course there is "proper" DJ-ing equipment like scratchpad etc.

rant

This is getting ridiculous. Since when did anyone have a RIGHT to make money from anything? Just as in any profession, the easier it is to duplicate the results, the lower the pay. Just ask Doctors, Engineers, IT professionals, Accountants, etc. who have seen their salaries drop due to ever increasing competition, computers, automation, spreadsheets, etc. Think about when (long long time ago) when to calculate something we now take for granted, took days or months or even years. But the RIAA complains it can't maintain lavish lifestyles because their product is easily copied - Boo F*cking Hoo.

Hell, it's so ridiculously easy to make "music" nowadays, and they are still B*tching. Wait till things like Reason, Sonar, Cubase, Fruityloops, become widely known about and start dropping in prices - hell they really aint all that expensive now for what they can do (like reason being a rack of studio equipment for 600 bucks) - especially when sound cards and DSP become of higher and higher qality

/rant

working on crazy new things for iLife (like GarageBand).

I can't see GarageBand being a reason to switch to the Mac. GarageBand is a toy for people who are already Mac owners. Windows owners would have to give up the following (better) software packages when they switched to the Mac:

Reason 2.5
Sonar 3
Vegas 4

As well as loop software like:
Acid 4
Fruity Loops

I think far more people would use OpenOffice on a mac than GarageBand.

Yes, that's it exactly.

I would be willing to deal with a less-polished UI, some incompatibilities and inconsistencies in an OS if it let me do something I want to do and can't do right now under XP.

Having access to the source code is a benefit for users who are interested in doing dev work, which I am not.

I want to be able to run Photoshop and Sonar, and play a specific handful of old and new games without using an emulator.

I already own a license for XP, so Linux being free isn't a benefit for me.

If I wanted to set up a web or mail server at home, I'd consider Linux, but really I do enough of that kind of thing at work without doing it here too.

The toolkit theming is a great idea. For a lot of the music-oriented applications, simple preferences just won't cut it because the applications are too graphical. Check out Reason, GuitarPort, or Project 5 for some good examples of the types of interfaces I'm talking about.

What I'd really like to do is make sure that every interface we work on works for colorblind people before it ships, so they won't have to find an artist to reskin it. Many of the apps I work on have an insane number of graphics, which is why we haven't put the effort into making a user-oriented skinning facility before. It'd be nice and I'll keep suggesting it, but it'd take a long time to build a full editor (or a single skin for that matter) and we've always had other features way more in demand by our users.

Here's a picture of my home studio.

I use some really cheap software called GuitarTrax Pro. For less than $100 it lets me record a huge number of tracks and modify them with effects.

Most of the pros still record in huge studios, but smaller artists can do some great stuff now on the cheap. Eventaully this will have an impact on the music industry.

If anyone wants to hear a tune recorded in my home studio you can check out this.

Please, people, if you don't know what s/he's asking, keep your trap shut, m'kay? We're talking audio here, so signal-to-noise ratio counts, you see...

But, do you want to go the hardware or software recording route?

If you have a decent enough computer (G3 macs or PII upwards x86s will do the trick for about 16 tracks), you might consider getting a good soundcard.

I personally use a M-Audio Delta44, 4 inputs, 4 outputs, nothing more. Perfect for recording. They have nice break-out boxes, so you don't have to crouch behind your computer when plugging in your guitars, basses or mics, they work under Macs, PC's and have linux support via ALSA (yes, linux can do multitracking as well). When you need more tracks, you can just add more cards and get 8/8 or up to 16/16 in/out-system.

As for recording software, well... my delta came with a cut-down version of Logic Audio, which should be good enough for start. Most 'pro-sumer' soundcards come up with basic software, so you shouldn't need to cough up any more money for it in the beginning.

Other software: Cubase is nice, and there's nice 'lite'-versions for beginners (some soundcards come with this instead of logic). Cakewalk is quite popular as well.

If you just want audio recording (the aforementioned do MIDI as well), then there's Cool Edit Pro. For free, there's Audacity (audacity does Windows, Linux and Mac) which is proficient enough multitrack audio editor. SLab is a good linux multitrack recorder.

