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Reborn 1.0 And The State of Linux Audio
Eugenia writes "This is great news for the Linux audio users! Reborn, a clone of the legendary ReBirth, has just been released. It provides software emulation for three of Roland Corporation's most famous electronic musical instruments. Also thrown in are four audio effects, individual mixers, a programmable sequencer and is fully compatible with the ReBirth .rbs song file format. To celebrate this release, OSNews runs an article presenting the most advanced professional, or semi-professional audio applications available today for the Linux platform." Most of the article consists of a list of audio software that can currently run on GNU/Linux systems. It's a pretty good list, but things like Cubase aren't there yet.
I used it the other day, and the sound quality is exceptional! I highly reccomend this product.
Can't you slashdot mods ban this fucks ip pool or something?? And anything owned by AOL?
d. Taylor Singletary, reality technician
experimental musician
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
they say it will be open source "when its ready", which may be never.
Hmm, my brother uses IT on DOS, and he says that if I'll get him a program that does the same as IT, for Linux, he'll switch to Linux and never look back. Anyone care to help me recruit another zealot ? Thanks!
quit whining. you think msnbc is a good news for nerds site? that is a good lemme tell you what i want you to think site. notice the ms at the beginning... take a wild guess at what that stands for... oh... and by the way, i think that the audio is a great idea... once there is nothing that other operating systems have that open source systems dont, there will be no excuse for using them. i still want a good photo editing studio for linux... maybe i am just not looking hard enough...
JMAX and PD (pure data), which are probably the most professional audio solutions for linux are not on the list, I wonder why. They are simply linux ports of previously mac software. Both of these are damn good rivalry to MAX.
x /en/ind ex.php3
You can get JMAX here:
http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/temps-reel/jma
PD Here:
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html
Photos.
MS for honest news sounds a lot like army intelligence.
...but does this Eugenia tart actually contribute to making Linux apps, or does she just sit around on her fat arse whinging?
(Note: Faffing around with Photoshop to make gtk look prettier, does NOT count)
Since Cubase was mentioned, I really doubt that Steinberg will ever shift in the direction of open source OS's in regards to their marquee products (Cubase, Nuendo, Wavelab, etc.) simply because they are moving towards a hardware based solution in the future, following Digidesign.
Sad, but true.
I can finally play 'baby elephant walk' on my linux box with a samba beat in the background.
oh joy...
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
i asked a friend who works for Native Instruments, one of the most important producers for music software, why they don't release their stuff for linux. To my surprise he replied that their code is so shit and hacky that they don't have
the ressources to do the port!
The problem with ReBirth, and with any clone thereof, is that the user gains nothing from a flashy raster imitation of a 303's physical interface (or that of any real gear), while losing a great deal of usability.
A physical knob isn't so bad out here in the physical world, but you're manipulating it with your fingers. A mouse pointer is not a pair of fingers. I've played with ReBirth, and while there's some great functionality in there, it's just hell trying to get at it through all those tiny, poorly-labeled knobs. That interface makes sense on a plastic box. It's got real drawbacks, but it is what it is because of simple necessity. It's the best you can do with a thing made out of plastic. Okay, that's fine when plastic is the medium you're stuck with, but you can do considerably better if you're making your interface out of zeroes and ones instead.
By all means, let us duplicate the functionality of analog gear in software. That's a noble undertaking. But let's not fuck up the GUI with gratuitously flashy nonsense at the expense of clarity and usability. It's a gimmick. The Microsoft Paper Clip is a gimmick.
If your software is actually meant to be used, gimmicks are bad.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
This was at +1, Funny. Which it is.
Who the fuck is being such a wet towel they are modding down funny stuff. YOU NEED TO GET A FUCKIN LIFE. POST SOME COMMENTS.
Seeing that these days the only I time I am rebooting into Windows is to run Cubase and various other music apps this is good news. I have been desperately trying to bring my music production over to Linux, in fact I'm picking up my copy of "The Csound Book" today. Over the years I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to run many of the freely available sequencers (Jazz), software synths, etc. Although I have never been a huge fan of ReBirth I have a friend who uses it and sends me ReBirth files once in a while. It will be interesting to see how they function in ReBorn.
