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Can't help very much, I'm afraid. My main problem (and I haven't tried recently) has been a) drivers for Avid M-Box which have improved now b) specific plugins that I use with Pro-Tools c) Laziness, since I have a lot of hardware hooked up in one place.

I use Audacity on both now, but that's a lot simpler than Ardour.

Incidentally, off-topic, I always enjoy riffling through this: http://linux-sound.org/

Ardour has a dependency on GTK, as per this, so Gnome would seem the more natural fit. I use mint/mate myself, but as others have pointed out you might want to consider a special purpose a/v distro. Several exist, based off of most popular general purpose distros. See this.

I know that to get Ardour running smoothly I had to jump through some hoops to set up Jack properly (Jack Audio Connection Kit) and chances are that a specialized distro makes that kind of thing a bit easier.

For the new/seeking, see these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMMS

http://lmms.sourceforge.net/

http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=opera&rls=en&q=lmms&sourceid=opera&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=FL14SrTCLYW0sgPfqe3xBA&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4#

http://keepthemfree.net/application/lmms-044

http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

http://linux-sound.org/notation.html

And a slew of others are starts if not replacements, depending on what any given person is after. If someone can top Rosegarden, Lilypond and LMMS, or combine the best of all these and some others, you'll probably see/hear Apple whip out the patent/copyright infringement... But, i DO have to say, Garageband is FANTASTIC. I watched a demon in the Apple Store, and it's hard (it appears) to beat GarageBand (for now?).

As well as the plethora of free packages such as Ardour, there's a few companies around with commercial linux products such as Syntheway who make linux compatible VST plug-ins, for use with FST or dssi. There's quite a few plugins for different architectures out there, here's a decent list. The linux sound architecture has been, well awkward until just a few years ago, but has come leaps and bounds since then. Advances in wine and vst emulation should push it past XPs capabilities before MS drops support, and the writings clearly on the wall for that OS, and as far as I'm concerned Vista is broken by design. Good luck with the switch.

Have you checked. ?

I have tried a few applications like LMMS and Ardour and have installed them through the distributions package management system (particularly in Ubuntu). Adding these applications usually added all of the other necessary files such as JACK and whatnot. And for the most part, there shouldn't be too much tweaking by the user.

I've even taken the time to get this going on a Slackware box and downloading all of the files from the slacky.it website. Once everything is working, there really isn't much to it. I already have LMMS running with a synth connected to it through USB. Granted no end user is going to do what I did with Slackware, but thankfully distros like Ubuntu and even more so the music-oriented distributions like Ubuntu Studio Edition, 64Studio, and the others listed on that page (if it ever revives from its slashdotting :-)) should make it easier for any musician to get up and running on Linux.

Here's a link to another site that lists the available apps and music-oriented distros out there:

http://linux-sound.org/

While I thank you for mentioning my site, I must also point out that it is currently unmaintained. The one-page in particular is woefully out-of-date. The main link at http://linux-sound.org/ calls a frames version of the material in the one-page, plus more. I'll try to provide one final update before I leave the site for good. I hope that an alternative to my site will evolve from a community-led initiative. We await the day.

Everything Linux audio/music is listed here:

http://linux-sound.org/one-page.html

If you have any computer skills and really enjoy composing music then linux is at least as good a choice as windows. For starters, you chould checkout Rosegarden ("the closest native equivalent to Cubase® for Linux" according to Sound on Sound). If you prefer a lower-level solution then give ChucK a try. Or maybe you want a compromise of the two, perhaps similar to Max/MSP with a block diagrams interface? Look at Pure Data or jMax

If those don't tickle your fancy then maybe you should take a look at the list of Software Sound Synthesis & Music Composition Packages available for linux! Oh, and if you're completely new to linux then Ubuntu Studio offers a baby spoon-fed approach to creating a linux digital audio workstation (the project is still in its infancy, but it looks promising).

Happy to have provided the links.

This is one of the best places for linux related audio links:

http://linux-sound.org/

I use a delta 1010 sometimes and an alesis multimix8usb sometimes. Plus, more generic and onboard sound cards.

If you want to see if your sound card is supported, check this link:

http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

Plus, with studio to go at the link I provided:

http://www.ferventsoftware.com/

it says this:

"The Studio to Go! Demo Disk is now available for immediate download!"

and

"You can use this demo to check your sound hardware for compatability and take an introductory tour, listen to demo songs as well as try composition to get a feel for how the package works. You're free to play with any of the included applications to your heart's content."

So you can test your hardware and mess around some without having to install anything, it is a "liveCD" dealia. There may be others, demudi or dynebolic from memory, don't trust my remembered spellings...

all the best,

drew

"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.

