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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.
Morpheus: What is homosexualality? How do you define faggot? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and ass-fuck, then homosexuality is simply electrical signals broadcast by Slashdot, and interpreted by your brain.
In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women!-H.Simpson
GM Jesse twitched and farted in his sleep. Next to him lay Susie Anne Lou, the GM plant-slut and all around bar whore. She was 42. She was also awake.
"Jesse, wake up," she hissed, her voice like sandpaper from years of a 5-pack-a-day smoking habit. "Wake up you fat son of a bitch!"
Stirring and mumbling something about "polishing his knob like a good little slut," GM Jesse awoke slowly. He winced as had fallen asleep with his cheap sunglasses on again and inadvertantly shoved them into his face in a failed attempt to wipe the sleep from his eyes.
"What the fuck!?" he exclaimed as he groggily looked around. He gasped as he saw Susie Anne Lou; he had forgotten that he had "seduced" (bought her 7 beers at the bar) and fucked her earlier that night. He had been dreaming about Sarah Jessica Parker's perky Jewish tits and her shaven Jewish pussy. He had "messed her pussy up" all night long in his dream and waking up to Susie Anne Lou was in sharp contrast to his fantasy.
"You were snoring and farting. You God-damned pig, I don't expect to deal with shit-smell and grunting after I fuck," Susie Anne Lou said pointedly. "God dammit!"
Without hesitation, GM Jesse bitchslapped Susie Anne Lou. "Fuckin' cunt, God-damn bitchin' an' whinin' after I got my balls in you," he berated. "Next time you want this God-damned meat pole you're gonna get down on your knees and kiss my balls first, you fuckin' hag!"
The next morning, Susie Ann Lou, the GM plant-slut, was nowhere to be seen. Neither was GM Jesse's guitar (untouched since '78), his Journey records (last listened to yesterday), his beer (all 5 cases of it, chilled), and a stack of porno mags (Open Legs, Hustler, and Shaved).
"Fuckin' slut stole all my shit, God dammit!" GM Jesse exclaimed angrily. "Fuckin' fuck-hole walked off with all my favotire shit!"
He grabbed his jean jacket and waddled out the door. It was a warm summer morning in Kansas City and he was wearing his finest red cut-off jogging pant shorts, a stained white tshirt, and a flannel shirt overtop of that. His shoes were imitation leather with Velcro straps. GM Jesse didn't have time to fuck around with tyin' his shoes!
His belly hung out from his tshirt, and though he didn't notice, his dirty cock was hanging limply from a hole he had cut in the front of his jogging pant cut-off shorts so he woulnd't have to pull them down to piss. He'd done this while trying to piss in a beer bottle in his reclining chair late one Wednesday night. It was quite hard to piss in a beer bottle sitting down with your dick aimed down and over the top of an elastic band!
His '78 stationwagon peeled out of his driveway and down the gravelly road toward I-70 and the GM plant.
His buddies from the line were drinking in the parking lot before work, per tradition every work day, and he didn't want to be late.
Bob Patterson is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Bob Patterson community when last month IDC confirmed that Bob Patterson accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of ABC Ratings. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Bob Patterson has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Bob Patterson is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Nielson's Ratings Survey.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Bob Patterson's future. The handwriting is on the wall: Bob Patterson faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Bob Patterson because Bob Patterson is dying. Things are looking very bad for Bob Patterson. As many of us are already aware, Bob Patterson continues to lose market share. Viewership flows like a river of blood. The Network Test Card is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Ratings leader Theo states that there are 7000 viewers of PAX. How many viewers of the WB are there? Let's see. The number of PAX versus WB posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 WB viewers. Bob Paterson posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of WB posts. Therefore there are about 700 viewers of Bob Paterson. A recent article put Network Test Cards at about 80 percent of the Bob Patterson market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Network Test Card viewers. This is consistent with the number of The Network Test Card Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of abysmal ratings and so on, Bob Paterson was moved so it was no longer against Frasier. Now in its new timeslot, its ratings continue to slide. Soon, its corpse turned over to another timeslot.
All major surveys show that Bob Patterson has steadily declined in market share. Bob Patterson is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Bob Patterson is to survive at all it will be cult television followers. Bob Patterson continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Bob Patterson is dead.
Bob Patterson is dying
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
"Linux audio" is like saying "innocent arab".
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!
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Their reposnse is not strong enough for a true American. Instead of striking back with EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT (biological, chemical AND nuclear weapons!), they waste their time building "alliances" with the unchristian people who are untrustwothy by nature.
This lack of resolution can be traced to the long period of peace time between the WW-II and the WW-III we're fighting now.
Compared to the previous war, we are pitifully handicapped by our concepts of "morality". Back in the 1940s we interned our slant-eyed enemies with no qualms and prevented an uncounted number of terrorist attacks by these sworn bastard enemies of our white race.
Now all the ethnic arabs, blacks and god-knows-what- europeans are running free in our great country. Free to poison our water reservoirs and contaminate our blood supplies with their AIDS infected blood.
The terrorists do not have moral. In fact, they are not human beings and should be treated as such.
I call on you, free white Americans, to take action against these criminals. You have to do it on your own since our government seems to lack the strength to accept the reality and imprison, torture and kill these animals.
Don't let yourselves be fooled by the weak enemy within who keeps crying: free speech, human rights and free religion. There is no free speech during war. There are no human rights either. Finally, there should be no free religion. The pagan religions are the root of all evil and should not be tolareted. Our money and Constitution says: In God we Trust. That God is not the satanic, pagan Islamic god. It's the merciful Christian God!
Now, if ever, is the time for WHITE NATIONAL UNITY! To preserve our nation, faith and way of life: find and kill the enemy within and without!
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.
4 4/ qid=1003254837/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_7_1/103-5443063-182 7000
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/18864113
Josh Woodward
Digital audio production and Macs are virtually synonomous; what does this guy have against macs?
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.
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huh? why?? i mean honestly, why not use a very good toll for the job?
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/
Check out Linuxartist.org. They have a ton of music stuff... some of which may even be usable! :)
it is also a firewall.
News for turds, shit that splatters!
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.
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Yes, I'm an AC - No, I don't feel like registering!
Does WINE emulate the BSOD or Kernel32 errors?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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.
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?
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.
Professional audio on Lunix? You've got to be kidding me. I'm fluent in English, which is something of a rarity on this site, and I interpret Professional Audio as "audio suitable for professionals."
News flash: professionals can afford to pay for software. They don't need half assed hobbyis crapware because they can afford professional software.
Lets be honest, Lunix is the same price as *BSD, has a more restrictive license than *BSD, isn't as well designed as *BSD and has a much less mature development model.
Could someone please tell me why the worst open source OS gets the most publicity?
Your friend,
--Shoeboy
I've been working for a large corporation for the last ten
years. I started out as a junior executive straight out of
college and finally worked my way up to middle management as
the head of the marketing division two years ago. My work
requires me to travel frequently, I've lived in nine
different cities so far during my career. Perhaps that's
partially why I've never found the "right" girl to settle
down with and marry. Another contributing factor - maybe the
biggest factor - is that I'm highly sexed and very
promiscuous, sort of a male nymphomaniac. I'm always very
careful not to contract any social diseases, but I've still
been able to enjoy many different kinds of sex with many
different partners, both female and male. I really have no
preference for any particular kind of activity or fetish - I
enjoy it all.