Even with the release of this excellent package, there's still a big hole waiting to be filled in the Linux audio community. Wave editing/mixing software is highly lacking. I have yet to find a decent wave editor with an integrated multitrack mixer. Can you say Cool Edit?
The samples are low-quality mp3s. How LAME. Vorbis kicks ass down there.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
So you advocate censorship also, shame on you. You should be censored, with a 2X4 jammed down your throat.
Nice to see... No, Nice to hear that Linux audio is finally coming of age. Maybe now I can finally hear what people are saying on a DVD movie.
On the other hand, thanks to crappy Linux sound, millions of people have learned to read lips and find out what people are really saying about them. Now they can hear the disses in surround sound - in addition to seeing the middle finger!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I skimmed through this wild-eyed gibberish and I have to say I'm bitterly disappointed that Taco is still relying on moderation alone. It's clear to any rational being that meaningless, infantile, ankle-biting posts like yours should simply be deleted. When censorship serves to weed defectives out of the gene pool (poetically speaking), it can only be a Good Thing.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
A 1x2 goes further down, and can then be twisted.
until a programs like Reason or Cooledit is released.
Of course before there is a market demand for such apps, no serious audio programmer will bother.
This is not something that a couple geeks can fix, this is pure economics.
ReBorn comes only as a Intel binary - so much for running it on BSDs or PowerBooks. Too bad, I'd love to see that ported to BeOS or MacOS X.
Let's hope that when it goes open source someone will do VSTi and DXi versions of it so that it can get the recognition it deserves.
As it stands it will be used by exactly ZERO musicians.
!
Reborn, a clone of the legendary ReBirth
So it's a clone of a clone of a box that was originally built to simulate a bass guitar?
What happens when we get linux clones of the Windows port of this program? Oooh, my head....
And then somebody will build this into a hardware box, with a little TFT on the front and a few rotary encoders....
and then somebody will program a software simulation of THAT box....
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
Why not Reason? (http://www.propellerheads.se). Its simply the greatest morph between "cubase-type" programs and "Rebirth type" programs. That surely would make _me_ turn from Windows without looking back.
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
As a matter of fact yes I do advocate censorship. I believe that every citizen of earth should be givin an IQ test at birth. Those that fail are extinguished. Most of the population has no idea what it's like to be twice as smart the rest of the people around you. The ones who do know are ostracized or are forced to dumb themselves to your levels. A person with an IQ 40 points less than median is said to have half the intelligence of said median. A person with an increase the same size can be said to be twice as intelligent. Imagine spending your whole life living in an insane asylum. Welcome to my world.
As for the post. How can YOU advocate non-censorship on people saying things ONLY for the reason of demaning/hurting others. In the United States you have the freedom to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT INFRINGE UPON THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS IN DOING SO. If the mods just banned the ips of every person who trolled like HE WAS DOING (IE, PAGES AND PAGES OF NON TOPIC SHIT) then we wouldn't have to even have this forum thread in the first place.
And I hope the slashdotters leave the poor site alone, it's tumbling to my machine at 175 bytes per second and I CAN't WAIT!!!
You probably think the National Socialists of WW2 fame deserve freedom of speech as well. If you don't know what a National Socialist is you really are just a tool of the establishment.
I'm not a musician so I'm not familiar with all the hardware tools. I've been looking at Windows and Linux audio software to get started with. Programs on both platforms are complex, but the user interfaces on the shareware/demoware Windows programs are vastly more polished and visually appealing that the UIs on the open source programs.
The Windows programs are at least accesible to the beginner musician, while the Linux programs are only an option for an experienced musician. The problem is, most experienced musicians probably already have a substantial investment in Windows software that the Linux software can't match.
It comes back to the old observation that the open source community has lots of good programmers, but few people who have the talent and time to design an efficient and attractive GUI. (That's not to say there aren't any, just that there aren't nearly enough.)
The program I've been playing with most (since I'm not able to tackle the serious music creation programs yet) is CoolEdit Pro. It's amazing how much functionality has been packed into such an attractive, efficient, and most importantly easy to use interface. There are Linux apps with some of the same functionality, but the GUIs are years behind and may never catch up.
