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: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?