Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
insotracker aims for IT compatibility, and seems to be there already. Try that one.
Dave Phillip's linux audio page should cover most of linux audio software. Check it out.
Then get something like this or this.
Ben
quote from the article--"ReBorn will be released as Open Source in the near future once the code is ready. That's the deal - take it or leave it. "
He probably doesn't want to release the code having it look like shit. If this is going to build this guys rep in the community and/or help him get a job, it should look nice and pretty. If I am not mistaken I have enven read someware that a project should not be opened until the beta at earliest, and there is nothing wrong with finishing everything you want before opening yourself to an onslaught of patches.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You might like Ableton Live's interface. Clean, not gimmicks, perfectly understandable.
(sorry for the link - Ableton.com is frame-based, unfortuately)
PS. Whoever came up with the 20-second delay ought to be shot and then beaten up just to be sure.
Yeah but the problem is you're still stuck with the keyboard and mouse for real-time manipulation, regarless of what the GUI looks like. At least by looking like the original 303/808/909, it's familiar to the musician. Get an inexpensive external controller like the Keyfax Phatboy.
Thanks for pointing that out. I was going to post the same thing, I guess it's a good thing that I read the other posts first. :~) The Oxygen8 controller is quite a piece of hardware, I just got one a few weeks ago and haven't been able to put it down. It really makes programs like ReBirth, Reason, or any other program capable of MIDI control 100x easier to work with. Plus, you don't even need a MIDI cable or interface. USB is all that's needed! It's also relatively cheap (I got mine for USD$140). Essential to anyone using soft-synths!
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)
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?
I think you are confused. CUPS is a printer API, it has nothing to do with sound. In fact, there is no need for an ASIO equivalent as Linux with the kernel pre-empt and low latency patches has far lower latency normally than Windows even with ASIO. I don't know if they are sample accurate, but I know you can get extremely low audio latencies with this sort of setup.
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?
I don't understand you. Currently Linux is going through a switch of the C++ ABI. If your audio app is written in C++ then you will need to provide 2 binaries for the duration of the switchover. They do not require porting, just a recompile. The widget toolkits only break compatability every few years, and you can always use compatability libs as they can be installed side by side. Moonlight for instance uses its own version of Qt 2.2. X has been backwards compatible for over 10 years. They can do what all the other Linux companies do, and write their software to be distro neutral. It's not hard, the biggest challenge is the installer.
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.
NVidia manage it. There are even drivers now for WinModems (which use proprietary drivers). It's more work to support all kernel versions, and I agree that Linus should stop breaking compatability, however it is perfectly possible to write drivers that will compile on any kernel version. If Echo don't release the specs, or write their own drivers then yes you are locked in to Windows. Congratulations.
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.
VST plugins are the standard because of the popularity of Cubase. This is hardly the fault of Linux - if one sequencer gets more popular than the rest then I'm sure we'll see something similar. How often the plugin API changes is entirely up to the developer: remember that APIs change more frequently on Linux because most stuff is open source, so changing the API to get a better system is less painful than on a closed source system.
You're right, there's nothing quite like cool edit for linux audio.
gnusound is OK, however, not so many features, but it works for simple recording. Up to 32 tracks limit now..