After the tests, representatives of Fedora, Linspire and Novell told me that Sony Vaios are known to have compatibility problems with Linux.

The Linux systems could make sense for users who just want to send and receive email and surf the Web without the need for multimedia programs, or to perform home-office tasks without a lot of interaction with Microsoft systems.

Claims by some Linux publishers that anybody can easily switch to Linux from Windows seem totally oversold.

There are also a lot of other Free Software projects that deal with music practice and education.

And for linux users: Speech Synthesis & Analysis Software at linux-sound.org. Some of the programs (most notably, Festival) also run on Windows. Of course, it doesn't sound amazing out of the box, but it's Free and free.

better yet... you could use google. look at hydrogen, ardour, rosegarden, audacity, zyn, etc, etc.

Granted I am no expert, but for me they are a useable replacement for cakewalk, sound forge, reason, and cubase. Getting the Jack interface configured is a bit flaky, esp in KDE - but my distro had enough packages that getting everything installed was easy enough.

http://linux-sound.org/

Linux will never see a large market share for these kind of specialist tools, in the case of audio part of this is due to poor audio interface support under linux (are there any good multi in/out cards that will work under linux?)

Check out the Alsa Soundcard Matrix, e.g. M-Audio and RME, probably a couple others for multi-line. Of course the whole driver/open specs issue is as relevant to sound cards on linux as it is with any other hardware.

BTW, there are seemingly infinite numbers of cool sound apps available for linux. As is also generally the case they tend to be small apps that do one thing really well as opposed to Pro-Tools/CuBase ultimate behemoths that attempt to do everything (new, now with proprietary lock-in!).

Are they generally used to exclusively populate a "pro-audio" toolkit? Probably not by your definition of "pro", not yet anyway.

Do professionals use FOSS audio tools on linux to earn their livings? Yes absolutely, everyday. For that matter, the GIMP, Inkscape, Dia and mplayer? Natch.

Indispensible resource page: dave phillips linux-sound.org

Also one of the highest signal to noise mailing lists I've seen on teh Intarweb: linux-audio-user

Big ditto. Also note that the Ardour author and his team are also the designers of the awesome JACK audio connection system. Further note: Ardour and JACK are OSX-savvy...

Dave Phillips
http://linux-sound.org/

This is not a complete list, but Reason and GarageBand are not free nor open source, so these links might be useful:

- ardour, Digital Audio workstation / http://ardour.org/
- Rosegarden, audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment / http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/
- LilyPond, music notation / http://lilypond.org/web/
- MusE MIDI/Audio sequencer / http://muse.serverkommune.de/
- Audacity, music editing station / http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- Music Theory (free, not oss): http://www.musictheory.net/ and http://andyvn.ath.cx/Software-Aquallegro.php
- general link: http://linux-sound.org/

Cheers :-)

The Sound & MIDI Software For Linux site is a useful reference for all things Linux/Audio. (Yes the site is ugly but there is a lot of good info available there.) Here's their link to several audio-centric distros. One that I have not used but would love to try is Studio To Go! by Fervent Software. An installable LiveCD that is supposed to be end-all of Linux audio solutions. It's a pay-to-play disc, so you'll have to shell out some cash to give it a go. Sight unseen, I'm betting this distro is probably the most refined option available...

The Sound & MIDI Software For Linux site is a useful reference for all things Linux/Audio. (Yes the site is ugly but there is a lot of good info available there.) Here's their link to several audio-centric distros. One that I have not used but would love to try is Studio To Go! by Fervent Software. An installable LiveCD that is supposed to be end-all of Linux audio solutions. It's a pay-to-play disc, so you'll have to shell out some cash to give it a go. Sight unseen, I'm betting this distro is probably the most refined option available...

Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the best place to find music and sound related software for Linux based systems is Dave Phillips's site linux-sound.org. It lists, among other things, lots of notation software and helpful tools for musicians.

Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the best place to find music and sound related software for Linux based systems is Dave Phillips's site linux-sound.org. It lists, among other things, lots of notation software and helpful tools for musicians.

Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the best place to find music and sound related software for Linux based systems is Dave Phillips's site linux-sound.org. It lists, among other things, lots of notation software and helpful tools for musicians.

I think it doesn't make sense to try to convince the author of ReBorn to continue his project. I've never seen any source and I guess it was a closed-source project.

If you're looking for open-source audio, MIDI and sound software, you should take a look at this site (jack applications) and also this one.

1) A dv movie editor - no idea on linux

kino edits DV natively. There are a bunch of Linux audio/video editing programs listed here.

You'll probably also want mjpegtools to turn DV into VideoCDs and DVDs.

While there is some development going on, nothing really matches the quality of Cubase 3 or Logic Pro. And that's not to say that similar things can't be done with inferior software, but not with the same ease of use, quality, and precision.

It depends on your experiences I suppose, but Wired, Ardour, and Rosegarden do well enough for me when I'm using Linux. Audio is mostly a side-issue for my work, and I never really took to Cubase for some reason, so its not something I miss.

There's a fairly comprehensive list of Linux audio here http://linux-sound.org/one-page.html if anyone's interested.

The are lots of articles on the web about recording with open source software. Also check out Dave Phillips's site and his articles in Linux Journal.

> Admittedly, not too much open-source in that field.

You've got to be joking! I've been doing software synthesis for a least a decade with Csound, long before VST. VST plug-ins are a proverbial drop in the bucket compared to the rich history of software synthesis. For more information about the field, I'd suggest The Computer Music Tutorial by Curtis Roads.

Look at Linux MIDI & Sound page and tell me there aren't "much" open source soft synths. Besides Csound, pd and jMax might be worth investigating.

Or you can spend $1000 on getting microphones and $0 dollars for the software.

Believe or it not it is possible to produce decent music cheaply. Equipment is another problem...a good eight track sound card (e.g. Midiman Delta 1010-LT) will run you around $250, more if you want something fancy (e.g. the Midiman Delta 1010 which has the connections in a rack mounted breakout box instead of the back of the computer--much easier to use). The cost of a reasonable workstation has gone down a lot--my Dual AthlonMP 2800+ machine cost around $2000 total (including all of the equipment I got to upgrade my old 500Mhz k6-2 that ended up in this box and my used 24" SGI Monitor).

The microphones are what kills me. I use my live sound stuff to record occasionally. An SM58 will run around $85 for vocals, an SM57 $75 or $80, and a set of drum mics...I have a cheap $140 set of Samson drum mics with a pair of weird overheads I got from a guy for $20 and it sounds OK but in reality they suck. A good set of Shure drum mics (for live sound) would cost around ... $600. Add a second kick drum (grr, stupid Brent) or a fourth tom and you'll add another $200. It's cheaper to buy a cheap drum machine than to get mics for a real drum :)

Recording demo quality material is cheap and easy nowadays if everyone in the band has mics for live performances. Recording studio quality stuff is still expensive for a bunch of college kids making subs all day. Sure, maybe the guy with a good tech job and lots of money to waste can do it but the people actually making music all day can't. The important part is that it is a lot cheaper now to maybe record at home and trick your friend in the college music program majoring to be a mastering engineer to master your recordings cheaply and then get some CDs pressed with a small booklet to send to the labels.

There are still labels that accept new music. Even the big five do--InsideOut is an imprint of EMI and carries only progressive rock/metal bands like Symphony X and Transatlantic. Relapse Records consists entirely of Grindcore (well, most people wouldn't think of Grindcore as music...), SPV carries a lot of metal now; everything from Hair to Black to Progressive. Koch records also has quite a few excellent bands (e.g. Opeth).

Lastly, life is not all about records. It is easy to book a tour if you don't care where you will be playing or whom you will be playing with. Hell, I am planning on doing vocals for Recently Vacated Graves on a two week Canadian tour at the end of July. Look at the lyrics...there are a week worth of shows booked so far for three weeks worth of time spent contacting venues. Every band should tour a few times before they release a real record (that's how people get to know who you are when you don't have a huge marketing machine behind you).

The above is based on the experiences of several friends who are in bands which are mildly successful (successful enough to be on tours, one in Europe and to have actually gotten signed to real labels with DIY demos).

P.S. Are you planning on going to a show on the Dream Theater and Yes tour? I'm afraid of how much those tickets will cost.

> What I'd really like to see is an OS text-to-voice reader program.

Beg your pardon? There are many, listed here at linux-sound.org. I know the Festival program works...

Didn't see this link but it's excellent: http://linux-sound.org/

Lilypond is a program, IMHO, generates scores & sheet music that aesthetically look better than anything that Finale can do. Though the format used isn't too user friendly. However, there are plenty of front-ends and programs capable of exporting to the lilypond format. One such program, Rosegarden, which not only is a music notation program, but a full suite of music editing funness (does audio recording). But like a brother post simply stated, linux-sound.org is a very usefull site with many many FOSS projects regarding audio.

You might want to look here: Linux-sound.org

Here's your software replacements:

3DS Max, Photoshop,Illustrator,sampling software, looping software, midi software, etc.

Sorry it took me so long to write them all!

I'm sorry, but the ONLY area that linux is truely lacking is in the gaming department.

erm, yes.

First off the availability is slowly but steadily increasing. With projects like Ardour nearing major releases even professional recording studios are starting to take note. Even the home user is finding more useful tools available. And with preemptive kernels there's lots of possibilities.

The future for Linux holds many things. Hackers composing music? You bet.

I haven't seen any Linux distribution use an approach like that yet. (They allow Gnome/KDE to start esound/arts, of course. But those don't work with legacy /dev/dsp apps, and neither has great audio quality)

I think the conclusion was that software mixing is a user-space job,

Clearly software mixing falls under the category of "hardware abstraction", which is a job for the OS. Whether it happen in kernel or userspace is up to the implementors.

However, the Linux developers strongly support backwards compatibility. And existing software (like quake1) expects to open /dev/dsp to make noise. This means a kernel-based interface to software mixing is the only way to go. (I suppose the kernel could use a trick to feed data sent to /dev/dsp into userspace code, then back down into the real sound driver)

PS. The thing is called JACK (or jackit ?). The Jacks project is something completely different.

Anyone used Ardour? I have got as far as installing, but it requires jack configured, which I think requires ALSA (which I don't use). I wouldn't know where to start as I use the kernel drivers for my SB Live.

What about ProTux or Glame? A guide starting point to look is http://linux-sound.org/hdr.html.

could perchance tell me where I can find a free software (GNU, etc) package containing all of the necessary programs to turn a Linux box into a DAW? You can't.

Unfortunately, you are correct. You cannot get an out of the box Linux solution to this problem.

Yet.

The 2.6 kernel will have some killer audio features, and if you want to try it, you can run the latest 2.5 development kernel. Of course, this means you have to compile your own, which is something you've said you don't want to do.

As far as software goes, though, according to the May 2003 edition of Linux Journal, there are over 20 softsynth software packages. Some of them are:
iiwusynth - A SoundFont based synthesizer, which can be embedded in applications, or be used from the command line.
RX/Saturno - an emulation of the Yamaha DX7, which works with any program that supports ALSA.
vstserver - uses some OS trickery to run Windows VST plugins under Linux
Bristol - provides GUIs and synthesis engines for the Mini Moog, Moog Voyager, Sequential Circuits Prophet-5, Roland Juno-6 and the DX7. Also built in is a mixing board and an emulation of the Yamaha Pro10 digital mixer.

For more, take a look at http://www.linux-sound.org/

Now the killer question, is this cool tool a good replacement for Windows based products such as CoolEdit or Cakewalk's Sonar? I've been a long time user of the later since the DOS days, but have become increasingly annoyed by latency issues as a result of the operating system.

I'm not only encouraged to make the switch by tools such as Ardour, but the increasing support for MIDI & Sound cards AND if need be, tweak my Linux Kernel for real-time music, MIDI & sound performance.

Now I just need to find an equivalent to Dave Phillips' "Sound & Midi Software for Linux" page for Video editing & DVD production.

Of course each software project has its own web pages and mailing lists. In addition to that there's linux-sound.org, which is basically a directory of all sound and music related software for Linux (both free and non-free). Then there's Linux Audio Developers Mailing List. I'm sure there's more, but that's a start.

This has been mentioned ad nauseum on Slashdot already, but it seems to be missing in this article... if you're really interested in using Linux for sound and music, the definitive place to go is Dave Phillip's comprehensive directory.

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?

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

I've gotta agree...what's the deal with you folks? Check out the page he listed in the subject line:

http://linux-sound.org/

I've been checking out this stuff and using the software linking from it for a few years now (thanks Dave P.), and I've had a really fun time with it. If you are willing to use proprietary software and want to throw $50 towards a good project, I can recommend the 'Ultramaster rs101,' which is a fun little 16 track sequencer: http://www.ultramaster.com/rs101/. (seems like the site is temporarily down, try the google cache for now: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.ultramast er.com/rs101/.) If you want, you can hear some of the music I've made on linux with this package: http://www.easy-protest.com/music/

Currently I'm in the process of installing Ardour to see how that works, and I've used a bunch of other stuff already with good results, like Audacity, snd, (haven't tried hard enough to use) PD, etc.

There's a lot of stuff out there, and a lot going on! I know Ardour's been mentioned a lot, but if you would like to get some real pro-audio on Linux, I would recommend checking it out: http://ardour.sf.net/--and maybe tossing some money toward Paul Davis, who does a sh*tload of work for Alsa, Jack, and etc. as well as creating this amazing software. Of course, there are others out there too, get involved!