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.

Comments

Jmax? PD? They're not on the list why?

[metalhed77]

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.

You can get JMAX here:
http://www.ircam.fr/equipes/temps-reel/jmax /en/ind ex.php3

PD Here:
http://crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html

Simulating a bass: Rezfilter or Karplus-Strong

[yerricde]

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.