Professional Audio on Linux?

twilightzero asks: "Recently a friend of mine who is chief engineer at a medium size recording studio/radio station has become increasingly unhappy with Windows (and would like to stay away from Macs) and has asked me if there is any sort of professional audio solution for Linux. Has anybody, anywhere ever tried this? Is it possible to buy a pro audio card with Linux drivers and just run Sound Forge in WINE or do you need an entirely native package?" This is one of those questions that just needs to be answered. What Open Source sound packages out there are good enough for even the professionals to use when they need to make their squeaks, squeals, and whistles. Also, what can they use to put their created sounds together into some semblance of music? As an addendum, coasterfreak asks: "Being an avid Linux user and composer is a bit of a problem right now. I've never run across any decent music creation programs for Linux. I've used Finale and Cakewalk before, but have yet to see them for Linux. I've heard rumors of something coming from the Debain crew, but nothing more than rumors." Can anyone confirm or deny them?

Just as a bit of a helpful hint, how many of you have tried Audacity yet? It looks to be a fairly feature rich sound editor, and it supports mixing tracks, plugin sound effects, and is cross platform, to boot! Maybe this is a decent spring board for those of you looking to start experimenting with sound under Linux, but I'm not quite sure it's ready for professionals yet...this based on the version number of 0.97 rather than any actual experience, so I'd take the word of those who have said they have used it rather than mine. It would be great if Audacity is further along than it looks.

Comments

Linuxsound.at

[mirko]

I was about to write you a loooooong answer in order to show you most alternatives but this link just does it much better that I may have...

Have fun!

Re:Linuxsound.at

[kilgore_47]

Whats the guy got against using a mac?
The mac is a great choice for professional audio.
(or at least a lot of professionals think so)

Re:Linuxsound.at

[NathanL]

I hope that someone does come out with a Linux solution. This will trash Avid in much the same way Avid trashed the whole entertainment industry (at least in the post-prod business I worked in in California). If people think that the entertainment industry losing jobs to Canada is the whole problem, they aren't seeing the big picture.

When Avid came out with their AudioVision tool as well as a broadcast quality video editor, this is really what trashed the industry. Instead of needing a $500k-$3M system to do it all, you could now set up a whole post suite in a clost for less than $100k. This was easier to set up, so all the engineers with tons of experience started losing their $50-$100 jobs to less experienced "kids" that were happy to make $15-$25 an hour. The value of experience was thrown out the window.

So next time you hear a radio ad or TV commercial that has loud digital hiss, you know that its because some film-school puke didn't have enough experience to know that a DAT should be copied digtially rather than through the analog inputs. Same with crappy TV commercials that sound like the mic was at the bottom of a trash can while the actor was talking.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[garcia]

they are expensive, proprietary, and lack freedom.

that's what most Linux users have against any software/hardware/OS. (or is that most /. readers -- one in the same I guess on most levels hehe)

Yes, they are probably the best source for professional audio but the cost of an Intel based machine w/Linux is far better than a Mac.

Money is everything. I wonder if the RIAA uses Macs, ;)

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how this is offtopic. Mod up.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Tim Doran]

Heh... they're gonna wonder about the spike in traffic today...

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can wear mittens while you work on a mac.
Linux requires the use of your fingers.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[cymen]

But surely if your music is a professional thing the cost of a mac over a pc is practically nothing! I'm a pc guy myself but I'm starting to feel bad about condemning macs all those years ago... Must resist the temptation...

Of course it isn't too hard though when you are a hardware geek too. PC hardware is just too much fun to give up.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Macs are much cheaper than either Windows or (shudder) Linux from a total cost of ownership perspective. If you don't want to pay out the nose for onsite support or to have your productivity slowed to a crawl by balky user interfaces, then get a Mac. Otherwise Windows is fine. Linux remains firmly ensconced in the geeks-only, buy-only-if-you-love-to-tinker camp. For audio, either Windows or Mac also presents a much better value in terms of software availability, a significant part of delivered value.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Enkur]

Support? We don't need no stinkin' support.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[UberLame]

When it comes to sound, professional gear is called for, even if you are just doing it as a hobby. Seriously, try using a cheap 4-track versus an ADAT someday, and you will quickly see what I mean. If you don't want to use total junk, then being a hobbiest takes some serious cash, and anything that can be done to reduce the amount is helpfull. Thankfully, most sound gear and musical instruments don't go out of date quickly, so there is a healthy used market for the gear.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

They're used to it by now. It's a mirror of Dave Phillips' site. I've bookmarked another one at http://sound.condorow.net . Dave's mirrors get posted anytime there's an audio thread on /. so I expect they've been through this many times before.

-- Paul Winkler

Re:Linuxsound.at

[angel'o'sphere]

Again a moderator running mad ....
Propably not very informatinve, but OFFTOPIC?

Anyway: all sound engineers I know, which are only 3 ... use a Mac.

Regarding 'free' operating System. MacOS X is based on FreeBSD.

Regarding Sound Editing Software: get a Mac Magazine or a Sound Magazine like "Keyboard", look for decent Sound Software, there are regulary comparision tests. (Or visit a profesional sound studio and look what they use and get their advice)

No proffesional Sound Master has the time to fiddle with OS, Driver or Hardware incompatibilities on a PC platform or with Software on a PC platform where the company/team engineering the software has a history of less than 10 years.

Only my 5 cents so .... but you are mad if you: "do not consider to take a Mac".

Regards,
angel'o'sphere

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

You're bitter, aren't you?

It sucks when you can't sit up there on top of the world forever, on a big heap of capital and claim it has to be that way forever.

You're a lot like those pissed off Mainframe guys who pissed and moaned and griped when the PC started taking off.

Elitist prig.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[joestar]

I have spent the entire week in a recording studio using Protools on a Mac and I can tell you that trashing 3 hours of work just because of MacOS repetiting crashes is not exactly what I can call a great choice for professional audio.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[kilgore_47]

I have spent the entire week in a recording studio using Protools on a Mac and I can tell you that trashing 3 hours of work just because of MacOS repetiting crashes is not exactly what I can call a great choice for professional audio.
Anyone who works for three hours without hitting "Save" is certainly not a 'professional'.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Nykon]

Why was he marked off topic? Hes dead right. Jus tlike doing graphic art, MAC is one of the better platforms for doing audio. yes the question raised was about linux and audio but it also brings up another point that maybe he should look at MAC over linux in the case of audio studio usage. At least hes not giving money is m$ ;)

Re:Linuxsound.at

[WNight]

It wasn't off topic for the question, just off topic for the message it was a reply to. It was also a troll. People often post trolls as replies to highly moderated posts so that their troll gets seen.

Why was it a troll? Because it had no useful content and brought up Macs vs PCs. I can think of many reasons to not use a Mac for audio (and to not use a PC). The point is not that one or the other is bad, but that there are valid reasons. Perhaps the person is question has PC hardware and wants to use it. Linux is free, MacOS is cheap but you've got to purchase the Mac to run it on.

As such, the "Not Mac" in the question was valid, and questioning it in such a way was very troll-like. Even if not an intentional troll, it was likely to cause a flame-war for no reason.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[joestar]

Very funny. There is an autosave function in Protools, just for your information.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[WNight]

If those young kids can't do the job properly, I don't see what your problem is. Anyone who knows this will continue to hire a professional.

When you need to worry is when those same kids can do the job just as well as someone billing five times as much. That's when the expensive guy will be completely out of a job.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Bedouin X]

No proffesional [sic] Sound Master has the time to fiddle with OS, Driver or Hardware incompatibilities on a PC platform or with Software on a PC platform where the company/team engineering the software has a history of less than 10 years.

I work in the recording studios at a major US University and we have a number of PCs running Sound Forge, WaveLab, Vegas, SAW etc. and have absolutely no hardware problems (except for the temptation to upgrade all of the time due to ridiculously cheap prices). I honestly can't remember having many (any?) hardware compatibility problems since the release of Win98.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[kilgore_47]

Very funny. There is an autosave function in Protools, just for your information.

Then how did you manage to lose 3 hours of work?

Sure, macs freeze up from time to time (as do a lot of other computers). But random data-loss is pretty unheardof.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[gig]

Pro Tools systems are sold and supported by Digidesign, complete. If you have a problem with a system, you should talk to Digidesign. If you are having repetitive crashes, then you have a problem there somewhere.

For Apple's part, they spent the last five years writing a completely new operating system that doesn't crash, and released it over six months ago. What more do you want from them, to rewrite Pro Tools as well? They did in a way, because Mac OS X includes a complete modern, multichannel audio and MIDI subsystem that supports 32-bit floating point files (infinite headroom, no clipping, easier to process, they are the new standard). Any Mac OS X app can take advantage of these features for free. That stuff is there because the people who need it are using Apple's products, and have been for decades.

As if Windows never crashes ... sheesh.

Right now, Mac OS 9 is still the best place to do music and audio, but when the apps flip over to Mac OS X, it's going to be a whole new world for us guys. The great interface, super stability, the best apps, and the new audio and music subsystem and plugin formats. The multitasking and buffered windows and excellent memory management are also going to make for a great improvement.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[gig]

Avid is already being hurt by Final Cut Pro, which costs only $1000 and runs on any recent Mac. It's chump change for what the system can do. The G4 is perfect for these kinds of computations, too.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[moncyb]

Then how did you manage to lose 3 hours of work?

Didn't he say he lost the 3 hours on repeating crashes? Sometimes a problem occurs that doesn't get fixed with a reboot, and you have to fix it before you can get any work done...in fact Microsoft mandates that everyone using their software has to lose at least 3 hours/day to fixing stupid problems. ;-)

Re:Linuxsound.at

[talonyx]

Ok, so maybe this is a little off topic. I'll turn off my +1.

"If people think that the entertainment industry losing jobs to Canada is the whole problem, they aren't seeing the big picture."

LOSING JOBS TO CANADA????

Fuck, everybody from Canada is moving down to the states! It's called the "Brain Drain" up here. Once somebody's got enough skills to become a coveted professional, he's also got enough skills to see that making a lot more a year with a LOT less tax is the way to go.

Canada invariably loses jobs to the States, with the same people doing them for higher pay! The money stays in the US and all you yanks can be happy, while people up here get mad becuase of all the socialistic crap that got those people a good enough education to do their highly paid jobs.

In other words I pay taxes into a school system that educates people for free, and then sends them and their skills to the US.

Don't say you lose jobs to Canada. Ohhh no.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[lkeagle]

Pro Tools systems are sold and supported by Digidesign, complete.

ProTools is just a software package, and is usually a solo system only in professional studios. If you buy DigiDesign's hardware, then you've got but one interface with which to use ProTools, but it supports quite a bit of other audio hardware as well.

For Apple's part, they spent the last five years writing a completely new operating system that doesn't crash,

Does this furrow anyone else's brow? No? Just me? hmmm...

What more do you want from them, to rewrite Pro Tools as well?

Well, it seems so, I believe the question posed was for professional audio software to be available for Linux. I know of many many audio professionals that would absolutely love to have ProTools for Linux. I'd even be willing to pay for it ;-)

They did in a way, because Mac OS X includes a complete modern, multichannel audio and MIDI subsystem that supports 32-bit floating point files (infinite headroom, no clipping,

Infinite headroom? No clipping? Again, my eyebrows are having trouble staying in place.

easier to process, they are the new standard).

Oh great... Another standard 'Pro Audio' format...

As if Windows never crashes ... sheesh.

This may come as a surprise to some of us, but Linux crashes too... The question isn't only about stability, although that is definitely the key issue. I'll still pick a Linux desktop over Windows 2000 or MacOS X for stability purposes. PC's have a slight advantage due to available hardware drivers. Mac's have a slight advantage due to available, tested, industry approved pro audio software. Linux, I hope, will gain popularity enough to attract the hardware and software industries and perhaps set a new 'standard' of pro audio editing workstations. I for one would love to not have to worry that all my expensive software is installed on a questionably stable foundation.
I'm just glad there's finally a MacOS with memory management...

~Loren

Re:Linuxsound.at

[DavidRavenMoon]

Linux is free, MacOS is cheap but you've got to purchase the Mac to run it on.

And what pro audio card are we going to use with Linux? I'm not talking SoundBlaster, I mean like one of the multi channel cards, like from DigiDesign, M-Audio, Echo, etc.

Are there Linux drivers? (I'm not trolling, I just don't know the answer... ;-) There is more to pro audio hardware than the computer.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

My cat's name is mittens.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[orangesquid]

My cat uses a mac.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[Anonymous Coward]

YES YES YES!!!!

I finally got to metamod some fuckwit down for slamming a legitimate response! "Off-topic" indeed! UNFAIR.

All I can say is... "w00t".

woof.

Of course, some of the bad mods are probably also incorrectly meta-modding...

Re:Linuxsound.at

[WNight]

I heard (from this thread) that one of the makers of pro-level hardware had Linux drivers for their PCI cards.

I imagine most of the cards would be "fairly" easy to support. They're "just" a sound card, right? A very good one maybe, but still, just a way of reading one or more sound streams and playing others? I doubt you'd get into trade-secret area here, which means you'd probably get more developer support in writing the driver.

I know a bit of what-for I speak. My company makes ATM networking cards which share no hardware in common with a 3-com ethernet card, yet our beta-level driver we've written for Linux are very close, code wise, to the 3-com ethernet drivers. Some of the hardware dependant stuff is different of course, but the basic packet assembly stuff is very similar. Any skilled Linux hacker could write drivers for our card in a weekend based on the Windows binaries. It's be a single afternoon if he had source.

OT: I wasn't saying Linux was a possibility, but I can definately see reasons for saying "No Macs". If I was asking I'd do the same thing. I've got a ton of high-end PC hardware and no Mac hardware. I'm sure if I wanted to buy something from scratch I could consider a Mac as well as a PC, but I'd prefer to use my existing hardware. Thus if I asked about options I'd ask for PC options. If I was ready to buy a new system I'd call a few pro-audio houses and ask what they used instead.

Re:Linuxsound.at

[NathanL]

Its not jobs that are lost to Canada, its production money. This would generally mean a short-term project where local governments and businesses get money for location fees and economy-boosting production expenses. I didn't mean career type jobs. Sorry.

Obligitory book link..

[cheesyfru]

Check out Dave Phillips' excellent book on the subject, Linux Music and Sound. There is a chapter dedicated to what you're wanting to do.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/188641134 4/ qid=1003254837/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_7_1/103-5443063-182 7000

Re:Obligitory book link..

[carlos_benj]

I'd dismissed that book after reading a negative review. After your use of the word 'excellent' I did a little Googling and found others with the same opinion including a blurb from Electronic Musician and Keyboard Magazine. Looks like I'll have to check into it a little more now.

Dang! How am I ever going to save time by letting others do my thinking if they don't all think alike?

Re:Obligitory book link..

[JamesOfTheDesert]

I have the book, and it's a good overview for getting started, but, covering so many apps, fails to provide enough detail. Plus, it does not offer enough help for when you can't get even basic sound running right.

If people need to be sysadmins or recompile kernals to do music on Linux, it just won't happen.

Macs?

[Baba Abhui]

Digital audio production and Macs are virtually synonomous; what does this guy have against macs?

Re:Macs?

[gbaldwin1]

Really? I didn't get the memo! Damn, and I was really starting to dig MacOS X.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, Troll

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

if we have to tell you, you'll never learn.

Re:Macs?

[jeffy124]

my guess is the bottom line. He probably doesnt want to spend the money in purchasing Apple hardware. So he wants to spend a little on Linux and reuse the hardware he already has that's currently running Windows.

He may also want to retain some things from Windows but not have enough physical desk space for two machines (a Mac and a Windows box). So he can use Linux and dual-boot the two OSs.

Re:Macs?

[kilgore_47]

my guess is the bottom line.

"budget concerns" and "professional audio" are very very incompatible, regardless of platform. Audio hardware aint cheap.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably dissed them in the past (no floppy! no command line! no bsod! too easy to use!) and is now too embarrassed to consider them.

Re:Macs?

[LordNimon]

I agree completely. The supposed cost differences between Macs and PCs (and depending on who you ask, Macs either cost more or less than PCs) can't possibly be of concern to someone considering professional audio. After all, how much is his time worth? If he thinks he's going to save time and money (and in his business, time IS money) by forgoing Macs in favor of some cheapo PC running Linux, then he's got MUCH bigger problems.

Re:Macs?

[kjj]

Exactly! They probably bought the expensive audio hardware when they money was rolling in. Now things are tough and they already have hardware and PCs but don't have any extra cash. The investment in the audio hardware is made once in a while with less need for an upgrade merry-go-round like the insane pc industry. Only now are people hanging on to older PC equipment. Again this is the economic downturn combined with the fact that an older 500Mhz or so machine is far from being usless. Why toss perfectly good hardware when new software is all that is needed?

Re:Macs?

[torklugnutz]

There are some good reasons he might not want a Mac. #1 he's already got a PC and wants to keep his hardware. #2 ... Yeah, I guess #1 is good enough.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest thing I have against Macs is the sheer cost of buying the hardware and software.

When I set up my digital audio solution in my home studio, I looked at both. I was able to purchase a dual PIII system, 2 gigs of ram and a few 30 gig 10,000 RPM SCSI disks for about the baseline price of a dual-G4 system with 1/4 the RAM, 10 or 20 gig of disk and a single button mouse(!).

Most of the software I wanted to use for post production was not available on the Mac (Acid, SoundForge, etc). Yes, I use Pro Tools which works just as well on the Mac as on the PC. But why should i buy TWO computers so I could use my favorite post-production and mixing tools?

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're smart fags. Smarter than you, apparently.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the reason Macs are good at audio and PCs are poor is precisely because Macs are custom hardware and PCs are not. You just can't get the guaranteed low latencies you require on a PC.

Re:Macs?

[eAndroid]

I use a Mac and a PC. It would be only a PC if it weren't for one special piece of software: Cool Edit. Cool Edit is destructive editing, but besides that, it has some excellent features! In particular its source cleaner (noise/hiss reduction et al) is second to none. Not even multi-thousand dollar systems can compare to the ease, speed and most of all quality of cleanup Cool Edit can do.

If you've heard my stuff you know the quality if already poor. But considering most of the worst of those songs were recorded single-channel with a radioshack mic and SB16 it is surprising they turned out at all.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt. Walk into any commercial recording studio and what do you see? Clients expect a mac running protools, cubase,etc. Fuck the politics, will you be able to exchange your session data with your mastering engineer?

Re:Macs?

[Shwang_Shwing]

Not only that, but plug-in software is cheaper on the PC. Same plug-in on a Mac is 10-20% more than a PC

Re:Macs?

[kitzilla]

I was wondering the same thing. Why NOT use a nice, stable OS like Mac OS X for audio--especially when there will be a ton of elegant software and a user culture to support it?

A local high-volume production studio was slowly migrating from Mac (OS 9) to Windoze. They changed their minds once OS X came out. Stability saves time, and big files transfer smoothly. I bet Mac does fine in audio apps.

Re:Macs?

[mlheur]

It could be a religious thing.
I never did like high school, and I had to use Macs in highschool... Maybe that's why I dont mind IBM PPC running AIX but I dont like Mac PPC running MacOS?

I never associated windows, linux, solaris, or bsd with school so I use them. I used macs at school and I vowed never to use them again.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I will log on with my other account and moderate you down now.

Re:Macs?

[NulDevice]

That's not true at all, unless you're talking about the TDM plugins for specific hardware, in which case they're just plain expensive for everyone.

There's a lot more freeware plugs for PC, sure, but the "professional" ones (there are few that are really of quality sufficient for a commercial recording) are either cross-platform...or mac-only!

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

What good is a smart fag when they're locked in a gas chamber?

Re:Macs?

[Florian Weimer]

That's partly because Macs used to have a basically non-preemptive operating system. Usually, this is a severe limitation, but in some cases, you can get lower latency and more exact timing. On the consumer Windows platform, too, there were some reports that MIDI performance degraded because of partly preemptive between Win32 applications introduced by Windows 95.

However, with MacOS X, you've got a real preemptive scheduler, so this advantage is probably lost forever. There may be some real-time scheduling options, but scheduling a typical UNIX workload and real-time scheduling don't mix very well (although there are some hackish solutions).

Re:Macs?

[Joey the Lemur]

It would be only a PC if it weren't for one special piece of software: Cool Edit

Cool Edit is PC-only, I think you meant it would only be a Mac if it weren't for Cool Edit :) It is a good program, I wish they'd make a Mac port, perhaps they'll be persuaded to make a Mac OS X version eventually.

Re:Macs?

[twilightzero]

The economy has nothing to do with it. The recording studio side of the business is busier than it's ever been before and they're burning cd's as fast as they can fill the burner towers. And no, actually he just doesn't like Macs proprietary-ness (at least from what I know). However, your point about tossing perfectly good hardware is well put. Most of the pc equipment IS fairly new. He's just getting tired of Windoze crashing and instability and M$ crap, etc.

Re:Macs?

[nether]

Read the link above at Maccentral regarding almost ALL the big names in audio going gaga over OS X.

It's about implementation ... and Apple's all over that.

Apple hasn't lost the advantage in Audio, it's just left the competition behind.

__joel

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep.
Don't even think of using anything but Switchcraft connectors. And they'd damn well better be gold plated ones. It affects the sound quality!

Yeah, right.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Latencies?

What the hell? You're Mister Snow Job. Talk about something real, not made up Apple-speak from marketing.

Here's a blowtorch, you hyping bastard...

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did someone say butt plug?
but plug-in software is cheaper

Oh never mind.

Re:Macs?

[awful]

seriously, they are the standard when it comes to msuic production. take a look at any major recording publication e.g. Sound on Sound - its Mac Mac Mac all the way. Faffing around with drivers, motherboards, hard drive, OS crashes etc just gets in the way of making music, hence the Mac.

Re:Macs?

[LafinTux]

OS X stable? Whom are you kidding?
Efficient? With a 100% cpu time guzzling GUI, I don't think so. Are you aware of the fact that OS X is up to 30% slower than OS 9?

As much as apps migrating to Windows, they already have done that a long time ago. On the PC you got if not the same, than comparable software and then more.

As much as the Windows stability is concerned, have you heard of Windows 2000 (the OS that runs half of the WWW servers in the world), or even better the new XP (whose current benchmarks show it to be up to 50% faster than the Win9x)?

Big files transfer smoothly? Not on a Mac with a 33Mhz PCI bus, 100Mhz front-side bus and 66Mhz ATA form factor (just for your info, PC hardware has up to 133Mhz PCI buses, up to 400Mhz front-side bus and 100Mhz ATA/RAID capability, while SCSI stuff is comparable).

Mac does "fine," but that's pretty much it.
Try this for your reader's digest:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q4/macosx-10.1/ ma cosx-10.1-12.html#conclusion

Re:Macs?

[logicassasin]

He's probably got that same thing against macs as I do - I simply loathe MacOS.

Anyways...

For truely professional software (ie - Cakewalk/Sonar, Cubase, Logic, SoundForge, etc...) you need to stick to win98/ME (since some apps won't run under NT/2000/XP). Cakewalk will run under NT/2000, but many pro audio cards won't work. It was rumored that Cubase and Cakewalk would be ported to Linux, but apparently Steinberg and 12 Tone dropped the projects. I've been able to run Sound Forge 4.5(minus Direct X plugins) with Wine, but it's slower than just running it in Win98. There is also a shortage of Linux drivers for the better audio cards, without them, having good sw is useless.

If any of you wish to check out my recording setup, check out my site @ http://www.geocities.com/labwerx

(oh, BTW, all of the above mentioned sw is available for the mac, I'm not saying that pro stuff isn't available for the mac, but comparing the currently available linux sw to Win98 stuff. )

Re:Macs?

[LafinTux]

Crashes? Lol, I've yet to see a Mac that crashes as seldom as Win2k or Linux system. Even OS X bombed with their Gui crashes which are not repairable, unless you remotely log in onto the machine and kill the process. Otherwise you have to force a reboot. So much for crashes and user-friendliness.

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of digital audio production on Macs, some of you might want to take a look at our new short film at http://www.skeeterbyte.com/. We used Macs and Final Cut Pro throughout the editing process and were very pleased with the end result for our first effort. The Peak DV audio editor that comes with Final Cut is a standard for digital audio production.

Re:Macs?

[larkost]

Interesting statisics... wonder where you pulled them from:

30% slower than OS 9
In what? This is a nonsense statistic. For audio MacOS X offers real time mode, which will blow past any GUI calculations.

And I think you are more than a little confused about what hardware is avalible on what platform:

All macs and PC's (other than a very few servers that don't even count in this discussion), use a 33Mhz PCI buss. Apple offers 4 64Bit slots in their towers, which are relatively unheard of on the PC side (which uses 32Bit PCI). There is no such thing as 133Mhz PCI.

The memory bus (so-called front-side bus), on the G4 towers is 133Mhz, as it is with many PC's. The 400Mhz that you site is for RamBus, and if you knew what you were talking about, you would know that the deficiencies in this technology make it equivalent to the 133Mhz SDRAM that Apple uses (at a fraction of the cost). If you want to, you could site DDR-DRAM which is faster than what Apple uses, and has started to make its why into new PC's.

On the Hard Drive Front, Apple uses ATA100 on desktops, and ATA66 on laptops. No difference there, they are even the same drives. Hardware RAID (SCSI, FireWire, iBic, or ATA) options exist, and MacOS 10.1 offers software RAID for non-booting volumes. Once again, no difference (same solutions in most cases).

Oh.. and ATA is not a 'form factor'. You are thinking of the AT Motherboard, which has nothing to do with Hard Drives, and has nothing you can measure in Mhz.

And you are really gullible if you think that any upgrade is going to be 50% faster. besides, one has to ask, "faster at what"...

Re:Macs?

[gig]

Latency is how long it takes audio to get from the inputs to the outputs, via the computer. If it's not low enough, you'll hear a delay effect. Macs have the lowest latency, Linux is a close second when not under load, and a distant second when under load, while Windows sounds like it is in a cave.

Latency is a big issue to music and audio people who want to use a computer in their work.

Re:Macs?

[gig]

> #1 he's already got a PC

> #1 is good enough

If he really thinks that, please post his name and the studio he works at so I can make sure not to work with him. I mean, he might as well show up to a session with a pinball machine because he happened to have one around. Or a cash register, or a typewriter.

Re:Macs?

[gig]

> Yes, I use Pro Tools which works just as well
> on the Mac as on the PC

Actually, Pro Tools is missing features on the PC, which means that it runs better on the Mac than on the PC. Not surprising, since 85% of Digidesign's customers are using Macs, including 99% of their pro customers (Pro Tools, not Pro Tools LE or Free).

