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It was inevitable and of course it has a bright future. We don't need anybody to tell us this. Those of us that used to play around on BBSs back in the early 80s on our Apple IIes, and such, could see that.

What we do need to realize is that closed-source/proprietary has its role as well. If the goal is "freedom" for the user then that has to encompass all the tools available. The GPL and the strong leadership of Torvalds has insured a level playing field for that above it on the software stack but we need to be wary of Stallman/FSF fascist dogma. Open Source tends to work very well at the lower levels of the software stack - glibc, the kernel, other libraries, but we need to recognize that we need to provide incentives to innovate at the ever higher-ends of the software stack as well. I consider the rather luke-warm adoption of desktop linux (yes it is, I've been using it a work for the past 8 years) to be indicative of both factionalization and the perils of "giving everything away" at the higher-end of the software stack.

I would keep an eye out on croquet (or something in that realm), for what will be the next leap in collaboration. Definitely check out this recent video (might be windows only). I consider this web 3.0

Oh, this is a small problem for Microsoft. They will just buy SonicFoundry and have no trials

What is the best software to use to create such a beast on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems?

For audio CDs, SoundForge formerly of Sonic Foundry, and now owned by Sony Pictures seems to be the industry favorite, and is generally considered the best multi-track audio sequencer around. Here is a review. You will also need Roxio or some other CD burning software to create the CD.

And conversely, has anyone used any of the music software on these platforms to actually analyze the contents of commercial subliminal CDs?

For that, you need some sampling software and some oscilloscope software. Talk to the DJ at your local club (the kind who has two decks and a microphone and a laptop). Your local DJ should be able to sample and analyze the CD for you, although it's not all that usefull... Audio signals layers get flattened to a single layer when burned to a CD, and it's difficult to separate the layers afterwords. That being said, we often times just used WinAmp to analyze audio signals. When analyzing audio spectrum, we would often run it through a video oscilloscope... Personally, I like to use G-Force as it's easy on the eyes and can analyze amplitude, frequency, and phase, at the same time. There are some software packages which people have written to try to seperate a flattened audio feed into seperate channels, although they usually don't work well (i.e. most of them are crap).

One common method of creating a "hidden message" is to write a short track and layer it inside the base by decreasing it's frequency and putting it below normal speaking range, down in the base range, with the drum beat. You can also take a message and put a white-noise mask over it, although signal loss is obviously a problem with that method. Obviously, you can also distort a message's temporal length, and make it veeerrrryyy sssllllloooowwww or vry fst. And you can also phase shift it, although that gets kinda weird.

A really good method for creating a good subliminal message, however, is to use symbolic messaging rather than embedded messaging. Basically, you separate your message into "chunks", and divide the chunks between different layers. As a somewhat silly example, which illustrates how this works, imagine that my subliminal message was "Impeach Bush". I would then chunk the message into "Impeach" and "Bush" obviously... Then I would sample two music clips, such as some dude saying the words "bush & beaver" and some chick singing the words "I'm just a wild peach". I'd loop the guy's sample to create one of those kinda annoying euro dance beats, and use the chick's sample as part of the refrain. If the refrain was sung three times throughout the song, and the last line to the refrain was "I'm just a wild peach", there would be three subliminal messages in the song, as the words transitioned from the girl saying "wild peach" to the guy saying "bush and beaver"... With the end effect of three subliminal messages in the CD approximating the impression "Impeach Bush".

By the way, there are a lot of twits on the slashdot forum today who are posting stuff like "subliminal messages are bullshit" and "subliminal messages don't work". I used to work at the National Opinion Research Center which is a demographics research center, and monitored things like commercials and subliminal messages. That was part of my job. Granted, we tended to concentrate on visual feeds, rather than auditory feeds. However, I can guarantee you that subliminal messages are extinsively used in communications. Often times, people create a subliminal message without even realizing it. Other times, they are sneakier and craft

Gee, I believe you 're right!

Fruity Loops is a good starting point because it teaches the basics of step sequencing (beat-box style programming) and lets people start making good tracks right out of the box.

Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge and Acid are also good programs for loop recording arranging -- the best I've seen in the low-end home user market.

Reason is the ultimate in soft-synth sound generation. I don't know a single producer who uses software who doesn't love Reason. It's pricey, but worth it.

