Slashdot Mirror

(what do you do when you decide you want some background sounds from a symphony orchestra? Use a synth? the record labels would pay out for the real thing if you wanted it).

Easy. You'd use this or this or this or even this. If it's just "background sounds" what makes you so sure you could tell the difference? Good arrangement is much more important than virtuous playing. More professionals are using this stuff than you think. A sensible producer would certainly think twice before booking an orchestra if it isn't going to add anything.

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.

The upturn in Apple market share started long before Vista's loud and thunderous flop.

With OSX, I fully agree that Apple was on the uptick before Vista's flop. However, Ubuntu and Apple got a great boost with Vista's flop. I now run 3 Ubuntu machines, 2 dual boot with Windown 2K and Windows 98 SE. The 3rd machine is a new build Digital Audio Workstation without Windows due to the flop. Vista is unreliable for audio multitrack recording and production. Most interfaces don't come with Vista support. Ubuntu Studio comes with the real time kernel for low latency multi-track recording.

My dad picked up an Apple Laptop when his XP laptop died, again because of problems with Vista. I think much of the Apple uptick is due to growth of the OSX platform and applications, and the rest is from Vista's flop.

Refrences, Of course;
http://www.steinberg.net/1045+M52087573ab0.html Support for MAC and Windows XP.
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1267.html Support for OS X
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1194.html Wow, some Vista support, but with a bug list. Best stated as improved and improving.. Unlike drivers for other OSes

Yeah right... most machines sound takes far less than 0.1% of the CPU time to 'push the bits'. Even if you write it in C++ or asm it "might work on some people's computers and not on other". Ooh scary.

Well it is, if you want the code to "write once, run everywhere" (by everywhere we mean NOT "all arbitrarily fast and memory capacious home computers" but "any computer, including embedded systems, from Micro-ITX Mobos to battery-powered greeting cards that speak a greeting when opened." And forgive me for being so handwavy, it's not "pushing the bits on the buss," it's more like "reading the bits off the disk driver at whatever rate it'd like to get them for you, passing these to ringbuffers, keeping track of the ringbuffers state so they don't underrun, synchronizing the threads that read the input ringbuffers so they're all pulling the precise sample for the given realtime offset, reading the samples from the ringbuffers for several streams into the CPU for summing, writing the summed stream to the summed ringbuffer (or "mix buss"), keeping a tally of how many samples you send to the DAC so you don't overrun it, and emitting the bytes to the DAC. You CAN do it all in java, but if their are performance problems on platform X, your boss will ask you "Is this code written in the fastest way possible?" and if there's anything in it pertaining to java, you know how you'll have to answer.

These methods get inlined directly by the JIT since it knows the final types so these buffers are generally equivalent to arrays in overhead.

Generally? In C or C++, you can make it compulsory.

They do check bounds though, but if you want to crash your sound app go ahead and write it in C++.

You mean like these guys?

One of the many Amiga magazines offered instructions, how to build a midi port for the Amiga. It was very easy to do, and enabled me to keep ridiculing those horrible Atari's. Oh, the fun we had in those glorious days.

It might have been easy to add MIDI ports to the Amiga, but their presence-as-standard on the Atari was enough impetus for high-level audio software to be developed for the ST. Software that's still around today, despite having long since left the Atari platform.

It might be one thing having splendidly capable hardware and operating systems, but having actual, worthwhile, not-available-anywhere-else applications is the thing which gets people to use a particular platform. :-/

For those who don't know, VST (Virtual Studio Technology) is a plug-in architecture engineered by Steinberg Media Technologies. VST plug-ins aren't limited simply to sound filters, but allow users to expand their host applications with elaborate third-party instruments that do things like, say, simulate a grand piano. Many regard it as superior to the competing DirectX-based plug-in system.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of VST instrument support in Linux-based audio applications. Many musicians depend heavily on specific VST instruments, and wouldn't dream of migrating without them. Also, VST allows for so many new possibilities with your host application, it would multiply Wired's potential capabilities tremendously, and would be tantamount to porting dozens of applications to Linux.

Since Windows has a long-standing reputation for latency problems in MIDI timing (especially with budget hardware), I can see how a new version of Wired with VST support could compel some Windows users to switch.