Windows users have such big heads about their platform. Tech sites moan all day about Apple having a 5% market share and it makes Windows users assume that there's nothing Windows can't do, or isn't the best choice for.

When a guy shows up in Hollywood and is all Windows-this and Windows-that and pissing on the Mac and spouting five year old myths, it is not professional. People in the industry know whose tools have buttered their bread over the years. PowerBooks abound.

Re:Macs?

[DavidRavenMoon]

Try this for your reader's digest: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q4/macosx-10.1/ma cosx-10.1-12.html#conclusion

I have a better suggestion... try this.. try using OS X 10.1. You just read some article and you are an expert? He doesn't like OS X as much as OS 9. But that's him. I'm running OS X 10.1, and on my machine, which I'll admit is faster and has more RAM then his machine, it's just slightly slower *feeling* than OS 9... but that's only the GUI... the OS is faster and I have never had a GUI lockup or kernel panic, and I've been runing it since March...

Re:Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

They SUCK!

Re:Macs?

[LafinTux]

My apologies for the "form factor" and Rambus mixup.

Still, I do not see a valid reason for excluding PCI-X motherboards from the comparison chart. If this person were to buy a top-of-the-line Mac, they'd be easily spending $5000. For that kind of money they could easily afford a single processor Itanium with a PCI-X bus which supports 66Mhz and a hefty RME Hammerfall soundcard. Btw, Pc's busses do also support PCI 64-bit slots, again depending on a motherboard (heh, gotta love the freedom of choice)...

Front side bus IS 400Mhz on Pc's, so please do not try to twist the facts (and yes, Rambus is also running on 400Mhz):
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/ma in boards/asus_p4t/4.shtml

Actually, there are now talks of having a 533Mhz one for the oncoming Northwood chip...

On a side-note, UltraDMA100 is not natively supported by Apple, but by the third-party vendor (as I found out after the fact), so I made my coments based on what I saw on Apple's website...

50% Faster at what? Go visit
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=windows2000

Re:Macs?

[lkeagle]

Cooledit Pro is not a destructive editor when used in multitrack mode. I do quite a bit of non-destructive editing with CoolEdit and other software packages like it.

I'll give you that CoolEdit has the ease of use in their noise reduction algorithm, but professional audio solutions are in an entire class of their own in terms of the quality that they produce. You can bet that there was a plethora of DSP and psychoacoustical research that went into the creation of, say, a Sonic Solutions package. They're in a class all their own, and therefore worth whatever the manufacturer wants to charge for them.

A well trained, experienced engineer familiar with a Sonic Solutions workstation can do things to audio that would blow your mind.

ProTools definitely has a high quality noise reduction algorith, as well. The difference between theirs and CoolEdit is that they don't display a nifty little noise signature and they don't give you complete control over all the FFT parameters (which I still see people fiddle with, even when they've never even heard of an FFT).

Re:Macs?

[lkeagle]

Please don't disrespect all of the prefectly good audio software and hardware that's been developed for PCs. A lot of research time and energy and a lot of great programming went into the PC based software packages.

I know of plenty of well respected studios that are PC based. In fact, a decent studio will have BOTH types of hardware around, to make sure that they can be productive to more of their clients.

It's the same reason that major studios don't buy into a single brand of signal processors, or speakers, or better yet, microphones. If they can afford it (and they can in most cases, simply from the additional client response) they will buy multiple devices that perform the same function from many manufacturers.

~Loren

(why does no one respond to my posts??? I feel so unloved... :-)

Re:Macs?

[torklugnutz]

If he could get Linux on a pinball machine, or a typewriter, you'd hear about it here first ;)/.

check out Demudi

[TerryG]

There are a lot of pieces that need putting together. I think Demudi is working on it.

One of... no... The most powerful, flexible, and extensible sound synthesis programs is Csound.

Re:check out Demudi

[phossie]

pure data, aka PD.

this is a close cousin of max/msp (combined), by the original author of max, running on Irix, Linux, and NT. it doesn't have the same object variety or community size, but *you can fix that*. with both PD and max/msp (mac only), you can write your own low-level objects in C, if what's there doesn't work for you. hence extensibility, low latency, etc.

you could probably run it on an iPaq. ;-)

Re:check out Demudi

[Anonymous Coward]

Csound's text interface is a serious pain to use. I hate to think of actually writing a substantial piece with it. OutOfPhase (a GPL program for Mac) is the best sound synthesis program I have seen. It has a built in programming language so you can write your own filtering modules, synthesize wavetables and sound samples, or define your own instruments, in other words do just about anything. On top of this, it is all seamlessly integrated into a GUI. Plus, you can write scores using a GUI in the program and use a full range of score effects. Why there seem to be no web resources for this program whatsoever, I don't know. If you can find it anywhere, the author has a bunch of demo instruments and a song that show some of the features.

stay away from macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

huh? why?? i mean honestly, why not use a very good toll for the job?

Pure Data, Jmax

[AtaruMoroboshi]

There is an audio solution for hardcore sound designers, it's called pd or Pure Data.

It's basically an attempt at an open source version of Max/MSP which is a program that is mac only and is used by groups like Autechre, Aphex Twin...

What PD is is a visual object oriented music "programing" language. It lets you build synths, midi controlers, do math, store data, create generative (algorythmic) music, do interactive composition...

here is a good link on PD:

http://wonk.epy.co.at/

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[AtaruMoroboshi]

Oh yeah, and i forgot to mention Jmax.

Jmax is the same kind of deal, and the GUI is built in Java, so they call it Jmax. it runs on linux and windows.

Both pd and jmax can be used on Mac OS X, if you tweak them a bit.

Note that neither pd nor jmax have quite the robust roster of externals/objects that Max/MSP have, but they are open source and pretty functional, from what I understand from people who are hardcore about these things.

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[kilgore_47]

That is fucking incredible!

Does anyone know about getting it to run on OS X?

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[AtaruMoroboshi]

it is possible to run PD on os X, it requires a bit of comand line stuff, but i don't have a link on hand, sorry.

you may find some useful links by exploring around...

http://www.cycling74.com is the max/msp people...

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[steveo777]

I notice a link to PD, but there is no link to JMax. I've been interested in developing my own sound and such. I just got a sound blaster Audigy, and the thing just rocks. Could you provide a link to get JMax. (yeah, I run windows).

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[rmull]

I've used MAX/MSP before, and it's one hell of a tool. I just couldn't wrap my mind around it enough to do anything useful with it in the time that I spent with it. (just a few weeks) It's like learning a new instrument, but instead it's a meta-instrument. Crazy stuff.

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[jcw2112]

Pure Data will run nicely on NT/2000. Jmax, while prettier seems to have some major stability issues (based on my experience...no flames please). I would just stick with pd. The GUI is ugly, but the results are incredible.

happy noise-making!

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[DeeezNutz]

Pure Dat and Jmax are not for audio. MIDI is not audio, synths are not audio!

This guy wants something to be able to record and edit audio, MIDI is control data

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[Anonymous Coward]

pure data and jmax have dsp (AUDIO) networks as well as control (MIDI/OSC/WHATEVER) networks.

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[Anonymous Coward]

jmax is my personal choice, the kernel is in my opinion more advanced/promising than pd's approach. Jmax is an IRCAM product.

http://www.ircam.fr/jmax

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[gig]

MetaSynth and Reaktor are two more apps that would appeal to someone who likes MAX. MetaSynth works with sonograms, which you can paint on with painting tools, and then run through different samples, synths, and filters. Mac-only. Reaktor is Mac/Windows, and is a modern synth construction kit that comes with hundreds of ready-made synths, and of course you can build your own. It sounds great.

Cycling '74 also have a set of 74 VST Plugins called "Pluggo", that retails for $74. Incredible bargain, and lots of fun ... sort of like a play-only "MAX Lite". These plugs don't try to be all pretty and audiophile ... they'll surprise you a lot. Mac only.

Re:Pure Data, Jmax

[Anonymous Coward]

> Pure Dat and Jmax are not for audio. MIDI is not audio, synths are not audio

That's nonsens. PD stands for Pure Data as you know. That means, that PD handles audio data nearlyly the same way it handles MIDI data or even graphics (with the gem package). One major reason to write PD was, that pure old MAX (without MSP) could only handle MIDI, no audio. The resulting audio engine of PD was later incorporated in MAX in the form of MSP ("Max Signal Processing")
But you're right: PD is most useful for synthesis, which is not what you would need in a radio station.

Linuxartist.org

[reverius]

Check out Linuxartist.org. They have a ton of music stuff... some of which may even be usable! :)

Re:Linuxartist.org

[kilgore_47]

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -- S.G. Tallentyre"

Wasn't it Voltaire who said that?
I've seen a few different names credited with that quote lately...

Re:Linuxartist.org

[Anonymous Coward]

This is completely off topic, but Voltaire actually never said that. Check this page for more information.

Re:Linuxartist.org

[kilgore_47]

This is completely off topic, but Voltaire actually never said that. Check this page for more information.

OK, so the quote was ABOUT Voltaire, not by him.
Voltaire's actual quote, according to that link, was "What a fuss about an omelette!"

Not quite as profound, but I'm sure someone is still willing to defend (to the death) his right to say it.

Demudi

[Anonymous Coward]

A specialised debian dist. is being setup just for this purpose, read more at www.demudi.org (or read below ;o)

The GNU/Linux operating system is widely known as a robust base for running Internet servers, but has not reached yet a similar audience as a platform of choice for the musician and the multimedia artist. The DeMuDi project targets one reason of this issue, the lack of a GNU/Linux distribution oriented toward music and multimedia.
The Demudi project (for Debian Multimedia Distribution) aims to provide for the musician and artist a GNU/Linux distribution dedicated to music and multimedia that would ease installing and customizing GNU/Linux for their needs. Demudi is not actually a distribution in itself. Taking advantage of the existing Debian distribution, it enhances a Debian distribution by a collection of packages containing music and multimedia applications or development tools. The Debian distribution has been chosen, because it is the only distribution that is developed entirely by volunteers over the Internet, just like a significant part of the GNU system, the Linux kernel and many applications. Additionally, it supports several different hardware architectures.

--------------
Yes, I'm an AC - No, I don't feel like registering!

Re:Demudi

[suitti]

I've just installed the alpha distribution. I'd like to give it a rave, but, uhm, it's still alpha, and I haven't gotten it to recognize my sound card. Red Hat did.

Re:GM Jesse's Night of Passion

[Anonymous Coward]

Now *THAT* is some funny sheeeee-it!

-DFW : Banning can't stop me!

Silly question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does WINE emulate the BSOD or Kernel32 errors?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Rediculous

[swgs]

are there any valid reasons why he'd like to stay away from macs? macs are more widely used in the recording industry than windows. they are excellent for what he needs, and are not complicated. im sorry maybe im being a typical mac user, but i dont see what's missing.

this is a recording studio we are talking about, if they are at all proffesional they dont need to be dealing with the normally non existant support on linux.

so unless the guy is a big linux geek, or the idea of being fired sounds good to him. i say a Power Mac 9600 running Mac OS 8.6 should do the trick.

SWGS

Re:Rediculous

[Roofus]

Thank you for your unwanted opinion. This guy explicitly said he does not want to use a mac. If you can't add to the conversation, please keep your mouth shut. I'm interested in hearing what kind of applications there are for linux.

Re:Rediculous

[brer_rabbit]

I don't know if that's still the case like it was 5 years ago. The PC has made incredible inroads thanks to companies like Sonic Foundry and similar stuff. I just with their were Unix equivalents of SoundForge, Acid, and Cubase. That'd really make my day.

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.

Re:Rediculous

[Shadowin]

Being a musician, who does his own production, I would say stick with the Windows before switching to Mac.

There may be good software for Macs, I don't know. However, when it comes down to it, it is difficult to program on a Mac, and almost everything is propietary. At least if you use open source software in Linux, if you don't like the way something works, you can code something up yourself.

Oh, and on more reason to stay away from Mac. Can we say one-button mouse, or even worse, a mouse with no buttons?

-Shade

Re:Rediculous

[trcooper]

Could be because he can't change hardware.

Or could be because he doesn't want to work with Macs.

A linux solution may be completely free of new costs, sure there's his time, and time to aquaint the talent with the new software, but that would be incurred regardless. A mac solution would involve hardware and software as well.

He didn't say why this guy was getting tired of Windows, it might not be crashing that's the problem. He may be fed up with licensing in general, and a mac based solution isn't going to get him any further away from that problem.

Re:Rediculous

[sgt_getraer]

are there any valid reasons why he'd like to stay away from macs?

Ummm... prohibitive pricing, lack of clear upgrade paths, lack of support?

Anyway, suppose the guy already has $$$ invested in PC hardware (like I do) and would like to get away from evil Windows (like I do). Your answer wouldn't be very useful.

Re:Rediculous

[SuperKendall]

One button mouse?

I was going to flame, but I'll just mention that you can also use any USB mouse you like with a Mac, which includes three buttons or more (and scroll wheels).

There may be other reasons not to choose a Mac, but you didn't list any of them.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

are there any valid reasons why he'd like to stay away from macs?

Probably the same reasons that many of us stay away from anything from Apple: It's overpriced, and you are locked in to Apple forever. People like to talk about Microsoft's "monopoly" but it's nothing compared to Apple. You are totally at their mercy, and they haven't exactly been merciful in the past.

That's the practical reason, but you can also choose to stay away from them for moral reasons. Apple lives and dies by the lawsuit. At least Microsoft doesn't sue everyone in existence for ridiculous reasons (like "copying" the concept of a computer with a built-in monitor in a bright color).

Or you could dislike them for how they stabbed the clone manufacturers in the back.

Or you could dislike them for flat-out lies in their advertising ("twice as fast").

Ironically, Apple now actually makes a product that I'm semi-interested in, namely OS/X. But I will never, ever EVER give Apple any money. I'm hoping that someone will make an OS/X clone.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously upset at the disruption in your circlejerk. Don't let rational opinions bother you, chump, they never see the light of day around here anyway.

For a bunch of dorks who piss and whine about freedom of expression, you're not much for sticking to it when it disagrees with you, are ya?

Re:Rediculous

[gmhowell]

(licensing)
Finally, a decent answer on this topic about why Macs might not be the right solution. Now, I kinda doubt it, given the way the question was asked, but at least you gave an answer, not flamage.

FWIW, I think that the original poster needs to get in here and clarify himself a little bit.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

What would you have said if he wanted to avoid Linux in lieu of Mac and asked the same question? Moron.

Re:Rediculous

[firewort]

It's fine and well to bash the Mac for things that are factually correct, like the stock mouse as you point out. (Although it's worth noting that a standard USB scroll-wheel/three button mouse functions correctly with no drivers in OS X.)

It's not so good of you to try and represent falsehoods as truth:

It's easy to program on Macintosh, or at least, as easy or easier than it is on Linux or BSD. Mac OS X comes with the Developer Tools.

Audio applications benefit from the low latency in CoreAudio of Mac OS X.

My Lexicon Core2 card has drivers for Mac and Windows. Cubase is available for both. Sound Studio for OS X is nicely coded, and while not quite as feature rich, works better than SoundForge in many ways.

Darwin isn't proprietary, it's open, and GNU-Darwin is Free.

For the article author, Mac isn't an option. It is a valid option for many others, as long as they haven't got their thinking as clouded as yours appears to be.

Re:Rediculous

[outZider]

First of all, it's not OS/X, it's OS X. Methinks you used too much OS/2 in your day. Second, even if a clone running OS X is made, which there won't be, you'll still be giving Apple money by buying Mac OS X.

Of course, you could pirate it, but then we'd all kill you. ;)

Re:Rediculous

[toupsie]

Sounds like someone needs to whacked by the clue-by-four

Probably the same reasons that many of us stay away from anything from Apple: It's overpriced, and you are locked in to Apple forever.

You are locked into Apple forever? Does Steve Jobs have a gun pointed at your puny little brain?

On my PowerMac G4/Dual 500 I can run Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Windows 95, Windows NT, BeOS, Linux PPC and Linux x86 -- makes you wonder if Macs suck and it can run Linux x86, the quality of Linux x86 must really suck. So I guess I am not "locked" into Apple.

If I get tired of owning a Mac (which ain't gonna happen), I can put it on eBay and recover more than 50% of my investment. You are not going to do that with a POS intel box -- no matter who assembles it. As for being overpriced, give me a break. Apple gives awesome deals. The quality and built-in hardware (quad-firewire, dual usb, AGP dual head monitor card, heavy duty power supply, etc) is amazing on a Mac. Most of the time to build a similar PC, you would be having to add on a ton of stuff to match the Mac that PC manufacturers don't normally equip.

That's the practical reason, but you can also choose to stay away from them for moral reasons. Apple lives and dies by the lawsuit

No, twit, Apple lives by its bottom line and its stockholders. This is the sort of gripe I would expect from someone with ZERO interest in capitalism (your Anti-American article link shows your true colors). Apple sues people for stealing their intellectual property just like an author of a GPL app would sue a commercial publisher for stealing their code. If you fail to protect your property in the US court system, you lose your rights to it. The suits your are discussing deal with "Trade Dress". By your thought process, Harley Davidson would not have the right to prevent other motorcycle makers from stealing the sound of their exhaust system. Which they do successfully when challenged. Are you anti-HOG as well?

Or you could dislike them for how they stabbed the clone manufacturers in the back.

Thank God!!! I owned a Mac clone from PowerComputing. The worst POS computer I ever bought in my life. Killing the clones boosted the quality of the Macintosh. Buying a Mac is buying quality. When Jobs killed the clones, he saved Mac OS from running on sub par quality hardware like most x86 machines.

Or you could dislike them for flat-out lies in their advertising ("twice as fast").

Apple has demonstrated at MacWorld this fact time and time again. If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and scream "Na-na-na" at the top of your lungs, fine. For fun, try to render and burn a movie to a DVD in real time with your PC. Oh, wait, you can't. Only Macs have that capability.

Ironically, Apple now actually makes a product that I'm semi-interested in, namely OS/X. But I will never, ever EVER give Apple any money. I'm hoping that someone will make an OS/X clone.

It's OS X not OS/X -- this is Apple not IBM. I am more than happy for you to stay away from Macintosh and even happier that there will never be an OS X clone. When I buy a computer I want quality. Apple can only assure that by building the product itself. The clone fiasco proved that. So, by all means, keep your head in the sand. Mac users will just point our fingers at you and laugh at your Mac bigotry.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwwww... poor little Mac zealot had his computer insulted.

Re:Rediculous

[toupsie]

Awwwww... poor little Mac zealot had his computer insulted.

Even worse, lied about. And I am not a Mac zealot, I am a DEC Alpha zealot.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

You are locked into Apple forever? Does Steve Jobs have a gun pointed at your puny little brain?

The point is that you are locked in if you don't want to throw away your investment.

I can run [...] Windows 95, Windows NT, BeOS, Linux PPC and Linux x86

Yeah, in a crappy, emulated environment. It's real convenient having to fire up the emulator. Why not just use the apps you want to use on a native hardware?

I can put it on eBay and recover more than 50% of my investment. You are not going to do that with a POS intel box -- no matter who assembles it.

Well, duh, of course you can. That's because it's an artificially tight market. The reason you can't sell used PC hardware is because you can buy better hardware for the same price because of the commoditization of hardware in the PC market. The resale value of Mac hardware is a disadvantage -- that's an indication that the newer stuff is not much better than the older stuff.

This is the sort of gripe I would expect from someone with ZERO interest in capitalism (your Anti-American article link shows your true colors).

LOL! I see you've never seen any posts by me in the past. I am one of huge defenders of Capitalism on Slashdot, not to mention the USA's right to destroy the barbarians (anti-american article!?). Which is why I hate Apple -- they are anti-competition. They are not protecting their "intellectual property", they are protecting their monopoly position. A colored computer is not intellectual property. A gumdrop-shaped button is not intellectual property. The GUI was not intellectual property.

Harley Davidson would not have the right to prevent other motorcycle makers from stealing the sound of their exhaust system. Which they do successfully when challenged. Are you anti-HOG as well?

Actually, I detest Harley Davidsons (too f'ing loud), but that's irrelevent. No, they don't have the right to an "exhaust note". That's simply absurd. And I'm a huge intellectual property advocate. I don't believe in music trading, and I don't believe in software trading. If H/D thinks their engine sound is what their about, then maybe they should think about making motorcycles instead.

When Jobs killed the clones, he saved Mac OS from running on sub par quality hardware like most x86 machines.

What Jobs killed was your freedom to buy what you want. Fine, if you don't like Power Computing's stuff, then don't buy it. But it really takes a Mac Zealot to say that you are better off without the choice.

Apple has demonstrated at MacWorld this fact time and time again.

Apple has demonstrated smoke and mirrors time and again, but funny how when people benchmark real applications, you don't see it. You can find certain things that have been optimized for the Mac, but on average, it's about 20% faster clock-for-clock. Their advertising used the bullshit, ancient "integer Bytemark" that proved absolutely nothing about real world performance. Apple is a pack of liars when it comes to their advertising.

Mac users will just point our fingers at you and laugh at your Mac bigotry.

And the rest of the world will laugh back as you convince each other that you're really better off with only Apple as your sole supplier. Competition is such an overrated concept.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

You are locked into Apple forever? Does Steve Jobs have a gun pointed at your puny little brain?

The point is that you are locked in if you don't want to throw away your investment.

I can run [...] Windows 95, Windows NT, BeOS, Linux PPC and Linux x86

Yeah, in a crappy, emulated environment. It's real convenient having to fire up the emulator. Why not just use the apps you want to use on a native hardware?

I can put it on eBay and recover more than 50% of my investment. You are not going to do that with a POS intel box -- no matter who assembles it.

Well, duh, of course you can. That's because it's an artificially tight market. The reason you can't sell used PC hardware is because you can buy better hardware for the same price because of the commoditization of hardware in the PC market. The resale value of Mac hardware is a disadvantage -- that's an indication that the newer stuff is not much better than the older stuff.

This is the sort of gripe I would expect from someone with ZERO interest in capitalism (your Anti-American article link shows your true colors).

LOL! I see you've never seen any posts by me in the past. I am one of huge defenders of Capitalism on Slashdot, not to mention the USA's right to destroy the barbarians (anti-american article!?). Which is why I hate Apple -- they are anti-competition. They are not protecting their "intellectual property", they are protecting their monopoly position. A colored computer is not intellectual property. A gumdrop-shaped button is not intellectual property. The GUI was not intellectual property.

Harley Davidson would not have the right to prevent other motorcycle makers from stealing the sound of their exhaust system. Which they do successfully when challenged. Are you anti-HOG as well?

Actually, I detest Harley Davidsons (too f'ing loud), but that's irrelevent. No, they don't have the right to an "exhaust note". That's simply absurd. And I'm a huge intellectual property advocate. I don't believe in music trading, and I don't believe in software trading. If H/D thinks their engine sound is what their about, then maybe they should think about making motorcycles instead.

When Jobs killed the clones, he saved Mac OS from running on sub par quality hardware like most x86 machines.

What Jobs killed was your freedom to buy what you want. Fine, if you don't like Power Computing's stuff, then don't buy it. But it really takes a Mac Zealot to say that you are better off without the choice.

Apple has demonstrated at MacWorld this fact time and time again.

Apple has demonstrated smoke and mirrors time and again, but funny how when people benchmark real applications, you don't see it. You can find certain things that have been optimized for the Mac, but on average, it's about 20% faster clock-for-clock. Their advertising used the bullshit, ancient "integer Bytemark" that proved absolutely nothing about real world performance. Apple is a pack of liars when it comes to their advertising.

Apple can only assure that by building the product itself. The clone fiasco proved that. Mac users will just point our fingers at you and laugh at your Mac bigotry.

And the rest of the world will laugh back as you convince each other that you're really better off with only Apple as your sole supplier. Competition is such an overrated concept.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

Freaking crap Slashdot. I wish they would actually keep the site working correctly. Sorry for the duplicate post.

Re:Rediculous

[droleary]

The point is that you are locked in if you don't want to throw away your investment.

Uh, do I need to even point out that your statement is true for most anything? From your OS to your hardware to your car and house, you're "locked in" if you think of it as an investment.

Yeah, in a crappy, emulated environment. It's real convenient having to fire up the emulator. Why not just use the apps you want to use on a native hardware?

This from the guy who was just waxing on about investments? What matters is that you could evaluate the x86 offerings on a Mac before having to drop a wad on a new system right away. I'd say you're more locked into a PC because there is no VirtualPPC software to let you test out OS X.

Apple is a pack of liars when it comes to their advertising.

You say that as though they were the only ones. Everyone twists and turns whatever statistics they get their hands on for their own benefit. It happens in the Linux community, too, you know.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why I hate Apple -- they are anti-competition.

When did Apple prevent you from buying a computer from another manufacturer? Apple even allows you to run their core OS on other platforms. Darwin is even free for the taking and can be installed on x86 equipment. I think you need to open your eyes and see what Apple really produces.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

Uh, do I need to even point out that your statement is true for most anything? From your OS to your hardware to your car and house, you're "locked in" if you think of it as an investment.

There are different levels of "locked in". If I buy a software package for the PC, I can buy a different PC from a different manufacturer without having to throw away my software. With Apple you have one place to go -- back to Apple. I can upgrade my processor -- from many different suppliers. I can upgrade my motherboard -- from several different manufacturers. Apple, in the case of the iMac, intentionally made it difficult if not impossible to upgrade. We can't be cannibilizing the sales of our more expensive models, you know.

I'd say you're more locked into a PC because there is no VirtualPPC software to let you test out OS X.

And there is a reason there is no VirtualPPC that is commonly used on the PC. Because there is no software that is Mac-only that creates a reason for VirtualPPC. I love Unix, and would love to have a truly consumer-friendly system that was Unix based. But I have a Linux box that I use all day, in addition to my Win2K box, so it's more curiosity than something I can't do without.

You say that as though they were the only ones. Everyone twists and turns whatever statistics they get their hands on for their own benefit. It happens in the Linux community, too, you know.

Ah yes, the ol' "well, everyone lies" argument. No, everyone DOES NOT flat out lie and mislead like Apple does. Can you find exaggerations by other computer companies? Sure. But not at the level of disinformation that Apple puts out. The Mac has NEVER been twice as fast as a PC for practical purposes. Never. Yet Apple knowingly put that in their ads for the express purposes of misleading people. Show me another computer company -- even Microsoft -- that has ever told such a bald-faced falsehood.

And by the way, you will get no argument from me that many Linux advocates don't live in any kind of reality, either. But that's different from a company taking someone's money in unethical ways.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

When did Apple prevent you from buying a computer from another manufacturer?

Why they tried to sue everyone who had a competing computer that used pixels. They sued everyone who had a competing GUI regardless of whether it even worked like the Mac or not (Win 3.1 bears absolutely no resemblence to the Mac, but that didn't stop Apple).

Darwin is even free for the taking and can be installed on x86 equipment.

Yeah, thanks Apple, for giving me BSD which I can already get. But you'll note that anything above the Kernel is strictly verboten. You'll note that Apple threatens to sue anyone that tries to make anything that even looks like OS X (like the themes).

I think you need to open your eyes and see what Apple really produces.

Maybe you should open your eyes and see that what Apple primarily produces is lawsuits.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

This wasn't the case, and I for one wouldn't even if it had been.

Re:Rediculous

[soellman]

A linux solution may be completely free of new costs, sure there's his time, and time to aquaint the talent with the new software, but that would be incurred regardless. A mac solution would involve hardware and software as well.

oh don't fall into the "everything linux is free" trap - in the words of jwz:

linux is only free if your time is of no value

if you have to screw around for 20 hours on a linux box to get everything correct, you could have just bought all the software for a mac/win solution. choose your battles wisely..

Re:Rediculous

[zCyl]

if you have to screw around for 20 hours on a linux box to get everything correct, you could have just bought all the software for a mac/win solution. choose your battles wisely..

Typically, I have to screw around for the same length of time on either system to get everything configured correctly. There are two differences. One, if I want to do something unusual on Linux, then I actually am able to configure it because it is more flexible. And two, once I finally get the system configured, the Linux one works consistently. Considering that I only configure a system once, and then use it thousands of times, that last point is of extreme importance.

Re: Rediculous

[elflord]

Could you at least try to spell the subject line correctly ? "Rediculous" isn't a word, you clown.
I'd like to propose a moratorium on the following:

• Using the non-word "rediculous"
  
• Using the word "loose" instead of "lose"
  
• Terminating a question with a period instead
  of a question mark
  

Re:Rediculous

[gig]

Using a PC for audio because you already had it is a fine excuse for kids or hobbyists, but not for professionals.

Really, you have to see the point of view of the people who know the music and audio field here. What if this article read like this:

"Recently a friend of mine who is head of Information Technology at a medium size ISP has become increasingly unhappy with Windows (and would like to stay away from UNIX/Linux) and has asked me if there is any sort of professional Web server solution for Macs. Has anybody, anywhere ever tried this? Is it possible to buy a redundant power supply with Mac drivers and just run Internet Information Server in VirtualPC or do you need an entirely native package?"

To this guy, I say: I tried to use Windows to do audio work as well, then after a year of pain I gave up and got a Mac. I swallowed all the pride I had about how I was going to stick it to the man (how I ever thought Apple was the man is beyond me) and cook up a home-brew, cheap as shit Windows-based audio solution in between sessions. I realized that I had been cooking things up in between takes, and during takes, and after takes, and while other people were getting dinner, or whatever else. You have to hold its little hand and even then it can't pump out audio consistently, or with good timing. Consider just giving up on that PC and starting from scratch and doing it right. Of course, this is the worst time to switch to a Mac ... wait a few months until your favorite apps are updated for Mac OS X. Especially if you are into Cubase ... it runs so good on Altivec and dual CPU's ... sweet.

I know the above might sound a bit ranty, but I'm telling you, I'm speaking plainly from experience. Windows Everywhere is as much a myth as the dot-com bubble. I really feel like you do someone a disservice when you don't give them the straight shit on Windows or PC's because "everybody uses them" and anyway, you want to "allow them to make their own choice". Of course they can make their own choice, but do them the favor of at least telling them that they're going out on a rope there.

Anyway, a few years ago, I would have said "to each his own", but now, Mac OS X is standing about 10 miles taller than everything else for music and audio. Yamaha's mLAN is in there, next-generation MIDI routing, Downloadable Sounds, 5.1 audio and more channels if you want them, object-oriented drivers that enable you to share hardware in new and interesting ways, routing of 32-bit floating point audio between apps ... this is huge, huge stuff. The best part is that all the apps on the platform can use this stuff. It's like a Digital Audio Workstation is in the OS and developers can utilize it whenever.

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that it'll crash every couple hours, and OMS will have trouble with sync, and on a 9600 you're not going to be doing too many tracks of audio, and...
I use Macs for audio/MIDI, and although I like them more than Windows, I've gotta say, I wish there was a good alternative.

Re:Rediculous

[lkeagle]

I think too many people confuse 'screwing around' and 'learning'.

It takes time to learn a new system, and it takes even more time to learn new software. It takes 1000 times longer than both of those combined to learn how to be a decent recording engineer, who may use digital software based editing as one of the many, many tools at his disposal.

What we have here is an individual that is looking for a new tool to learn to help him with his digital audio work. I'm not going to question his ability to be an audio engineer, but seeing as how the post was on slashdot, I'd be willing to assume that he has the time to learn new systems and software.

~Loren

Re:Rediculous

[droleary]

There are different levels of "locked in". If I buy a software package for the PC, I can . . . I can . . . I can . . . Apple, in the case of the iMac, intentionally made it difficult if not impossible to upgrade.

Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps you're not the target market for the iMac? You also seem deeply fascinated with what you could do with your PC instead of what you will do with it. Mac users aren't like that for the most part. I mean, what reaction would you expect to get if you stood outside an Apple Store and started telling buyers things like "You know you wont be able to upgrade the video card in that!" and "You'll be stuck at 800MHz until you buy a new computer, you fool!" Thing is, odds are, you'll get the same strange looks you'd get from PC buyers outside a CompUSA telling them they could do those things.

But I have a Linux box that I use all day, in addition to my Win2K box, so it's more curiosity than something I can't do without.

Seems somewhat ironic that you need two PCs to get Unix and Windows together on your desk to accomplish what one Mac can get you, but I'm sure you paid less for both of them than a single Mac would have run you; not being "locked in" must be so great . . .

Ah yes, the ol' "well, everyone lies" argument. No, everyone DOES NOT flat out lie and mislead like Apple does. Can you find exaggerations by other computer companies? Sure. But not at the level of disinformation that Apple puts out.

Aw, you gotta be shittin' me! From Sun's Java hype to the XP and .Net hype of MS, to the users of dead operating systems like BeOS and Amiga who still seem to think they'll take over the world like they were promised. Face it, you have a bone to pick with Apple for whatever reason that isn't tied to an objective reality. That's fine; I have friends who are Applephobic, too. To think that Apple is in any way the only or even worst offender, though, is self-indulgence to feed that phobia.

And by the way, you will get no argument from me that many Linux advocates don't live in any kind of reality, either. But that's different from a company taking someone's money in unethical ways.

Apple is not "taking" anyone's money. They are not criminals; not the bad guys you'd like to believe they are. What they are is a minority company leveraging whatever advantage they can get to fight a company that isn't happy have "just" 95% of the market. Apple as Evil? I mean, really!

Re: Rediculous

[shanek]

What do you mean. No one does this, don't be rediculous. I think you're about to loose your mind?

Re:Rediculous

[Anonymous Coward]

>Why they tried to sue everyone who had a competing computer that used pixels

They sued MS. Get over it already. They did not 'sue everyone ...'

>But you'll note that anything above the Kernel

microkernel...

> is strictly verboten

Like Darwin, say.

>You'll note that Apple threatens to sue anyone that tries to make anything that even looks like OS X (like the themes).

Cut to recent Yang case.

>Maybe you should open your eyes and see that what Apple primarily produces is lawsuits.

Yes, that must be where the majority of their revenues come from.

Re:Rediculous

[_aa_]

YOU HAVE ENRAGED ME FAR BEYOND WORDS. You are trying to start a war between people who use PCs and those that use Macintoshes! My God man! Can't we all just get along? What the world needs now.. is love.. sweet love. PC vs. Mac is a volitile situation! Just imagine what would happen if someone like you triggered an all out war! Boy.. that would suck almost as much as your Mac!

Re:Rediculous

[uebernewby]

Using a PC for audio because you already had it is a fine excuse for kids or hobbyists, but not for professionals.

It would seem that the line between "kids and hobbyists" and "professionals" is getting blurrier by the minute.

Personally, I'd much rather hear "kids or hobbyists" music, if we take "kids or hobbyists" to mean Four Tet ("There's nothing, no mixing desk, no effects. Only my computer and my hi-fi. ") or Bogdan Raczynski (who offers, or used to, anyways, tracks in Impulse Tracker (!) format on his website) than "professional music", which, for the most part, is major label schlock such as Britney Spears. To shove PC users automatically into the "kids or hobbyists" camp is ridiculous, and proves that you don't have the slightest clue about what is really going on in music these days.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

You also seem deeply fascinated with what you could do with your PC instead of what you will do with it. Mac users aren't like that for the most part.

The point isn't whether Apple should push upgradability, the point is that they actively went out of their way to prevent upgrades. Fine, if someone never upgrades their iMac, they don't upgrade it. But why intentionally take away that freedom from the customer? It doesn't hurt the ones who don't choose to exercise that freedom.

I agree that the iMac isn't intended for someone like me, but it's symptomatic of arrogance of the company.

Aw, you gotta be shittin' me! From Sun's Java hype to the XP and .Net hype of MS, to the users of dead operating systems like BeOS and Amiga who still seem to think they'll take over the world like they were promised.

Give me a quote: What did Sun say about Java that was flat-out untrue? They never said it was a speed demon. They actually never said it was going to take over the world, either. "Hype" is not lies, it's a lot of people jumping on bandwagons. Apple is not "hyping" their products when they claim it's "twice as fast", they are lying about them. Forget Sun, give me a quote by Satan's spawn, Microsoft. Give me a quote where they lied about the capabilities of the product. How about BeOS? Give me the lie. Amiga? Intel? Dell? Gateway? If "everyone does it", I'm sure you must have a quote where they put out a "fact" that was provably wrong. Look, I don't even call Apple's repeated incompetence with coming out with a modern operating system a "lie". Schedules change. But that advertising campaign was an out-and-out disgrace.

What they are is a minority company leveraging whatever advantage they can get to fight a company that isn't happy have "just" 95% of the market.

So if you're a minority company, it's OK to lie about your products and mislead your customers?

Put it this way, if Intel made claims that they were "twice as fast" as the G4 for one specific, useless benchmark but played it up like all applications were twice as fast, would you or other Mac people like you give them the same benefit? I highly doubt it.

Re:Rediculous

[Reality Master 101]

They sued MS. Get over it already. They did not 'sue everyone ...'

Yes, they did. HP had NewWave, and Apple sued them as well. There weren't that many graphical environments for the PC at the time, but Apple sued 'em all. Do a google search on "Apple look and feel lawsuit". You will be amazed and astounded by what Apple claimed were infringements ("zooming rectangles" is one of my favorites).

Re:Rediculous

[droleary]

The point isn't whether Apple should push upgradability, the point is that they actively went out of their way to prevent upgrades. Fine, if someone never upgrades their iMac, they don't upgrade it. But why intentionally take away that freedom from the customer? It doesn't hurt the ones who don't choose to exercise that freedom.

I encourage you to actually look at an iMac sometime. It's simply not a box built for hardware geeks! It's constructed around the monitor, damn it, and the bloody thing is just 15" at that! People that care about expandability get the G4 tower.

I agree that the iMac isn't intended for someone like me, but it's symptomatic of arrogance of the company.

Bwahahahaha! It's called absolutely nailing your target market. The iMac was a huge success. I can see how something like the would piss off an Apple hater like yourself.

Give me a quote: What did Sun say about Java that was flat-out untrue?

You don't get to make such demands when you yourself have failed to give any direct quotes of what you claim are Apple "lies". For every one you produce (that is actually a lie), I will produce a lie from another major technology company.

Apple is not "hyping" their products when they claim it's "twice as fast", they are lying about them.

Heh. Is that what sticks in your craw? As I recall, any claims they made likely had qualifying phrases around it like "up to" and "for certain tasks". That is called marketing, and is common with all technology companies publishing benchmark figures.

So if you're a minority company, it's OK to lie about your products and mislead your customers?

You are a total laugh riot. It seems as though "de facto" and "true" mean the same thing to you.

Put it this way, if Intel made claims that they were "twice as fast" as the G4 for one specific, useless benchmark but played it up like all applications were twice as fast, would you or other Mac people like you give them the same benefit? I highly doubt it.

What benefit? It was a silly (both in a good way and a bad way) campaign for Apple because anybody that really does care about raw speed is going to be influenced much by marketing. Hell, when I was evaluating notebooks some years back (when a 25MHz 486 was tops) for some pure number crunching tasks, I compiled both DOS and Mac versions to verify which one really was faster for what I wanted it to do. The PC did win, too, which is ultimately what got me involved in Linux. I'd run the same test again today if heavy number crunching mattered to me as much, but right now, for what I want to do, my 2x450 G4 running Mac OS X is just fine for my desktop, and my Linux server is still a smoothly running 300MHz Cyrix MII.

Also, Intel is perhaps a worse offender by releasing a next generation chip that is actually slower at the same clock speed than their own last generation chip simply so they could pull ahead in the MHz "benchmark". And do you expect me to come down on AMD for relabelling their chips with a higher number than their clock rate? Sorry to disappoint you, but I actually understand the point of marketing and the techniques used, so Apple and AMD (and Intel) can do anything they like to push their product because it doesn't influence my reality. Shame that it influences yours so much.

I don't know of the software side, but

[alleria]

M-Audio and MidiMan provide professional-caliber cards with pro-level features, and support Linux as one of their OSes, as well as Mac/Windows, of course.

Their driver support for Windows is okay, but I believe their Linux support may well be binary only. That said, their drivers generally don't suck.

I'm not affiliated with them -- just a happy home user who enjoys using their pro-level cards for cleaner sound output under Windoze.

Re:I don't know of the software side, but

[pigeon]

I just got a M-audio Audiophile 2496, and I love the thing. Primary reason I bought this card is that it works with windows (up to xp!) Mac (9 and X!) and Linux (with alsa drivers). I now use a PC with Linux for most of my tasks and windows 98se with logic for audio, but I'm really sick and tired of windows (and logic doesn't work on windows 2000/xp). I'd love to have logic on linux, but that's not evry likely. So I am saving for a Mac G4 . Mac's are more expensive than PC's but when you're doing pro audio the price of the machine itself is not so much an issue, the price of your protools, you're mackie 8bus digital mixer and your adat gear are more significant..

beat me to it

[Rai]

i was going to submit a similar question. i use several windows progs for desktop music production--cubase, fruity loops, rebirth, etc... does linux offer any similar packages? or would my best solution be to run these progs from a windows emulator?

Re:beat me to it

[van der Rohe]

Good luck running Cubase in an emulator. Your latency will be HORRIBLE. To run properly, Cubase requires direct access to your audio system - that's the whole purpose of the ASIO standard.

And for now, there's no app on Linux that even comes close to Cubase, Nuendo, Logic, not to mention all of the incredible virtual synth apps (Reaktor, Reason, etc.)

Sorry, but Csound is not an alternative. Incredible power + lousy, non-real-time interface = inefficient workflow. Sure guys like Autechre use it - but for raw sound design, not composition.

Plea for a Programs

[Ashcrow]

I myself am a recording artist and wish so much for a cakewalk like (multi track, simple to lay tracks down for refrence) like program. I will rejoice the day I can use my Linux or BSD boxes to record my music.

Re:Plea for a Programs

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tested JAZZ++ www.jazzware.com?

It is pretty similar to Cubase. (I am not a recording musician)

Re:Plea for a Programs

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that MacOS X is very BSD-ish, the day is already here.

Wine?

[zarathustra93]

I don't think wine would cut it. Even if you could find an application that would run under WINE, the latency would be so high that you wouldn't be able to get decent performance out of it.

Why someone would want to stay away from macintosh for audio is beyond me. OS 8/9 may not have all the cool modern OS goodness, but it *is* wonderful for real time recording and processing. Granted, there are no applications at the moment for OS X, but that should change now that there is a stable OS release (i.e. 10.1)

There is a multi track recorder available for linux.....searching google now......Oh well, I can't find the program I was thinking of, but there is a good linux DAW resource here:

http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linuxsound/

Sameless plug: To see how one can attain pre studio level recording on a mac, visit my tracks at

http://www.assasins.net

Try this:

[Green Aardvark House]

You could use Protux.

Even though it uses its own file format (PRAF) you can import .WAV, .OGG and .MP3 files, too.

Screen shots and more info can be found on the Protux home page.

Commercial opportunity?

[jason99si]

"What Open Source sound packages out there are good enough for even the professionals to use when they need to make their squeaks, squeals, and whistles."

I believe the question posed was if there were any quality sound applications for Linux, why focus solely on Open Source?

Re:Commercial opportunity?

[gimbo]

Because Open Source is at least half the point of linux, in many people's minds (including mine).

Very silly question indeed. . .

[kfg]

since Wine Is Not an Emulator.

KFG

composing

[Anonymous Coward]

Lilypond is to Finale what LaTex is to Word.

If you are comforatble editing a rather simple text representation of music, Lilypond will produce beautiful scores for you.

The critical mass isn't possible in Linux

[sacherjj]

I am a person who would love to us Linux for things, but almost every time I try, I keep getting bit by unsupported hardware or lacking features.

For $70 you can purchase Home Studio from Cakewalk (a subset of their SONAR professional package). It supports DirectX plugins (the standard now for adding third party mixes, effects, and instruments.) The amount of plugins available is mind boggling. If a Linux package doesn't support this forget it.

Also, on the hardware side. Is there any support for mixing board interfaces, or multiple in/out cards for when you need to get more than 2 channels in and out at one time?

It would be nice, but It ain't gonna happen soon. There features just aren't there.

Re:The critical mass isn't possible in Linux

[divbyzero]

There are indeed multiple sequencer projects for Linux which provide a similar user interface to Cakewalk. Many of them support LADSPA, which is a plugin interface similar though not compatible with the DirectX one which you mentioned. Most patent-free DSP algorithms in common use today have already been ported to LADSPA.

There are several, though not many professional multichannel audio cards supported under Linux under at least one of the three sound driver architectures (ALSA, OSS/Commercial, and OSS/Free).

Oh, and all of this is available and working today. Any other objections?

Re:The critical mass isn't possible in Linux

[beanerspace]

I disagree. I use Sonar. Latency continues to be an issue, not because of the good folks at Cakewalk, but because of the daggoned operating system. Yes, DirectX does add alot of "stuff" ... but that "stuff" comes at a big price to real-time performance.

My biggest gripe is that when I try to run several effects plug-in back to back I get the blue screen of death. Your mileage may vary, but I'd like to see a Linux implementation provided I can tweak the operating system to compensate for latency and f/x problems previously stated.

Re:The critical mass isn't possible in Linux

[van der Rohe]

"There are indeed multiple sequencer projects for Linux which provide a similar user interface to Cakewalk."

Sure. Brahms LOOKS like any of the Pro-Tools modeled sequenecers. But what can it DO?

Name one Linux app with the power of any of Steinberg's products (Cubase, Nuendo, etc.) I'll help you. There are none. Period.

Re:The critical mass isn't possible in Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

> Name one Linux app with the power of any of
> Steinberg's products (Cubase, Nuendo, etc.) I'll
> help you. There are none. Period.

That's a bit unfair. Steinberg is a major commercial company that has shaped the way music is done on computers today. But there are alternatives in development for linux. A very interesting and active project is Muse (http://muse.seh.de). That's a Logic/Cubase/Cakewalk like Midi- and Audio-Sequencer with support for LADSPA plugins, virtual synth instruments and of course very low latency on an appropriatly patched linux kernel.

Re:The critical mass isn't possible in Linux

[divbyzero]

Actually, I'm a Cakewalk user of many years, and I chose my words carefully. Since its early days as a MIDI-focussed product, the primary user interface elements of Cakewalk have been a track list, an event list, and a piano roll. Of course lots more has been added over the years, but these remain the core of the program. They're a modest goal to replicate (note, just the user interface, not the underlying realtime I/O), and the Linux projects are doing a reasonable job at it.

I'm personally very disappointed with Cakewalk, its commercial competitors, and its noncommercial immitators alike, specifically for sticking to this dated and limited user interface. True innovations in this field, such as a massively multidimentional equivalent of a piano roll, are needed in order to more accurately model the way real musicians (composers, arrangers, conductors, etc) think of musical control data. And no, I'm not just whining, I've been designing and coding attempted solutions to this problem on and off for several years; not yet ready for a release though.

Simple Linux Solution

[Root Down]

There is really a simple solution that is typically used for Linux apps. First, write C drivers for any of the devices you use to make your sounds, then implement several system calls - I recommend the latest kernel release for ease of implementation - to access the new drivers and debug. (Naturally, C code is clean enough so as to avoid any errors save for the case of the extremely novice programmer.) Recompile the new kernel after remaking your dependency files and source it in your lilo.conf file. Now, reboot and you should be all set! (Note that neither your dependencies nor your kernel may work properly, so it is best to source lilo and specify the 'once only' option.)
It's that simple! Enjoy!

Why not Mac?

[Dephex Twin]

Recently a friend of mine who is chief engineer at a medium size recording studio/radio station has become increasingly unhappy with Windows (and would like to stay away from Macs) and has asked me if there is any sort of professional audio solution for Linux.

I'm curious as to why this person wants to "stay away from Macs". It may be the best tool for the job for audio, and unless he or she has tried it, I'm not sure why it would be something to avoid.

Re:Why not Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps because Mac hardware is overpriced for what you get?

Re:Why not Mac?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? The fastest solution with the best tools available? Cheap bastards...

Re:Why not Mac?

[TheAwfulTruth]

Or for that matter, why not Windows? I used WaveLab, Cubase and Reason on Win2k and XP to compose and master an album and they performed flawlessly on what today would be considered the lowest end hardware you could possibly buy.

I frequently find people making statements like "I'm growing to dislike Windows and I don't want to go MAC" based mainly on trying to run software like Cubase or Reason or T-Racks on 5 year old windows/mac boxes and complaining about latency an stability. When it comes right down to it you find that they have 25 tray/init programs running on a computer computer that is lower than speced for the software. Switching from Windows to Mac or vise-versa usually fixes all their problems. But why? Because it always involves buying a new machine with a new OS install. Has nothing to do with the OS itself.

Installs require a little maintenence now and then (Get rid of all those inits!) and sooner or later you will find that your 5 year old machine can't load 20 of the latest software synths and maintain 2ms latency.

All kindz of musicians have great experience with the pro music software/hardware on both windows and mac. Both seem to be equally capable at this point (Except OS/X for the short term anyway). Now if all the current software were ported to Linux and more than one or two card vendors jump over, well then it'll do fine too. But right now, virtually all the hardware/software is for Windows/Mac.

Use the tools that are available! Any "Sound Engineer" that cares more about what OS they're running than what tools (SW/HW) they need is no real "Sound Engineer" :(

Pro support seems to be very limited

[Chakat]

I'd say that you're probably going to have to wait a while to get professional level sound card (multiple analog inputs, ADAT, etc) available under Linux. Even with entry level pro sound boards, such as the Lexicon Core2, drivers are still non-existant. Linux may have good support for doing electronica, etc, but if you're doing "live" music, you've still got enough hoops you've got to jump through that it's just not worth it for the time being.

This isn't meant as a flame, or a troll, it's just the truth. It's time to start turning the screws on the big vendors to start making their high-end sound drivers available for Linux, even if they are simply binary drivers only.

Re:Pro support seems to be very limited

[jjoyce]

It makes one wonder if Microsoft's contracts with board & chip manufacturers stipulate that if they make drivers for Windows, they cannot make them for Linux.

Soundcard: M-Audio

[2ms]

I asked about pro soundcards once at linux.com and someone pointed me to http://www.m-audio.com - the 24-bit "audiophile" looks sweet to me.

Re:Soundcard: M-Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

Midiman/M-Audio Audiophile is quite ok for low-end home use, at least for my $3000 computer audio setup.

For serious professional use, I'd recommend stuff like M-Audio Delta 1010, Lynx Studio Technology, Digital Audio Labs, or any other serious product with truly balanced inputs and outputs.

also, on the general requests.

[AtaruMoroboshi]

I am a serious computer music hobbyist.

I currently run Native Instrument's Reaktor, Propellorheads' Reason & Recycle, U & I's Metasynth, and Bias's Peak on an iBook and an older mac.

I would much rather use open source programs for the simple reason that they would be massively cheaper, in addition to generally being in agreement with open source ideaology.

Here is what is needed:

A good multitrack Midi and hard disk audio recording/sequencing program that is actually as powerful as Logic Audio Gold or Cubase VST 5.0. This is absolutely vital. You need a Logic Audio Platnium or Pro Tools killer to get a serious studio to consider switching to open source and away from the Macintosh.

And you need a useful, well implemented plug in architecture for both virtual instruments and effect processors.

Once you've got that, then people just need to write the virtual instruments and effect processors. :)

Seriously though, the audio stuff running on Macintosh hardware is pretty fabulous, and Mac OS X is extremely suited to audio, able to get latency as low as 1 ms (just like linux.)

Re:also, on the general requests.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not just +5 Interesting, he's +5 Correct.

If you could get Logic for Linux and latency was good (I'd apply RML's preempt and amorton's lowlatency for a start) I'd have a bunch of musicheads asking me round for a Linux install and a doobie.

Cheers

Andy

real electronic musicians

[Marcus Brody]

Also, what can they use to put their created sounds together into some semblance of music?

Sticky tape & Blue tac. At least that's what Aphex Twin and Matmos use.

--In fact, the Aphex Twin, lik a real man, bulds his own analogue keyboards.

Re:real electronic musicians

[2ms]

Not anymore he doesn't. If I'm not mistaken, all his work since early 1996 has been done on a PowerMac. You can hear the difference too - even to a digital lover such as myself, a lot of the 96+ stuff sounds like it was recorded at way too low bit rate.

Re:real electronic musicians

[AtaruMoroboshi]

I'm pretty damn sure that's intentional.

Listen to Drukqs when it comes out next week, it's the most immaculate recording i've ever heard from a techno artist. Astonishingly good, even when all i've heard is 192kbs mp3s. (i'll be first in line to buy it when it's out!)

Re:Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice troll. You're pretty fluent in tags too.

Unfortunately

[rsimmons]

SoundForge like software is good and all, but what you really need to write music is something like Logic Audio Platinum by emagic. It really is one of the best, except for ProTools. If you can't match the features of one of those two (or convince them to release a linux version), you will get nowhere.

Re:Unfortunately

[lkeagle]

No, what you really need to write music is a decent instrument and a lot of time practicing and studying orchestration and theory.

Yes, this applies to techno and pop, too.

~Loren

Home recording for the rest of us

[stevenbee]

I don't want Cape Canaveral on my PC, I just want a Linux app that works at least as well as Cool Edit Pro for Windows! Maybe Demudi will get there someday, but right now they can't even keep their website up.

Linux/Mac's Digital Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the dawn of digital editing, Mac's have been THE platform. But from the radio point of view, it's always been PC's (Dos or Win). What are his strong points? Does he do mostly radio where commercials need sent over a network to some automation computer?? Or Not?

Either way, Digidesign's Pro Tools is the industry standard for audio editing. About 2 years ago they DID release a WinNT version, but at any rate this is what he should consider. Especially since it will output BroadcastWave files if needed. PC / Mac file sharing, how about DAVE from Thursby Software...

Don't use windows emulators

[punchdrunk]

Emulators are generally slower than running native. Latency is the bane of pro audio software if you are trying to do anything remotely real-time (sequencing, sound sources, midi controllers, real-time audio manipulation, etc.). Since at least some of this is usually required in any pro audio situation, especially at a studio, any type of emulation is going to be a big problem. We're talking situations where milliseconds are extremely important.

Re:Don't use windows emulators

[Spy Hunter]

WINE Is Not an Emulator.

Apps have the potential to run just as fast (faster even) on Linux using WINE as they do on "real" Windows. There is no emulation going on, WINE is simply an implementation of Win32 for Linux.

Someone earlier mentioned that DirectX is becoming a standard for audio effects plugins - WINE could be used to run these plugins in much the same manner as mplayer or whatever its called runs Windows video codecs under Linux (x86 only, though).

Re:Don't use windows emulators

[Nicolas MONNET]

This is a rather erroneous description of the situation. Wine is both an emulator, and not an emulator at the same time. It doesn't emulate machine code (unlike, say, Bochs). It does however translate Windows calls to Unix/XWindows calls.

And in many cases, when it does'nt translate directly, it has to emulate.

Anyway, this nitpicking on the word "emulator" does not matter. Don't call it an emulator if you don't want to. It's still a fact that some parts of Wine run slower than native calls, because of important semantic differences between the two OSs.

BeOS

[PygmySurfer]

What about BeOS? BeOS was created from the ground-up as a "Media OS", isn't this exactly the sort of thing to use it for?

Unfortunately, BeOS' future is kind of unclear at the moment, however, I think it'd be worth it to seriously look at BeOS for this individual.

Re:BeOS

[Rude Turnip]

I second doing some research on BeOS-based solutions. It runs on X86-based hardware, so you don't have to go out and buy a Mac. The definitive resource for BeOS pro audio solutions can be found at the le Buzz StudioLab.

BeOS, as an operating system, is an excellent environment for audio production, due to its incredibly low latency and flexibility. It's being used in live theatre and concert productions (www.lcsaudio.com) and in specialized editing/recorder devices (www.tascam.com).

Good idea but not likely

[snoozerdss]

I'm a musician (no not famous LOL) I can tell you the standard is Protools running on a Mac. Sure Protools runs on NT but stabilty is a problem one studio did have protools on nt but switched to mac real quick. I have tried protux on linux(at home) and I can tell you it is no where near as robust as protools and it's quite ustable on my box. Also many studio types aren't exactly tech savy so installing and trouble shooting on Linux would be a problem, you'd have to bring someone else in which would cost more $$$$. I just don't see it happening, sure it would be great if protools was ported to Linux it would no doubt be more stable then it is on a mac but hardware might be a problem as well. I'm not big on Macs at all but I must say audio recording/editing is where it shines.

Re:Good idea but not likely

[vinnythenose]

Hell, if you want a popular group that has done their albums with Protools, check out Collective Soul's newer album... comes after Dosage... has Why Pt 2 on it... ahh the name escapes me.

I was kinda shocked to see Protools listed on their pull-out. I've used protools in a classroom music recording set, I liked it a lot.

Re:Good idea but not likely

[snoozerdss]

Like I said ProTools is an industry standard, off the top of my head I can think of Tool, a perfect circle, Radio Head. These guys recorded with it but I'm betting almost all new releases are at least masterd with protools.

linux music production

[Anonymous Coward]

after many years of producing music using windows apps and working with linux in my spare time, and constantly waiting for a package to come around for linux that would allow me to migrate, i have yet to find any decent software packages that would give me that option. sad.. but true.

wes

Soundforge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro studios use Soundforge?

Audacity rocks.

[torpor]

And the code is really easy to get into, so if there's some itch you need scratched, Audacity is a good place to start.

Also good is Ardour, which in my opinion has a *much* greater chance of becoming the professional workstation tool that we're all looking for - there's a lot of development occurring on it, and it's already made some serious headway:

http://ardour.sourceforge.net/

Personally, I'd advise your friend to look a bit closer at the Mac way right now, and try to put bias aside. Pursue the Linux side too, if you like, but keep a very close eye on the OSX way of life...

Mac OS X is an *excellent* operating system for professional media work, and there are some extremely exciting things on the horizon for OSX - which I can't talk about due to NDA's, alas, but I will say this: getting ready now for the release of some kickass Audio tools on OS X for June/July release next year is probably a *very* wise thing.

The advantage to this, also, is that any OSS Linux apps that are available now, may (fairly easily) be ported to OS X pretty soon ...

Re:Audacity rocks.

[motorsabbath]

Ardour is a great package. I've used audacity as well but I think Ardour is (will be) more suited to professional studio work.

And even though their web-page has a really offensive Explorer-type look, the HME audio cards work really well, from what I've been told. It will be a year or so before I can afford one...

Re:Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa, heheheh ;)

Maybe you've already answered your question. If Linux sucks so bad, you won't mind scratching it ;)

That's pretty much it, isn't it?

[Soko]

Thanks.
Nice way to kill a story - provide the entire answer in one small, compact link. You've earned your Karma with barely a .sig.

Geez.

It's over folks - nothing left to see here, move along.

Oh well - at least I've got some ammo for this ArsTechnica Battlefront thread. ;-)

Soko

MacCentral: Mac OS X great for pro audio

[HalimCMe]

Apple betting audio pros will like Mac OS X 10.1

Interesting article for those interested in professional audio under a well-supported non-Windows Unix-based OS.

audacity

[atif_ghaffar]

I know nothing about mixing sounds etc, but I tried it two nights ago (couldnt sleep and didnt feel like coding).
The result is at www.madpeople.ch/mad.mp3

Re:audacity

[ellem]

nice all it needs is a background track of some guy screaming "Mortal Kombat"

Re:Audacity

[beanerspace]

Dominic,

A shameless plug ? I don't think so. I think you're being VERY modest. You have an excellent product. I for one am hoping that you come along enough at some point I can get rid of Windows altogether ... though I'll miss some of the effects of Sonar ... Audacity is Audacious (now THAT's what I call a shamless plug !-)

Re:Audacity

[Chris Johnson]

You're using the GPL. So do I. Want any code or algorithms from Mastering Tools Pro? I'm doing compression, limiting, a couple forms of equalization, declicking/peak expansion, and numerous forms of wordlength reduction, some of which would be realtime in C++. In fact, because you're GPL, you _can't_ have some of the more 'brand name' wordlength reduction algorithms like POW-R, because they are proprietary, but it just so happens that the ones I do are GPL. You're welcome to take a look at the spectral analyses of these algorithms compared to common ones like TPDF dither.

If you're not using dithered 2-busses yet, run don't walk to check that stuff out- you really need to be covering that base to be pro-level. Even Pro Tools has had to bow to pressure and incorporate a dithered buss in their new mixer, and they have such a big name that they've stagnated horribly.

Talk to me if this sounds interesting- it's definitely about what _you_ think is important. You can suit yourselves, I'm just saying that I'm happy to consult with you for nothing and donate algorithms under the GPL- and consider that, although you guys are clearly much better coders than me, it's possible that there are people out there with a clearer idea of what constitutes a state of the art DAW system. Within the narrow confines of digital gain staging and wordlength reduction practices (and possibly compression and limiting, though I'm damned if I can figure how to implement a realtime lookahead limiter for you guys without sacrificing latency), I'd suggest that I'm the guy you should be talking to. Up to you...

Re:Audacity

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, you could just write the man an e-mail, rather than this lame, off-topic self-promotion.

Re:Audacity

[Chris Johnson]

"You know, you could just write the man an e-mail, rather than this lame, off-topic self-promotion."

Hi AC ;)

Actually, "there are professional-quality wordlength reduction algorithms available to free software" is just as relevant to professional audio on Linux as "here's a 24 track digital audio workstation program for Linux". This is because the field is littered with proprietary approaches: you can license algorithms like Apogee's UV-22 or POW-R 3, but you can't use them in free software because you'd have to disclose them.

Given that this would otherwise permanently cripple Linux/free professional audio by guaranteeing that its basic sound was inferior to proprietary software that can license these high-performance algorithms, the fact that there are Free routines out there is GOOD.

So *phbbbbt* to you, sir ;) if you want to have moral authority, _you_ write a wordlength reduction routine that peaks at -160 db noise floor at 16/44.1 and then proceed to not tell anyone about it.

Free software is everybody's. There's no point in hiding it. For all you know, some unexpected person might have found that information useful, gone off and read the source and built it into their own app that has nothing to do with Audacity. That's the _point_.

Re:Audacity

[Voidhobo]

So you're the genius behind Audacity! I recently edited a 100Mbyte AIFF file in MacOS 8.6 (added a "hidden track" and did a bass boost) and was expecting it to crash at any minute, considering it was v.0.96. It didn't. I got the files merged and edited and saved within minutes. The Mac version has a beautiful intuitive and Aquaesque interface. Keep up the good work!

(I wrote a car racing program in C++ once... Unfortunately I think that Audacity takes a little more skill.)

Re:Audacity

[Anonymous Coward]

the fact that there are Free routines out there is GOOD.

I didn't say your software was worthless, nor did I say you shouldn't publicize it. What is classless is to post some "Hey! You wanna work together??? I DO have a clue, I do! I do!" rather than just writing the man directly.

If you wanted to post, "by the way, users of his software may be interested in my program, which does such and so" and leave it at that, and then write him directly about working together, that would have been OK. But read back your post, with an eye toward "is this being informative, or is this primarily intended to feed my ego", and I think you'll see that you could have dialed back a bit.

Hey, you can do what you want. I'm just telling you how it looks to Joe Slashdot here. Most people who are truly competent don't feel the need to "rah rah" themselves. I know I'm always a little hesitent to work with someone who seems to need a lot of validation.

Re:Audacity

[Chris Johnson]

You should have seen me when I was your age ;) then I was _really_ insecure.

Suit yourself. Your opinions of what has class are your own. I don't think it's proper for open source development to be taking place in back rooms and through private little deals. (Neither should government, but that's another story) ;)

what about latency issues?

[wishyfish]

I know that one of the key factors for me in choosing a computing platform for audio work is latency... essentially, the difference in time between when an audio signal enters the computer and when the audio signal exits via, i.e., a soundcard's audio outs.

So far, I've tried to stick with Macs because of their reasonably low latency figures. However, I'd be willing to consider a switch to Linux if it, too, could guarantee me reasonably low latency figures.

Have any attempts been made to do cross-platform latency comparisons--i.e., Mac, Windows 9x/nt/2k/etc., Linux?

-m

Re:what about latency issues?

[h4b1t]

there are several low-latency kernel patches, up to and including 2.4.10 kernels... http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/linux/schedlat.html #downloads check there u can get down to at least 8ms

Re:what about latency issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/resourceslatency. php3
you need a kernel patch which is mentioned there, or the new pre-emptible kernel patch. a link to the latter is on our news page at
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/news.php3

regards, jo"rn

Re:what about latency issues?

[gig]

There was a study that came out recently from some University folks that compared Mac OS X and Linux for audio work, specifically latency. Linux was a close second to Mac OS X when not under load, but under load Mac OS X's latency stayed at 1ms and Linux went from 2ms to 4ms or something along those lines.

Re:what about latency issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

DeMuDi (Debian Multimedia Distribution) is a Linux distro that has the low-latency patches installed by default. It might be worth checking it out.

Some helpful places to check out:

[Azog]

From reading the Linux Audio mailing list, I can offer a quick summary: There is pretty decent hardware support for a variety of pro audio gear. See below. The software side is not quite so good. As one poster put it: "The problem is not a lack of developers for Linux Audio. The problem is that instead of two or three 90% complete software packages, we've got twelve or fifteen 20% complete packages."

That might be a little pessimistic, but there's some truth to it. However, there is usable software out there, even if it is not done. Broadcast 2000 was aimed at video editing, but was apparently useful for audio as well. Ardor is a hard disk recorder package. There's a lot of stuff out there - heck, just search Google and Sourceforge.

The ALSA project http://www.alsa-project.org/ is an important site if you are looking for pro audio Linux drivers and software.

Now, about the hardware: http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/ is a place to start.

Also check out http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/Linux_Audio_Users _Guide/

The M-Audio pro hardware has a lot of good cards - everything from an inexpensive 24 bit / 96 Khz DA /AD card all the way up to the 10 channel Delta 1010, suitable for real pro / recording work. These cards have Linux support, and is probably your best bet for really good AD / DA and Midi under Linux.

The RME Hammerfall card is also supported under Linux. Other quality hardware (from Echo and other companies) is unfortunately not so well supported.

Personally, I'm planning on getting one of the M-Audio cards just for playing with.

Re:Some helpful places to check out:

[Stonehead]

The ALSA Project is really cool. I have a nameless Aztech 2320-based sound card. Last time I checked, the only available Windows drivers where for 95 and NT. Lots of bugs in there, too, and it couldn't record via the line-in without a lot of hiss. The default Linux kernel recognizes the azt2320 card, but can't play music through it. But ALSA works! Unlike in Windows, I can now adjust *all* volume controls, line-in recordings are pretty clean and even midi works fine. The joystick too, but you don't need alsa for the game port of course :)
Actually, the Linux kernel with ALSA might support many older cards better than the current Windows drivers. Some features for the Soundblaster Live! and a few more high-end cards are still underway, though..

Well..

[mindstrm]

Though you can probably get some decent tools in the Linux world...
Why is this person trying to 'get away' from windows... do the applications he has not work? Sound engineering is an application-specific task.. as long as the apps work, he should be fine.
Also.. why does he want to stay away from macs? macs, I believe, are the leader in digital sound engineering, no? That's like saying you want to build a huge complex network but want to stay away from Cisco.

Re:Well..

[dhalgren]

It's only application-specific as far as the applications go. If you can't trust the OS to not drop out from underneath you, you feel edgy every second you're in the studio.

This is *not* word-processing. When you're charging $100 or more per hour, stability is very important.

So, you go for the foundation which has the best stability track record. Of course, this isn't necessarily Linux, but Linux beats Windows all to hell for stability--Macs too (never used OS X so can't comment on that).

Until we get software with the same reliability that the dedicated hardware units have--and I've been programming too long to believe that this will be soon ;)--people will always want to trust their work to the most stable system of which they are aware. At the moment, this is neither Windows nor Mac.

Re:Well..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why is this person trying to 'get away' from windows... do the applications he has not work? Sound engineering is an application-specific task.. as long as the apps work, he should be fine."

Sound engineering is an application-specific business, and if you're using Windows software you can expect to have more of your money going to Microsoft than staying with you. This is not an accident.

There are solid business reasons to move away from Microsoft's s/w-thru-rentals plans for its ..uh.. "customers".

Relevant Linux Journal article

[the_rev_matt]

Here's an article on exactly that subject.. http://www2.linuxjournal.com/articles/style/0009.h tml

Linux DJ

[h_box]

I have been using Linux to DJ for about a year now at parties and as a resident at a local club. Linux IMHO is vastly superior as a performance oriented tool, due to it's efficiency and stability. Unfortunately on the music creation and creativity side of things, Windows and even the Mac are still quite a bit easier to get into.

My linux Dj configuration is an IBM thinkpad pentium 2 366. It allows me to re-mix music on the fly and send multiple soundstreams out through some external USB Digital Analog Converters. I run the channels into a standard DJ mixer where I can get twiddly with the EQ's and crossfader and the built in Kaoss effects processor. The software is called GDAM, and is available on sourceforge. Props to the geniuses who wrote the app, they have been very helpful with various problems I have had with older versions when it came to compiling. They have even implemented some of my suggestions into their code over the last year. [song searching case insensitive for example]

The whole thing is running on top of X windows, I use Blackbox to keep resource usage low, and in turn I can re-loop and remix up to 4 soundstreams on the lowly Pentium 2 366 without noticeable latency. I keep notes on my set using VI.

Of course i'm available for certain types of events worldwide. Demonstration sets are available at my website, though I imagine it will get slashdotted pretty quick so be gentle with me.

My sets

Re:Linux DJ

[Spy Hunter]

Do you use the preemptible kernel patches?

Re:Linux DJ

[jovlinger]

Perhaps you know:

whatever happened to that DJ kit availible for BeOS; the one with the time-track encoded vinyl LP, which you could scratch/delay/loop just like a normal record, but whcih was sampled by the software to modify the playing of an mp3 file instead?

Now that BeOS is pushing up the daisys, I was wondering whether it was avilible for other OSs

Re:Linux DJ

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to mention a really great DJing tool for linux, which is lacking the automatic beat detection that native instrument's traktor has: GDAM. It does beat matching and has a very flexible skin and control system, plus an excellent support for LADSPA plugins (the equivalent of vst for linux)

http://www.ffem.org/gdam

sadly the development while still moving is not extraordinary quick these days.. perhaps some
fresh blood could make this software THE best
djing tool all platform considered.

Re:Linux DJ

[h_box]

I have not patched my kernel with any additional realtime-related fixes if that's what you mean. I find that the bone stock "several versions ago" [I think 2.6 / 2.8?] kernel works very well, once compiled with only the things I need.

Re:Linux DJ

[h_box]

Don't know of that product. In my opinion though, as cool and geeky as it may be, nobody responds to 'digital dj's' the same way they do to their throwback vinyl counterparts. I play 'Intelligent Dance Music' so I get a crowd who aren't as tied to the 'two turntables and a microphone' but I still use Technics every day, otherwise I would never get gigs. If you want to scratch, get turntables! If you want to push the envelope - get GDAM. I do remember one 'scratch' app; http://www.analogx.com but I think it's for windows...

Re:Linux DJ

[Linuxathome]

I'm not a DJ, nor a musician by any stretch of the definition. I have, though, encountered a very interesting device [mixman.com] that is made by mattel and beatnik (yes, mattel as in the toy manufacturer). It appears to be a great device for music hobbyists everywhere (it's on my xmas wishlist ;-) Would any of you DJ's out there know of any open source software available out there that is compatible with this device? Something like the MixMan software available now for windoze? Or maybe even just simple software to create loops importable by MixMan? Something like AcidSound (or was it AcidStudio?)?

Professional software - lawsuit 4 U

[heroine]

As far as I know, writing professional non destructive editor for free is going to expose you to liability battles because of the amount of money professionals risk on the software and the assumption that the software is going to carry their $250 million talent's voice to DVD.

The GPL is worthless at protecting you in a high cost environment like professional audio. That's why you won't see open source programmers giving out more than simple wave editors and utilities.

Re:Professional software - lawsuit 4 U

[Anonymous Coward]

>The GPL is worthless at protecting you in a high cost environment like professional audio

Hmmm, well, then the answer would be to add a big disclaimer saying:

"This software is not intended for professional use. This software is guaranteed to break under these circumstances. I promise you that this software does not work properly. You must print this message out and send it and your signature on the same paper in to me if you agree. If not, exit the software now"

Sorta like what happens when you buy something that's broken. You're told its busted so don't come crying to me. That and if you tell me you want to use that broken item for a professional purpose I'll tell you "no".

Not too difficult...

Of course the problem comes when a company _thinks_ a disclaimer like that doesn't include them and sues you anyways. I don't think they would be successful -- but you still have to pay court fees. :-(

Of course, you could try to counter-sue on the grounds of them filing a frivilous lawsuit against you, but that's more time and money on your part. Ho Hum. Maybe it would be best to include a function in the source code that causes the software to crash after 10 or 20 seconds -- that way the company has to hack the bad code out and by doing so they both run a modified version and prove that they know the software isn't suitable to their task.

Re:Professional software - lawsuit 4 U

[paulbd]

This is an extremely disingenuous comment. As far as I can tell, it comes from the author of Broadcast 2000, who recently pulled the source of B2000 from the net because of the fears expressed in this message. Several people have asked the author of B2000 to substantiate his fears of liability. There appears to be no basis in fact for it. All commercial software would come with the same issues, and the companies that produce it are often not rich enough to face the kind of lawsuit he suggests. In additional, all software, commercial or open source, comes with explicit disclaimers as part of the license, and several people have suggested that these would have no problem standing in a court of law. The pulling of B2000 because of un-explained fears of legal liability was reported on slashdot, and is, IMHO, an irresponsible act. The author should either justify his concerns, or provide some other rationale for the decision. As for:

you won't see open source programmers giving out more than simple wave editors and utilities.

I don't think so. Otherwise, why would I be spending hours and hours every day working on a fully-fledged ProTools equivalent called Ardour?

Re:Professional software - lawsuit 4 U

[mojo-raisin]

"Otherwise, why would I be spending hours and hours
every day working on a fully-fledged ProTools equivalent called Ardour?"

Ummm... b/c you rock?
I almost want to become a musician just so I can use the cool apps.
...when I retire in ~40 years, maybe I'l have the time.

Linux Driver Support

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think there really is a Linux alternative for pro-sound recording environments. Mostly due to a lack driver support for high-end sound cards. Any serious recording studio that works in the digital domiain is usually working in the realm of 24 bit, 96 kHz audio (soon to be 192 kHz audio), with sound cards with muliple I/O interfaces, and often built in MIDI. In my experiences, you can get high end sound cards working on Linux, but never with 24 bit 96 kHz audio, and rarely with all the I/O ports functioning, and more rarely with accurate MIDI timing.

I've been in the Pro-audio industry for years, and I've never heard of a studio running Linux. I've been pressuring the company I work for to come out with Linux support, but after a real cost/benefit analysis, they never go for it.

Luke Deniston
Technical Manager
Ego Sys, Inc.
http://www.egosys.net

Audacity

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

I can't resist making a shameless plug for my project, Audacity.

While Audacity is nowhere near being a complete replacement for a full set of commercial audio tools, I believe it's one of the best editors available for Linux today and has a lot of potential to be extremely competitive with commercial multitrack audio solutions within the next year or two. Here's what it has going for it:

• It's cross-platform. We use wxWindows (but with native audio I/O code for each platform) and Audacity currently runs on Linux, Windows, MacOS (9 and X), and other Posix systems.
• Fully non-destructive editing, using a novel blocked-file approach which caches the current mix for faster real-time playback.
• Supports (on most sound cards) full-duplex recording - sing harmonies with yourself!
• Import and Export MP3 files from within Audacity (using LAME for exporting)
• Built-in effects include Bass Boost, FFT Filter, and Noise Reduction. Compression/Expansion under development. Support for VST plug-ins on Windows and MacOS, and LADSPA support is under development.
• Unlimited number of tracks and automatic mixing. The code in CVS (not yet released) supports automatic resampling.
• Built-in envelope editor
• Spectrogram mode and frequency analysis tools

(For those of you who have tried the current release (0.97) and are having audio I/O problems on Linux, rest assured that the latest version in CVS has much improved audio I/O and should solve all of those problems and more...)

There are three or four active developers of Audacity, and another dozen or so people who contribute code or bug fixes from time to time. We're definitely interested in more help - visit the web site and contact us if you're a C++ whiz (or have some other skill which might be useful for us) and want to join the team!

Perhaps...

[cnelzie]

...it is the "Think Diferent" marketing thing they have, while it is really more like Henry Ford and the Model-T.

"You can have one in any color as long as it is black." - Henry Ford

Steve Jobs does have diferent colored cutesy boxes, but you are very limited as to what you can do with the OS. Just look at the legal action against groups that think diferent and came up with a way to alter their desktop theme. I suppose there are also countless other things that Apple has proclaimed as evil, whenever a user or group of users wanted to "Think Diferent" than the Apple groupthink.

That is why I will personally never own a Mac. Sure, they make good hardware, sure the OS is pretty easy to use and functional. The thing that sucks, is you really can't think diferently than the Apple party line. It makes it sound a little like a dictatorship.

At least with Linux and Windows, there is nothing wrong with you changing the entire layout of the desktop and you have nearly limitless choices of what you can do with your system.

People just don't like Dictators.. Don't ask me why...

--
.sig seperator
--

Re:Perhaps...

[Lysol]

But this has nothing to do with running pro audio. If you really looked and really shopped and really got into the recording studio industry, you'd find out that basically mac hardware and os are just a delivery tool for that particular vendors custom made hardware and software.
In the industry nobody gives a shit about colors or 'think different' or Steve Jobs or any of that crap. That piece of hardware is just hooked up and is one of many other expensive pieces of gear.

Ya know, it's seems almost like every ./'er thinks the world revolves around linux. I have every mahcine at home running Linux, except 1 and all my work development coding is done on linux. Frankly tho, it's pretty ridiculous to read all these posts all the time bitching about anything not linux.
I love linux. I love bsd. I love my Ti-Powerbook (ok, 2 home machines that dont run linux). And my experience in many industries has convinced me that linux is not the f***ing answer to everything! Neither is Win32. Neither is Solaris. Neither is Bsd. Neither is Mac. It's all about picking the right tool for the job.
Pro audio studio types (well, mostly everyone I've met) don't give a crap about open source or Linux. Most of the pro audio world runs on macs because either Pro Tools or some other hardware/software combo works and has cranked out many million dollar cd's.
I'm all for linux changing that. But the only way that that's going to happen is to find out - not assume - how people are using tools and then make better ones. And if they're cheaper, then all the better. That's what drives change.

Not the well so and so is evil and they're just out to lock everyone in, so screw that attitude.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at the legal action against groups that think diferent and came up with a way to alter their desktop theme.

Desktop theme? Who gives a flying fuck about that? Do you honestly tell me that you choose your OS based on the desktop theme?

Re:Perhaps...

[Elfboy]

That is why I will personally never own a Mac. Sure, they make good hardware, sure the OS is pretty easy to use and functional. The thing that sucks, is you really can't think diferently than the Apple party line. It makes it sound a little like a dictatorship.

That's why the first thing I do to my Macs is install Linux.

It's quite fun having LinuxPPC, OS X, OS 9, and Win98 (emulated under 9 with VirtualPC) all on the same box.
And as for the desktop of a Mac. Check out Kalidescope shareware. Much more flexible than any Windows decoration of I've seen.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, based on a lawsuit. If a company is a bunch of fuckers and sues people for frivolous shit like this, there's no way I'm going to buy their stuff, even if it's the best on earth.

Re:Perhaps...

[Anonymous Coward]

trademark law. read it.

Re:Perhaps...

[LafinTux]

Don't make me laugh out loud. The only reason studios still buy Macs is because the stores where they buy all the expensive equipment that way make more money and because general population's stupidity assumes that if something is free it can't be as good as overpriced crap such as Protools. If you did some research in this field before flapping with your yapper, you'd realize that Linux beats Macs in every respect when it comes to multimedia, and that times are rapidly changing with many audio companies introducing Linux support. Not only that, but in many cases Linux doesn't even need commercial solutions, since it has already comparatively good free software!

Protools vs. Ardour, Mixmagic, Rt
ASIO drivers vs. ALSA drivers
Soundforge vs. Snd, Ecawave, mxv etc.
VST plugins vs. LADSPA plugins
Sequencers vs. Muse sequencer, timidity etc.
Max/Msp vs. Jmax, PD
etc.

The only difference is that with Linux you get better latencies, better performance and no out-of-pocket expenses. Now be smart and make a rational choice. As much as your Protools buddies are concerned, they do not obviously care about Linux, but they surely do not care about their wallets either, dishing out much more than they ought to...

On the other hand, there is plenty commercial software out there which has been readily available for Linux before it came for the Macs i.e. Maya, with which Apple people swear by, came out on Linux before it came out on Macs, Linux has also Softimage, and Blender.

And to leave you with some sense of enlightenment, pop quiz for ya:

What equipment was used for the latest animated cartoon blockbuster Shrek? Hint: it ain't them apples...

Re:Perhaps...

[gig]

> People just don't like Dictators.. Don't ask me why...

What, like Linus Torvalds? He and Steve Jobs both publicly answered the question, "what's wrong with Microsoft?" by answering, "they have no taste". A "dictator" can be a great asset to a computing platform ... when I buy a new Mac (I bought a new one today) I know that somebody had to get it past Steve Jobs first ... it's great quality control. Also, Steve Jobs and the people around him have a history of driving the industry forward, and it's exciting to watch that happen.

As for defending the look of the Aqua GUI and having letter-happy lawyers, I'm inclined to cut a company a little slack when they have been competing with Microsoft for 20 years. Apple is hardly AOL Time Warner, or even Disney. Apple's computers are the most standards-based boxes you will find anywhere, hardware and software both.

It would be cool if the dual-boot Windows/Linux users would give Apple a look before they send in their next payment to Microsoft. If you are happy in Linux full-time, then great (lucky for you!), but it seems hypocritical to me to dual-boot Linux and Windows and disparage Mac OS X.

Re:Perhaps...

[DavidRavenMoon]

What equipment was used for the latest animated cartoon blockbuster Shrek? Hint: it ain't them apples...

But the audio tracks and the sound track (and music score) were done on Apples ;-)

No one but hobbiest use Linux for audio

Re:Perhaps...

[lkeagle]

No one but hobbiest use Linux for audio

And professionals curious about how Linux developments are going to change their field :-)

~Loren

Re:Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ

[Anonymous Coward]

c'mon man. I've seen you do much better. This troll is beneath you, actually it reminds me of goingware (except bold substituted for links).

Plea for good drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Linux's sound drivers deserves some attention too. Out of the 3 sound cards I have, only one of them (SB Live) could play multiple audio streams simultaneously. Other cards need to use sound daemons such as esd and arts to achieve the same effect, but generally these sound daemons cause more trouble than what they're trying to solve. It's hard to believe that while Windows users takes multiplexing on their sound cards for granted, such feature is generally not availble for Linux.

It's true we need professional audio application, but what good are those if the underlying drivers suck?

Define "Professional"

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked at a few radio stations, and the definition of "professional" differs from person to person.

If you are looking for a dedicated PC with a decent GUI, 96k sampling rate, 8 stereo ins, 8 stereo outs, any combination of analog / balanced analog / SPDIF / AESEBU, real-time or on-the-card processing for each track (as opposed to crunching the numbers via the CPU), then no, odds are you find it in linux. There are deciated hardware / software solutions for this, like Digigram's XTrack, DigiDesign ProTools, SonicSolutions, etc, but they are all proprietary and usually either windows or mac, not both.

If all you are looking to do is record your voice on the left channel, the interviewee's voice on the right, and cut and past the segment together, then yes, you can probably find it in linux, but why bother?

Seems to me the problem isn't the software, or even the platform, it's the administrator. I have audio workstations running Windows that are very stable.

It's still not there yet..

[Lysol]

Honestly. I've spent many years using various audio packages. first on the mac - cuz it was there wayyyy before pc, esp. with propreitary hardware extensions ala protools, etc - and within the past few years, the pc.
My friend has a studio and a few years ago, i convinced them to dump their protools package (cuz seriously, who wants to be locked in and protools excels at that!) for pc software. over time, we got a decent machine, with full scsi, and started tracking his new project. We used Cool Edit Pro and it started barfing here and there. You can't afford *any* drop outs or variations in a track. otherwise, it's useless.
A few months back, they switched back over to protools on a G4. i think part of their problem was lack of experience tho. they have a 'producer' in now using their equip and he's recorded some major label projects. he likes the setup. so i guess it works. however, it *cost* them quite a bit.
my home studio has a athalon 750, 512mb ram, ata-100 raid 0 40gb hd setup, and - ugh - win98. this is *only* because the company i bought my digi audio card - tascam pci 822 (dont go for that crappy soundblaster stuff, u wanna track 24-bit, at least 44khz, *at least*). that connects into my tascam tmd1000 mixer. this is pretty kick ass for a home/project studio. i actually *read* a lot of stuff for disabling read-ahead cache (bad!) and various other things. At most I've had about 36 tracks of audio goin whithout a hitch. Using Cool Edit Pro as well.
Obviosuly, I'd prefer to use linux, but the drivers and the software are *the* major hitch. I mean, tascam (funny, how there's scam in the middle of their name..) can't even get their shit together to write Win2k drivers (which wld be far more robust than 98). So I think it would be difficult to get the appropriate linux drivers.
I do have faith in Linux tho. Esp since a lot of CG shops are using it more and more. Just needs the software and drivers, thats all. And coming from a analog/mixing board kinda view, the software has to be easy to use. I feel cool edit is pretty straight forwars. I gave up on cakewalk and all those others. I personally don't have much need for midi.
So, remember, if you really care about your proj/home studio, you'll record in at least 24-bit/44khz. And for that u need a beefier card than the crappy sound blasters. And that card will require custom drivers. Kinda a weird cicken and egg syndrome.

Re:It's still not there yet..

[h4b1t]

dont tell anyone, but alot of tracks u are hearing on vinyl are produced on sub-$300 soundcards on pcs like mine (p3 600mhz, ata33 hds) ive only gotten upto 32 tracks of audio in VST going w/o problems, and then only in win98 w/ latency of about 8-10ms. i personally havent had any dropouts in recording on my dinky ide ata33 setup, but then 16bit 44khz works for me just fine :) so anyways, yeah u probably need to spend 20 grand if u want to be the next BT but you can make some phat trax with just your pc and less than your life-savings worth of cash, ppl do it all the time.

Re:It's still not there yet..

[Lysol]

This is true. However, now yr getting real artsy fartsy. Don't let neil you hear u say that...

a fine analog mist vs. digital ice cubes...

Re:It's still not there yet..

[tmuka]

I also do a fair share of recording projects on my Athalon 1.4, 256M ram, 60GATA100 Raid 0 and win98/2K. I use two relatively cheap sound cards, Aureal MX-300, and Ensoniq AudioPCI. both cards have a very low s/n ratio (although likely not as good as your (expensive?) tascam card). I wonder if you have tried using Ntrack Studio. I have used it for several year now and i prefer it to Cooledit Pro. It is extremely powerful while maintaining a very easy to use interface. It also supports directX and Cubase VST plugins. If you havent checked out this package i recommend it. I am thinking about buying a high quality sound card with at least 4in/4out. Any Recommendations?

Re:It's still not there yet..

[discogravy]

>>>>> I do have faith in Linux tho. Esp since a lot of CG shops are using it more and more. Just needs the software and drivers, thats all. >>>>>

that's like saying it's a great car, it just needs wheels and an engine.

linux sound apps are sorely lacking, although i will second the earlier post mentioning the 'linux sound and music' books -- excellent resource.

waiting for Cakewalk Sonar

[beanerspace]

Back in the 1986, Greg Hendershott made the PC a viable choice for MIDI production. Well, actually, it wasn't until the early 90's with the Windows version of Cakewalk that it became a weapon of choice. IN the late '90's the product improved to the point of a pro-weight Audio product now named Sonar.

My only complaint is that while the software is sturdy, the operating system under it isn't. More than once, Windows has "burped" in the middle of critical recordings. I recently set up a church with RealAudio Producer for Linux for precisely that reason. I didn't want an operating system getting in the way of a 20 minute sermon.

My hope is that Greg H. get's the innovation bug that's made him a hero in the industry, and provide a Linux solution. When that happens, you can kiss Windows goodbye in my own studio.

mixing vs midi

[sehryan]

fyi, finale and cakewalk are not audio mixing programs. cakewalk is midi, and finale, while it may also be used for midi, is mostly for score production. i don't know about cakewalk, but i am pretty sure that finale will not be moving to linux any time soon.

and looking through the comments, i agree with whomever said macs are the way to go. i don't want to get off on a rant here, but most of the OSes have their place, and macs dominate multimedia. not only that, but osx is a bsd system, so there you have it, best of both worlds.

Re:mixing vs midi

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most references to cakewalk are shorthand for cakewalk pro audio (ie the good version) which indeed does support audio mixing.

I know he wants to stay away from Macs but...

[TJPile]

OS X has been praised for it Sound abilities and low latencies. Now we need some killer audio apps to run on it...

Pro Audio

[asv108]

Is it possible to buy a pro audio card with Linux drivers and just run Sound Forge in WINE

Last time I checked, Sound Forge was not something to be used for PRO audio.

Re:Pro Audio

[ONU CS Geek]

Look for the Radio Free Linux Project. Yes, I know it's in pre-alpha, but I was interested on working on the project last year, and it seems to be going along well.

Re:Pro Audio

[MuthaFukka]

excuse me! soundforge is not "PRO" audio?

soundforge is best audio editor available on *any* OS (mac/win/linux/etc), or proprietary system (like pro FOOLS).

as a matter of fact the stuff (pro tools) that is considered "PRO" audio is total shit. people are too intimidated by the $30K they pay to state the obvious: soundforge (and wavelab too) kick pro fools sorry worthless ass.

a lowly pc or mac now has as much power as any of that "PRO" crap. there are TONS of studios that use macs/pc's. the ones that use shit like protools just have too much money than they know what to do with & who are TOO STUPID to run a computer.

Re:Pro Audio

[raresilk]

Sound Forge Pro samples in 32 bit and over 96,000 sample rate -- that is not "pro" anymore? If not, I'm amazed. What do you have that can do better? I would really like to know about it.

Re:Pro Audio

[emerson]

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?

Re:Pro Audio

[twilightzero]

SoundForge is used at many of the top studios around and has what are generally considered the ABSOLUTE best noise reduction, hiss remove, etc. plugins. You must be thinking of SoundForge XP, the cheap little home version that sux rocks when even compared to stuff like GoldWave.

But none of this answers the actual question. Can you successfully run SoundForge in WINE, say with a digital audio card with native Linux ALSA drivers (there have been several mentioned in this story) and have the sound come out correctly?

Re:Pro Audio

[lkeagle]

True, ProTools may be overpriced and not worth it to do many even medium sized audio tasks.

But "pro audio" is not defined by bit depth and sample rates. Pro audio isn't really even defined by low s/n ratios and quality connectors. Pro audio, when it comes down to it, is defined simply by what the 'professionals' choose to use. And when I say professionals, I mean people who are qualified to make decisions as to what equipment better suits them for a recording task. This requires much more knowledge than how to use a piece of software. It requires knowledge of all the other equipment in the studio and it's history, knowledge of the physics of sound and the mathematics of sampling theory, and usually, knowledge of the genre of music you're trying to record. Chances are if you need a big professional solution to a recording problem, you're recording a large orchestra, or a complicated and dense rock track. Otherwise, all it takes is a little imagination to learn to use some really basic audio software to do accomplish smaller tasks. Very few recording applications actually neccessitate the use of a full 36 channel digital mixing console and ProTools software. But then again, you get what you pay for (which is generally an engineer that is very familiar with the ProTools and thus saves you a ton of money by being more productive).

~Loren

Re:Pro Audio

[lkeagle]

P.S. SoundForge doesn't sample anything. Your audio hardware does that. All the software does is push bits around.

The quality of the A/D and other electronics in your sound card is what manufacturers usually use to label something 'Pro Audio'. Often, manufacturers will release multiple versions of the same product, but with higher quality parts in the 'professional' versions.

Sounds a bit like VCR's doesn't it? Or cars, for that matter...

~Loren

Re:Pro Audio

[raresilk]

Your definition of where "sampling" occurs seems like semantics to me. If one does not have software capable of editing and storing a sample at a specific bit rate, the audio hardware cannot "sample" at that quality, whatever its underlying capability. A theoretical "sample" sitting in the audio hardware without software that can make use of it? Cmon, really . . . this is like "when a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears, does it make a sound?"

And, in any event, your response is irrelevant. The original poster was scoffing at the Sound Forge editor -- a software package -- as insufficiently "pro audio" to qualify for this discussion -- a discussion of software packages for Linux with pro audio capability. As I am familiar with and use Sound Forge, my reply pointed out the high audio quality capabilities of Sound Forge, and asked what software could do better. (As expected, no response.) According to your theory, all software would be "pro audio" even if it dithered every sample down to 12K rate or even less, because only the quality of your hardware matters. Ha.

(By the way, my audio hardware is an Echo Layla 24/96.)

* * *

SuSE

[manon]

I've seen that the new version of SuSE has some sound editing apps that look powerful to me. Although I never used them and don't know the least about it. ;)
Anyway, here is the page with the sound stuff.
They have these apps:

* gamix
* GDAM
* ALSA and Midi
* RTSynth
* kladspa
* Linux grooves with jazz and TK-707

I hope there are some apps here that can help your friend.

I was gonna sk the same question stupid moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck is so trollish about asking why he doesn't want to use a Mac? Macs are superior to windows in audio editing and I'm sure the audio editing software is much more mature then Linux

MAC OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

Sound quality is much better..and OS will last longer than most distro :)

TuneTracker for BeOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure how relevant this is to the discussion, but for professional radio automation stuff TuneTracker for BeOS is excellent:

http://www.beosradio.com/tunetracker/

It's not open-source, but is fairly inexpensive at $100. (It's inexpensive compared to the systems with which it competes - they cost thousands.)

Getting there...

[theno23]

There are a number of very promising pro-level applications for linux, whihx I won't bother listing as there are several good webpages that will do that.

I will say however that most of them are not ready for everyday use yet, most are alpha and still under heavy development.

On the hardware side, both M-Audio Deltas (24bit analogue, up to 10 channels) and RME Hammerfalls (digital only, 3 ADAT ports each way + SPDIF, my personal choice) work well and are supported. Both are available from any decent electronic music shop.

If you are a DSP programmer then pitch in and write some LADSPA plugins (see http://www.ladspa.org/), the API is very simple and well documented adnd lots of applications can use them.

- Steve

Slightly offtopic: SLashdot linux distro

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got done making the press release for the Slashdot Linux Distribution Beta 1 available for immediate release. It is a debian based distro aimed at butt pirates.

CmdTaco (oops not logged in to my account)

Hate to say it

[Yog-Soth]

But Macs are most often used in professional audio studios with good reason. The Pro Tools system is an industry standard for audio engineering. See http://www.digidesign.com/ for more info on Pro Tools. Note: I do not work for them but I did work for a studio that was fully equipped with their products.

To their credit, I find programs such as Audacity and snd equally useful as, say, Cool Edit, meaning I can paste together a few things and apply simple audio transformations, but nothing comes close to the sophistication offered by Pro Tools. So far linux's applications represent the "lite" of audio engineering.

Silly Assumptions

[xinit]

How would running YEWA (yet another windows app) under WINE? It won't HELP time dependant operations much, and it'll still be subject to the windows compatible crashes.

On another note, who said that the sound application would have to necessarily be open source? The question asked if there were any Linux audio program - not if there were any that were freely available. Where does the assumption that a program must cost nothing in order to be a viable linux application come from?

Spiral Synth Modular

[wwinfrey]

There's an interesting modular soft synth available for Linux called "Spiral Synth Modular". Looks like a project with a lot of promise: http://www.pawfal.org/Software/SSM/

Re:Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ

[h4b1t]

yeah thats really helpful i guess if you arent rich dont even bother making music you dont have any right to note that all those professionals started out rich and with a full studio of gear like this guy who probably just finished working on the new nsync track

Tell your buddy to wake up

[Acheon]

Okay, two years ago I wouldn't have wanted to hear about a mac either. Now I don't want to hear from anything else. We used to make music on PC's only, and I insist, only because this is everything we've got. Now that Apple finally decided to build some good Power Mac's, there's no excuse. Both the software and the hardware is there. (And find a windows box supporting firewire devices :P)

I mean, really, take a look at new Macs ; it's really worth it. And then you won't wonder anymore why musicians swear only by that in magazines.

Re:Tell your buddy to wake up

[paulbd]

and then tell hime to go back to sleep for several months (at least).

very few of the major packages for audio on MacOS have been ported to Mac OS X. all new macs
ship with OS X. porting efforts are underway,
but they are not trivial if they want good
performance.

Re:Tell your buddy to wake up

[Anonymous Coward]

What a ridiculous thing to say.
OF COURSE all new macs ship with os X.
THEY ALSO ship with os 9 too.
:P
Moreso if you don't want to reboot then
you can just run the apps inside of os X.

LilyPond

[cortense]

It's not exactly a music composition program, but it's an amazing typesetter. I have yet to see better output from a computer program, Finale can't even compare. More information is available here.

Re:LilyPond

[van der Rohe]

"I have yet to see better output from a computer program, Finale can't even compare."

Unless, of course, you want your music to look published.

LilyPond is cute but it looks exactly nothing like typeset music. Try Score, Sibelius, or yes, even Finale if you know how to use it.

Don't believe me? Try submitting your LilyPond output to a publisher.

Linux advocacy is fine, but let's be sure to reality check every once in a while - there are some things that Linux simply doesn't do better yet. Period.

Re:LilyPond

[jcn]

LilyPond is cute but it looks exactly nothing like typeset music. Don't believe me?

Music typesetting is not a religion. If you come accros a situation that LilyPond doesn't handle elegantly, please send a bug report with an example.

Dismissing something on a belief-me basis qualifies as FUD in my book.

Linux advocacy is fine, but let's be sure to reality check every once in a while

And how should spreading FUD be of any help? Btw, what (once in a while) version of LilyPond did you use?

linux audio

[h4b1t]

http://www.uow.edu.au/~andrewm/linux/schedlat.html go there to get a low latency kernel patch
then grab any one of the numerous linux audio editors (i recommend the art of noise, audacity, and protux, in that order)
then grab any one of the numerous midi/audio sequencers : jazz (audio/midi), rosegarden (midi), soundtracker (audio), muse (midi/limited audio), brahms (midi/limited audio)
then u can go and grab any one of the numerous softsynths (freebirth, spiralsynth), or a modular synth like pd or arts which probably came with your distribution.
then there are also the various ladspa plugins, lots of them at that, supported by most of the above apps.
you can make decent music in linux, dont listen to the losers with money out their ass telling you that you need 200 grand worth of gear to make anything, they are just ppl with too much cash who for some reason assume everyone else either has as much money to piss away as they do (i wish i did, id have a pile of gear too ok) or would rather have a pile of gear than say, a house, or a car.

Professional Audio on Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck who said that there were pro audio cards with Windows drivers that worked well?

I work for a company that developes audio software (on Windows) for the radio industry. Of the cards we support (names removed to protect the innocent, well protect from commercial liability anyway) I would have to say most of them can be dogs to work with. Every time they come out with a new card or driver we spend days and weeks of QA time silver plattering them bugs that will make Windows curl up and die. We buy ~85% of a certain company's production of some cards and still the cards are the quickest way I know to destroy a Windows box enough to require an OS reinstall with all the 27 squillion reboots that entails.

Some Linux based apps and drivers would be just the jolt a few companies need methinks. Bring it on.

Macs, Slashdotters, This Question

[LawGeek]

All the posts requesting to know why this person wants to "avoid macs" are perfectly valid.

The simple answer is probably that the "friend" mentioned here is chief engineer of the self-assembled PC in his basement and can't afford to buy anything that would cost money. Though there's nothing wrong with this plight, I don't understand why we must lie about things to get the information we want.

Anyone not on crack who's a chief engineer at a recording studio would not "avoid macs." They are the absolute standard in virtually all audio and most video production. There are numerous software and hardware solutions at the professional level and if you want to create quality recordings for your artists, then there is but one choice.

Why in God's earth anyone calling themselves a professional audio engineer would try and duct tape together a platform of pre-beta, open source (read: no paid-for, reliable support -- and I'm talking about the applications here, not the operating system)software in an OS that obviously nobody is using for audio production is beyond me. Therefore, I can only come to the conclusion above that there is no real "friend" looking for advice here.

I really would love to see open source, professional quality audio developed for Linux. Unfortunately, anyone who's spent more than a week on Slashdot knows for a fact that this sort of stuff isn't around. Yes, there are a few things for doing amateur digital audio work, but nothing that could drive the hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment any real studio would have.

Re:Macs, Slashdotters, This Question

[Shwang_Shwing]

That's a load of BS. I have a Mac and a PC in my office that I use for audio. Hate the Mac, love the PC. THere isn't a damn thing I can't do on the PC that I do on the MAc and the programs cost more on the Mac anyway.

Re:Macs, Slashdotters, This Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I think someone forgot to take his Fisher-Price piano away

Re:Macs, Slashdotters, This Question

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a load of BS. I have a Mac and a PC in my office that I use for audio. Hate the Mac, love the PC. THere isn't a damn thing I can't do on the PC that I do on the MAc and the programs cost more on the Mac anyway.

Go out and buy a professional studio setup with pro audio hardware and software tools, then tell us how well your PC vs. Mac comparison holds up. Otherwise, you are just another annoying amateur.

Re:Macs, Slashdotters, This Question

[Anonymous Coward]

being as I've looked into it, the only way the "programs cost more on the mac" is if you're using warez versions on the pc, simply cuz you can't find the mac versions.

Audio latency

[Another MacHack]

There's a paper, Audio Latency Measurements of Desktop Operating Systems, which might give you some useful information. Mac OS X's CoreAudio provided the most consistant latencies regardless of loads, although a suitably patched Linux 2.4 kernel has better latencies under no-load conditions.

"All of the current desktop operating systems offer excellent latency performance under some conditions, though most of them cannot deliver this performance in all situations. This is a substantial improvement over previous results (Brandt and Dannenberg 1998; Freed, Chaudhary, and Davila 1997), but because of the inconsistency of the results more improvement is necessary before reliable low-latency performance can be expected from desktop operating systems.

"In conclusion, Linux showed the best performance in the tests without load while MacOS X showed the best performance in the tests with load. Windows and MacOS 8 and 9 produced some of the best results when using a professional soundcard with the ASIO API but showed poor performance when using the standard APIs and consumer-grade soundcards."

you could always ask people who know ...

[paulbd]

As the author of the RME Hammerfall driver, Ardour (a pro/commercial level DAW for linux), SoftWerk and a bunch of other audio s/w for Linux, and founder of Linux Audio Systems, I probably know at least as much about this as anybody else. the short answer to the question is that at this time, there is no software for Linux suitable for use in a pro-audio setting, if by that you mean a serious multitrack recording studio. many have pointed to Dave Phillips fabulous web pages that list a plethora of linux audio+MIDI applications. there is some great stuff in there, but absolutely none of it would be in any way a replacement or stand-in for ProTools, Logic Audio, Samplitude 24/96, Paris or any of the other DAW systems that studios might consider. the closest to what you're looking for right now is probably MusE, which is a sequence that concentrates on MIDI but has some limited audio capacity. Its under active development. Ardour is closer in theory to what you want, but I cannot suggest that you even try it out at this time, since it can only be built from CVS (no tarballs) and is under even more rapid development than MusE (I think:) Ardour v1.0 is scheduled for some time early this winter. That version will not support MIDI. Other audio editors for Linux include some fine software (snd, in particular), but their functionality is very different (and often much more limited) than the multichannel DAW tools I mentioned above. As long as most audio app authors continue to think in terms of 16 bit stereo interleaved audio, which the vast majority do at this time, the supply of Linux pro-audio applications will be a mere trickle. If you want to ask more specific questions, do write. When Ardour v1.0 appears, my company, Linux Audio Systems, will be selling prebuilt Linux-based hardware DAWs. --p pbd@op.net

Re:you could always ask people who know ...

[Anonymous Coward]

heh... you could actually have a decent market doing that... 99% of musicians aren't wiling to build a computer and twiddle with linux - the downfall of VALinux: trying to sell hardware to geeky sysadmins.

pd and msp

[Anonymous Coward]

from looking around the web at this it looks like pd was the basis for msp and was developed in parallel with max, rather than being an attempt at a port.

Maybe This:

[SomeOtherGuy]

Since we all know Java (c) is going to be "the next big thing...." there just must be a "Java - Platform Independent (c)" solution out there right??? I mean hell, all of the universities are teaching Java right??? (My tongue is firmly in my cheek...)

Re:Maybe This:

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, why tongue in cheek? Java has perfectly good sound output and input, as good as any native solutions, and will run on almost any popular OS. You'll see solutions, guaranteed. Java doesn't HAVE to mature, it HAS matured, unlike the OS Linux...

Re:Maybe This:

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be a fucking asshole, you armchair codewarrior.

We both know Java is NOT INTENDED for low-latency issues... heck, neither is Perl, Python, or Visual Basic. Java solves a set of problems: portability, pointer & memory management, and built-in security. Oh yeah, and a GUI and a host of other things. You can strawman the Java arguement by taking 1

Don't expect Java to compete with assembly (or C) in areas it was not intended for... just like it's not reasonable to to write webserver applications in assembly.

My question is...

[Uttles]

Why does this professional audio person want to stay away from macs? It's been understood for as long as I can remember that Macintosh is the leader in multimedia computing. Photoshop set the standard, and titles like Director and others keep the tradition going. Open source would be much cheaper, you can't get less expensive than free. However, staying away from Macintosh isn't all that smart. I would recommend finding the best Open Source stuff out there to see if it has all you need, then if it doesn't get a Mac.

Mod parent up.

[Spankophile]

If people need to be sysadmins or recompile kernals to do music on Linux, it just won't happen.

OT perhaps, but I think this goes without saying for much, if not all of the things Linux aims to do as well, or better than Windows since the entry point still requires too large a learning curve.

Long, ambiguous to parse sentences are my friends.

Re:Mod parent up.

[Tomun]

Actually arent most Windows machines pre-installed by the vendor ? The few that install Windows themselves could handle a Linux install too if they cared to try.

The answer is "NO, DEAR GOD, NO!"

[Shiska]

I used to love Linux. I took great pleasure in exterminating Windows years ago and switching over entirely. ... Well, soon enough, I was back to Windows on my Desktop.

At some point, I took an interest in computer-based music production. "Great! I'm sure I can do this with Linux!" ... Wrong.

Sadly, Both Windows and MacOS take a huge dump all over linux when it comes to the availability of professional-quality audio applications.

All of the open source audio projects seem either stale, abandoned (Someone mentioned JMAX. Take a look at when that was last updated, jack.) or eternally in pre-alpha -- not to mention at most times horribly inadequate. Compare XWave to Sound Forge, and you will get my picture.

Want VST Instruments? VST Effects? DirectX Plugins? A Proper Sequencer? A Proper Sound Editor? ...Sorry, not in Linux yet...

Very little plug-in support

[Shwang_Shwing]

I make video game sounds for a living and although running Linux for audio would be cool there is next to no support for DirectX adn VST plug-ins. Without plug-ins there is no reason to move to Linux.

Sequoia

[yoink!]

Yes, it's sad but true that right now Linux just won't cut if for user-level professional audio systems.

Yes. it is also sad to see BeOS struggling so hard when it is the perfect choice for much of the multi-media production that goes on.

My audio setup currently consists of two machines running several pieces of software. Suprisingly, I have been running Windows 98 SE in a mission critical environment with no crashes to date. I swear it must be a first. One of our systems get transported to GIGs as a live sample system, with no problems. Don't get me wrong I'm not a hailer of Windows Products; I've been using linux for several years now (albeit I'm still rather bad with much of it's vast abilities). I switched over to Linux exclusively until I needed my own setup and then the choice was clear ... windows. You see, the most powerful studio app I have ever encountered is called Sequoia (Sek'd) and it doesn't run on anything but pcs. It has features that protools will never have.

For example you can run it on multi-processor systems and assign functions individually to different processors to relieve the weight and allow for more DSP power when needed. Macs require expensive add-on cards like the TC_PowerCore which few people will support. Othe PC audio applications like Magix Samplitude (Magix) have absolutely stunning features like realtime FFT filters, a 1000 track limit and unlimited effects routing.

I dream of the day such things will be availanble on linux, and I'm sure they will. No one wants to pay $3K US for Sequoia. What people do want is to be able to work creatively and that will take time to develop. Unfortunately on both the Mac and PC side they products that gain popularity the most are those which have the highest amount of capital backing for advertising, product placement and "subjective" reviews. We need to stop thinking like we're in the early 90's. Sure Macs are good for audio. Windows is there too at this time. As for Linux.... it is on the way. Penguins can move.

Re:Macs & Pro Tools (Free!)

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK macs and protools are the way to go with pro -audio. I know someone who records/edits books on tape and built a new studio a couple years back. Record straight to hard drive and digitally edit with pro-tools. He mixed his bands demo there, un beleivable sound quality..

I've also heard some good results from other bands doing the mix at home with macs.

Pro-tools used to have a free version with (somewhat) limited functionality. It works great for editing down live recordings that have about 20+ minutes of crowd noise so they can fit on 2 cds... But I digress....

Windowns 2000?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am not trolling, but if he is using Win95/98/ME and is unhappy with stability, maybe he should try Windows 2000. I realize it is still Windows, but it is much more stable.

(ducking flames)

Score 1 Informative

[Anonymous Coward]

M-Audio does have some excellent cards. 24 bit recording 96Khz sampling rate. Most of their cards use the ICE1712 Chipset. This chip is supported best by the newest version of ALSA 0.9.X. It comes with a nice little control panel, like in Windows, so you may control the internal mixer and the digital outs etc... I would have to say that the ALSA driver are rock solid.

The RME hammerfall is, I believe, even more featurefull. As in more input/outputs. And definately the other choice when It comes to profetional quality audio under Linux.

As far as the operating system goes. The Linux a real pleasure to use for audio. The new kernels with the pre-emptive patches applied make for a real snappy response. Multiple desktops. The ability to run many applicatings at once without fear of crashing or causing audio dropouts is nice. Many applications, *cough* Cubase *cough* for windows have big hooks into the kernel to get a decent latentcy response, this makes for a really sketchy and unstable system. Low latentcy...

Wave editors are nice to have, Linux has a few as well as Windows and MAC. I have not found one on any platform that I like. I suffer through using the Windows ones as much as the Linux ones. A little bit more so with the Linux ones however.

There are also the music toys. Little DJ apps and loopers and stuff. There are a number for linux that are pretty fun and can really inspire your creativity. Freebirth I like to doodle with now and then. Spiral loops is also quite fun and Terminator X. For windows there are LOTS of these little toys and they are lots of fun I still use the linux ones.

Trackers have always been popular going back to the Amiga days. Linux has a excellent tracker called Soundtracker. Floating point interpolations effects up to 64 tracks, what can I say it's great... I have not used any trackers under windows or MAC, I am quite happy with soundtracker. Not profetional software but you can make nice music with it nevertheless.

For the big time studio in a box type applications, Cubase Logic. I would have to say there is much hope for Ardour. 32 bit recording 96Khz MIDI just like the big boys. The is support for plugins it is even mentioned on the website that VST may happen someday.

Linux is coming along but not ready yet. IMHO. Lack of support for all hardware and a serious lack of pro quality applications or even applications that work the same is limiting.

BTW: All you mac users who said why not mac? Your argument of "It's the industry standard." is pretty weak. Thats like saying why not run windows on your desktop? It's the industry standard! Standard does not mean better. Like the Imperial mesuring system vs the Metric...

Audio applications: http://sound.condorow.net/
corn

Re:Score 1 Informative

[lkeagle]

"It's the industry standard! Standard does not mean better. Like the Imperial mesuring system vs the Metric..."

"Better" does not mean more productive.

I prefer smaller PC applications, such as SoundForge or CoolEdit Pro, but like the good sound engineer I am, I'm perfectly comfortable working with ProTools on a mac as well.

Nothing will ever be 100 percent stable, and nothing will ever work exactly the way you want it to. However, if I can get the job done with a mac and ProTools, I will.

The Industry standard argument was not conjured up by mac users. It's the argument you're going to get directly from the industry itself.

Loren
btw, I use a PC... with Linux... at home...

MacOS X Latency

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you didn't get a chance to read (ofcourse I can't find the link to the article) the recent research from the Peabody Institute, they recently reviewed platforms for audio and named OS X the best of the group. (including Mac OS X, Linux and Windows)

In tests, audio was sampled at 44.1KHz with 16-bit or 24-bit precision. Apple's machines were the only ones on test that didn't require a soundcard.

The best latency test results for systems without load were as follows (time in milliseconds);

- Mac OS X running on a 400MHz G4: 2.83 ms.
- Soundcraft Desk: 1.81 ms.
- 933MHz Pentium 3 running Linux 2.4.1 with a third party audio software patch: 2.72 ms.
- 933MHz Pentium 3 running Linux: 2.72ms.

Mac OS X performed outstandingly when under system load. It offered the same latency speed as before - 2.83 ms. Previous competitors in the unloaded category dropped out of sight. Its nearest rival (with 4.3ms) was again Linux 2.4.1 OS, this time running on a dual processor Pentium 3 with a pro audio card installed and additional software.

The article was authored by:
Karl MacMillan, Michael Droettboom and Ichiro Fujinaga of the Peabody Institute - part of John Hopkins University in the US.

You may also want to look at the following links:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/audio.h tm l

http://developer.apple.com/audio/

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/05.audi o. php

You may not like the Mac or the MacOS but I would have to say that OS X looks like it has a very, very good chance of holding onto and attracting a large chunk of the audio market.

I am not a Mac/Linux/Windows fanatic, just someone who uses the best tool for the job and to me it appears like in the near future OS X will be the system of choice for audio professionals.

Re:MacOS X Latency

[bad-badtz-maru]

The PDF is at http://gigue.peabody.jhu.edu/~mdboom/latency-icmc2 001.pdf . It really doesn't discuss what platform is the "best of the group", only what platform has the lowest latency.
It is noteworthy that I have been unable to view page 3 (the page that actually has the results) of the PDF on every Win box I have tried.
I did notice that the Windows latency that their testing revealed indicated a much higher value than most people experience in reality. I also noticed that some type of multiplatform sound library was used to do the testing. Some of the stuff was curious in that respect. To counter that, however, a coworker knows Karl MacMillan personally and swears that he is a "mad genius" and that the report must be accurate. So...

maru
www.mp3.com/pixal

Music on Linux

[Bastard0]

I am also involved in computer music production. I think the fact that your friend works in a professional environment would rule out all the existing Linux audio projects. Digital recording demands low latency access to hardware and compatibility with a wide range of hardware which is not really considered mainstream. Running windows apps through an emulation layer might run office apps ok but will not provide the performance needed in situations like this. Currently none of the solutions that I am aware of will provide you with this natively on Linux. Although there are many ambitious attempts to remedy this situation I fear that nothing that exists on Linux today will give you the anywhere near the flexibility, reliability and feature set of a properly configured Mac/Windows based Cubase, Logic, or Pro Tools rig. At the height of BeOS's popularity Steinberg and E-Magic were working on ports of some of their products for that platform. Since then they have both canceled those projects. Makers of audio software tend to be very sluggish about making a move to a new platform and I think this fact combined with the general lack of standards in the Linux world might dissuade them from support of Linux right now.

MidiMan - Digital Audio Cards

[kireK]

Midiman has great support for Linux. Wants digital audio straight from a Linux machine?

M-Audio Delta Series

[Anonymous Coward]

The M-Audio (midiman) www.midiman.com i think is supported in Linux via Alsa drivers the drivers work pretty well... the card is also supported in windows and on mac (including os X) I have three of these cards, two 44's and a 1010, they all work flawlessly... very very good sounding cards. and I can put all three into the same system and the ASIO drivers can manage to sync them up..... great hardware for the price.. and excelent driver support.

Apple OS X probably your best choice

[mir@ge]

There is always a best tool for the job. There may be a reason so many audio professionals go with a Mac. Check out this article a friend forwarded the other day:

Apple betting audio pros will like Mac OS X 10.1

I don't quite understand it all but it seems OS X is built for sound from the ground up.

No real sound cards

[_pi-away]

The problem here isn't software (although the programs aren't exactly excellent either). The problem is hardware. Speaking as an audio engineer, i will make the bold statement that NO pro-level sound card is currently supported in linux. Some people may disagree, but let me see if i can cut some of them off at the pass; a sound blaster of ANY kind is not a real sound card. Nor is a gravis, a turtle beach, or any other of the gaming cards people usually mention. The turtle beach comes close in a few areas, but doesn't get out of the hobbiest arena, due mostly to it's SNR, i/o connectors, and low rate ADCs.

Don't misunderstand me, i'm not saying these cards are horrible or that they suck, but if you think you're gonna replace 2" tape with your audigy, think again.

The real pro-level sound systems like sonic solutions, protools, motu, and to a more semi-pro extent midiman and echo audio have absolutely no linux support. For now, studio level audio with linux is a total dead end. The most you can hope for now is to use it for audio processing or creation does not even involve a sound card, and that's a pretty limited use.

BeOS could have made it, in fact they were starting to, but then they made the brilliant decision to "change focus" from multimedia to networking, good call guys.

All is not lost however, because OSX will bring light. Mac is THE platform for pro audio, protools is native to it, as is sonic solutions. This means that before too long all the biggies will be offering drivers for OSX (midiman already does), and if they are smart enough to offer the source with them, then they'll be ported in short order to linux i'm sure.

Linux audio now? bah! Linux audio in three years? definately!

Re:No real sound cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Midiman and some more professional brands have support in ALSA and commercial OSS (www.opensound.com) drivers.

Completely separate issue is wether there's point to attempt doing pro audio editing under Linux. Personally, I don't see the point. Very few people care about the license of software used when they listen to the music, or even when they produce it.

Re:No real sound cards

[yakfacts]

I have got to agree with most of what you say; Ensoniq made some decent ISA cards with Analog Devices A/D converters, but with almost no support under any OS. Most of the modern "professional" cards are crap. Professional my ass; they are made for game heads and MP3 players. MP3 players don't need high quality anyway.

Some of the recent cards have some okay A/D
steps, but with horrible mixers that add in tons of noise. Until there is decent support for the niche hardware, Linux will never be a good audio
editing platform. I would LOVE a decent audio
tool set for record->cd recording....

Re:No real sound cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you have never seen (or heard) *professional* audio equipment.

Maybe because no ptofessional sound cards have been marketed to the consumers so far, and largely there has been no point to do so. OTOH, consumer cards could be way better, it's just that manufacturers have found more flashy things to advertise every time there has been a chance.

Re:No real sound cards

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot RME from your list of professional audio equipment. RME makes both very high quality product and supports quite a lot the developement of audio drivers for linux.

I bought an rme card for those very reasons, and encourage other fellow musicians to do the same.

Re:No real sound cards

[FrankNputer]

midiman [midiman.com]...(has) absolutely no linux support.

Actually, if you check the list at opensound.com, you'll see that they support the whole Delta series of cards, with a few limitations; M Audio have even advertised Linux compatibility in their recent print ads.

You'll also find support for the RME Digi/32 series & the Digi/96 series, all very fine cards. Also, they have recently added support for the Hoontech DSP24, which is a 8x8 24-bit card with a companion A/D & D/A converter box, not too unlike the Echo Layla. So, there are options at least on the semi-pro level.

And as for ProTools, the changes in the underlying audio handling in OS X means that, at the moment, ProTools is completely unsupported. It relies on a proprietary interface, and an Apple rep said in the recent EQ Magazine that they have no intention of supporting proprietary hardware interfaces - that will be up to ProTools to do. They probably will, since the bulk of their users are probably on Macs, but it's not native by any means.

Re:No real sound cards

[tialaramex]

ALSA is a basic requirement for decent audio on Linux, and ALSA supports several cards which have the following properties that (to me, as an amateur) scream "I am not a gamer's card"

* Large numbers of channels
* Support for 96kHz sampling rate
* Support for 24-bit samples
* Manufacturer's web site talks about "audio I/O" and "Multitrack recording" rather than "3D Surround" and "Explosive Bass"
* Price > $300
* Far too many odd-looking connectors

So, are these cards suitable for Linux pro-audio (in which case the problem IS the software after all) or am I totally out of my depth?

Re:No real sound cards

[drinkypoo]

Completely separate issue is wether there's point to attempt doing pro audio editing under Linux. Personally, I don't see the point. Very few people care about the license of software used when they listen to the music, or even when they produce it.

The issue is whether or not those who use only OSS can find software with which they can do pro audio editing.

Re:No real sound cards

[twilightzero]

The issue is whether or not those who use only OSS can find software with which they can do pro audio editing.

No, the issue is that all of the hardware is already purchased for PC's and the studio is a heavily Windows studio. To switch to Mac would be a HUGE outlay of cash, something that almost no studios want to get into. However, to switch to Linux would only take getting some cd's and a little time (probably not much more time altogether than putting in a whole new Mac system).

Re:No real sound cards

[_pi-away]

Yes, protools (and sonic solutions) rely on proprietary hardware. I have no doubt whatsoever that they will both support OSX in the not too distant future, mac is THE platform for both of these systems. Let's just hope they open source the driver interface.

Re:No real sound cards

[The Evil Twin]

hmm... after a quick check both Midiman and RME have linux support (or are supported).

Now I don't know about you, but RME is better than any of the brands you mentioned (In my opinion of course). And motu doesn't write very good drivers for any platform. But that's beside the point.

The Mac is not going to last forever as the leader of this race. Steinberg Canada has already stated that Windows 2000 is their preferred platform for stability and speed. Not to mention price of course (not the price of windows but the hardware).
I've talked to several Yamaha Techs from Japan who say the same thing.

Now I agree with you that OSX kicks ass in many ways. But Linux on a PC kicks even more ass. The raw speed, the choice of hardware, and the *ahem* choice of OS.

Re:No real sound cards

[LafinTux]

Geesh from what hole did you just crawl out? Go visit this site:

http://www.alsa-project.org/~goemon/

There is over 150 soundcards supported there including PROFESSIONAL RME Hammerfall (and others) which does 32-bit sound up to 52 CHANNELS with ADAT lightpipe and 2.6ms latency (2.6 ms being the limit of all of the current soundcards on the market due to fact that their smallest buffer is 64 bytes, and this is not the limitation of Linux, but hey, you as an engineer should know that, right?). Go visit www.rme-audio.com for this particular card and its specs in order to enlighten yourself...

At the same time if you had any knowledge about good vs. so-called-pro-software, then you'd understand that there's Mixmagic, Rt, Multitrack, and others which have the same abilities as protools, except that they have no pricetag.

It seems like ignorance among general populace is like a widespread disease, and what is even worse is the fact that the individuals such as yourself try to "educate" others with your own lack of knowledge...

No offense, but no wonder there are more macs there right now when so-called audio engineers such as yourself spread the false info to the even-more-ignorant consumers.

Re:No real sound cards

[Crixus]

It seems like ignorance among general populace is like a widespread disease, and what is even worse is the fact that the individuals such as yourself try to "educate" others with your own lack of knowledge...

No offense, but no wonder there are more macs there right now when so-called audio engineers such as yourself spread the false info to the even-more-ignorant consumers.

Sadly the world is full of many "would be" audio engineers. They think because they know the Mac and have stuck a mic in front of someone's face that they're an engineer.

I've seen it all too often. My old boss at a medium sized studio near Syracuse NY still thinks that phase doesn't matter.

He got a real shocker when one of the band members (of a band he recorded) wanted to make some mono Real Audio files from tracks on their CD... and all of the rhythm guitars, AND the snare drum DISAPPEARED.

Nope, phase doesn't matter.

Rich...

Re:No real sound cards

[_pi-away]

You seem to have misread. Never did i say i used mac, i just said it's the standard; and if you'd ever worked in the industry you'd know that to be unquestionably true. Personally i prefer windows for audio.

Mixmagic and Rt are fine programs, but if you really knew protools you'd know they aren't in the same league. Neither of these programs support TDM plugins nor do they support DSP outsourcing. When it comes to fine wave glitch repair (i.e. going in and redrawing a damaged wave) neither of these programs even compares to sound forge!

As to RME i have heard of them, but quite frankly they haven't seem to catch on to nearly the extent of the others i mentioned. I mean compare the number of protools systems out there to the number of RME systems, it's not even close.

In the future i would suggest reading a little closer, watching your tongue, and knowing the facts before throwing around words like "ignorant."

Re:No real sound cards

[_pi-away]

I agree that these are important items. However the $300-500 is pretty much still hobbyiest/semi-pro area in my imo. But more important then the price tag are things like SNR and just plain overall quality. Sometimes you see cards that have the numbers but really don't cut it, anyone remember gadget labs?

OT - my sig

[reverius]

I actually thought it was Voltaire... and originally had it credited to him in my sig.

Somebody e-mailed me and told me I was wrong, and that it was actually the person I have credited now.

According to them, Voltaire was merely paraphrasing the original author of the quote.

Then again, it's possible that the person who e-mailed me was wrong and it really is Voltaire. I don't know. :)

Mac OS X is going to be the bomb for audio...

[Aqua OS X]

I hate to sound like the token-mac-geek, however this guy should probably look into OS X in about 3 to 6 months.

Although there are not a lot of Audio toys for OS X, there will be in about 3 to 6 months. My buddy over at BIAS said they are shooting for November releases of X audio software, and the other big boys re planning the same.

OS X has support for DigiDesign plugins, VST plugins, 32bit audio(the bomb), etc etc ...all built into the system. OS also has a sick MIDI manager and the ability to share out single ports to multiple devices.

All in all, these are just a few cool toys that are in X's audio "layer." This OS has really taken a HUGE leap over the competition when it comes to audio...however there will not be apps for a few months.

Look into this. MacOS and audio hve always gone hand in hand. and there is a reason for this. I have all of my hubs and cables pointed to my mac... not my win2k Athlon. Spend the extra money...you can't be cheep with tools like this.

Re:Mac OS X is going to be the bomb for audio...

[LafinTux]

32-bit sound has been around for over 2 years and readily available for Windows and Linux, so I do not see a point in your "bomb" statement, I can only see a belated entrance to the market. As much as the MIDI stuff is concerned, the "breaking of the new grounds" as announced by the Apple, is again somewhat belated,since Linux has had sub 1ms MIDI latency for the past 3 years. Maybe they are talking about Apple breaking out of its own cocoon and realizing that there is a whole new world out there.

Just for comparison sakes, in my studio, there are no macs and all my cables are pointed to my Athlon...

Oh btw, you can get cheaper cpu's with better audio performance. For $4000 spent only on the top-of-line Mac, I can get an Itanium (true 64-bit system) and a dream 52-channel RME 32-bit soundcard running on both Linux and Windows.

I know this might be seen as flamebait, but...

[Lurkingrue]

I think an important thing to consider is why this person is increasingly unhappy with Windows, and why they want to stay away from Macs.

I know many (most? all?) of us are very partisan about our software/OS/hardware/etc. choices, but to really answer this guy's question, to really help him make a wise selection (and not just trumpet the praises of What-We-Like-Best), he really needs to explain why his friend dislikes what he does, too.

I mean, I'd really like to go on and on about how wonderful Mac OS X is (because is is, but that doesn't really solve the problem, or answer the question posed by the moderators. Just a thought...

Re:Macs? Port That Sound

[wiremind]

Just an Idea, as it is well known,
A: Max os X is based on BSD, BSD is based on standards.
Wouldn't it be relatively easy to port mac software to *nix?? even if the software is Closed source, couldnt you just email the developers of mac based sound stuff, and ask them to compile their stuff for an X86 based architechure?
Am I complely off my ball? or doesnt this seem like something that could be done to port all sorts of mac software to *nix? one of those things being sound software.

~Wire

Re:Audio latency & Linux

[beanerspace]

Another excellent article on the topic by David Phillips can be found at http://linux.oreillynet.com/lpt/a//linux/2000/11/1 7/low_latency.html. It includes good descriptions and solutions.

Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

And to boot they crash every few minutes unless you install unreal amounts of memory.

Mac sucks, but so do fairies....

Re:Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[Anonymous Coward]

well folks, there you have it. The platform battle is over, and it turns uot Macs=Faries!

At least according to some faceless AC on slashdot, though the majority of serious audio, video, and graphic professionals seem to disagree...

Re:Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[t]

Not the fucking ram thing again... Here's a buck, buy yourself a 128 stick.

Re:Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[AssFace]

if you think a mac crashes to frequently, you just aren't rebooting enough.
don't blame it on the memory or the lack thereof.
(blame it on the dutch, or the rain, or somaon midgets)

Re:Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[DavidRavenMoon]

My Mac doesn't crash ... and I rarely reboot... (Of course I have 896 MB and I'm mostly running OS X...)

But back to music ... pro studios use Macs ... period. Every Grammy winning album was recorded, mixed, edited, or mastered on a Mac.

I'm not sure how Linux would do, but Windows sucks for music. Just the latency issue alone makes it worthless.

Mac OS X has some real nice audio features built in ... the guy that wrote OMS now works for Apple and wrote the MIDI subsystem. Now we just have to wait for the native apps! M-Audio just released an OS X driver for the Delta cards (and the great Audiophile 24/96) that has only 1 ms latency times!

Audio in Mac OS X

Re:Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[divbyzero]

Serious question here, not rhetorical: I thought the traditional advantage of Macs over Windows was the very fact that the pre-OS/X MacOS did not have preemptive multitasking. For general use, preemption is great, but for hard realtime (critical in professional audio), it's really useful for an application to be able to take over the whole machine. Do you lose this advantage in the "modern", preemptive OS/X?

Re:Entertainment = fairies = Mac

[kaimiike1970]

You can now get TWO 128 sticks for a buck, but who would want them?

Re:Jesus H. Motherfucking Christ

[NulDevice]

You can make music at home with a tape recorder.

You want to make music that you can sell/play on the radio/use for video/make a CD out of/Make a record out of, you use a recording studio. As it has been since the dawn of time. WHile the pricepoint has come down a lot, it's still not cheap by any means to record at home with the kind of quality required (and by that, I mean "doesn't sound like it was recorded under a blanket in some guy's basement"). You don't need to *build* your own studio - a real pro one costs several thousands to hundreds-of-thousands to do. You rent it for a few hundred bucks a day. You and your band learn your parts at home, then go into the studio and you're there. It's what everyone has done, from the lowliest garage band to the lofty overproduced pop bands (plus you usually get the services of an engineer who knows what he's doing in the bargain).

I know a lot of folks (myself included) with decent, semi-pro home/project studios, and none of them spent less than a few grand on them, not counting the computer. It's a lot cheaper than it used to be, but it still isn't cheap.

not really

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing native in Linux that is on a professional level. Soundtracker and others are in various states of development, but it's all beta or alpha, it seems.

Just recently I tried to install RedHat 7.1 with sound, WINE and my favorite audio applications. It wasn't a sucess. First of all, sound was a major pain in the ass to deal with. It took me a week of reading through email lists to finally come across the magic combination of tools and drivers and commands. Then I installed WINE. I tried CodeWeavers latest beta. It installed fine. Cool Edit 96 worked, almost. I could edit files and do other things, but some widgets, some window bits and things were missing making it impossible to do some other things. For example, navigating the drive looking for new files was nearly impossible with all sorts of messups, missing files, problems with the drop down box and so no. It simply wasn't an effective solution. Then I tried Buzz 1.2beta9, a peice of tracker software. After I finally got it to load, it was missing the master volume slider widget and never made a peep. It also seemed to have other problems.

I didn't try any other software.

I'm putting my hopes into WINE and am looking forward to testing it again in a couple months time, rather than expecting native Linux apps to take the place of popular audio software any time soon.

One thing to consider is that it's the interface to the application itself rather than the audio itself that's been the problem for me. It's quite possible that a different version of WINE running over a different flavor OS, loading a different piece of audio software may just work. In fact, some people have reported success with both of the software packages I mentioned above. The only way to know is to try.

khl

Diversity in computing applications

[jacrawf]

Bravo! But I think no matter how many times sane, pragmatic sorts of people say things like you just said, we'll have people still toting the anti-party line. After all, there can only be one good guy, right?

Different computers (and OSes) are better at different things. This is a fact of life and the very reason we don't have homogenous computers across the board. And I consider this a good feature of computer hardware and software. This is how we avoid monopolies, first of all, and second of all, different computing paradigms are better able to handle different kinds of jobs.

You wouldn't trust Red Hat Linux to handle the real-time calculations necessary in a nuclear power facility right now, would you?

Would you use a Sun Fire 15K to do video editing? Or to play Quake 3?

Would you rely on *BSD to provide a no-brainer (even if that means lack of customizability) easy-to-use GUI environment right out of the box?

The answer to all of those is more than likely a resounding, "no," because you've just left the domain of what each one of those computers or OSes is designed for or is really good at.

It just happens, in this case, that Macs are well suited to professional audio work (and will likely become moreso with the advent of the really nice audio APIs Apple has designed for OS X -- 1ms latency and low-level OS support for audio plugins are nice features, folks) so it's not unpragmatic to sell off your PC equipment to pick one up if you're truly serious about your field.

Or you can wait 5 years or more until Linux possibly becomes suited to the task. It's your choice.

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you're basically saying 'The Mac does it now, stop trying to do it any other way.'

Geez, what a depressing point of view.

I guess if my ego was wrapped up in a particular brand of computer equipment I might agree with you....

But still...

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[WNight]

Why can't one computer be good at everything? Or, at any rate, everything its hardware is capable of?

Why can't a PCI sound card that plugs into a Mac plug into a PC and work with software on either computer?

The hardware is a Mac is no better than good PC hardware, so there's no reason a Mac should be needed.

Perhaps things are done on a Mac now, but that's likely because just because it always was that way. I know many artists who insist on using Mac's but when you watch them it's obvious they do so because they're computer illiterate and use the minimum the need to get around, so they use the same system they used in school. (Of course I know some PC users like this too...)

Anyways, the point is that things may be done on a Mac now, but there's no physical reason why they have to be. What's wrong with looking for a Linux solution and if one doesn't exist, trying to construct it? Eventually it'll be a better platform and cheaper. Or do you not like the idea of bringing powerful tools to the masses? (This isn't an idle question, some developers hate how anyone can download Perl and write a program, instead of having to buy a compiler or download DJGPP, etc. They like keeping the power in the hands of a privelleged few.)

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[Anonymous Coward]

> so it's not unpragmatic to sell off your PC
> equipment to pick [a Mac] up if you're truly
> serious about your field [music and audio].

Getting a Mac was the best thing I ever did for my own recordings. First, I was very happy that it was much easier to use than Windows. Second, I turned out more work, with better quality, in less time. Third, I enjoyed my work more. Fourth, I became very depressed for a short time over the year I had spent cajoling, begging, pleading with a Windows box to just please once manage to maintain decent audio timing, or even just to make it through a session without audio mysteriously stopping, or a system freeze, or whatever. I felt like I put a year of my creative life into a blender. The facilities just aren't there in Windows, and the apps aren't as mature. Also, there are five or six excellent Mac-only applications that I could never be without now ... MetaSynth is one. Fantastic, creative stuff.

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[gig]

> So, you're basically saying 'The Mac does it now,
> stop trying to do it any other way.'

I think the point is that it's a much bigger job than the layman might think for another system to replace the Mac in the audio industry. It's not just the OS, but also the user's knowledge, the diverse and mature and interoperable apps, the consistent hardware and drivers. The styling and low power consumption and heat dissipation are also good benefits. All the other gear in the studio is also hot ... you can run two Macs on the juice that one PC needs, easy.

I have a friend who still uses a 1985 Mac for MIDI sequencing in his studio. It has been sitting on top of a music keyboard for all these years, pumping out MIDI. There is a lot of history for music and audio on the Mac platform.

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[DavidRavenMoon]

Why can't a PCI sound card that plugs into a Mac plug into a PC and work with software on either computer?

The hardware is a Mac is no better than good PC hardware, so there's no reason a Mac should be needed.

Actually the problems with doing audio on PCs is mostly with the OS... Windows was never designed to do audio (or graphics, which is why MS stopped trying to push NT to pro publishing...) Macs were designed to do audio. Read the support section of any company that makes audio apps for both Windows and Mac OS and see all the issues listed trouble shooting PC problems, and very little on the Mac. There are driver issues... latency problems... etc.

Also Apple hardware is based on newer designs ... there is still a lot of legacy crap in PCs. The main reason people have been using Macs in audio all these years is because they do audio better, not so much because they are easier to use. if good drivers and software can be written for Linux, then I see no reason it wouldn't work better than Windows... but the Mac had a big head start!

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[kidtexas]

Totally correct, but if this guy needs to do something now, then he can't sit around waiting for the platform to get better, can he? I could say the same thing about computer games and the Mac - but it could be a long damn wait for the Mac (any Mac) to ever fill this niche. Especially when you consider the momentum in the industry to continue to churn out what works and what the masses like and not to broaden horizons.

I would hope that someone does go make some better Linux solutions. Why? Not because I want to do audio on Linux, or a Mac, or on Windows, but because if there is a serious option on Linux, then the Mac crowd will have to try harder, which will make better products at better prices all across the board.

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[lkeagle]

Something most /.ers don't realize about the audio engineering industry is that money isn't the primary concern. The primary concern is getting the job done without pissing off your customers (the artists/producers/labels). I'm sure programmers can find that analogy a little easier to chew. Studios (not home project studios) will use a mac because that's where the industry is, simply because macs had a headstart in audio software. Recording schools will instruct you using macs, therefore engineers and producers understand macs.

A big idea in the recording industry is compatability between studios. A producer will choose to use a studio if it has the equipment he knows how to use, or knows will do the job for him. You think there's a pair of Yamaha NS10's in every studio in the world because they're a decent speaker? Far from it. They probably add more color to the sound than anything else in a major recording studio. But the fact is, there's a pair in every major studio, and everyone knows what they sound like, so they've become an industry standard.

The same idea holds true with mac hardware in studios. It's there, they know how to use it. The software is there for it. Most importantly, it works, and if it ain't broke, studios will see very little reason to fix it.

I think what you can expect to see regarding Linux in pro studios is that the recording engineers won't start using Linux solutions until it becomes a 'big' topic in the recording industry. And that won't happen until a 'big' product like ProTools gets ported to Linux.

Loren

Re:Diversity in computing applications

[WNight]

He might be able to help the platform get better if he sees that he could use it and save buying an expensive new system by doing so.

Now that most desktops are using PCI, the hardware that lets a Mac do this can let a PC do it. Much like the GeForce cards make the Mac a potential gaming station.

There are a few components. Hardware, drivers, OS, software, and filters. I'm assuming he understands the hardware, and the drivers I've heard do exist for Linux (for one high-end brand anyways.) The OS has multi-media patches that do better things for the latency than anything the Mac could do before OSX and probably match it.

So it's the software. Does the photoshop equivalent for sound (whatever that is) exist for Linux? Or even something close like to that, like GIMP to Photosop?

Then an issue would be purchasing filters for it, like with Sound Forge and Photoshop, much of the strength is adding third-party effects. Could these be emulated? (It should be 'easy', filters shouldn't interact with the OS much and the API is public (or nobody could write filters).)

And yes, if there is competition, we all benefit. I think we all benefit as well by Linux doing well. Not only is it usable on Macs, but it's strong potential competion for MacOS which might help Apple stay on the OSX road as well as getting Microsoft to make XP more stable than before.

Poor Multimedia

[Apreche]

I don't know about you, but I've found from personal experience that multimedia playback is on average very poor in Linux. I mean there isn't a decent Divx ;-) player anywhere, even though you can get the codec.
As for audio I have a SbLive! and I have it correctly configured in every way in both windows and linux. Windows audio playback with the same speakers and extremely similar configurations is just far superior. In linux I get noise and distortion and just crappy sound. Even just playing directly off of a CD sounds crappier. I usually end up plugging headphones into the front of my PlexWriter to get better sound.

Re:Poor Multimedia

[Adnans]

I don't know about you, but I've found from personal experience that multimedia playback is on average very poor in Linux. I mean there isn't a decent Divx ;-) player anywhere.

Oh, you haven't tried MPlayer then. It's an excellent DivX ;-) / MPEG / AVI / ASF / etc. player. It plays DivX files flawlessly. The best part is the cool keyboard control.

As for audio I have a SbLive! and I have it correctly configured in every way in both windows and linux. Windows audio playback with the same speakers and extremely similar configurations is just far superior

The Windows audio playback is probably using the advanced futures of the Em10K chipset. Programming info for the DSP is sadly not free, and thus not available to Linux users, hence no advanced sound features. But this isn't Linux's fault.

In linux I get noise and distortion and just crappy sound

Have you tried the ALSA drivers with it? It might give you better quality.

-adnans

Re:Poor Multimedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing directly off a CD sounds bad?

Hint: Linux is doing NOTHING when you play directly from CD. If it sounds bad that's your fault, either you configured something wrongly or you've got too much RF noise near the card and cables.

It would not surprise me to see that you had the mixer configured with +10dB treble and no bass or some other ghastly screw-up.

Re:Poor Multimedia

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I don't know what you did to mess with your system, but I swear by Linux for audio playback.

I've got a dual-boot box with Win98 SE and Linux, running a custom kernel 2.4.9, with the low-latency patch, and Alsa 0.9.7 for an SBLive.

Here's the scoop: Windows works alright. But not if I open another program other than the mp3 or cd player. And not if I do something slightly cpu-intensive in another app, like save a file, or something. *snickers* Then I get crackles. Audio cuts out for brief moments.

On the linux side, I've hdparmed my IDE ATA-33 drive to get about 20 MB/s with an 'hdparm -t /dev/hda'. Even without setting Xmms to use real-time priority, I run *multiple* applications, an integrated development environment, a webserver, a Mysql daemon, Bind, and have multiple instances of several browsers open. *Never* a drop-out, never a disappointment in Linux! I thought that I heard a drop-out once, and then replayed the mp3, only to realize that the mp3 had a crackle sound in it.

Sure, I can probably get my Linux box to drop-out on audio if I did lots of stuff simultaneously. But that would take a lot of work. So in the end, Windows *just can't compete* with the performance and configurability I get with Linux.

'Nuff said. Linux for audio playback = a *much* better proposition.

Patience Master of Reality!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all it takes.....

Re:Audio

[Anonymous Coward]

Now thats clever...and the jews are to blame for ww2?

Re:Macs? Port That Sound

[scrod]

You've apparently never done any programming before. Have you heard of a little something called APIs? Not only will these sound apps either be written for Carbon (which is an OS X-compatible evolution of the traditional Mac toolbox) or Cocoa (which used to be OpenStep) but they'll probably be using the OS X CoreAudio API as well! Unless you can make all of those frameworks available for Linux or whatever OS you're using, you're 100% out of luck; the whole freaking app would have to be completely rewritten. So many people on slashdot have such a simplistic understanding of software development.

guitar software

[kbroom]

If you are interested in guitar software for linux, this
article by Dave Phillips has reviews for some pretty good applications.... including Stompboxes2 (my own project :) )

It's a many-pronged problem.

[NulDevice]

The problem, as such for Linux right now is manifold.

First, there's no actual good multitrack audio recoding/sequencing software for it. Audacity is nice (and I even use it for tweaking on my mac) but it lacks the functionality of a cubase, a Logic, a Pro Tools, etc.

Second, there's no support for the hardware. And when I say the hardware, I'm not talking about Saoundblaster audio cards and the like - the real money for digital audio isn't in the "guy making techno in his bedroom" market, it's in the professional sound design, recording and mastering area, where you get things like the Kyma Capybara, the Fairlight Dreamsystem, the Ensoniq RADAR, and a myrid of other big digital consoles. These are bastards that cost $1000 easy. Even my home studio soundcard, which is sorta consumer-endish (MOTU 828) costs $700. The capabilites required for professional digital audio outstrip the capabilities of most consumer-level gear (multiple ins and outs, ADAT, Sync, TDAT, Word Clock, yadda yadda). Until there's support for this hardware, there's little point to having audio software. Some companies are taking the first steps - M-audio, MOTU, and a few others are starting to support linux with drivers. Full support for the big stuff is a ways off.

Third, there's just the installed base problem - there's already a zillion studios that have Macs or wintel machines at the core of their systems, and there's hardware and software options aplenty. It's a tough market to break itno.

Finally, there's the problem of profitability. It kinda goes with #3. Most audio software and even hardware companies run on a pretty thin margin. They're not big shops with lots of developers - adding support to another platform with only a small marketshare makes it real difficult for these companies to expand. Even comparative giants like Avid (parent company of digidesign, who make pro tools and a lot of hardware solutions) are having trouble these days economically.

It'd be nice to have a wide variety of open-source audio options, but it's going to be slow in coming.

(for reference, I've got a Mac at home running most of my audio, although I've got a Win machine for some audio apps as well. Gotta love Absynth, though. Mmmm)

Not Using Mac

[kfs27]

if you are into Pro Audio and aren't using a mac i don't know if you can call yourself a professional.

Re:Not Using Mac

[FrankNputer]

Hmm...would you say this to someone from SGI?

Re:Not Using Mac

[mabinogi]

hmmm...that's probably a little harsh....

I'd rephrase it a bit to 'If you are into pro audio and won't consider (or lust after) a mac'

Afterall, while Mac may dominate the field, it doesn't mean that PCs are COMPLETELY incompetent.......

Re:Not Using Mac

[twilightzero]

Isn't that a bit like saying "If you are into computers and aren't using [insert favorite OS]"...etc or "If you are into programming and don't use [insert Vi or EMACS or whatever crap you use]"...you get the picture.

music software site

[peachboy]

try heading over to hitsquad.com.

plenty of software for several os'es, including linux, windows, beos, and amiga :) - peachboy

Re:Macs? Port That Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't possible, because Mac OS X's very cool and very powerful audio is built into the Cocoa/Carbon frameworks (CoreAudio framework, namely). Unless Apple opens their entire framework set, you'd be stuck with just the base Darwin OS. And although rumors abound, I doubt any in-house developers at Apple will recompile the entire framework set for x86 for the general public.

If you read my other posts...

[cnelzie]

You would find that I do indeed "bitch" about Linux as well. I am only suggesting that perhaps, this is a socio-political reason.

That is really why I choose to never own a Mac. I do indeed like the hardware. The first computer with a hard drive in my household was a Mac.

As for your presumption that I believe that Linux is the answer to everything. Get off of your high horse. I believe that there is a solution for every situation and it isn't always the same solution for every thing.

You would also notice that I mentioned that with WINDOWS AND LINUX, you can change the appearance of the desktop numorous ways.

I have also been involved in putting together a number of higher end workstations for everything from CAD, video editing and music creation. Of course, those clients asked for Windows and that was their choice.

What is important isn't necesarily what is the best for the job. It is what the client asks for. As they would be the one using the solution and they need to use the one that they are most comfortable with.

While I do advocate the use of Linux, it is best to advocate for areas and people that are open to looking at Linux. To do otherwise would simply be a waste of time. That is one thing that took me some considerable time to learn.

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Re:Macs? Port That Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

that's cool for command line apps, but the mac gui isn't cross-platform.

Based on themes alone? No...

[cnelzie]

I will choose my OS and desktop of choice for socio-political reasons. If Apple will go after people simply attempting to extend their product. People that are FREELY giving away their time and energy. Then they simply do not deserve my business until they alter that stance.

You also took that sentence out of context. What I am saying is that Apple is being hipocritical about their "Think Diferent" marketing campaign. If they really wanted people to do that, then why stop people from doing what that desktop theme group was doing? Isn't what they were doing, "Thinking Diferent"?

Re:Based on themes alone? No...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get it. Apple is a crypto-fascist company, has been a gathering point for the kind of marketing slime and poseurs who nobody else can stand to be around.

And they attract that element to their user base.

So obviously they're going to have weird 'artsy' advertising campaings like their ironic 'Think Different' one. That's just what happens when narcissists and nihilists all gather together in a group.

Re:Based on themes alone? No...

[gig]

> What I am saying is that Apple is being
> hipocritical about their "Think Diferent" marketing
> campaign. If they really wanted people to do that,
> then why stop people from doing what that desktop
> theme group was doing? Isn't what they were
> doing, "Thinking Diferent"?

Copying something is not "thinking different".

Thousands of people spending five years locked away at Apple so that they can create an OS to compete with Microsoft Windows ... now THAT is "thinking different".

Something I believe in as well...

[cnelzie]

I believe that every platform has and indeed serves its own purpose. I also believe that if someone says, "Hey, I just don't like Macs, I wanna use a Commodore-64!." Then by all means they can figure out how to use a Commodore-64 to get their job done.

It is a matter of personal preference moreso than what is the best at a job. If he is uncomfortable with Macs, or for socio-political reasons, like myeself, chooses to stay away from Macs. Then that is really his choice.

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Re:Something I believe in as well...

[twilightzero]

If he is uncomfortable with Macs, or for socio-political reasons, like myeself, chooses to stay away from Macs, then that is really his choice.

I was waiting for someone to say that! (btw I fixed your typo) ;)

Re:Something I believe in as well...

[soellman]

I agree that you should always use the best tool for the job, but if you're chief-anything at a company, leave your biases at home. Macs in this case may turn out to be the best solution, after all, the cost of the hardware is only one part of the TCO (oh don't you love those MSisms).

Re:Something I believe in as well...

[cnelzie]

Obviously you don't work in or are blissfully unaware of how things work in The Corporate Environment. CTO/CIO biases are indeed the one main factor in what OS/equipment architecture is used in virtually every company. Now, in some places there are actually CTO/CIOs that are into Linux/UNIX and Macs.

Unfortunately, most of them only look at the Microsoft option as that is what most vendors push as a solution. It makes no sense to me. However, that is not yet my job.

If it was, I would look at as many options as possible. Then I still might end up choosing Windows on the desktop, Unix for the back-end and DB Servers and a few MS Windows Exchange servers. Of course that depends on the needs of the company.

Some companies actually have no use for those extra features in Exchange server. Others cannot live without those Exchange features. If the OSS movement were to develop their own Exchange-like system. I would probably choose that. The only thing is, that is not important to OSS developers. If it was, then it would already be a project.

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TuneTracker - BeOS

[rhh]

If he is working at a radio station he might wan to check out TuneTracker at LeBuzz It does just about everything other radio automation software does but for only about $100US. Yes, it runs on BeOS. Possibly the only professional audio software still available on that platform. It really pissed me off the way software companies said "no release till more soundcard drivers" and sound card companies said "no drivers unitll more audio software" Echo was the last chance, they falt out said they would deliver drivers in their advertisements in 2000. They lied, stalled and then said "no". These drivers were probaly the single largest thing keeping BeOS from actually hitting pro audio outside the embedded and automation markets.

Re:TuneTracker - BeOS

[Chris Johnson]

Not so- not by a long shot.

The high end multitrack machine RADAR runs on BeOS. It's been really impressing people who loathe Pro Tools. Even with professional audio equipment there's levels and levels. On one level, Pro Tools is all wizzy keen and professional, compared to, say, Cool Edit: but you can still get stuff that leaves it in the dust, and at least one of those high-end options (RADAR) runs on BeOS.

Tried Wine, tried Linux audio...

[alrz1]

I have been experimenting with Linux and professional audio production for some time, with few productive results. One obvious limitation, as stated before, is driver support, but another real factor in Linux's inefficacy in this medium is that there is no support for VST, DirectX, ProTools, and other proprietary plug-ins. In wintendo or on any mac os since 8, audio plug-ins (db-audio, timeworks, sonic foundry) have been more or less designed to be interchangeable between several applications, so that the user can apply the same effect in Wavelab, Cool Edit, Cubase, etc. There is no such standardization in Linux audio. In audacity, for example, the only effects availible are internal, and bad internals at that. You could code your own, but the underlying framework is suspect at that (no 24-bit support, no 32-bit flp editing). And let's face it, most *nix that I have ever used was not written with by audiophiles nor with audiophiles in mind; thus, the os's built-in capability for high-end "professional" features is very limited when compared to BeOS (r.i.p.) or windows.
The speed lost in using wine is reason enough just to load windows for pro audio apps - 'nough said. But there must be potential for Linux Audio, right? Better addressing, quicker drive access - hmmm. Just not yet.

Re:Tried Wine, tried Linux audio...

[LafinTux]

do a web search on LADSPA plugins on linux, you'll be pleasantly surprised (they are VST equivalent) :-) Also check ecawave app for a soundeditor (among many others which do what you're looking for).

Re:Tried Wine, tried Linux audio...

[alrz1]

Thanks! I was unaware of this architecture. The initial findings seem good, but I have yet to find time to check out the audio quality of the plug-ins. The code on ladspa.org looks better than much of the code I have seen for similar purposes. I couldn't tell from the documentation (was there any?) at the ecawave home page what the supported sound formats were, but the UI seemed a bit arcane though, and the last thing I need is to code my own shell again. Thanks, though, for some really great pointers.

Mac are okay, but gimme my MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I like my port of ProTools and Penguin (ironic, isn't it) on Win2K with my PureMid card and Ensoniq keyboard (oh, and Roland monitors that can put out a candle at 15-20 feet *grin*). I can amp it all up (with appropriate feed back and surge/drain protections) and it is an awsome home/semi-professional studio set up.

---------------
Yep, Another AC... Registering is Bad...

Thanks...

[cnelzie]

Thanks for the compliment.

Re:Ridiculous

[itachi]

Just a minor factual correction - you can run BeOS, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and Linux all natively on PPC. No emulators involved. Between those, OS X, and the older Mac OSes, that's all of the OSes that I'm willing to run on hardware I can afford. I'd love a DS20 on which to run Tru64, but a Mac is a bit cheaper, and has more OS flexibility... Nice sig, though. I'm not sure about the conclusions that are drawn, but that's me.

itachi

not entirely true

[Anonymous Coward]

There is support for several families of pro-grade multichannel cards, most notably the Envy24 cards (M-Audio in particular) and the RME Hammerfall series. I have personally had 6-in 6-out full duplex 24/96 running with a Delta 66, and the Ardour guys run 'teens worth of channels on the Hammerfalls.
Don't know how midi fits into this, though.
Unfortunately, all of this requires ALSA, which is not the easiest road, even for techies. It's closing in on stability, but finding info is a chore.

Pro/Semi-Pro

[DigitalSorceress]

I used to use PCs for Digital Audio and MIDI sequencing, but I got really tired of the system "barfing" in the middle of 50% of my takes. I Finally came to the decision that if I was going to record music digitally, I would really need a dedicated device.

I ended up plunking down the cash for a Roland VS-1880 and have never looked back since. They are not cheap, but dedicated hard disk based digital recorders are rock solid. I still use a PC for creating/warping out samples before I load them into a keyboard, and of course, I use them to take my final tracks and rip them to MP3, but I don't think I will ever trust a PC again for digital multitrack audio recording.

Low-Latency Patches

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd like to see a Linux implementation provided I can tweak the operating system to compensate for latency and f/x problems previously stated."

Slashdot story from October 14: Preemptible Linux Kernel: Interviews and Info . Story & comments include pointers to two possible options.
You're welcome. :)

Non-Mac professional audio solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

...good luck! Not that you can't find any, but not even considering it ignores reality.

Why rule out MAC's?

[Suicyco]

I dont understand why you would rule out a MAC outright. This is what they excel at. Pro tools runs natively on mac's and macs are the standard platform for most pro audio. Why not just go with what works, works well and has a huge user base? You can go cutting edge with linux just because, but for a professional studio I would go with what is proven and works very well. Have a problem with some issue on a mac? Just ask in a newsgroup or any of dozens of message boards. Have a problem with linux (regarding pro audio) and you dont have a lot of places to turn. Slashdot maybe....

BEOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not BEOS??

Re:Ridiculous

[Reality Master 101]

Nice sig, though. I'm not sure about the conclusions that are drawn, but that's me.

FYI to anyone reading this... I just changed my .sig. You can see the Newsweek article he's referring to in my journal.

Sound forge for PRO AUDIO?

[Nykon]

I'd really hope if you are doing "pro audio" you'd be using something other then JUST Sound Forge anyway. At minimum for a home based computer studio, you'd want to be able to run a good internal or perf. a external "break away box" sound card on linux and have support for a midi sequencer like cake walk, logic, cubase,etc, plus any other programs like acid, reason,etc. Though not to down play sound forge, I use it all the time for sound editing in my home studio but you'd want alot mreo then that. i think finding the drivers to support a _GOOD_ sound card would be the hard part, I beleive WINE would work with most of the low to mid level audio packages made for windows now a days.

Re:Macs on those curtains...

[garf]

And don't forget to tie the knots (clockwise) in those curtains for improved sound quality...:)

OK, for the definitive answer....

[kko]

I love linux, a lot, but if you have ever tried to do _real_ music work, you will not find anything to suit all of your needs, _yet_. As good as GNU/Linux is getting, it has no good alternatives to good old Cubase, or Logic Audio, or sound forge, or ProTools (hint, hint: I am a Cubase user).
Stick with Macs, at least for now.....

Re:Macs? Port That Sound

[pi_3]

And that my friends is why we need to use (and promote) cross-platform APIs like qt and OpenGL

"Do or do not, there is no try." - Yoda

Once I find a way...

[anewman]

I work for a small college station and I am simply chomping at the bit to be able to work on Linux or any sort of UN*X variant, simply because our network sucks. We have a mid-range Pentium running CoolEdit Pro on Windows 98 (I believe) for production work, an internet broadcasting machine which is very similar to the production box, and the MCR computer is a high-range Pentium, which is running Windows ME and is the core of our broadcast operation. We have a great program from BSI called WaveCart, which simulates old cart decks, only with wav files. We have a full licence to this product, but I would not be afraid to get rid of that licence if we can find something better that runs on Linux. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a program which serves the same need as WaveCart, and until I find it, I guess I'm stuck on Windows. Guess I just have to keep on looking. However, I think that our LAN that integrates our production, MCR and internet broadcasting computers could be a lot more streamlined if we can just serve our needs and still sound professional.

Broadcast 2000

[Boatman]

Broadcast 2000 has a lot of potential for both audio and video. Still a little buggy for serious use, but with some work might be brought up to speed. As was pointed out, the author pulled it recently, but thanks to the miracle of the GPL it didn't cost me the work I was already doing with it.

Scott Studios embraced Linux early on

[robt]

Scott Studios, the largest supplier of production and automation systems for radio stations in the U.S., was a very early supporter of Linux.

Although their software solutions are proprietary, their hardware--to the greatest extent possible--is not.

They offer everything a record or radio producer would need--supported on Linux.

http://www.scottstudios.com/

Real Professionals use ProTools

[Mr Average Funk]

As a professional sound engineer, I know there is a very good reason for the main choice of software being ProTools. ProTools is not just software. When you buy a mix plus system or similar you're getting dedicated DSP hardware to run digidesign software on (mostly) digidesign i/o hardware. In my studio I run a G4, but ultimately the computer configuration is beside the point because a majority of the processing is done on the TDM hardware. As much as I love open source, i can't see professional studios charging $1000s a day risking it. Open source simply can't release DSP specific software packages like Digidesign does.

Pros use Macs as a drink holder

[Anonymous Coward]

At one of the places I worked (alright. I was a tea boy.) they had a massive AMS/NEVE system and guess what system the control software was running on?
WinNT4!

So there you have it. Pros use Windows! bwahahahahahahahaha

latency

[soellman]

the last I checked (about a year ago) macos (9) and windows had audio latency of about 30ms. Beos had the best, at about 5-6ms. I'm not sure about linux, but the arch of the kernel dictates that it wouldn't have significantly lower latency than mac/win (except without patches that directly address latency, mentioned in the other sibling to the parent post).

I believe the threshold of human hearing to notice latency is about 15-20ms.

That MacOSX has 1ms audio latency is really an achievement made possible by the progressive architecture of the darwin kernel. CoreAudio rules!

Re:latency

[lkeagle]

I believe the threshold of human hearing to notice latency is about 15-20ms.

Offtopic, but the human ear can be trained to detect latencies of as little as 5ms, for many different types of sounds. White noise excluded ;-)

~Loren

Ecasound

[Mandelbrute]

It uses chains (think pipes, only sometimes in parallel) to process audio. The gui is still in early stages of development, but you can do far more than in any gui I've seen with the command line tools (which is probably why it's hard to represent it all in a gui). it lives here.

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.

Re:Macs? Port That Sound

[Anonymous Coward]

What "standards" is BSD based on?

It intentionally ignores Single UNIX Specification and POSIX.

Stability, yes...

[mindstrm]

How do you explain that the Mac is the de-facto standard for recording studios then? That's my point.

Re:Stability, yes...

[dhalgren]

Sure. And Win9x is still the de facto standard for desktop OSs. And Garth Brooks et al. are the de facto standard in what is being called 'country music' these days. Moo.

My point is that I would LOVE to get away from Windows and Macs for studio work, to something with the stability of, say, the RADAR 24 (BeOS-based hardware unit), except in a full editing workstation format (i.e. take my apps with me). I don't care whether it's BeOS, or Linux, or *BSD; all of these offer stability with which Macs and Windows just cannot compete.

Studio work is application-specific, as you note. But I will always gravitate toward the platform which can best keep those apps working. Unfortunately, in the world of Windows and Mac studio software, in most cases the studio software is of higher quality than the operating system. On *nix it's mostly the other way around. ;)

Yes.

[mindstrm]

But I doubt that's the issue. The issue is the available software for sound engineering, and whether it works reliably on the platform.

This isn't a huge corporation facing millions of dollars in licensing fees because office and windows need to be upgraded. This is something else entirely.

Plus.. the cost of commerical sound engineering software absolutely dwarfs the cost of windows.

Facts about Linux (for the linux-audio ignorant)

[LafinTux]

First off, apologies for cross-posting if any of my fellow Linux users have already posted this info. Just trying to write a summary :-)

Here we go:

Linux OS has the best latency out there (after applying low-latency or pre-empting patches), having MIDI latency in sub-1ms and 2.6ms latency for multichannel DSP streams (up to 52 channels with RME Hammerfall). This DSP latency is not limited by Linux OS, but by the current construction of audio hardware (having the smallest possible buffer of 64bytes -- so you do the math). Mac has just now introduced 32-bit sound and native multichannel options, while both Linux and Windows have had that since ~1998.

Linux OS supports more than 150 soundcards including mainstram (sb, sblive etc.), laptop (ESS Maestro series and other), and high-grade (RME, MOTU etc.). See: www.alsa-project.org (look under soundcards/card matrix). There is also commercial driver called OSS (open sound system)

Linux OS has PLENTY of audio apps. Just check the following site, and you'll find numerous apps for every type of app:
http://www.bright.net/~dlphilp/linuxsound/

Just for reference, here are some apps to take a note of:

Protools equivalent: Ardour, Mixmagic, Multitrack, Rt, Audacity
Soundforge equivalent: Audacity, Ecawave, mxv, snd
Max equivalent: Jmax, PD
Video editing: Broadcast2000 (yes, it can do sorenson and 12-channel sound production and is loaded with audio and video filters)
DVD player: bunch of these, I'll let ya figure these on your own (some of them being OMS and MPlayer)
3D design: Maya (commercial), Softimage (commercial), Blender (free)
Sequencers: Muse, Timidity
VST-like plugins: LADSPA plugins
MP3 player: XMMS
Other: Csound, Cecilia, RTcmix, Glame etc.
etc. (you get the point! :-)

x86 computers ARE superior almost in every respect to Macs, and that whole Photoshop benchmarking does not mean a thing due to fact that Apple has invested into Adobe in order for them to make a couple of filters use altivec engine (128-bit float point calculation engine that needs to be specially coded for, usually in a low-level language), while Adobe completely ignored the corresponding AMD/Intel SSE (streamlined SIMD extensions) engine which does the same thing for the x86 cpu's. That's what causes seeming performance "boost" on Macexpo's "benchmark charade" that Steve Jobs sells so well (by "benchmarking" using only one app in the whole world LOL). All other apps out there run faster on x86 cpu's than on Macs due to fact that simply altivec is not being used, OR it is being used, but Intel/AMD version also utilizes SSE in the same app, thus leveling the competition. Here are some sites that prove that (in respect to CPU speeds):

http://www.cpuscorecard.com/all_cpus.htm
http://no6.com/apple/

Other reasons why x86 cpu's architecture is better:

Mac's front-side bus is 100Mhz, x86's is 266Mhz for AMD and 400Mhz for Intel.

Mac's PCI bus speed is 33Mhz, x86 is either 66 or 133Mhz (depending on Motherboard).

Mac's IDE drive ATA form factor is 66Mhz, while x86's offers 100Mhz ATA/Raid capability.

Mac's best memory runs at 133Mhz, while x86 allow for Rambus memory.

Intel's chips (P4's) now offer SSE2 which directly corresponds to Altivec engine, except that there are more apps which utilize Intel's technology due to fact it is easier to code.

All of this speaks of faster data transfer on x86's (both Windows and Linux OS) than on Macs. And don't even get me started on Itanium (true 64-bit processor that can sustain continuous 6.5 Gigaflops calculations).

Also, x86 computers offer customizability and an ability to put as many soundcards as one can potentially stuff into them at the same time, thus leaving the freedom of choice to the user, and not cover up, lack of choice in some kind of a "think different" slogan...

Finally, x86 computers are cheaper, much MUCH cheaper!

As much as the OS X.1 is concerned, read the review given on Slashdot (on the 10/16/2001) written by a Mac person. He has described it rather well (read the conclusions), so there's no need for me to comment on that one.

Finally, if you look into the Windows XP, as an Intel/AMD machine alternative, you'll hear nothing but praises, even in the above-mentioned article written by a Mac person! Nvida reports up to 50% boost of their cards in the new OS, by just issuing new drivers, and they have already now (prior to these latest drivers) beaten Mac OS 3:1 in 3d benchmarking (check sharkyextreme.com's benchmarks of GeForce3 and Quake3 just to get some kind of an idea, as much as I remember, it was something like ~120fps on a dual G4 800 vs. ~230+ fps on a 1.5Ghz P4 with Gforce3,before this latest driver issued by Nvidia). Other news sources also report up to 50% performance improvement of Windows XP over Win9x.

nuff said :-)

Radio Station playback system

[Anonymous Coward]

It's probably not the same, but I use linux as a playback system for my pirate radio station.

The benefits are obvious; it's very stable and I never have problems with it. I wrote a program for it a while ago that can do automatic playback in case i have to go get some food or something, and i'm working on an n-curses based playback system ATM. I've not seen a ton of horridly impressive linux sound editing equipment before, but it handles simple stuff like music playback very well, due to its stability and programmibility.

...

[insolace]

i use 2 gadget labs 8 in 8 out cards and cakewalk to do my audio recording, and i've been in several uncomfortable situations where i'll be recording a band and halfway through the take windows crashes, cakewalk locks up, etc etc. this is a common problem with many people in the same situation, it's next to impossible to get a solid system running with the current software and hardware that is available. when you're charging someone a hundred dollars an hour, and half of that hour was wasted because of your computer, you begin to compromise your integrity.

so far the only "fail safe" system i've heard of is protools.

while it'd be nice to stick with dedicated hardware, there are so many wonderful things that software CAN do (when it's working right) that it's a big drag to be stuck with multitrack recording units.

the real problem is that there is no money in taking multi-track audio to linux, and it takes a LOT of time and skill to program software that will do the job right.

-eryk

Portable recording solutions

[Kotau]

At Boost Hardware we are well into the final stages of prototype production for our portable recording studio/DAW.

Once Ardour is more stable we will be able to provide a considerably cheaper portable setup than you could get if purchasing a notebook. More powerful too.

If you would like to know more then contact us via sales_at_boostahardware.com

Http://www.boosthardware.com

We also host the Linux Audio Users Guide

http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/Linux_Audio_Use rs _Guide/

Designed for musicians by musicians.

Is this a troll?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right?

Creative Audigy

[Anonymous Coward]

While there are no linux drivers available at this time, the path from the emu10k1 drivers should not be that difficult. I've already gotten mine to recognize the card and transfer line in to line out.

That aside, the audigy is a decent card for 'home' studio applications. I've got eight analog inputs, and with the ASIO drivers 10 other source packages to install before even compiling the thing your interested in its a headache...not useable. I want to install a multi-track recording package and use it, not spend weeks trying to get umpteen source packages to compile.

And I'm a fairly skilled linux user and developer...i can't imagine the average consumer being able to do multi-track recording in Linux for years.

Re:Creative Audigy

[Anonymous Coward]

Then go get yourself Mixmagic and feel the difference. It's a rpm and it installs like a breeze (with one rpm -Uvh * command). Multitrack recording/mixing is alive and well in Linux, you just need to search a bit on the net before jumping to conclusions. For a free software is that too much to ask? As far as audigy is concerned, I wouldn't touch that card with a 20' pole. it's the same crud as sblive was with resampling junk plastered all over it. If you already spent $200 on a card, you might as well add that much more and get a RME Hammerfall or one of their weaker cards with 8-channel output currently supported in linux.

Re:Creative Audigy

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to do research? Mixmagic has recording on the 'to do' list. It is nothing but another sample mixer...don't need anymore of those. I'm recording multitrack, synched, analog and mixing to stereo. Mixmagic comes nowhere close to supporting that.

So I should get an RME Hammerfall with no analog inputs for $400 and then get another RME card with 2 channel analog I/O for another $300? Sorry, I'll stick with my 8 analog I/0s for $200.

Someone in this thread sure does need to do some research and it isn't me.

Emagic's Logic Audio under Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an audioengineer running Dual Boot Windows ME/XP on a Laptop computer. Attached is, among other things, a Firewire Audio Interface with 18 channels in/out, a firewire harddrive and a USB midi interface. I was using Linux a little bit last semester on my Desktop, just to try it, and It's without a doubt a lot better than any other OS I've ever tested, but what does that help me when there is no Professional (In the true meaning of the word) Audio solution available for it.

I do see a possible future way of bringing good Audio Software to Linux.

Apple released OS X and is marketing it very seriously. As of right now, none of the Major Sequenser / Multitrack applications support it, but I'm pretty sure Apple will have them all do in about a year and a half from now.

So what's good about this?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but programming for OS X and it's Unix based core shouldn't be very different from programming from Linux.

What any Audio interested Linux User should do is try to make Audio Software companies realize how much easier it will be to support OS X and Linux than OS X and Windows. Recompiling code between Linux and OS X must be a lot easier than between OS X and Windows with all it's API's and bugs etc etc.

I'm totally convinced that all the major Audio Software developers - Digidesign, Emagic, Steinberg Propeller Head etc will continue to support the Mac platform 100% but if they can be convinced of Linux's superiority and stability over Windows it shouldn be to hard to make them recompile their code and release Linux versions of it. Of course they probably won't be Open source, but maybe competition from the proprietary audio software companies will make the open source developers pick up the pace too.

If you are a professional and are serious...

[Anonymous Coward]

then GET OFF THE CRACK PIPE and go buy an apple
computer .

Pro Audio, Macs, Linux, and eveything else.

[kidtexas]

If this guy truly runs a "medium-sized" production studio, and wants to stay away from macs for any reason, there is a problem. First of all, he would not be overly concerned about keeping costs down. What's a $3000 brand new computer compared to the PRO setup "sound card" that costs close to $10k. A basic Protools system I think is $7-8k. That is 8 or 16 channels in/out, no control surface. Most studios want at least 24 in/outs, and don't want to mix with the mouse, so add another couple grand for a good control surface/digital mixer (I think a good prosumer digital mixer by Mackie can be had used for $4k). This guy probably (if he really is in a mid-sized studio) owns several $1-2k mics. We aren't talking about a $400 dollar M-Audio card for a home studio setup. So, I don't think the fact that he wants to save a few bucks on a computer is driving this decision. Unless its really not a mid-sized studio, but more of a home studio thing. Protools is the standard. And yes, it does run on PC's, but in professional studios, it runs on Macs. Why, I don't know, it just does. This is before OS X mind you. I am excited about the audio capabilities in OS X, but as of now, hardware and software support is non existent. And from what I hear, OS X has real time mode (now with 10.1) in the kernel for applications in music and digital video (Apple isn't going to shoot themselves in the foot and alienate the professional music sector or the media sector - remember they do make Final Cut Pro, a video editing program). But this is a moot point. Protools -> Mac running the old Mac OS is the standard. End of story. And from my limited associations, standards mean a lot in the audio industry. That is why every album you hear is mixed on an SSL or a Neve, all guitarists play a strat, tele, or gibson through a Marshall stack, bass players play a P or Jazz bass through an Ampeg SVT on the road and a b-15 in the studio. Sure, this is an exaggeration, but you get the picture. Put in another way, Protools on mac is the windows of the audio industry in this area. And lets face it, why do macs suck? They don't have software/hardware/driver support. Well, in the music arena, linux doesn't have these either. Macs do. Sure, Macs might not have Acid or Sonic Foundry, but they have Protools. They might not have some of the "professional" home studio applications, but they got the professional ones. If I were building a home studio right now from scratch, I'd get a PC, run Windows on it, buy Acid, etc. and get a decent sound interface all for less than maybe $3k. If I was setting up a professional studio, I'd get a Mac, an ungodly amount of Protools equipment and software, for more money than I will ever have to spend. I think you get the picture. Either this guy's studio is going to go under when he switches to Linux, or he ain't a "medium sized production/radio" studio.

Re:Pro Audio, Macs, Linux, and eveything else.

[Anonymous Coward]

The studio where I work is considered Mid-sized, and we use Linux machines, and there's no talk whatsoever of going under. The only bad investments that we did in the past were that we went ahead and wasted money by purchasing a couple of them apples ;-). The reason you see so many macs being used by so-called-pro studios is because in many cases Apple most likely gives stuff away for the publicity sakes, so that people like you are willing to spend more money thinking you're getting something better by doing so -- just because Nine Inch Nails uses a mac, maybe you should too (and through people such as yourself, Apple is able to make-up for the loss of donating equipment). Why in most movies do you see Macs? Because that's how Apple tries to stay afloat, by constantly promoting their computers -- they need that, they need their "looks" to help 'em out. Windows PC's do not need that, they already sell very well... go figure!

From a real long-time audio professional

[Anonymous Coward]

From someone who actually makes a living (and not dabble) working with state-of-the-art music composition, recording and editing and sound design software:

When it comes to doing this, you are faced with the prospects of not only using the most productive, reliable and powerful tools because life is very short indeed, but also take into account the installed user base!!!

A lot of us collaborate and add to projects which have to be done in compatible formats, sort of like CVS.... There is no question that the Macintosh platform has historically towered over anything else when talking about certain pro audio niches markets, which happen to have the giant's share of everyone's work.
From knowing someone deep in the Digidesign R&D team, I can honestly tell you that it seemed they had no plans for Linux the last time I asked. This of course may change, as we are now in a situation where the entire Apple platform will have to be FreeBSD-compatible with Mac OS-X, and certainly Linux ports can't be far behind.

It would be great to hear someone's experience of having played with the beta release of Logic Audio 5.0 for OS-X. (anyone out there?...)

Once Emagic really gets it going, the competition (Digidesign, Steinberg, Mark Of The Unique Horn :) cannot be far behind.

Basically, I think the discussion should get productive once we start addressing the specifics of what it takes to port over a Free-BSD_Darwin_Carbonized app and port it over to other flavors of *nix. The reason for saying this is that is that those pieces of software (ProTools, Logic Audio, Cubase, Digital Performer, Recycle, SonicWorx, ...sorry CakeWalk and Digital Orchestrator) are so far beyond the rest in terms of features and man-hours spent making truly evolutionary products that in my opinion most other software packages only offer B-grade performance, with a few notable exceptions.

We are still talking about professional recording studios, right???

Would anyone knowledgeable please comment on what that port between OS-X and Linux entails, how easy it would be, and certainly comment on the driver issues for proprietary PCI hardware addressing???

Computers are Hard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, I'll probably never get moderated up for my opinion, but here I go anyways.

Computers are hard... Digital audio, along with digital video really push the performance of what your hardware is capible of delivering on.

It doesn't matter what your running on, Windows, MacOS, or some form of *nix... you're gonna have to get your hands dirty at the OS and hardware level to this type of work unless you go turn-key.

That comment about Mac's being better geared towards digital audio is complete bullshit. The Digi gear which people are really referencing in such statements is nothing more than overpriced coprocessors and disk controllers available on both Windows and MacOS that use the host OS only for GUI functions. (BTW.. a little history, the first generation Digidesign gear was designed for Sun platforms).

If all you're interested in is saying that I offer ProTools, go ahead and waste $15k to $20k on that proprietary crap while the rest of us will be happily tracking the same 16 simultanious tracks with 28 realtime plugins on our $2k Athlon boxes (Don't forget, you'll need to add a second DSP Farm card for more than one TDM plugin under Protools ;) ).

Given the power of today's modern processor's, you don't need to drop a load of cash to put together a system with world class capabilities. No matter if you're using a Windows box or *nix, there's still a bunch of crap you still worry about. Disk cache size, virtual memory, write back caching. If you want to squeeze every bit of performance from your disk and CPU you need to know this stuff inside and out.

If you're friend isn't willing to go this route and get educated on such settings under Windows, he's going to get a wakeup call when it comes to *nix. Maybe it's time start looking for a good price on a used Otari 2" 24-track, or get out of the music business altogether.

------
Void (12 years digital audio experience on Intel based systems)
http://www.badassgeek.com

OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

Rediculous is not honoring his request.

Re:Facts about Linux (for the linux-audio ignorant

[LafinTux]

Correction about the "form factor" as I have been corrected in the other post, the ATA UltraDMA speed is 100Mhz, while Apple can have the same with third-party addons. The second correction pertains to PCI bus speed on PC's and that is that the best one is 66Mhz, not 133Mhz, while both Apple's and Pc's PCI bus can be 64-bit.

Pretty Nifty Sequencer: rs101...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, thought I would mention this, as it did not make it into the fab book "Linux Music and Sound."

http://www.ultramaster.com/

They also have a neat emulation of the Juno keyboard, but I've had problems with Midi timing, note-off stuff. Elara is another, really-fun, analog synth.

AudioWerks 2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like the perfect time to ask this question.
I have an AudioWerks 2 professional soundcard & I was wondering if there are any linux drivers for such a card.

Locked away?

[cnelzie]

Sounds like your average program development team. Don't they all get "locked away" for some long period of time?

--
.sig seperator
--

Re:Synonomous?

[tiedemann]

"Digital audio production and Macs are virtually synonomous"

AFAIK there's PCs running in a lot of proffessional studios.

ProTools may be the dominant platform at the moment but it's definately not the only one in use when it comes to proffessional audio production.

During my own recording sessions I've used both without any problems (except for lack of RAM in the Mac of course)...

what is you exp with:Linuxsound.at

[leuk_he]

The link points to a lot of links (as far what i can see). But do you have EXPERIENCE what packages are good? what packages are really in beta? Trying out all those links will take a lot of time. Why not say what is useful to a pro? please write a long story.

Or did you just do a search for sound midi linux and earned quick karma. (In that case just ignore me).

Re:what is you exp with:Linuxsound.at

[mirko]

I actually found there many packages that I use a lot in both my musical and journalistic activities.

Re:what is you exp with:Linuxsound.at

[leuk_he]

I actually found there many packages that I use a lot in both my musical and journalistic activities.

then please name those packages. If one has to try out ech and every product named in your link it takes along long time.

LInux Music Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.. Well anyone here remember THE best music system... An AMIGA running Octamed... It just so happens that it has been ported to the PC- Linux and Windows... Go check out http://www.octamed.co.uk .
It rocks... Now I wonder- can u set up soundfonts properly with Linux?

WINE + CoolEdit Pro

[Skip666Kent]

Has anyone tried this? I would but my current soundcard does not work under Linux. I run CoolEdit Pro on Windows and have found it to be the ultimate home studio. It's simple to use and loaded with effects. I use it exactly the way I used my old four track and have never had a problem with latency.

Wish they'd port it straight to Linux or BeOS, although then we wouldn't get the plugins (yet). It sounds like running on WINE might keep the plugins intact...

Re:Pure Data, Jmax// important URLs and info

[parasew]

also check out the official site for PureData which is
http://pure-data.org

pure data can be downloaded directly from the site of miller puckette (the creator of max and PD)
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html

also check the publications of miller, including some references/docs for pd
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/publications.html

and here are some additional linux audio URLs

alsa supported soundcards
http://www.alsa-project.org/src/soundcards.html

oss supported soundcards
http://www.opensound.com/osshw.html

linux sound howto
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO/

linux mp3 howto
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/MP3-HOWTO.html

linux sound playing howto
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Sound-Playing-HOWT O. html

Linux Audio-Quality-HOWTO
http://chandra.ph1.uni-koeln.de/linux/HOWTO/Audi o- Quality-HOWTO.html

linux MP3 Player Box HOWTO
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/MP3-Box-HOWTO.html

open sound architecture
http://www.opensound.com/

linux sound-applications
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/sound/!IND EX .html

SoX - Sound eXchange (fuer fast alle plattformen)
http://home.sprynet.com/~cbagwell/sox.html

linux audio development
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/

linux sound pages linklists
http://www.xdt.com/ar/linux-snd/
http://pd.0rf.at

Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API (LADSPA)
http://www.ladspa.org/
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2001/02/ 02 /ladspa.html

GLAME
http://glame.sourceforge.net/audio-resources.var

general linux howtos, info

oreilly
http://www.onlamp.com/onlamp/general/linux.csp
http://safari.oreilly.com/main.asp?cat=2&last=2
http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/q/linux_tutorial s

linux documentation project
http://www.linuxdoc.org
http://www.linuxdoc.de

audio effects faq:
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/index.php3
http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/audio-eff ec ts-faq-10.txt
http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/effects-e xp lained.html

jMax is surely worth looking at

[SqyD]

jMax is a graphical programming environment for interactive real-time audio applications. It is based on Max, an ancient realtime enviroment still alive on the Mac. jMax consists of a C(++) realtime server that does all the work on and a graphical Java client where you can easily drag and drop your enviroments a la Logic audio. jMax is not suited for your average harddisk recording project but it's an object oriented enviroment for creating realtime midi/audio/video/whatever artwork. The project's page isn't that informative but do check out the mailinglist, that's where the action is...
Note that the project is still under development fully GPL'ed and has an anonymous CVS-server that will get you the latest sources for your favourite platform (Irix, Linux (x86+PPC) OS-X...

Go check it out!

Re:Facts about Linux (for the linux-audio ignorant

[NulDevice]

Audacity is cool and all, but it's not even *close* in capability to Pro Tools. It's not even close in capability to Pro Tools LE. SOundforge, yeah, maybe closer, but even then there's some room for improvement. Maybe after a few more revisions it'll be there, like gimp is to photoshop, but it's got a ways to go.

I've used several of the mentioned audio packages (although admittedly, not all) and have never seen a multitrack audio editor or seqeuncer for Linux that has the power or hardware support of the commercial ones for Win and Mac. While I'd *love* to see it happen, it's going to be a few years before I trade into a linux system for doing audio.

Another Choice

[metaphysicist]

At the risk of being labeled a fanatic, I'm just going to say that pro audio can be done quite well on an Amiga. And that's all I'm going to say since most people here seem to tune out after the word 'Amiga' anyway.

Need a good sequencer

[thockin]

I use FruityLoops ($99 bucks, free upgrades FOREVER) on Windows for techno composition and sequencing. The sad truth is that Linux doesn't have anything like it.

So I started to write one. It's not that hard of a concept, but I realized that I was starting on a multi-year project, and I'd rather be making tunes.

Add to that the lack of anything approaching established. Linux has LADSPA for plugin FX. That's great - IF YOU LIKE MONO SOUND. Ask the LADSPA creator why there isn't stereo - the S in LADSPA is for simple. And useless.

I've got a small code-base started for a sequency with a fruityloops model. Anyone want it?

Re:Audacity (drool)

[ToyKeeper]

Wow. Linux audio tools have come a long way since last time I looked.

After trying audacity, I got rid of my copies of cooledit and sound forge. I know audacity is still simple compared to the "professional" tools out there, but it already does everything I need for creating music samples and other misc editing... :)

Now, if I can find a good (and mature) composition/synth program, I'll be set!
Thanks for the great program!