There is also a lot of good high-end music production software out there, many of it with great MIDI controllers like the Oxygen 8 or the Ozone. I use a combination of direct-recording hardware tools (a nice, high-end sound card, Line 6 direct recording equipment) to hook up my instruments (guitars, synths, beatboxes, etc) and a combination of Sound Forge and Reason to generate my loops. I can then arrange and mix them in Acid or Fruityloops. Fruityloops serves as my backup generator for certain drum and bass parts, but overall, my setup is pretty stripped down.

But if you really want professional studio quality digital recording, MIDI sequencing and mixing, get ProTools. It's like God.

Feature list

Vegas® 4.0

Please stop exxagurating the truth. From the Sonic Foundry website, Vegas costs $489.97

Sonar Costs $479.

If your job/profession absolutely depends upon these applications (which is the case for about 90% of their users), $500 is a VERY small price to pay.

Sorry about the mangled URL for Vegas. Here is the correct one, tested this time.

All of my OS X friends love Final Cut Pro. I can't argue with them at all, since in my brief exposure to that product, it is a blast to use. However, if you have a PC, I highly recommend you try Vegas from Sonic Foundry.

Vegas and Reason from Propellerheads are the only reason I boot Windows at all (yes I know Reason is available on Macs), but they are also my favorite reason I have to turn on a computer in the first place.

but what I really want is Linux alternatives to the Sonic Foundry Range of superior audio-warez!
if you can match that set of high-quality audio sequencers and editors i'd swap to linux in an instant!

Amplitube is quite awesome at emulating some of the best amps out there. I've started using this as an alternative to mic'ing my triple rectifier at my studio, simply because the amount of control you get is so much greater (IE changing the amp after the guitar was recorded)

Also, Sonic Foundry's Acoustic Mirror does a great job of mimicking any environment, even the charicteristics of a piece of equipment (vintage mic or amp).

I believe both of these products have demo versions you can try out, and they are both directx plugins (so use with Sound Forge or some other audio editing app).

What about Sonic Foundry's Acid? Protools is probably the budget of most aspiring musicians.

It is the platform of choice for design, sub-feature length film, and sound, with apps that have nothing comparable on the Windows platform - no, Premiere is not comparable to Final Cut Pro, and I usually use Premiere, so I know).

There is nothing under $1000 on a PC that can do the same
WRONG !!!! Go to www.sonicfoundry.com and get Vegas Video 3.0

I have spent only a little time using Final Cut Pro on a friend's Mac and though it was immediately and obviously a well-realized product, it was not enough time for me to full opinion. Most of my Mac-using friend who enjoy editing video rave about it, so it must really pass muster.

If one was interested in a sub $1k NLE, I would endorse the product Vegas Video 3.0 from Sonic Foundry as being an excellent tool for pc users at an incredible price considering its feature set. It is the only reason I have to boot Windows, but it is also my favorite reason for powering any computer I own: it is that much fun.

The product can be purchased for $300-$400 dollars, and if you are a student, there is a handsomely discounted academic version available. I strongly recommend anyone who hasn't tried it to download the demo and see how good it is, and I am not alone in my opinion.

I have spent only a little time using Final Cut Pro on a friend's Mac and though it was immediately and obviously a well-realized product, it was not enough time for me to full opinion. Most of my Mac-using friend who enjoy editing video rave about it, so it must really pass muster.

If one was interested in a sub $1k NLE, I would endorse the product Vegas Video 3.0 from Sonic Foundry as being an excellent tool for pc users at an incredible price considering its feature set. It is the only reason I have to boot Windows, but it is also my favorite reason for powering any computer I own: it is that much fun.

The product can be purchased for $300-$400 dollars, and if you are a student, there is a handsomely discounted academic version available. I strongly recommend anyone who hasn't tried it to download the demo and see how good it is, and I am not alone in my opinion.

I agree with most of what you said about ambient music. The artists you list, and Vir Unis in particular, are all excellent examples for anyone interested in truly innovative ambient works. Vir Unis also has a couple of sample CDs available through Sonic Foundry, makers of the Acid looping/composition program.

That said, I disagree with one thing:

For one, I think this is highly innovative.

I know, I know... "art" is in the eye of the beholder, but I can't bring myself to call this an artistic statement -- not to mention innovative. The artists you mention are all pushing boundaries and defining new sounds. This 24-Hour Ode To Joy is just someone stretching a WAV file in Sound Forge. Is the resulting sound interesting? Sure... but hardly innovative. Recompress the time and you still just have Ode To Joy, right?