And mp3, well, you don't want to use mp3 for multitrack recording, but most modern software can import mp3-sounds, and output the result to mp3 (some of them [cool edit/audacity] can do ogg as well)

If you want a proper hardware recorder (which are nice, since you can take them to your rehersal space, summer cottage, ..., what have you), then there's plenty to choose from. Most of these are a couple of years old, so you can find them for reasonable prices used (or even new!)

Roland VS-8xx series, they're nice, compact, can do 4-track recording, and 8-track playback. Loads of features, and useful later on even if you grow out of this one. Earlier models had inbuilt harddrives, the later ones have ZIP-drives (if I remember correctly). If you can get one for cheap (and i think you should), then go for this one.

Korg D-8. A bit easier to operate, but quite useful nevertheless.

And i think Fostex had some as well, just keep your eyes open in the pawnshops.

That's why, sometimes, a simple Google search won't do. The results you found suck! Cakewalk wasn't even returned by your search and it's one of the better digital home recording products out there. No one seems to get that Ask Slashdot is about getting the opinion of geeks, not just cold hard results from a search engine! :)

Cakewalk rocks. I've recorded about 10 songs using "Guitar Tracks". Look into it. It's 8 tracks too. You'd be surprised how many tracks you can use when you get creative! You can also "bounce" 7 of the tracks to the eighth, opening up the 7 tracks for more! Great product IMO!

Okay, let me understand this. Lets say I create a set of Christmas Jingles using something like Cakewalk Sonar .. or better yet, one of several Linux based multi-track recording tools. Then burn my tunes with something like Nero ... then list it on E-Bay - they're going to pull my ad?

Perhaps this is a result of an indiscriminate Copyright Bot as described by Tennessee Law professor, Glenn Reynolds?

While the whole story strikes me as marginal at best, since Wintel user base of the Emagic is only about 1/3 of quoted 200,000 (and as a comparison Cakewalk's Sonar -- a Wintel-only product has roughly one million users), and Apple needs to urgently establish a good Sequencer for the OS X to bridge the current MIDI woes that have been plaguing the OS, then it is a rather obvious move on Apple's part.

What really interests me now is since Apple's new anti-M$ policy obviously involves buying out popular software and cutting Wintel support, is how much longer will M$ sit idle before it strikes back with some punitive measures, such as dropping Office support, or some other similarly devastating blow to the Apple's OS. Or perhaps M$ won't do a thing due to current legal problems it's been having (or maybe there is a silent agreement between the two in terms of division of the market)?

She will be able to write complete arrangements and do sequencing and other stuff without her sight. I think thats pretty rad!

Get Pro Tools free from Digidesign. Musicians like Beck, Bjork and Aerosmith use it. Of course, they use the version that's tens of thousands of dollars. Basically, the difference is the more money you spend, the more hardware (and thereby processing power) you get.

The best way to learn is to just start doing it. If you have a sound card and Pro Tools free, you should be able to just start laying down tracks with the mic that came with your computer. Experiment with EQ settings. It's all about training your ear to recognise what sounds good and what doesn't. After you've recorded an album's worth of material, you'll find you're able to make much better sounding songs, though you won't be sure how you got there.

If you don't have a sound card, get one that has at least a stereo input and output. Before you get it, make sure it's supported by whatever software program you're using. If you don't have a firewire port, think about getting one. Firewire is useful in so many ways.

If you want to get some higher fidelity, you'll need to get a decent mic. Pick up a Shure SM57 if you're recording mostly instruments or 58 if it's mostly vocals ($80-100). These mics are workhorses of the industry and will remain useful even after you become a famous rock star. You might be able to find a XLR -> 1/8" adapter to plug the mic into the back of the computer, but I recommend either buying a cheap mixer and going mic -> mixer -> soundcard, or getting Digidesign's mBox ($450), a firewire-based audio input system. The good thing about the mBox is you get a more robust version of the software along with it.

Pro Tools isn't the only way to go, though I think it's the only way that's free. Kruder & Dorfmeister use Cubase, and Thievery Corporation use Cakewalk. I've heard lots of great things about Cubase, but the Cakewalk seems to be more amateurish. Thievery has a crapload of hardware, and I think Cakewalk is just a small part of their studio.