For those who don't know, VST (Virtual Studio Technology) is a plug-in architecture engineered by Steinberg Media Technologies. VST plug-ins aren't limited simply to sound filters, but allow users to expand their host applications with elaborate third-party instruments that do things like, say, simulate a grand piano. Many regard it as superior to the competing DirectX-based plug-in system.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of VST instrument support in Linux-based audio applications. Many musicians depend heavily on specific VST instruments, and wouldn't dream of migrating without them. Also, VST allows for so many new possibilities with your host application, it would multiply Wired's potential capabilities tremendously, and would be tantamount to porting dozens of applications to Linux.

Since Windows has a long-standing reputation for latency problems in MIDI timing (especially with budget hardware), I can see how a new version of Wired with VST support could compel some Windows users to switch.

is what the cool kids are running thesedays, that full VST experience (gotta love vst plugins), from Steiberg of course
Clicky

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

What's next?!?! A virtual Jimi Hendrix?

Have you used Cubase's score editor? Because it seems Hans Zimmer has...if it's good enough for him, it should be good enough for most of the rest of the world. And yes, I know the difference because I tried to score music with Finale, and I have written songs with Cubase. Just because the sequencer is the default interface doesn't mean there isn't more under the hood.

Like a creative writer who spends too much time selecting the "right" word processor and focusing on page layout, I can't help but wonder whether some "music creators" (and their listeners) would be better served if they concentrated more on the muse of music and less on the toolset of the recording engineer.

The exact thing you pointed out is why I stick to only a few pieces of software. I use Reason 2.0 and Cubase SX for my main production programs. Any new synths I need, I can download them in the form of VSTi's (Virtual Studio Technology instruments. There's always going to be a huge learning curve for something as complex as music making. You don't think the hardware producers make all that snazzy music with just a Drum Machine and a Synth, do you? Those "composers" don't just pull music out of their ass..

P.S. I know there's Engineers for that, but they don't know exactly the pad or the bass drop you're looking for.

DBG

Well, you can't just buy a PC from Walmart and start recording 'Tommy' in your basement, one of the caveats is that you still need a decent audio interface, and an Audigy, while possible, is just not how most people go about it. I mean technically, you could plug an amp straight into your stock sound card 1/8" mic input and load up CoolEdit, but you'll be *seriously* lacking in quality.

If you're serious about digital mixing, Mark of the Unicorn makes some pretty affordable interfaces, an amateur producer friend of mine bought a 16-track interface and was so happy with it that he just sold his digital mixer. If you were even more serious, I'd check out Digidesign, who also make ProTools, an industry standard in terms of recording software. That stuff doesn't run cheap, but they do offer a very high quality amateur/enthusiast grade interface called the MBox for ~$400 (it also comes with a lesser version of ProTools), which isn't bad at all.

In terms of recording software, check out ProTools, Steinberg Nuendo, or CoolEdit, which is now apparently being distributed as Adobe Audtion.

Finale - this is like the Microsoft Office of music notation - seems easy to use at first, really annoying once you try to do more complicated things, but has thousands of features. No other program has as many features as Finale, even though Finale implements many of them quite poorly. Totally unintuitive and not very Mac-like. Unfortunately, Finale files are the standard file format in the industry, so if you're going to be trading sheet music with other composers, you'll need to have Finale. See also their low-end versions, Finale Allegro and PrintMusic - there's nothing at all wrong with these if you don't need the features they leave out - mainly the ability to work with large scores and do part extraction.

Sibelius - intuitive, Mac-like. Easier to use than Finale, though some things take some getting used to. Not quite as powerful. Buggy - not more so than Finale, but in different ways. In theory it can open Finale files - not sure how well it really works.

Low-end WYSIWYG notation software:

Harmony Assistant

Lime Music Notation

Unix (may work on Mac OS X with Apple's X11):

Rosegarden

Text-based (no GUI, but renders nice output):

MusicTeX

Lilypond

Sequencers (may do a little bit of notation):

Intuem

Cubase et. al from Steinberg

Logic Audio

Please feel free to add and re-post. If someone wants to compile prices for all of these, that would be great.

It appears that it's Linux elitist because generally users with clue use Linux on their home machines.

I code for Linux at work. At home I have SuSe but my primary machine is Windows XP.

Why?

Because as a hobby I play music, and there is a plethera of excellent music software for the Windows platform. From recording (cubase, protools) to creation (live, reason) there is simply no comparison in linux, outside of academic electronic music.

Your elderly 'elitism' is misplaced, and wildly out of touch.

Personally, I hope not. Linux has a lot to learn from OS X and the junky spiel you get from everyone about Linux being "hard to use" has some truth in its madness. You can't ask a typical idiot to go to a shell and ./configure, make and make install - it's all too overwhelming. And what about uninstall? Most of my friends haven't figured that out yet... what you can ask them to do is drag stuff into the trash can, because that makes sense.

On a side note, speaking as a music producer, I can't see much of the mucho expensive music software taking off on a free operating system... I mean, the price of Cubase SX, in comparison to the cost of Windows, is pretty outrageous to begin with, but when you consider that the whole rest of your applications, including your office suite, were free, you'll be even more apprehensive.

"Hate to break it to you, but only the part that is open source, is what they stole from open source community...and if you knew anything about programming, you would know that it takes more than just source from the UNIX portion to write software."

Oh, I see... You know little or nothing about OS X... Please take some time to learn what you are talking about as to not seem like a jackass in the future. Darwin was not stolen... It is still open source with concurrent x86 builds. Cocoa is an amazing API. Project Builder is pretty nice as well. Does Microsoft provide developers with this? Sure they do, right? Is Microsoft's Windows Media Server open source; and will it run on Linux, Solaris and Windows NT/2000 - hmmm...

MSDN.com just gives you the info you need when you need it right? "Cut and Dry - it is not bloated at all. ;-)

"I work in the radio field, and the only decent application that runs on Mac is Protools. Everything else we use is PC only"

Ah, Radio... what a cutting edge field... I hear that is where things are headed - FM. Ha. Developers are all over it.

Protools is nice, but I am sure you have heard of Logicand Cubase right? BTW, no more Logic for pc - mac bought Emagic.

Radio Automation software - you mean a digital media player with an integrated database? (a few open source apps that cover this)

News Delivery Software.... You mean a newswire?

Satellite Control Software - well - you sure that WIN32 is the only platform supported?

All these apps that you claim are not being written for mac - where are they? You use WIN32 applications at the 'radio station' - woohoo. Your point?

Why isn't Microsoft getting any of these or these? When is the last time that Microsoft invented something as influential as Firewire? Where are these apps you speak of?

Yes, please go on - moron.

Hold on while I get ReBirth spun up on my trusty old iMac ... lookin' for a mod ... something with a mostly house sound but a little more edge. Now I'll just run these lyrics through text-to-speech and glue it all together in Cubase. Phat!

wtf? hey maclots.... Just cause someone is criticising Altivec doesn't necessarily make them a troll....

I do agree with you that clustering could be far more useful than it currently is, but as you say, anything that requires low latency is kind of problematic...

As far as clustering goes, you know you're able to put together a PC processing monster and use VST System Link ?

Been considering this to add to my TiBook...

Plug this... Presonus Firestation

Into your PC running this... Cubase SX

Hey super, you now have the same recording capability as many studios claiming to run ProTools HD (which your million dollar studio is most likely running.) And before you holler about recording quality, lemme tell you that it's 90% engineer, 10% equipment, and I'm being generous to the equipment.

The cost? Under a grand if you don't buy at Guitar Center. ;) I think I paid around $500 for the Firestation and $340 for Cubase SX.. both new and in the box. And you don't even need pre's for your mic.. the Firestation has nice tube preamps on channels 1 & 2.

The best part? You don't need a mac. Sorry mac users, it's true. Thanks to firewire the PC has caught up. And before someone starts shouting Digi001 or Digi002 and the omnipresent ProTools or the venerable Logic Audio... the only real difference between the production suites anymore is interface and editing tools (and *not* sound quality, no matter what you're told.)

Just my opinion. :)

--
mcp.kaaos

My bad. I hadn't read the VST License Agreement in a while. It states

The Licensee has no permission to sell, licence, give-away and/or distribute the VST PlugIn Interface technology or parts of it in anyway, on any medium, including the Internet, to any other person, including sub-licensors of the Licensee or companies where the Licensee has any involvement. This includes re-working this specification, or reverse-engineering any products based upon this specification.

Still, I suppose they could ask Steinberg for permission to port the SDK to Linux.

Just like in so many fields, software advances have allowed things to be done that used to be done in hardware. I've just recently purchased a piece of music production software I just can't recommend enough, Reason. Remember the big synth / sampler combos that sounded (more or less) like an orchestra? That's all in software now.

Equally impressive is Steinberg's Cubasis. Cubasis has a lot of cross-over with Reason, but its main capability is doing actual audio recording (whereas Reaons's reason is digital sound generation). Both of these pieces of software are sub grand price.

Will it finally play OGG... ;-)
Oups, sick joke, I meant : will it finally run Fruity Loops or even Cubase ???

Emagic's Windows-based product offerings will be discontinued on September 30, 2002.

try following the innovators instead of copycat clones

wrong, its a hardware and driver standard, hence why it is also present in a Macintosh
Both platforms running Logic Audio or Cubase use ASIO if the hardware supports it.

All You Need To Know About ASIO
As computers become more commonplace in recording and home project studios, so does the demand for faster, more responsive sound cards to work in these systems. A sound card is expected to enhance the recording process by handling many jobs at once. At any given time it's expected to be recording audio from a single or multiple inputs, playing back audio from multiple sources such as audio from the hard drive or virtual synthesizer instruments, and doing it all in a synchronous manner keeping in step with MIDI or other time dependent devices. These requirements are steep and often leave an ill-equipped system at a grinding halt.

In order to create a more direct path to the hardware, and also make the hardware more responsive to the software's needs, Steinberg of Germany (developer of the popular Cubase digital sequencer and Nuendo digital audio workstation) developed Audio Stream In/Out (ASIO) technology. ASIO has made its mark as the driver standard for delivering low-latency transfer of digital audio. This means that hardware supporting an ASIO driver is able to deliver low-latency recording and monitoring to hard disk.

http://www.soundblaster.com/resources/read.asp?art icleid=60&cat=2

you can grab the Steinberg ASIO SDK or jump on the mail lists here

So I'll post my own question, guessing what the post was supposed to be: I'm in the market for a digital multitrack, but since I'll be recording my wife's voice, a guitar and keyboard, I shouldn't need more than four tracks. I've seen lots of expensive digital 8-track and 16-track recorders, but a simple, high-quality digital equivalent of the old casette four-tracks (we own one of the casette types) would be really nice and would save some money. So what do people recommend?

Something off this page. From what you're asking, the Delta 66 may be the right one. Don't waste your time with cassettes, digital or not, when for about the same price, you get 6 in/6 out, and virtually unlimited tracks in software (CoolEdit, Cubase, etc.).

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 no way that RJ45 connectors would be able to endure any kind of live stage abuse. At least mLAN uses Firewire cables which are possibly a little more durable. Why don't they update the MIDI protocol to include all these extra things. In a MIDI lead two of the five pins don't do anything anyway. Everyone's gear already has MIDI connections, so I reckon it would take a while for the new protocol to take off.

All in all though, new technology such as this will create some totally wild new music and some awesome new stage shows. I am excited! (Big Kev excited!)

Some related technologies:

Yamaha mLAN

CobraNet

Steinberg System Link

My software studio controlled by Cubase SX from Steinberg. By having lots of power in your PC, you can emulate more VST instruments and sound effects.

In this business, you can't get enough GHz!

My software studio controlled by Cubase SX from Steinberg. By having lots of power in your PC, you can emulate more VST instruments and sound effects.

In this business, you can't get enough GHz!

My software studio controlled by Cubase SX from Steinberg. By having lots of power in your PC, you can emulate more VST instruments and sound effects.

In this business, you can't get enough GHz!

So, c'mon Charlie - let's have a copy of Cubase SX soon. Please??

So, c'mon Charlie - let's have a copy of Cubase SX soon. Please??

I can't see Jazz listed...

There's going to be a lot of work to catch up with software such as Cubase SX or Reaktor...

Especially I saw no standard for plug-ins, like VST, for example (which already is multiplatform so could probably be ported to Linux, after all it's just API specs). I didn't see any software that gives audio and midi multitrack integration either.

Another huge problem is going to be the drivers for the many professional audio cards (none of them has drivers for Linux, as far as I know)

Since Cubase was mentioned, I really doubt that Steinberg will ever shift in the direction of open source OS's in regards to their marquee products (Cubase, Nuendo, Wavelab, etc.) simply because they are moving towards a hardware based solution in the future, following Digidesign.

Steinberg (or any other sequencing software company for that matter) aren't moving to hardware replacements for their products. What they are doing is coming up with some pretty rad hardware to control the software.

It's an odd thought, controlling a software program with an outboard piece of hardware but if you think about it, it makes sense. As computers get more and more powerful, only the software that records,renders,manipulates,and,masters the audio needs change. Virually replacing an entire studio's worth of gear is a matter of a:\install.exe. Steinberg, Cakewalk, Logic, et al, all know this and will continue to push for a software-based studio.

This distribution looks alot like Demudi. I've never seen a little friendly competition hurt anything, especially in the Linux world. I hope companies like Steinberg and Protools start releasing apps for it.

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.

• http://www.kvr-vst.com - My favorite VST (softsynth and effect plugin) news and discussion site.
• http://www.em411.com - Another computer music news site.
• http://www.computermusic.co.uk/ - Lovely Computer Music magazine
• http://www.steinberg.net - Steinberg, makers of "Cubase" ... a software sequencer, music work environment and more.
• http://www.emagic.de - Makers of "Logic". A lot like Cubase. Sequencer holy warrior fanatics will track me down and rip me apart for mentioning Cubase first.
• http://www.cycling74.com/ - Makers of sound programming thingies Max/MSP and Pluggo. Pretty complicated, but reportedly worthwhile.
• http://microsound.org/ - Home of arguably the most snobbiest "experimental music" and computer music mailing list on the net. Plenty of interesting stuff here too. Prepare to listen to various 30 minute plus "masterpieces" of quiet shuffling sounds, only.
• http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?home_us - (English Link) Stylish softsynth and plugin rockstar company. They make some incredible products. Geeks will have hard-ons for Reaktor.
• http://www.refx.net - Maker of interesting VST plugins, notably "QuadraSID" which is a sound plugin based on the Commodore 64's famous, classic "SID" chip.

If you think Reason is powerful, you need to be shot. It is a simple sequencer with a few built in samplers, synths and effects. Perhaps you were thinking of Reaktor, made by Native Instruments. There are countless sequencers, effects and instruments out there that can be combined in any way you can imagine. Here are a few links to get you started:

Native Instruments
Cubase VST
K-v-R (huge VST resource)

Please see the Tascam US-428 for a USB- connecting MIDI and Audio (Analog and Digital, XLR, half-inch jacks) In and Out- Box.

It has knobs and sliders, pre- configured for Cubase, which you assign as you please.

Personally, I use it for Reason, where I like to tweak those filter sweeps physically.

Latency? No problem for me - try it out, it's faster than MIDI.

The Soundblaster thing might be great adding surround to my system, but dunno about it's Mac- friendliness. They make a card for the Mac, but who knows - when it doesn't state any platforms, it's bound to be Windows- only...

The Tascam, of course, works perfectly with any USB- Mac.

Judge_Fire

Is it going to be usable as a pre-amplifier, to hook a vynil player to the sound card? Because I'd like to rip old LPs and save them on CD, but I'm a little stuck since the pre section of my old ampli is not working properly. I've found a nice gadget called Clean!Plus but this would be far better if it'd cover the pre-ampli stuff.

I haven't found anything that can touch wavelab, but it runs on windows, though.

The real killer is the audio montage section where you can arrange clips(non destructively) in unlimited tracks and adjust things like volume and effects on track or clip basis. Crossfading, etc. is a snap. Ton of effects that can be run real-time or not.. the montage section is a lot like broadcast2000..

Can do speed changes with constant pitch and vice versa, connects to your favourite sampler and does mp3 decoding/encoding too..

Also an added plus is an integrated cd burning software. Which means that you can do a montage of clips, set cd-markers(track changes) and burn a cd without gaps between tracks..

Check it out at steinberg.net

What BeOS had was amazing performance in the low-latency area of computing, namely audio and video.There is a huge market for audio and video processing. People in that sector goes with what runs best, they're even running MacOS 9 (gasp!), because Cubase and other applications just plain works better under MacOS compared to Windows. Some are still running Atari!

Be had their chance when Steinberg announced a port of Nuendo, their successor to Cubase, to BeOS. At that point, the entire music business was raving, "No more suffering from Wndows/MacOS!!"

Guess what happened? Be made the decision to drop BeOS personal edition, and instead pursue the BeOS Internet Appliance(!?!). This failed in a spectacular way, with Sony delivering the only shipping units with BeIA. Sony have since discontinued that product.

They had their chance, a niche OS that would dominate a small percentage of the market, but blew it big time.

Mikael

Circuit bending is fun. My bandmate and I used to do this back in high school.. we didn't know what were were doing really, but we got plenty of wacked out sounds.

Nowadays we're a little more deliberate, so we make VST Plugins . The VST architecture is totally simple and pretty portable, so it's easy to crank out plugins if you have crazy effects in mind. This might be a good place to start if you know a little C programming and have some ideas.

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.

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

On a side note:
I've been looking to set up a mini-recording 'studio', preferably under Linux. Does anyone have good sound-card & software reccomendations? (The AWE64 I have doesn't cut it). Is there anything even close to Cubase in software out there?