In January of this year, I was transferred to San Diego.
Since I only anticipated being here for two years at most, I
decided to rent an apartment rather than go through the
hassle of trying to buy a house and then re-sell it two years
later.
I found a place in a fairly new apartment complex in Point
Loma which suited my lifestyle superbly - a third floor unit
with a big kitchen, a big living room for entertaining, and a
balcony that overlooked the complex' swimming pool. I'm very
voyeuristic, and looked forward to being able to enjoy the
human scenery at the pool when the weather warmed up.
My work kept me fairly busy my first few months here, finally
in mid-April things began to slack off and I found myself
with a little more free time. I hadn't had the opportunity
to meet many people in my apartment complex yet, so I spent a
lot of my free time at home alone gazing lustfully at the
many "girls next door" who began to frequent the pool. Two
girls in particular always showed up at the same time each
day, arriving together and leaving together. They were very
friendly with each other, always talking and joking, but I
never saw them converse with anyone else. One was a short
brunette, with well-padded hips and thighs - a little
overweight and stocky, but not flabby. Her boobs were large
for her height of about 5'2", and were usually totally
exposed, except for her nipples which she tried to keep
covered with the skimpiest string bikini top I've ever seen.
Her closely cropped hair permitted a clear view of her
monumentous breasts from all angles. The bottom of the suit
she usually wore was cut extremely high on the sides, barely
two inches of nylon fabric came down through her crotch,
covering the crack of her cushiony ass and most of her bushy
pubic hairs. Whenever she turned over on the chaise lounge,
or spread her legs wide enough, the sweaty pink fabric of her
suit rode right up into her crack; making her pussy lips,
labia, and anus plainly visible to me through the almost
transparent cloth from my vantage point.
Her friend, a petite Oriental girl, had almost no tits at
all, but her nipples, which must have been at least an inch
long, constantly protruded and looked like two dark thimbles
stretching the white knit fabric of the one piece swimsuit
she usually had on. Her long black hair reached down to her
ass, although she usually kept it pinned to the top of her
head. Her feet were very tiny and unblemished, she kept her
toenails closely trimmed and always painted a bright, tasty,
eye-catching red. Her olive skin was an immense contrast
with her suit, making her look like a miniature geisha
goddess.
The two girls were obviously very friendly, as they massaged
suntan oil on each other from time to time, they did it oh-
so-gently...much more of a caress than a functional move to
apply the oil. The Oriental girl, especially when massaging
oil on the fat girl's back and thighs, always lingered a
little longer than was necessary on those delicious globes of
the big girl's ass..and at least once, I was sure, slipped
her dainty index finger under her friend's suit and diddled
her anus oh-so-lovingly. Although I didn't know anything
about either girl, other than what I had seen from my balcony
while playing with my cock, I convinced myself that they were
probably dykes. They were never with any guys, and seemed to
be too friendly to be mere acquaintances.
This went on for several weeks, each day I spied on those two
tasty creatures while sitting on my balcony, a beer in one
hand and my dick in the other. I was too nervous to approach
them; after all, they were probably gay, and I didn't want to
risk a rejection. Anyhow, I was enjoying my solitary
fantasizing, and I guess I didn't want to risk having my
fantasies shattered either.
One Saturday in mid-May, I finished work unusually early,
went out on my balcony and started drinking beer a little
earlier than I usually did. My two fantasy girls showed up
at their appointed time and planted themselves in their usual
corner of the pool area, showing me a perfect view of their
gorgeous tits and asses. A little more tipsy than I usually
was this early in the afternoon, I decided to go for broke
and introduce myself to them, fuck the rejection...Who cares?
In my semi-inebriated state, I decided I could make a better
first impression if I dressed as revealingly as they did. I
pulled on my white Speedo Bikini bathing suit. My cock,
balls and ass cheeks were plainly visible through the thin
material; my wiry pubic hairs created a dark shadow in the
front of my suit. No shirt, no shoes...I went downstairs.
"Hi there, my name's Greg. I just moved in a few months
ago."
Both girls looked up, I thought I detected a half smile and a
gleam in the eyes of the Oriental girl as she looked at my
face, glanced at my crotch, then quickly away. The fat girl
eyed the bulge in my bathing suit steadily and unabashedly,
then looked me square in the eyes. "Get lost!" she said
disgustedly.
I'm generally a very cooperative guy, and don't like
confrontations. Usually, I would turn around and walk away
if I found myself in a position like the one I was in now.
But today...I guess the brew and the fantasizing about these
two dolls had emboldened me.
"Hey, I'm just trying to be friendly. No need to get rude."
"Sure you are," retorted the fat one. "Waving your penis in
our faces, advertising your wares. You're looking for a
quick fuck, just like every other guy in this city. Well,
you're not going to find it here. Go back to your balcony
and masturbate if that's what gets you off...and don't say
you don't do it, we see you every day."
I was flabbergasted. I had no idea they had seen me. I must
have turned twelve shades of red.
"I-I-I'm sorry," I stammered. "I-I-It's just that you're both
so gorgeous...Your ass...and your friend's feet...I didn't
know you could see...I-I-I guess I'll go now."
I could tell the Oriental girl was trying hard to suppress a
smile. She reached for the fat one, pulled her close, and
whispered in her ear. They conferred briefly, then both
started laughing. I turned to leave.
"Wait!" called the fat one. "Are you really sorry?"
"Yes," I hesitantly replied.
"Will you do anything to make it up to us?"
"Yes," I answered, a dim light beginning to flicker in my
mind.
"Will you do anything we tell you to...no questions
asked...no matter how vulgar or dirty?"
I suddenly realized that this was probably a sexual
proposition. So, they were into a little master/slave play?
A little S&M perhaps? I was definitely game.
"Yes, I will," I asserted.
"Okay," said the fat one, "my name is Gina, my friend here is
Susan. We would like to have a servant to abuse - both
physically and verbally - tomorrow when we go to Black's
Beach. You'll do. We're not going to let you get your rocks
off - your duty will be to do exactly what we tell you to
do...and we're going to make you do some pretty nasty, vulgar
things...all for our enjoyment. We're going to fuck you -
like you want to fuck us - maybe with a dildo, or maybe we'll
find some gay guy and tell him he can fuck you while we
watch. At any rate, you're not to speak at all, and you must
do everything we tell you to. Is that clear?"
Listening to her talk, my cock had grown to it's full six
inches. The bulge in my suit would surely have been visible
to everyone else in the complex...thank God I was facing the
girls with a wall on either side. Only they could see. I
really wanted to do this. Yes, I would grovel at the feet of
these two nasty creatures and do anything they said. I would
gladly play the subservient role for them
"Yes, Miss Gina, I'll do whatever you say."
"Okay then, you wimpy asshole. Get out of here. We'll be by
your apartment to pick you up at 9 o'clock sharp tomorrow.
Make sure you're ready! Be prepared for some pain, you
prick! Oh...come here."
She motioned for me to bend my head close to hers. Assuming
she wanted to whisper something nasty in my ear, I did so. I
saw stars as the full force of her open palm cracked across
my left cheek.