I can't see Jazz listed...
There's going to be a lot of work to catch up with software such as Cubase SX or Reaktor...
Especially I saw no standard for plug-ins, like VST, for example (which already is multiplatform so could probably be ported to Linux, after all it's just API specs). I didn't see any software that gives audio and midi multitrack integration either.
Another huge problem is going to be the drivers for the many professional audio cards (none of them has drivers for Linux, as far as I know)
One of the big selling points of Nuendo during a demo for version... 1.5.2(?) was its lack of attachment to specific hardware; a P4, gobs of RAM, and a fairly fast bus (oh, and a decent pro-level sound card:) were all that were necessary to use a lot of the program's better functions. It's the software we used on The Project That Won't Die (long story). I was seriously considering building a P4-based box specifically for Nuendo - $2500 for the box, $2000-soemthing for the software, I'd be set.
The thought of ProTools-type prices for software-hardware bundles makes my head hurt.
WTF planet are you on ?!
I *only* want ONE, so long as it works!
To reduce the server load for those guys, the tar.gz is als available here: reborn-i386-1_0.tar.gz Tom
GIMP?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
silly moderator....
Why is it that some Linux apps have to copy their Windows counterparts so closely? someone is going to get into trouble one of these days.
Cloning an app and making it look almost identical (even being able to load their file format) is a bit dodgy to say the least.
In this case I don't think they need to worry too much since ReBirth rips off the TB303 and other Roland gear (Reason didn't, they implemented their own synth ideas).
Can someone link to screenshots please ??
SF offers a 'free' ver of acid that will do 8 tracks (don't forget Protools Free, which also gives you 8 tracks (or 32 if you know where to look) Sadly, SF doesn't port to mac or linux, and Be died before they got to far with that port.
Acid is a multitracking loop-based recorder that also supports video. It has come a long way since ver 1, in ease of use and power. If there were linux or beos versions of Acid and Sound Forge, I would make the switch.
Don't respond with, "If you want it, code it up, you lazy bitch!"
Im a musician, not a programmer. I don't ask programmers to write a chorus, so don't ask me to write a program.
freebirth (http://www.bitmechanic.com/projects/freebirth/) was co-written by a coder/musician. pretty sweet, does some things that rebirth can't. You can hear it in use if you listen to Gold Chains: (http://www.epitonic.com/artists/goldchains.html). He's that co-author guy. Anyway, check freebirth out. F'in sweet.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
This thing is a TB 303, TR808 and 909 emulator, a dance music only instrument.
There are -IMO- much more interesting music projects on Linux that deserve some space on Slashdot, like the SpiralsynthModular analog synthesizer, the Ardour mutitrack hard disk recording system, or the Brahms MIDI sequencer.
A long list of projects can be found on LinuxSound.
Does anyone know of any mirrors where i can grab a copy? I'd love to have a tracker program under Linux!
So it's a clone of a clone of a box that was originally built to simulate a bass guitar?
The TB303 simulated a bass guitar by sweeping a resonant filter over a sawtooth wave.
Since then, better guitar synthesis methods have come to light, specifically the Karplus-Strong plucked string modeling algorithm. To implement KS, feed a click into a delay line for each string that's plucked. Set the length of the delay line proportional to the length of the string, determined by finger position. Then filter the output of the delay line (make sure to use a FIR filter so that you won't get too much harmonic distortion from phase shift nonlinearity), send it to the amp, and feed it back into the delay line.
If you have Cool Edit or a similar audio editor, you can do this with the "Echo" delay effect. Generate a short burst of noise. Then pull up Echo and set the echo period to 1000 divided by the frequency in Hz of the note, the echo feedback to between 95% and 99.5%, and the filters to all maximum except the highest frequency one. Tweak the Echo parameters until you have a sample you like, then paste it into your tracker.
Why wasn't KS used in the 303? Analog synthesizer parts were much cheaper at the time than the 16 KB or so of memory KS takes.
So why is 303 style synthesis still used? Easy. Changing the filter's center frequency while playing a repeating bass pattern gives the stereotypical "acid house" bass effect. That's what Rebirth and clones are for.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Most of the article consists of a list of audio software that can currently run on GNU/Linux systems. It's a pretty good list, but things like Cubase aren't there yet.