Remixing an existing work, whether by changing the instrumentation, rearranging the piece, or applying a piece's theme to a new song -- that requires some artistry, some talent. And certainly more thought and consideration than a handful of mouse clicks.

This seems more an NPR version of Puff Daddy adding a new beat to The Police's "Every Breath You Take", or Vanilla Ice adding a 16th note to the bass line in Bowie/Queen's "Pressure".

I agree with most of what you said about ambient music. The artists you list, and Vir Unis in particular, are all excellent examples for anyone interested in truly innovative ambient works. Vir Unis also has a couple of sample CDs available through Sonic Foundry, makers of the Acid looping/composition program.

That said, I disagree with one thing:

For one, I think this is highly innovative.

I know, I know... "art" is in the eye of the beholder, but I can't bring myself to call this an artistic statement -- not to mention innovative. The artists you mention are all pushing boundaries and defining new sounds. This 24-Hour Ode To Joy is just someone stretching a WAV file in Sound Forge. Is the resulting sound interesting? Sure... but hardly innovative. Recompress the time and you still just have Ode To Joy, right?

Remixing an existing work, whether by changing the instrumentation, rearranging the piece, or applying a piece's theme to a new song -- that requires some artistry, some talent. And certainly more thought and consideration than a handful of mouse clicks.

This seems more an NPR version of Puff Daddy adding a new beat to The Police's "Every Breath You Take", or Vanilla Ice adding a 16th note to the bass line in Bowie/Queen's "Pressure".

I'm a musician. I manipulate samples. My favorite tool is CoolEdit Pro [syntrillium.com], but Sound Forge [sonicfoundry.com]is pretty popular, too.

These are Windows-only tools. There is a project to develop a distro for musicians (DeMuDi [demudi.org]), but the best Linux can do is Audacity [audacity.sourceforge.net], which is kind of like My Audio Editor by Fisher Price.

Until there are serious OSS audio engineering tools, I'm fucked.

Whenever you are visually representing data, and providing a means by which to manipulate the representation, consistency is paramount. If you have three object types: A, B, C that are represented in the same visual space, an action on A should have an equivalent effect if taken on B or C.

This was the primary concern we had when I was working on Vegas Video. At first, we treated audio and video differently, thinking that different media types would require different interfaces, but we quickly realized that most actions for one media type had a corresponding action for the other (i.e. Fade out). When a coherent interface element did not exist, we extended the user interface for the given media type. We never allowed an interface element to exhibit different behaviors for different media types.

Of course, Vegas Video is not the end-all of user interfaces, but I learned a lot about simplicity and consistence in interface design.

It's the difference between a complex application and a powerful one.

Screw that, man...I want Sound Forge. I want ACID. I want Vegas Video. I want Martin Hash Animation:Master. I want ProTools.

Figure out how to make apps like those run on Linux, or write NATIVE apps like those on Linux, and I will happily de-assimilate one of my Windows 2K boxen. Happily.

Screw that, man...I want Sound Forge. I want ACID. I want Vegas Video. I want Martin Hash Animation:Master. I want ProTools.

Figure out how to make apps like those run on Linux, or write NATIVE apps like those on Linux, and I will happily de-assimilate one of my Windows 2K boxen. Happily.

Screw that, man...I want Sound Forge. I want ACID. I want Vegas Video. I want Martin Hash Animation:Master. I want ProTools.

Figure out how to make apps like those run on Linux, or write NATIVE apps like those on Linux, and I will happily de-assimilate one of my Windows 2K boxen. Happily.

VegasVideo (they make SoundForge too) is so mucher better than Premiere.

The problem lies with there are so many variables for coding a widely accepted Linux version. Do you use Alsa or OSS? Do you use GTK or QT or Motif? These are all factors that major companies don't want to deal with because it's too costly to acomidate for the various different Linux users.

Even if all Linux users went to a standard API it still wouldn't make a difference. For all of the little jobs we have open source projects that will do just fine: Abiword, Gimp and the like. But there is no equivilant for QuarkExpress for linux. Quark just rocks. Even if Express was ported to Linux, there would be a problem with fonts, or printing or something that isn't the same across all Linux boxes like Quark can expect from windows.

Personaly I would love to see Sonic Foundry's tools ported to Linux and have them work as well as their windows counterparts. Vegas Video rocks. It's a poor man's AVID. It's beats the pants off of any other prosumer NLE that I have tried. And it works with ACID files. How cool is that? But it will never be. WHY? Because Windows has made it easy to make multimedia application with their codec and DirectX APIs. Why hasn't linux done this yet? It wouldn't be that difficult and would open the barndoor for easily upgradable applications. I have been advocating this for years an nobody want's to hear it.

Thank you for reading this rant. You may now flame.

Here is the link. Wait like two minutes so I can get my copy.

You should check out Vegas Video 3.0 from Sonic FOundry. It started out as an audio editing application with support for one track of video for reference while editing audio but now it supports unlimited tracks of audio and video. In my opinion, all it's really missing is support for real-time hardware such as Canopus DVStorm and an A/B editing style workspace. I'd settle for just the A/B editing workspace as v3.0 supports RAM preview. While not the best solution, if you have enough RAM you can preview non real-time effects as well as real-time effects without any trouble.

... but I don't know if it will be able to win my favor from Vegas Video. Which runs in vmware and sorta in wine/winex.
Though I will definitely give this new guy more than a fair chance...

Besides the loops they give you, you can find lots of free ones on the web as well.

Besides the loops they give you, you can find lots of free ones on the web as well.

Check out Sonic Foundry They have a program called Vegas that does a pretty good job with video.

This looks just like Vegas Video 3.0!!

That is funny, considering you can download it from their website.

Dremedia isn't the only one working on this. despite the Business 2.0 article's nearly sole focus on that particular company. A few others in the field include, and of course is not limited to, MediaSite (which looks to have recently been acquired by the audio and video editing software company Sonic Foundry), Virage, Pictron and Vodium. Its worth checking out each of the sites respective products page to see how they each are approaching this this new field.

...I'm remixing it right now using Sonic Foundry Acid Pro!

I must say, the speed-metal riffs sure make a difference.

Then you need to check again.

Or are you confusing Sound Forge, the actual professional mastering / batch-processing / microediting tool that's a complete DX and VST harness; with Sound Forge XP, the tiny little consumer / multimedia / web version of the same thing that ships with lots of cheapo sound cards?

Or maybe you're making the common leap of logic that 'pro audio' somehow doesn't include advertising production, audio for video, game development, and the thousands of other professional audio fields that aren't 128-track digital multitrack Peter Gabriel studios?

Then you need to check again.

Or are you confusing Sound Forge, the actual professional mastering / batch-processing / microediting tool that's a complete DX and VST harness; with Sound Forge XP, the tiny little consumer / multimedia / web version of the same thing that ships with lots of cheapo sound cards?

Or maybe you're making the common leap of logic that 'pro audio' somehow doesn't include advertising production, audio for video, game development, and the thousands of other professional audio fields that aren't 128-track digital multitrack Peter Gabriel studios?

Of course, their are lots of Macs out there for professional audio. Hell, I still use an Atari for Cubase, and I know some people use an Atari Falcon for Cubase/audio recording.

This is a compelling argument and one which can partly be addressed by supporting open source gpl technologies like ogg vorbis, which effect both Windows and non windows users. It's interesting to me that now sonic foundry is supporting vorbis in their music creation suite acid 3.0. Probably because it dosen't cost them anything to do but it will aid in the proliferation of ogg vorbis as a viable replacement to proprietary patented file formats (mp3). CPRM scares me deeply at the hardware level, I can only do what's in my power to not advise the purchase of anything that comes close to CPRM in hard disks etc.

Using Project Mayo as an example, we see that we don't need to rely on big corporations to feed us what the new multimedia format is going to be. Microsoft, in their actions, are just going to get more developers into working on new, open, and hopefully free multimedia formats which will have a better compression than current technology. It's not a step back, it's Microsoft unwittingly pushing us, as developers, forward.

Also, Microsoft's limitation is only in their own MP3 codec which will come bundled with XP. Using other mp3 codecs will allow users to continue creating MP3s in higher-quality format.

On a side note, the world of Windows XP is getting more and more darker, in my own eyes. With subscription-based license and now active attempts to stop MP3 files from being produced on XP, I can't help but ask when will Microsoft's attempt to control what I do with my own computer end?

Ultimately, it's going to make me move to alternative OSes as the solution rather than continuing my use of any Microsoft product.

If only we could get the *NIX world to pick a defacto GUI standard, then 9/10ths of my reasons for not moving to Linux or one of the BSDs already would be eliminated.

The other 1/10th taken care of already with the announcement of Tribes 2 for Linux shipping. ;)

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"There is no off position on the genius switch." --Dave Letterman
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Let's just say for a minute that this protection scheme really works. Let's say it doesn't break compatibility with regular cd players. Let's say we somehow can't raw read it even with something hardcore like blindread. There is a simple way around these sort of protection schemes, and its name is VAC.

VAC (Virtual Audio Cable) is based off the idea (mentioned in a few other posts) of looping physical cables from your soundcard's output to it's input to record the audio. VAC creates a wave i/o device (or multiple i/o devices, but only one is needed for this sort of thing) that can be selected as your wave out device, and also as your wave in device in a recording program (soundforge, wavelab, hell even microsoft sound record would work). To the player you are simply listening to your cd, but in reality the signal is recorded without ever leaving the digital domain, and you now have a perfect copy.

The only downside to this is that you must do it all in real time. But of course once you've done it, then its a regular unprotected file, so do with it what you will. Also note that this works for recording real audio and other streams that are not supposed to be able to be recorded.

The free Vorbis will always be there. The availability of free encoders plus the standard plugin architecture of music players these days would make embracing and extending a real tough thing to do.

Actually, this is totally wrong. Price out some of the lower end Digidesign or MOTU cards/racks, then tell me how far that amount would have gotten you 25 years ago (adjusted for inflation, of course). The big difference is that your home recorded music can end up on CD sounding good rather than a self released cassette. Remember those?

Since, the "near death" of Apple a couple years ago, most major third party hardware and software is available for both Windows and Mac OS, with the same functionality. And yes, you do need third party hardware, even on the Mac. To name a few of the major players: Steinberg, Emagic, Opcode, Sonic Foundry, etc.

A short history on music production and distribution:
blah, blah, blah

This amusingly myopic regurgitation of dated rock critic wisdom is so terrible that I'll bring up only the worst points of it and then point you to some good resources so you can get a better handle on things.

The major problem with your "history" is that it neglects to mention black people until Public Enemy and NWA. Don't forget that the black community has played a major role in the invention of every American music, from jazz to rap to techno. Furthermore, they've had their own distribution channels in the past, and still do today.

While perhaps making for convenient comparisons to Britney, et al. , your explanation of the differences between AM/FM and 33/45 are grossly exagerated and, in some cases, incorrect. A lot of this has to do with the fact that you forgot black people, whose music is often more appropriately presented in a singles format.

Perhaps you best check out these places:
All Music
The Mechanic's Guide to Putting Out Records, Cassettes and CDs
Home Recording at About.com

Circumvention is the mother of invention. Get yourself an audio program [Sonic Foundry] that will record the imported signal from the system at the same time it's playing. Set it to record at the same time you are listening to the file. Once you have reproduced the MP3 on your drive. (yes it does consume some serious space) Save and burn to disk. Then run out and buy the hottest damn Mp3 multiformat CD player you can find. Port that back in to the Mic input to the card. Listen to and store as much damn music as you see fit. You get hard copy and the ability to play back with out having the File parse the info when accessed from a local drive. Circumventing completed.

Listen to what I'm saying. It's a hack, and I'm a musician with songs on MP3. WTF!!!!????

I don't know the ultimate answer. I release songs for the people, not the money. If I happen to get paid in the process, then that becomes a big fat frickin' bonus. I realise the beast that has been created. Either feed it, or get eaten.

Two words: Sonic Foundry.

Check out Vegas. It's a ProTools killer if ever I saw one. And there isn't anything like ACID anywhere, not for Mac, not for Linux, not even for Windows.

If I could run Sonic Foundry stuff on MacOS I would, but they are 100% Windows there. And all of their stuff is NT4/W2K savvy.

I am a Mac fan. I hate to say this, being a Mac fan, but the Foundry has kicked just about every Mac sound app's ass. Big time.

This is by far, the biggest thing that's keeping me chained to using windows.

Quake3 is out for linux, Pine's great for e-mail, Communicator is acceptable as a browser, but there is an emtpy void where the multi-media apps come in. I haven't been able to find anything for wav file editting like Sound Forge, or a sequencing program as good as VST, or a multitracker as good as SAW.
(all of these are personal preference I'm sure).
Plus, from my understanding, there's no plug-in architecture like MS's DirectX that allows for effects plugins to be compatible with virtually all of these programs (well, except for SAW)...
When these apps are carried over to Linux like Photoshop was (Gimp), MS will be a distant memory...the likeliness of this however is a sign that I'll be using MS stuff for a while to come :(

-lev