"That's just a small sample of what you can expect," said
Gina. "Get out of here."
Rubbing my stinging face, I turned and walked away. Behind
my back, I heard Gina and Susan breaking up in guffaws of
laughter. My hard-on had rapidly disappeared, although a
drop of pre-cum stained my bathing suit.
"Wait!" Gina yelled. I turned. "Do you really want to be
treated like shit?"
"Yes," I responded.
"Tell me you want to be treated like shit."
"I want to be treated like shit."
"Louder!"
"I WANT TO BE TREATED LIKE SHIT!"
"Okay," purred Gina, "we'll treat you like shit."
Back in my apartment, I ate, showered, and set my alarm for
8:30. I wanted to be sure not to miss the knock when Gina
and Susan came by the next morning.
BUZZ - BUZZ - BUZZ - BUZZ - I reached up, hit the alarm, and
parted my heavy eyelids with difficulty. 8:30. I'll sleep a
little more. Suddenly it hit me - this is Sunday! Today is
the day! I jumped from bed, quickly showered, and pulled on
my cut-off jeans. At 9:00 exactly there was a knock at the
door. I unlocked the door, turned the knob, Gina and Susan
came bursting in.
"On your knees, slave!" shouted Gina.
I dropped to my knees rapidly, more surprised than frightened.
Susan quickly darted behind me, and planted her sandaled right
foot for such a little girl. I fell forward. Gina grabbed
my hair and lifted my head up.
"Who told you to put on shorts, slave?"
I started to reply, but as soon as I opened my mouth, Gina
shouted, "Silence!"
Pushing me onto my back, they pulled off my shorts, then
stood me up.
"To the bathroom you dirty pig!"
For the next hour or so, things happened so fast I was in a
daze the whole time. The girls manhandled me easily,
although I made no attempt to resist. I was enjoying myself
- even the humiliation and pain they subjected me to.
First, they blindfolded me, put me in the bathtub and washed
me with cold water...I was thoroughly clean when they
finished, but my cock and balls were as shriveled and small
as a prune. The next thing I know, I was bent over the side
of the tub and felt a greased finger entering my asshole. I
didn't mind - it felt great - suddenly, it was removed and
replaced with something much harder...and longer...it
violated my rectum, and as my bowels began to fill with warm
water I realized that they had brought an enema with them. I
was very bloated when they finally removed the nozzle, they
made me hold the liquid in until I was grimacing with the
effort, at last I was allowed to expel the fluid. Finally
considering me clean, they removed the blindfold. Gina
produced a rubber butt plug - only about 3 inches long, but
about 2 inches in diameter. After making me such on it for a
while, she inserted it in my anus and made me put on a pair
of tight, french-cut nylon panties - which rode right up in
the crack of my ass - to hold the butt plug in place.
Gina announced, "That will stretch and prepare your asshole
for what's to come, slave. You are not going to cum at all.
If you touch yourself, or ejaculate for any reason...there
will be hell to pay. Do you understand?" She punctuated her
question with a firm squeeze on my shriveled balls, I meekly
nodded in the affirmative.
With that, I was ordered to put on sneakers, gym shorts, and
a T-shirt; and was led downstairs to their waiting van for
the drive to the beach. In the van, I was immediately
ordered to remove all my clothes again...except for the butt
plug and panties. Gina drove, while Susan removed her
shorts, spread her lovely legs while lounging on the sleeper
in the back of the van, and ordered me to chow down. Quickly
obliging, I reveled in the taste and texture of her tight,
pink lipped Oriental cunt. Her pubes were closely trimmed,
very dark and wiry; her clit was large red nodule which
protruded from the thin lips of her labia. I tongued and
slurped her delicious cunt the entire 30 minute drive to the
beach, very pleased to be able to make Susan orgasm at least
three times that I noticed. Whenever I slowed, or didn't
lick in the right place, Susan would reach down and paddle my
ass with a sandal, or push on the butt plug; which now had
performed it's function by loosening my sphincter muscles
significantly. Gina watched the show in the rear-view
mirror, from time to time telling Susan to give me an extra
slap for her or ordering me to slap myself. By the time we
pulled into the sandy parking lot at Black's Beach, my ass
was a nice shade of red, my anus was very loose, and my cock
was as hard and as stiff as a pole.
"So, you enjoyed that did you, you worm?" said Gina,
squeezing my cock. "Put these on."
She proffered a pair of flimsy women's jogging shorts, with
no lining, which were too small for me. Pulling them on, I
found myself with half of my reddened ass cheeks hanging out,
my engorged cock plainly visible through the thin material.
Susan then fastened a leather dog collar around my neck.
"You will wear this all day," she stated, "everyone will know
that you are our slave. Put on your shoes and let's go."
Feeling like a fool wearing only the tight shorts, shoes and
dog collar; my two mistresses led me down the steep trail
leading the the beach.
As soon as we hit the beach, Gina and Susan shed all their
clothes and ordered me to do the same. I was finally able to
remove the panties and the butt plug, only the dog collar had
to stay. The beach was sparsely populated this early in the
morning, Gina and Susan ordered me to stand with my hands at
my sides while they fingered each other's pussies in front of
me and watched my stiff cock bob in the breeze. Tiring of
this amusement, Susan said to Gina, "Let's find a good spot
to set up for the day."
"I know just the place," replied Gina. "Let's go."
The two girls began walking north along the beach, whispering
to each other and occasionally glancing back at me
mischievously. Trailing them, I was enjoying the sight of
those two delicious bare asses and the sensation of the sun
and the breeze on my skin.
Gina led us to a spot about one-half mile up the beach where
big rocks came down the side of the cliff to the sand.
During high tide, the surf lapped right up to these boulders;
during low tide, like it was now, the rocks created
convenient alcoves for people to lie in and not be seen by
passer-by until they were directly in front of them. This was
also the area where many of the gays who came to Black's
Beach liked to hang out.
Spreading their beach towels on the sand in one of the
alcoves, Gina and Susan ordered me to lie on my stomach with
my feet toward the ocean and my legs spread. With a bottle
of baby oil, they thoroughly oiled my backside from neck to
toe - paying particular attention to my enlarged anus.
"You're almost ready, slave. We just need to make one more
preparation," giggled Susan. Picking up one of her sandals,
she began to paddle my already glowing backside. When she
was finally satisfied that she had attained the right color,
my ass stung. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that it was a
bright, fiery red; glowing with baby oil.
Gina and Susan then positioned themselves on either side of
me, sitting and facing the ocean. "Now all we do is wait,"
said Gina.
I was facing the side of the cliff, and was not allowed to
turn around or look behind me. With my legs spread, my
stretched asshole and bright red ass facing toward the surf,
I felt very vulnerable...but very excited. I didn't know
what these two crazy girls had in mind, but I was sure it was
going to be fun.
A few minutes later, I heard some people approaching along
the beach. As the voices came nearer and nearer, Gina and
Susan each placed a hand in the crack of my ass, and pulled
my cheeks apart as widely as they could. As stretched as my
anus had been by the butt plug, I knew it must look as big as
a juice glass to whoever was passing by. With my face in the
beach towel, I realized that my cock was hard...I was going
to be a faceless exhibitionist who would be ogled by
strangers in passing! The voices suddenly stopped behind me.
