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

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.

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

[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.

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?

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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: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.

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?