Yeah, it really is too bad that there isn't anything like Cubase for Linux. I miss getting that instant blue screen of death every time I tried to record from SPDIF-in during the wrong phase of the moon. Or the fact that it would crash and you'd lose all of your work if you gave it a wav file that was mistakenly named ".aif". And its anti-piracy authentication method which forced me to find the original disk every time it got confused - wow, that brings back memories.
We need Cubase for Linux about as badly as we need a native port of SirCam.
I was 100% M$ free for the last year and a half, then I got back into music production. My former linux workstation is now a Windows XP Pro machine, and most likely I'll be moving to a Mac within the next year for additional stability. Why?
Linux does not have what we need for pro audio.
1) NO GOOD SOUND API's. Cups is moving in the right direction, but nothing matches ASIO on windows or mac for sample-accurate synchronization across multiple input and output devices. If I wanted to, could use a SBLive, Echo Mia, and RME Hammerfall all at the same time, and have every one synced down to the sample. Software programs have the ability to set parameters like buffer sizes, sample rates, etc with no hassle.
2) Inconsistent platform. We do not have a uniform development platform. Each distro ships a different version of GCC with its own inconsistencies, different GLIBC, same issue, and so on down to GTK or QT, XFree86, etc. With a product like Cubase taking at least 6 months to port, no doubt the platform will keep changing underneath them. What solution would they have other than supporting ONE distro only or shipping their own?
3) Lack of hardware support. Yes, vendors like my personal favorite, Echo, aren't releasing enough specs to the community for a free driver. But on the other hand, the community isn't providing them a stable platform to develop on, see #2.
4) Lack of unchanging commercial plugin standards. VST works. The API doesn't have a million tiny revisions, and any VST plugin works great on anything from Logic to Fruity Loops to the latest Cubase SX. The API was published WHEN IT WAS FINISHED, and NOT CHANGED.
now that apple has purchased germany's emagic, the makers of the logic series of midi / audio sequencers - i'm sure we'll see an OSX port of LA platinum - their flagship product in the not-too-distant future. Originally an Atari program, Logic found a home on Macs and had an arguably decent port to windows. With the apple buyout the windows version is history (this fall). Who knows, maybe some enterprising coder will be able to port the BSD/Power PC version to a workable Intel/Linux version?
I agree with all those users who think cubase is a dog with fleas....sonic foundry on the other hand -- pretty much rules.
Go read some bible: nubible.com
With Reason and Fruityloops, or clones of these programs, linux will be on its way as a musicians choice OS.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I totally agree with you about this, but many people are loath to use more difficult tools and actually prefer pseudo-hardware GUIs because they can comprehend it more easily.
If you are a developer willing to develop audio software on Linux please subscribe to
www.linuxaudiodev.org mailinglist so you can keep in touch with all other linux audio developers
I hope that they got permission from roland to mimmick their hardware, I know someone who wrote a 909 emulator once and was forced to remove it because he did not have permission from roland to copy their design.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Rebirth/Reborn is for the very lowest end of electronic music creation. How about a Linux version of Max/MSP? Cycling '74 is supposedly releasing the Windows version in October, but they've said a Linux version is simply unlikely.
Max/MSP is the kind of stuff that geeks really get into, it's basically a programming language for sound... somebody make a Linux clone of this!
sig.
None of my ISA sound cards work in Linux. When they do work in Windows 98, however, the results can be poor if the manufacturers drivers are not used. I got ahold of an old Packard Bell, couldn't boot it due to an expired Dallas clock-chip, but the sound card is very nice in another box, using the Packard Bell sound installation. This is windows 3.1 stuff. Redhat or Mandrake won't touch it.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
How difficult would it be to build an embedded version of this by making a box using off the shelf components? With embedded linux and reborn under the hood?
...
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Although this is a cool program (esp since I'm into electronic music creation), we should not be getting so excited about this software. It seems that the OSS Modus Operandi is copied software ideas from many years ago. Why not post an article about something NEW from the OSS community?
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips