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Nama's command prompt has been used to produce the prog rock compositions of Julien Claassen. It is a small overlay (<20kloc) on the well-regarded Ecasound audio engine. Nama is written in perl, so can build under any Unix brethren, and Ecasound as well. With some upcoming changes, it will also manage audio mixing and routing for live shows. It does have a optional hard-disk recorder styled GUI, and can pop up other utilities for viewing and editing waveforms. Best is to build from github.

--The Nama Animator (say that three times fast)

"I think they were using Ardour / Jack with RME Hammerfall cards. Obviously this won't work with SoundBlaster toys."

Obviously? For some purposes Jack works better on Linux than ASIO on Windows. And Soundblaster devices certainly are well supported by ALSA.

"I don't know if Jack is enough for "real" work, or if other real time patches are needed."

The realtime patches are useful to reduce audio latency, which means monitoring is improved and it means the computer can be used for live effects or synthesis.

I understand the point of your article. I would never represent to anyone that Linux is useful for them, unless maybe they came to me with the machine they wanted to install linux on.

But if they come in here and need to use a computer, they have Linux and Linux to choose from. As for *tasks*, there's all the usual stuff, plus there's music synthesis and recording. I have a whole studio, and while I do have a Windows machine for running FLStudio and EnergyXT, I also have a linux box with, among other things Pd (the best thing ever http://puredata.info/). Somebody who wants point-and-drool simplicity is going to *hate* Pd (and will *really* hate Max), but that does not stop it from being the best thing ever.

Likewise, one look at ECASound http://eca.cx/ecasound/ might make a Cubase user cringe, but it's better, in something of the same sense that LaTeX is better for typesetting than Word. For instance, I know people that *hate* LaTeX, but mainly because they haven't actually needed a tool that does for them what TeX can do.

The idea that a multitrack recorder/mixer/signal processor needs to *look like* a vintage mixing board or tape deck is completely ridiculous, and speaks more to a marketing domain than an audio production one!

Think about it!

There is a *LOT* of audio software for Linux. Not really very many turnkey solutions, and none of them on the order of Nuendo, Sequoia, Pyramid, Digital Performer, etc. But that's not where the demand is.
http://linux-sound.org/

For another instance, setting up a machine with a multitrack sound card (Delta 1010 in my studio), is a hardware job, and if you want to run Linux, you have to be careful to get hardware where the manufacturer isn't hostile to linux and forbids the driver support from being developed (there are a lot of those, and this is the biggest problem.)

Then there's an OS-level software job, installing the linux kernel, and tuning it for audio. This may or may not go beyond simply setting up the new Ubuntu or whatever with the realtime priority stuff.

Then there's the application-level software job, selecting and installing, say, Ardour and learning how to operate it.

Then there's the domain-specific job -- just because you have a DAW, monitors, mics and preamps, does not instantly mean you're a producer! (Although people do frequently have this expectation!)

Speaking of Ardour -- on audio forums, I've seen people dismiss it without ever trying it. For recording, it does work extremely well, although I personally prefer ECASound because it fits with the whole "Unix Philosophy" of doing one thing, well. It does do that one thing extremely well, and like a good unix app, its usefulness is amplified by combining it with other tools.

Sorry I rant too much, but I get tired of people who judge linux as an audio platform based on a minute or two of evaluation, don't see something they can use without putting some effort into it and educating themselves, and then get on forums to badmouth it. (You didn't do that, but it's a daily thing in audio forums.)

It is almost as though they are actually *angry* that we (the linux community) haven't given them something they can recognize as a free alternative to Cubase. The irony is some of the stuff we have is *better*, but coming from a different philosophy.

I said I ranted too much already good night!

PS Using Pd on MacOSX now also, building a Cocoa UI as part of a MacOS programming course.

So why use Windows tools any more?

This is not a troll, I use Linux and Free software to make music myself, for example Audacity, Ecasound and Soundtracker . These are definitely not the most advanced examples, but they suffice for me for now.

I've done realtime multitrack recording (not very demanding though, between 5 and 10 tracks) with a P2-350 using Ecasound on Linux. It runs on the command line, so it takes up relatively little resources. For non-realtime editing I use more fancy graphical editors.

And if you do have newer x86 machines then, yes, you apparently do think something is wrong with Macs.

I think something is wrong with

• machines that come with a proprietary commercial OS, when there are free and Free alternatives that do the job just as well
• expensive machines, when there are cheaper machines available that have the same capabilities.

Here's the easiest thing to do. Use ecasound as a filter for your audio ouput. How? ecasound -i:file.mp3 -eca -o:/dev/dsp
If you want to adjust the compressor, see the manpage. The default settings for the Advanced-Comp Effect are to kill most (but not all) of the dynamics, but you can adjust that.

You can probably come up with some clever hack for trapping all audio data and piping it through ecasound if you want.. *shrug*

Ecasound is the best recording application you can get, and it's all console, baby. Wow. ;)

All right, let Courtney say it again.

The internet gives bands a way to finally break clear of record companies, and here you come along telling us that we need them. Do you work for the RIAA, by any chance?

Distributing CDs cost $4, you charge your customer however much you want and pocket the difference.

Recording your music doesn't cost a fortune, either, as long as you have the gear to make the music (which you obviously already have if you're playing gigs) and can make the basic connection from your gear to your computer's mic jack.

Any questions?

What exactly is that page you're talking about? Not that one with .cx in url, I hope.

Lol. I'm wanting to GIMP that one and close the hole with my guitar embedded "to the hilt".

Also, I'd like to point out that anything with a .cx isn't automatically evil. Check out ecasound. If you setup your filter to filter out domains with .cx in it, then your musically-inclined kid might well miss out on the leading open source audio application.

http://www.eca.cx/ecamegapedal/

It's nice to dream, but for now and for the forseeable future, the software just isn't there.

Not true. Check out Ardour, Audacity, Ecasound, MusE, or some of the other 10,000 apps on Dave Phillp's Linux Sound and MIDI Apps page

Well, I'm using Linux for live recordings and postprocessing and like it alot. Especially ecasound is great and I did some nice concert recordings with it. Or do you know a program that records live audio direct to mp3, wav and ogg, even all of them at the same time!

Don't know wether this is 'Pro Audio', but it was at least much better than cooledit on windows.

The gui, of course goes give you the amplitude of sound on each track, lets you cut and paste, and apply whatever filters are defined to selections.

"Sounds like a worthy project, but sound processing is still in its infancy under Linux, ..."

I think the situation is much better than that. For a long time now, Linux has offered a lot to musicians and other audio enthusiasts. Just take a look at Dave Phillips' Sound&Midi page at http://www.linuxsound.at ! Linux audio apps might not have the same polished neat-knobs-and-stuff look as the popular Windows+Mac apps have, but they are very powerful tools for working with audio. Check Ardour, Quasimodo, aRts, GDAM, terminatorX, Snd, Sweep, Slab, SAOL, Csound,etc, etc... and not forgetting my own project, ecasound.

As for the clustering discussion, this is an old topic for linux-audio-dev folks. See for instance these threads: http://eca.cx/lad/2000/19991108-0307/0575.html and http://eca.cx/lad/2000/19991108-0307/0580.html. As a quick summary, I can say it's not easy. At the moment, even getting solid rt perfomance for running one userspace audio app on a Linux box requires a patched kernel (Ingo's 2.2.x ll-patches that never made it into the mainstream kernel are probably the most well-known). Running multiple rt-processes is even more difficult. Now from this, it's easy to see how far we are from realtime DSP-clustering. But nevertheless, problems can be solved, and Linux is a very good platform for experimenting. If you are interested in these matters, be sure to check the linux-audio-dev resources at http://www.linuxaudiodev.com.

"Sounds like a worthy project, but sound processing is still in its infancy under Linux, ..."

I think the situation is much better than that. For a long time now, Linux has offered a lot to musicians and other audio enthusiasts. Just take a look at Dave Phillips' Sound&Midi page at http://www.linuxsound.at ! Linux audio apps might not have the same polished neat-knobs-and-stuff look as the popular Windows+Mac apps have, but they are very powerful tools for working with audio. Check Ardour, Quasimodo, aRts, GDAM, terminatorX, Snd, Sweep, Slab, SAOL, Csound,etc, etc... and not forgetting my own project, ecasound.

As for the clustering discussion, this is an old topic for linux-audio-dev folks. See for instance these threads: http://eca.cx/lad/2000/19991108-0307/0575.html and http://eca.cx/lad/2000/19991108-0307/0580.html. As a quick summary, I can say it's not easy. At the moment, even getting solid rt perfomance for running one userspace audio app on a Linux box requires a patched kernel (Ingo's 2.2.x ll-patches that never made it into the mainstream kernel are probably the most well-known). Running multiple rt-processes is even more difficult. Now from this, it's easy to see how far we are from realtime DSP-clustering. But nevertheless, problems can be solved, and Linux is a very good platform for experimenting. If you are interested in these matters, be sure to check the linux-audio-dev resources at http://www.linuxaudiodev.com.