"Hi," shouted Susan, "nice day for the beach."
"Sure is," replied a male voice
"Nice ass you have there," giggled a female voice.
Gina and Susan both laughed. Gina ran her finger around the
rim of my asshole. "This is our slave. We're showing him
off."
The two voices laughed, along with Gina and Susan, then moved
on down the beach. The girls resumed their vigil.
This went on for a couple of hours, about 15 times my cheeks
were stretched wide while people passed by; male, female,
singles and groups. If the passer-by didn't say anything,
Susan would shout a greeting to them, making sure that each
one lingered a little behind me to look at my ass. In
between people, Susan would paddle my ass a little more to
retain it's color or apply more baby oil if necessary. Gina
had brought a cooler of beer, they both sipped beer while
having their fun and even allowed me to have a few sips. My
cock remained hard the whole time - I found that I was really
enjoying this unusual exhibitionistic game.
Someone else was approaching, again the girls stretched my
ass cheeks apart so wide I could fee the ocean breeze in my
anus.
"Hi," said Gina, "nice day."
"It's getting better by the minute," replied a deep male
voice. "What have you two girls got there?"
"Oh, this is just our slave," answered Susan. "We're showing
off his ass to whoever wants to look. See how nice and red
it is?"
"That is nice," said the voice, "and such a tasty looking
asshole, too. I think it's probably big enough for this."
I couldn't see what was going on behind me, but I definitely
heard the sounds of some guy flogging his dong. Gina and
Susan were in hysterics.
"I don't know," said Gina. "That's pretty big. Our slave
needs a good fucking, though. Why not give it a try?"
I was about to jump up and leave, but thought better of it.
I was really turned on by the conversation that had just
transpired, but I had never been fucked by someone I didn't
know. What about disease? Apparently sensing my hesitation,
Susan withdrew a condom from her bag.
"You'll have to put this on that big monster," she said. "We
have to make sure we keep our slave clean."
Gina and Susan stood up and moved in front of me to get a
good view of my face. "You'd better enjoy this slave," said
Gina. "You wanted to fuck us so badly yesterday...let's see
how much you like being fucked."
Rough hands spread my legs apart even further, and parted my
cheeks. I felt the tip of his cock being rubbed against the
outside of my well-oiled asshole, suddenly he thrust the full
length of his manhood into my rectum. I bit my lip. His
penis was no bigger around than the dildo that had already
loosened my anus; but the length! He must have been at least
8 inches long! After a few pumps, I no longer felt any pain,
and began to enjoy the sensation of being fucked immensely.
And I didn't know who he was or what he looked like! My cock
was as hard as the one in my ass, with each thrust he drove
my cock into Susan's beach towel which was supported by the
soft sand. Gina and Susan seemed to be enjoying the show
immensely, they began to kiss and fondle each other's tits
and pussies while watching the stiff dick being pushed in
and out of my ass.
Watching the girls, I realized that I was about to cum. The
combination of seeing those two beautiful creatures fingering
their twats and having a hard cock filling my ass was more
than I could bear.
Suddenly, my visitor stopped thrusting, and let out a load
groan with his dick planted up to his balls in my asshole.
As he came, I climaxed simultaneously, spurting puddles of
creamy white jism all over Susan's beach towel. Susan and
Gina, fingering each other's clits furiously, also began to
squeal with pleasure as they orgasmed along with us.
Our male visitor withdrew his rubber encased appendage from
my anus with a slurping sound, thanked the girls for their
generosity, and departed the way he had come.
Susan scolded me severely for having cum on her beach towel,
with a sandal she again began to slap my ass cheeks
vigorously.
"As punishment for what you have done, you slime," said Gina,
"we're going to find a bigger cock to fuck you...you'll
really feel this one. And this time, we won't even let you
hear his voice so you won't know when it's coming."
With that, she withdrew a Walkman Radio from her bag and
placed the headphones over my ears, turning the volume up
load on a Rock station; I could no longer hear anything or
anyone behind me. My cock began to stiffen again in
anticipation of what was to come. Shifting my head to get
more comfortable, I bumped the radio and lost the
station...the static in my ears was very loud...BUZZ-BUZZ-
BUZZ
BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ-BUZZ- I reached up, hit the alarm, and parted
my heavy eyelids with difficulty. 8:30. I'll sleep a little
more. Suddenly it hit me - this is Sunday! Today is the
day! I jumped from bed, quickly showered, and pulled on my
cut-off jeans. At 9:00, I was waiting breathlessly by the
door. Nothing happened...9:30...10:00...10:30. I realized I
had been stood up. I went out on my balcony and began to sip
beer while watching the pool. At about 11:30, on my way to
the kitchen to get another beer, I noticed an envelope that
had been slid under the door. Picking it up and ripping it
open, I read:
Greg,
Susan and I decided to make other plans for today. You said
you wanted to be treated like shit - now you've been treated
like shit. Hope you enjoyed it.
Gina
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
You could use Protux.
.WAV, .OGG and .MP3 files, too.
Even though it uses its own file format (PRAF) you can import
Screen shots and more info can be found on the Protux home page.
"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?that's why I completely shove my head up my ass and ignore the fact that Macs have dominated the audio production industry for over a decade and continue to do so.
</inserts head back up anus>
since Wine Is Not an Emulator.
KFG
if a mac is good enough for Joe Satriani...
well...
need I say more?
yup, he's a stupid fucker.
News for turds, shit that splatters!
Well it was Thursday afternoon. Almost the end of another long
day at work. As Amy passed my desk she said, "Cheer up - dinner time
soon." She and I had begun to share dinner together on Thursdays as we
are almost neighbors and, being recently divorced, enjoy visiting. I
replied with a tired smile, "I know - if I can survive that long!"
Little did I realize what was soon to be in store for me.
Five o'clock came after what seemed an eternity and we heading
home together in the car. As we came inside the house, she said, "Why
don't you go ahead and change, I'll start the pasta?" I agreed and
went off toward the bedroom. I began removing my blazer suit: hung my
blazer in the closet; unbuttoned my blouse and tossed it into the
laundry basket; kicked off my pumps and wiggled my tired feet;
unzipped my skirt and put it over the chair; unrolled my hose and
tossed them on top of the blouse, removed my bra and panties and
tossed them also. I went to into the bathroom to wash up but before I
could start the water Amy came in. "What are doing?", I asked
demanded. She had never seen me undressed before now. She grabbed my
wrists and before I could react she had handcuffed my wrists together
behind my back. "What the fuck are you doing!!" I yelled. She
answered, "I'm going to give you what you deserve slut. I'm tired of
the way you tease the men at work! You and your slutty clothes!! Where
do you get off coming on to the guys like you do?? Wearing no bra, and
skirts to show off your pussy - you must be a slut or whore!!". I was
shocked speechless by what she was saying.
She pulled me over to the bed and tied my ankles to the corner
bedposts She then tied a piece of cord to each wrist and then to
each bedpost at the headboard. As she unlocked the handcuffs, she
pulled tight on the cords and my wrists were then securely tied also.
I was very scared and began struggling against the bonds she had tied,
but it was no use - they were very tight. She then placed a ball gag
in mouth and fastened it with a leather strap. I was very terrified
now. There I was: tied spread-eagled to the bed & gagged. I couldn't
move or yell!
I watched as she left the room and soon returned my a black
nylon bag. From the bag she pulled out a short leather crop. I
thought, "My God, she is going to whip me!" Sure enough, she began
caressing my legs, thighs, stomach, and breasts with it. If I could
have screamed I certainly would have. She announced, "Are you ready
slut?". I watched in terror as she raised the crop and began to whip
my legs. I nearly jumped a foot off of the bed in pain as it landed.
She continued by criss-crossing my legs with lashes from her crop. She
began to move her lashes up my body - hitting my thighs, stomach, and
then my breasts. It all hurt so much that soon I lost all sense of
pain; it seemed to blur together as she kept up her merciless attack.
Suddenly she stopped, and put the crop down. The pain I had tried not
to think about I could no longer avoid as it flooded into me in the
absence of any new pain. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I managed a
gagged sob when I raised my head up a little and saw my body covered
with welts.
I then watched as she went into the bathroom and returned with a
razor and a can of shave cream. "Oh shit what is next??" I thought,
through the pain. As she climbed between my legs, she said "I'm going
to shave your cunt, whore. Whores must be kept clean." "I wouldn't
move at all if I were you; I wouldn't want to slip and cut something
off." As much pain as I was in I don't I could have moved if I tried,
but nonetheless I did not move. She lathered up my pubes and all over
and around my pussy opening. She set the can of cream aside and began
to stroke with the razor. She made long, sweeping strokes on my mound
and soon it was gone. She made shorter strokes along side of my labia.
She pulled my labia out firmly and she even made sure to shave that.
She continued by shaving around the opening and around my clit. After
another minute she announced I was now "clean." She got and went into
the bathroom. She got a wet handcloth and came back and wiped away the
remaining lather. My pussy felt so open, so vulnerable, so very
exposed. And I could do nothing.
She brought her nylon bag over closer to the bed. "I have now
punished you for what you have done and for what you are. You are and
have been a slut and whore. I'm about to punish you for what you might
do." She brought out of her bag a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a very
sharp but oversized needle. I had no idea what she was going to do
with that but I now knew it would not be good. She crawled to between
my legs and sat cross-legged. She pulled out firmly on my outer labia.
"Jeeezzz what fuck is she going to do??" I wondered silently. I knew a
second later when the needle passed through both of my labia. The pain
was so sharp and sudden, I felt very light-headed and sooo faint......
I awoke several hours later. The room was dark and I was under
the covers. I flicked on the nightstand light. I wasn't tied. The room
was quiet. Did I imagine all that?? I threw back the covers and looked
down at my body. No, I certainly didn't. My entire front from breasts
down to my knees was a cross-checking of welts. I then remembered what
she was last doing to me. I spread my legs and looked at my pussy. It
was very naked and hairless. Then I saw what she did to me. "My God
that fucking bitch!!" She had pierced through both my large labia and
had inserted a small gold ring. My labia were essentially stapled
together at that one point. I felt very faint again.....
--
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.
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.
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!
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
"The flowering of our S&M fantasies has been one of the highlights of
our sex life for Kathy and me. We began by using the telephone. I would
call her at work and describe in vivid detail what I planned to do to her
sexually that night. To my delight, I discovered that this excited her
and she walked around at work all day with a wet pussy. Knowing this
turned me on.
Gradually I began to smack her ass during sexplay, as she sat on top of
me or as she lay on her stomach sucking my cock. I would be on my haunches
in front of her, and as she sucked me, I would raise myself up on my knees,
hover over her and bring my palm down on her ass. At frist they were
exploratory smacks: light, but hard enough to make the rounded flesh of
her ass jiggle. Soon, though, I was spanking her full-force, causing her
ass to turn crimson with the imprint of my palm, and her pussy to turn
juicy.
As the spankings increased in regularity, I was satisfied we were on
the right path to living out our fantasies. Then we devised something
we call the CRACK BELT. Under her skirt or jeans she wore a thin belt
around her waist with a strip of rope attached to the back of the belt,
running down between her cheeks, snuggled tightly between the lips of
her pussy, pressing on her clit and attached again at the front. The
constant pressure on her clitoris and the continual rubbing of it while
she walked kept her crack juicy.
The best part was watching her face when I knew she was coming in her
pants and no one around her realized it. I also went out of my way to
find long flights of stairs to walk up, because I knew thats when the
rope and belt would make her pussy the hottest. There were times when
I thought she was going to faint from the tremors of pleasure she was
experiencing in her cunt. We always fucked immmediately after taking
the Belt off, and she was so wet that I could sink my cock in to the
hilt without the slightest bit of trouble.
The Crack Belt got to be such a favorite for us that Kathy actually
began asking for it, the first time being the night of our one year
wedding anniversary. In celebration, we decided to go out for a nice
dinner. After Kathy showered and put on her makeup, she walked out of
the bedroom, naked, holding her Crack Belt. Softly, in a seductive little
voice, she asked me if I would'nt like fit her into the Crack Belt
myself.
I fastened the small belt around her waist and then knelt down behind
her to tie the cloth rope and pass it down the crack of her ass to be tied
in front of her navel. But this time I felt something different as I was
doing it: such important emotional tenderness on our anniversary. While
kneeling behind her, I planted a warm, wet kiss on each one of her buttocks
causing her to shivver.
All through dinner my excitement continued to mount. I found myself
touching her, running my hand ahainst her cheek, pressing my hand against
her hip and lightly on her thighs. Beneath her dress I could feel the
outline of the Crack Belt. The slow, sweet torture of anticipation
tingled in my loins, and I looked forward to quenching my sexual thirst.
Gazing at Kathy across the table, knowing her crack was wet from the
Belt, I saw in her eyes the saeme tense anticipation I was feeling. We
picked up our wine glasses and toasted out one year anniversary.
When dinner was over we went right home. As soon as we were inside
the apartment, I took her in my arms and gave her a long, passionate kiss.
I sucked on her soft, warm tongue as if it were giving me life and
unzipped the back of her dress, letting it fall to the floor. My cock
bulged and pressed against the front of my pants as I knelt in front
of her and undid the Crack Belt. I pushed her back onto the couch and
spread her thighs so that her soggy pussy presented itself like a target
to me.
My tongue darted between her slippery lips and pushed into her hole. I
tasted her sticky juices as I licked up the length of crack, stopping
at her clit. Her back arched violently and a loud moan of pleasure came from
her mouth as I sucked the fleshy button into my mouth and ran my tongue
across it. Already she was about to have an orgasm, and she gripped the back
of my head with both hands in preparation for it.
When it came, she pumped her pussy up and down on my face while still
holding onto my head. I continued to suck on her clit as she screamed with
pleasure. When the waves of her orgasm had subsided, I took my now
juice-covered face away from her pusssy and kissed her hard on the mouth so
she could taste her own come. She again held me by the head and, kitten-like,
licked my entire face clean of her juices.
I stood up and took my clothes off. My cock stood at rigid attention as I told her to suck it. Kneeling down, she took the whole of my cock in her
mouth and cupped my balls in her hands. Her head bobbed back and forth,
her lips sliding along the entire length of my cock, her hands gently
squeezing my balls. Her tongue ran along member, pressing and stroking,
toying with the tip. Sometimes she would pause with my cock head caught in
her lips and massage it wetly with her tongue. I felt as if I were about to
explode with excitement.
As the feeling grew in intensity, I gripped her head steady and began to
fuck her face, pumping my cock slowly but deliberately into her now
stationary mouth. I wanted desparately to shoot my load down her throat,
but I decided to wait. I had other things in mind, and I wanted to
mainatin my sexual energy for a grand finale.
Pulling my cock from Kathy's mouth, I led her by the hand into the bedroom
with my hard cock pointing the way. I watched while she put on black, net
stockings with a black garter belt, elbow-length black lace gloves and
a wide-brim, blue straw hat with a black band around it.
With my girl dressed this way, I could hardly contain my desire for
her. Taking her own hairbrush from her dresser, I ordered her to
face the full-length mirror we have hanging on the back of the bedroom
door. She braced herself by putting her gloved hands on the upper
corners of the mirror and then spread her long, stockinged legs. As
she stood with her eyes glued to her own reflection, I positioned
myself behind and to one side of her and gently ran my hand across
the smooth skin of her bare ass.
"Beg me to spank you, Kathy," I ordered.
In a meek voice, barely more than an excited whisper, Kathy said,
"Oh, please spank me." And as she stood there spread-eagled against
the mirror, I began to spank her ass with the hair brush.
As the power of the blows became stronger, her ass got redder and the slap
of the wood smacking hard against her skin seemed to reverberate through
the bedroom. Although standing stationary, she began lifting first one foot,
and then the other as if she were doing a slow dance. Her head arched
back as she continued her dance and I continued the spanking. With Kathy
standing there in front of me dressed like something from a French
whorehouse and with a flaming red ass, I felt as though no man could
have it any better. I loved this woman, and I loved the sense of power
over her that spanking her gave me. This was a gift from Kathy.
I ordered her to come away from the mirror and bend over. As she
gripped the arms of an easy chair for support, I told her to spread her
legs as far as possible and to lift her ass in the air. Lowering her head
into the cushion, she did as she was told.
Kneeling behind her, I now had her plump, meaty pussy lips staring me
directly in the face. I hope I never lose my fascination with the sight
of a woman's cunt exposed this way and waiting for it to be administered
to. Pushing her ass up in the air as far as I could go with one hand, I
began to spank her again.
Moans of pleasure pain escaped Kathy's lips as her ass began to sway back
and forth. My excitement was rising quickly. With each new smack my cock
pulsed with the desire to fuck her until she screamed for mercy.
Finally, I could wait no more. With one last perfectly aimed stroke of
my hand, I elicted a loud moan from her.
Now standing squarely behind her, I placed on hand on her waist for support
and with the other hand guided my bone-hard cock into her hot, sticky ass.
Upon contact with the stretchy grasp of her hole, I gasped in relief for I
knew the huge amount of come I had been holding back would soon spill
out of my cock. And it did. I would have liked to fuck her longer, but
the tight walls of her asshole wraped around my cock like a slippery,
gripping hand and brought me to a violent climax. I threw back my head
and rammed my cock as far and as hard into her as I could. And as I
came with primal grunts signally the pumping of load after load of
my come into her ass, Kathy came also, throwing her head back and squealing
with joy.
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.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
News for turds, shit that splatters!
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.
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.)
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.
After playing tennis and frisbee for most of the afternoon, and cooking up a
tasty stir-fry (enjoyed over a bottle of white zinfandel) for dinner, Jim
and Janet decided to call it an early evening and went to sleep, having
allowed their feelings of horniness to be displaced temporarily by feelings
of fatigue. Overnight, the temperature dropped from warm-and-pleasant to
goose-pimple-cold, an occurrence for which they were ill-prepared, having
left the bedroom windows open, with a single sheet covering the two of them.
In their respective dreams, their king-sized bed became a stretch of frozen
tundra, complete with arctic winds cutting across the expanse.
What began as an overly-affectionate huddling together for warmth
degenerated, as the cold slowly pulled them awake, into a nasty little
tug-of-war, with the prize being a larger-than-fair portion of the
cotton/polyester sheet. Having always been better at such games, Janet
curled herself into a fetal position, clutched a double-handful of sheet to
her chest, and gave a little, twisting *tug*. Pretty as you please, the
last yard of sheet jumped away from Jim and settled neatly on Janet, leaving
Jim's butt exposed to the elements. His eyes flew open just as a breeze
blew up his backside. "Hey! I'm freezing! Gimme some back."
Janet purred a contented, sleepy little dismissal, "Jim, if you're cold,
just get up and take a blanket out of the closet." Jim was ready to hoist
himself out of bed when he realized that he'd just been snookered (and not
for the first time!) into getting a blanket while Janet stayed in bed. His
darling wife had suddenly been transformed, in his eyes, into an Evil
Manipulator, and he decided to stand up for All Men, everywhere.
"If you want a blanket, Janet, *you* get it. Now give me some sheet!", and
he proceeded to haul at the blanket like he was pulling in the main sail.
With more than half-serious indignation, Janet growled "You jerk! Pick on
someone your own size!" and she did that little clutching move again, which
rolled Jim over and recovered half of what he'd hauled away from her.
"Can't...there's no one else here." smirked Jim, and he pressed his (now
frozen) toes up against her warm, heart-shaped bottom. She squeaked out a
surprised little "Yelp!" and jumped away from him, letting go of the sheet.
"Aha!!" Jim grabbed the edge of the sheet and rolled back towards his side
of the bed. "Loser!" he cried and, gripping the sheet tightly, he rolled
over and away from Janet, spooling the entire sheet around himself. "*You*
can get the blanket for a change, chump!" He rolled clear to the other side
of the bed, and was quite pleased with himself, since he didn't get to
outsmart his wife very often.
He had about half-a-heartbeat to gloat, and then Janet jumped on top of him,
and glowered down at him with a frighteningly predatory look. "You know,
Jim, I'll never understand how such a smart man can consistently get himself
into such *dumb* predicaments!" He tried boosting himself up with his arms
(all those workouts came in handy when he was wrestling with Janet who,
although no pushover, was never able to beat him in a fair fight)...and he
collapsed backwards! Quickly, he realized that he'd mummified himself
inside the sheet. He thought hurriedly....king-sized sheet...must be eight
or nine layers of cloth...his hands stuck by his hips, tangled up more than
the rest of him...Janet sitting on his stomach with her knees on either side
of his chest, using those cyclist's legs of hers to squeeze his arms against
his sides. Oh, I'm meat, he thought, I'm hamburger fucking helper.
Janet was smiling down at him evilly. "You've got such an *endearing* look
on your face, honey!" And then her expression changed to one of
mock-concern: "Have you got enough of the sheet now, Jimmy?"
"Okay, heh, yeah, Janet...you got me, yep, that was pretty good...I'll go
get the blanket..."
"Oh, baby, what's the hurry, you're not still cold are you? *I'm* the one
who should be cold!" and reaching her arms behind her, she stretched her
naked torso backwards and turned from side to side, the silhouette of her
nipples sharply visible against the light from the bedroom window. He
became acutely aware that he had a hard on, and he squirmed as it strained,
like the rest of him, against the sheet. Janet brought her hands back down
and ran them smoothly over her breasts. With a sudden surge of frustrated
horniness, Jim bucked frantically and nearly threw his wife off of him.
Looking furious that Jim had the audacity to try taking advantage of her
posing for him, she shifted her legs lower down Jim's body and fell forward
onto him, hard, knocking the air out of him, and assumed a decidedly
female-superior position. Now, it was Janet's turn to look surprised, as
she felt Jim's erection pressing against her. For a second, Jim thought
that she might let him loose so they could go at it...but Janet's expression
shifted again, and became particularly merciless. "Poor baby!" she cooed,
"there's something you want really bad, isn't there?" Wrapping her arms and
legs tightly around Jim, she brought her face close and started giving him
soft kisses on his cheeks, his temples, his forehead. A small moan of
pleasure came from him, and he closed his eyes. She kissed his eyelids, and
brought her mouth down to meet his. His tongue reached for her, and with no
teasing Janet kissed him long and deeply.
"Oh, honey, I want you...please let me go."
She gazed at him tenderly, and said "I want you too, really bad, but some
things are worth waiting for. Besides, I *know* you...you'll enjoy it more
if I tease you senseless first."
"But you've already teased me senseless!" and, at this new development, he
started struggling in earnest. But poised as she was, he could barely get
enough leverage to rock her back and forth...rolling her away was utterly
impossible. He strained fruitlessly for long seconds, and fell back
exhausted.
"You call *this* teasing?" she chided, her face inches from his. "Darling,
I haven't even *started* teasing you!" and she placed her hands on both
sides of his face, keeping his head immobile. She brushed several feathery
kisses against his lips and, as he strained for more, she unceremoniously
licked his nose.
"*Bleck*!! Why, you bitch!! Gaaa!!!! I hate that!"
"Oh, so I'm a bitch? Well, what else am I supposed to do to you?" she asked
innocently, while she wiped the saliva off his nose.
"I don't care...anything but that! That felt horrid!"
"But, Jim, I can only torture your face...the rest of you has gone
undercover." She paused, smiling at her pun. "Except...except for...hmm..."
Like a dervish, she jumped back and landed her bum on his stomach, then
bounced off him and rolled him over another half turn, so he was face down,
whereupon she grabbed onto the sheets wrapped around his ankles and pulled
herself around. His first reaction (after "oof!") was that she was going to
try smacking his bottom, and he tried getting his hands back to ward off the
blows. A split second later, Janet was coming back down on top of him,
making a "Hiiee-yA!" noise very much like Miss Piggy. He flattened himself
so that the mattress would absorb the blow, but to his surprise Janet merely
settled gently on top of him. "You're learning, boy! What is it they say
about old dogs and new tricks?"
He was now face down, with his arms behind his back, hands pinned against
his own butt, thanks to his thrashing around. His wife was lying face down
on him, with her thighs again clamped around his chest. Her arms were
hugging his legs tightly, while her right hand fumbled at the cloth by his
ankles. Suddenly, he felt cold air, as Janet peeled back enough of the
sheets that his right foot was free. He tried to kick, but his knees were
still wrapped tightly together. Besides, what little maneuvering room his
ankles had disappeared when Janet wound the excess sheet around his shins.
His left foot was still bound in cloth, but his right foot was totally
exposed.
"So, is this the naughty foot that stuck it's cold toes up my butt, hmmm?"
Jim started to babble, "No no it was the other one I swear it wasn't that
one no..."
"I don't know, Jim, these toes feel *awfully* cold." she said, as she ran
the tip of her index finger along the base of Jim's toes. "So were *you*
the coldest toe? Or was it *you*?" she asked, punctuating each query with a
little squeeze of each toe.
"(*giggle*) It wasn't any of them! (*snort*) Oh, God, please..." The
gentle, almost loving touches underneath his toes made his foot twitch
spasmodically, and Jim became frantic at the prospect that Janet was going
to tickle him into hysteria. He didn't plead yet, though...he clung
desperately to the ludicrous hope that, if he didn't beg her not to tickle
him, then Janet wouldn't think of doing it.
"Oh, so I'm going to have to conduct an Inquisition, is that it? Well,
since you like picking on people smaller than you," she said snidely, "I'll
start with the littlest toe first...have you done anything that deserves
punishment, hmmm?" And she started running her fingertips very lightly down
the toe, along the outside edge of the foot, and then back up again.
Jim's initial, stifled laughs gave way to a steady stream of giggles, like
water falling. "No honest I-swear-to-god I haven't!" he gasped.
"You know, you've got a beautiful giggle, Jim, even if that wonderful
baritone voice of yours sounds more like a schoolgirl's now! It's too bad I
don't hear you giggle more often. So, how about Toe Number 2? Do *you*
have any confessions to make?" She started tracing her maddening fingertips
in a straight line along the second toe, up and down across the sole of
Jim's foot. That tickled *much* worse than the edge of his foot did, and
Jim dropped all pretense of not begging.
"Please Janet plee-hee-hee-heeze (*gasp*), don't tickle me-he-hee-HA! HA! oh
God (*giggle*) like this it's-sss-it's(*sputter*) HA HA not fair hah HAH!!"
"Oh, and I suppose that what you did to me last week on the couch was fair,
right? Remember, you brute? When we were smootching, and you started
kissing my neck, and when I laughed, you pinned my arms over my head and
started nuzzling me under my arms until I nearly wet myself? Do you
remember that, hmmm?" She shifted over to the third toe, so that her
fingertips were sliding up and down the very center of his foot, taking
little digressions to follow the curves along the arch and heel.
Jim was out-and-out laughing now, and gasping for breath. He'd always been
a tickle fiend, but that was when *he* was doing the tickling. The only
time he'd gotten it back badly was when he was was 12 and staying with
relatives before a wedding. His cousin Karen (how old was she then? 15?
16?) caught him peeking when she was trying on her bridesmaid's outfit. He
ran, but she caught him in about three strides and pinned him down, and
while she said "I'll bet you thought that was funny, huh?" over and over,
she proceeded to slowly and methodically tickle him half to death. He
didn't even remember her stopping...just him catching his breath afterwards.
That was 20 years ago, and he wasn't sure if he could stand it if it happened
again. He managed to blurt out "Yes-I-did-it-I-did-it-I'm-sorry-oh-God" in
one breath.
"Finally, a confession! Very well!" she said as she stopped her tickling,
and she drew herself up haughtily. "It's the judgement of this court that,
given your offense, the punishment should fit the crime. You are hereby
sentenced to the poetic justice of being tickled on the bottom of your right
foot until you go completely insane, said sentence to be carried out
immediately. Does the condemned care to make a final statement?" Red
faced, sweating, and panting, Jim gasped in a breath and started to open his
mouth when Janet chirped "Time's up!" and began very lightly and rapidly
dragging the fingertips of both hands over the sole of Jim's foot. She
alternated left and right hands, using all of her fingers and touching very
lightly, scraping as gently and as rapidly as she could.
If Jim thought that he'd ever been tickled before, he was wrong. His voice
jumped from hyperactive giggles to full-bodied guffaws and back again as his
tortured nerves tried desperately to reach some sort of equilibrium, but
Janet was a cruel, relentless, and very talented tickler, and she altered
her touch just enough to keep Jim from adapting to the torment. He felt
electric currents searing across his feet, racing up the backs of his legs
to his groin, and shooting out along his spinal cord. He howled...he
shrieked...he positively *screamed* with forced laughter, while his body
thrashed like a wild animal. "Kootchie, kootchie!" tormented Janet.
"Tickle toes!" and she dug into the sensitive skin under Jim's toes. "Tickle
here! Tickle there!" she teased, as she frantically scratched at one
sensitive spot, then another. "Tickle tickle tickle!!" she teased,
ruthlessly, while Jim prayed to God, to any god, to whatever god feels sorry
for people being tickled beyond human endurance, that she'd stop.
Then Jim's sense of time disappeared...he was in the Hell of Eternal Tickling.
"Jim!! JIM!!! Are you okay???" He realized that his wife was shouting at his
face while he was still being tickled senseless...no wait, he was still
laughing, but he could see her hands and neither one was tickling him.
Janet was staring straight at him, and looked scared witless. He started to
get a grip on himself, but he realized that he could still *feel* it, and he
collapsed laughing once more.
"I'm okay...oh God...HA!!!"
The look of concern partially drained away from Janet's face. "Um...I was
actually going to commute your sentence to 10 minutes of eating me, but when
I stopped you just kept on *laughing*." Her eyes got wide again, and she
tried loosening the sheet from around her husband. "Are you *sure* you're
alright?"
Jim tried to sit up and blurted out, "Ten minutes of head? How can I give
you head (*gasp*) when I can't even breathe??" and he collapsed backwards
roaring with laughter, like this was the funniest joke in the world.
"Jesus...let me get you out of this...sit up." The windings had loosened a
bit, and with a struggle (in no way helped by her husband's continuing
hysteria), she finally worked Jim's arms free and peeled the sweat-soaked
sheet away from his chest. "I've got to close the windows...you'll catch
pneumonia." While she closed them, Jim had flopped back onto the bed, and
she returned to the task of freeing him, trying to tug the sheet past his
hips.
"Ow! Watch it!" Jim opened his eyes wide, and looked coherent for the
first time. He scooted around on the bed, and wiggled his hips while he
carefully worked the sheets past an...um...obstruction.
"Oh my!" gasped Janet, eyes riveted at his crotch, "Maybe you won't have to
give me head after all!"
He glanced down. "Geez...I guess not." He looked at Janet, hungrily, and
grinned. "But this time," he paused while he backed his wife back down onto
the bed and lowered himself on top of her, "*I* get to be on top."
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.
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.
Don't read this!
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...
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.
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.
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.
Snoozer.
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
Pro studios use Soundforge?
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
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Thanks. .sig.
;-)
Nice way to kill a story - provide the entire answer in one small, compact link. You've earned your Karma with barely a
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
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
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
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
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."
s _Guide/
/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.
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_User
The M-Audio pro hardware has a lot of good cards - everything from an inexpensive 24 bit / 96 Khz DA
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.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
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.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
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
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.
What is the best food to eat to get 12+ inch turds? Stuff with lots of fiber? I think that would be the obvious choice, but i am looking for examples. thanks
Michael Loves Me!
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
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:
(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!
"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
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Quality crapflooding sir. Carry on!
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
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?
I have forgotten how to fuck. Can anyone point me to a HOWTO or a FAQ? Thanks.
Michael Loves Me!
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.
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.
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.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
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.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
I just want to say i think this is a real disgrace.
OS X has been praised for it Sound abilities and low latencies. Now we need some killer audio apps to run on it...
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.
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.
42 + 1 = 42
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
Sound quality is much better..and OS will last longer than most distro :)
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.)
Go back to your haven of c0ck-sm0king, cum gurgling and butt-fisting you ignorant fuckwad!
Please commit ritual suicide!
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
CmdTaco (oops not logged in to my account)
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.
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?
--- http://foo.ca
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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...)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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.
~ now you know
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.
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.
... Wrong.
...Sorry, not in Linux yet...
At some point, I took an interest in computer-based music production. "Great! I'm sure I can do this with Linux!"
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?
----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
Your honor is perfectly understandishable.
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.
Yes, it's sad but true that right now Linux just won't cut if for user-level professional audio systems.
... 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.
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
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.
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....
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)
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
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)
h tm l
i o. php
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.
http://developer.apple.com/audio/
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/05.aud
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.
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 has great support for Linux. Wants digital audio straight from a Linux machine?
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 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.
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!
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
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.
I hate to sound like the token-mac-geek, however this guy should probably look into OS X in about 3 to 6 months.
...all built into the system. OS also has a sick MIDI manager and the ability to share out single ports to multiple devices.
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 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.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
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...
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
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.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Mac sucks, but so do fairies....
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
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.
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.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
That's all it takes.....
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.
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
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)
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
if you are into Pro Audio and aren't using a mac i don't know if you can call yourself a professional.
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
try heading over to hitsquad.com.
:)
- peachboy
plenty of software for several os'es, including linux, windows, beos, and amiga
"I just want to thank my coach Eric a.k.a. Disco for shattering my reality..."
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.
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.
--
.sig seperator
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
that's cool for command line apps, but the mac gui isn't cross-platform.
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"?
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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.
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.
http://futur.thednb.com
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 for the compliment.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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
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.
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.
The Digital Sorceress
"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.
...good luck! Not that you can't find any, but not even considering it ignores reality.
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....
Why not BEOS??
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
And don't forget to tie the knots (clockwise) in those curtains for improved sound quality...:)
H&Ks Garf
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.....
No, seriously, I just come here for the articles.
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
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 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.
--Just the place for a snark!
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/
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.
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
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!
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.
What "standards" is BSD based on?
It intentionally ignores Single UNIX Specification and POSIX.
How do you explain that the Mac is the de-facto standard for recording studios then? That's my point.
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.
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
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.
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
razing beauty - progressive rock www.razingbeauty.com
At Boost Hardware we are well into the final stages of prototype production for our portable recording studio/DAW.
e rs _Guide/
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_Us
Designed for musicians by musicians.
You're kidding, right?
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.
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.
then GET OFF THE CRACK PIPE and go buy an apple
computer .
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.
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:
:) cannot be far behind.
...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.
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
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,
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???
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
Rediculous is not honoring his request.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like your average program development team. Don't they all get "locked away" for some long period of time?
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"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)...
Or did you just do a search for sound midi linux and earned quick karma. (In that case just ignore me).
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?
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...
**>>BELCH
also check out the official site for PureData which is
T O. html
i o- Quality-HOWTO.html
l
D EX .html
/ 02 /ladspa.html
r
l s
f ec ts-faq-10.txt
e xp lained.html
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-HOW
Linux Audio-Quality-HOWTO
http://chandra.ph1.uni-koeln.de/linux/HOWTO/Aud
linux MP3 Player Box HOWTO
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/MP3-Box-HOWTO.htm
open sound architecture
http://www.opensound.com/
linux sound-applications
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/apps/sound/!IN
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
GLAME
http://glame.sourceforge.net/audio-resources.va
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_tutoria
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-ef
http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/effects-
parasew's non-uber-geek blog
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!
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.
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"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
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.
Metaphysicist
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed"
- Cu
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?
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!