If you're broke, you can always pirate plug-in's from p2p networks, but audio programmers are generally non-rich really cool people, so if you ever wind up making decent money off of your music, you should buy the software you use frequently.

If you're into programming, check out MAX/MSP. Autechre uses it.

Also, check out Propellerheads Software:
Reason- Berklee is using this to teach recording concepts.
Rebirth- 303, 808, 909. Kicks ass.

For a reference, my stuff was recorded using Pro Tools with the Audiomedia III sound card (it's pretty old), a Neumann TLM103 mic and a Roland xp-60 synth, both going into a mackie 1202 mixer. I'm completely self-taught.

That all said, I don't think Dream Theater's going to be using software to make their music anytime soon. :-)

well, all wine users that would need high-end directX.

Oh wait, thats just us idiot gamers.

Actually, plenty of great music software such as Cakewalk SONAR, the Tassman and Reaktor use DirectX, so it's not only for gamers.

Please refrain from sweeping generalizations, as in most cases (except this one) they will be false.

Well well well... Looks like your sweeping generalization was false too. :-)

The point we as coders seem to consistently miss is that code isn't supposed to be pretty. It's supposed to provide utility to the human using it to make them more productive. Don't misinterpret me, pretty (better stated: more concisely and completely documented) code can co-exist within software that meets this goal.

At the time I started using Dr. T's music sequencing software on a Commodore 128 I had no fscking idea what C was. I don't know what that thing was written in to this day. But I wrote over 75 songs in 2 years and haven't created that level of product in the past 13 years.

I used Cakewalk 2.0 on Win3.1 for a couple years and was equally productive there until 1995. That's when music went away and I started hacking Linux because MickeySoft pissed me off so much with their "innovations" in Win95 that it completely killed my machine's ability to perform my most important task (writing music).

Thankfully, with Win2k and it's better stability Cakewalk 9 and my killer 128Mbit Creative Platinum with built in MIDI have brought songwriting back as an option. Yeah, it's Windows, I hate it, and it screws me sometimes, but not so bad that I can't write songs now. Honestly, I'm not that interested in coding C, now that I can write music again. Trust me: my music is better than my coding, although my coding isn't lousy.

What I want is Cakewalk for Linux and then I'll leave you talented hackers to your domain and drift back into that which I've wanted to remain in before all this sloppy coding pulled my sorry ass out of it.

I don't care what the source looks like, but you should comment your code. I just want results. I'm sure most others do as well.

Everyone laughed except C.B. of Voyetra.

Good grief. I suppose I should stay out of this, but I've been a professional composer using orchestral and electronic media for more than 30 years, and the PC has always provided the breadth of tools and configurability that I need, especially if I need to quickly build up a control device of some kind.

Look, I know those who started with Macs are happy with their stuff. That's fine. But I can't be tied to an Apple corporate stamp of approval for a product. For example, I'd not likely see an AudioMulch for Mac -- unless you consider Max, priced at 10 times the cost for similar functionality (and with Max lacking the ability to produce techno quickly, for example). And Sound Forge, Cool Edit Pro, Cakewalk, Finale, Graphire Music Press ... all (and hundreds of other programs and advanced plugins) are wonderful and flexible PC software. Finale and Graphire both started on Macs, and Finale's first PC port was terrible. But once they started writing from the ground up for PC, the results were stunning. And according to users on both platforms, the Graphire PC version leaves the Mac version behind for ease and speed of use.

As for professional results, legacy studios with Mac equipment do not a case for Macs make. My CD was produced with PCs alone, as have been thousands of others. Likewise, as an editor and book designer, I have had no trouble accommodating the needs of legacy print houses who still use Macs.

I have no problem with Macs and those who love them, but you are presenting a bogus argument from the computer world of a decade past.

Dennis

MaltedMedia
Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar
Erzsébet the Vampire

If there isn't a project to produce something like CakeWalk, would anyone be interested in trying to get CakeWalk itself ported to Linux? I for one would buy it ;-)