Slashdot Mirror
Turn-Key Linux Audio
gmaestro writes "The Turn-Key Linux Audio project at the Eastman Computer Music Center has released it's first instant linux audio workstation package. Simply download onto your Mandrake workstation, untar and type # ./install.sh."
I'll be waiting for Turn-Key Linux DRM next :)
That's great that we have something like that for music and audio.
Now if we could only get a system like that for video, with firewire included.
(I know Demudi claims to be multimedia, but it's only mono-media -- audio/music only.)
I understand Cinelerra is great, but I'm not a programmer and I can't get it to work on Mandrake or Redhat. If Linux could create an easy to setup video workstation, I know a lot of video people (like me) would jump on it.
If only they would add decent wavetable synth support to Linux I would ditch Windows without thinking about it twice.
Alejandro Abreu -- Composer http://listen.to/Ollin
It'd be cool to have packages like this for different things. A complete graphics package with Gimp, blender, driver install, and a collection of scripts would be cool. It'd be cooler if it was a deb package.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Here's thje info off their main page and a list of everything it contains for when it gets slashdotted.. Its basically an easy install of everything they use in the labs at the school..
/snd/'whoami'). All audio applications are aliased to open ready to access the current working soundfile directory. Ideally, a separate partition is used, optimizing this disk/space for large contiguous blocks such as sound or analysis files.
.aif .wav .norm) and strip .norm extensions
.tp...Ex. "chordmapper.tp" to access templates)
.fmh (Furse-Malham Higher Order Format) ambisonic spacialization files.
Turn-Key Linux Audio is a scripted installation package for the core set of linux audio applications used at the Eastman Computer Music Center (ECMC). It contains among its many tools over a decade's-worth of powerful shell scripts, smart aliases, tutorials, documentation, shell level environment variables for multi-media linux/unix workstations, and a library of powerful templates and macros (Csound, Score11, SMS, PVC, Rt, Vspace, etc) created by composer, teacher, and ECMC director Allan Schindler.
It is therefore a kind of ECMC 'mirroring' package, inclusive of open source applications from nearly all categories of music production such as editing, mixing, recording, dsp fuctionality, Csound helpers/front-ends, real-time applications, sound utilities, and many others(1). See the explore page for a complete listing. Each individual application is the result of the dedicated hard work and imagination of developers and users whose ongoing efforts continue to expand and improve linux as an audio platform.
The entire package installs from within a fully installed linux distribution (currently Mandrake 9.0) with the execution of a single script, saving users hours of dependencies footwork and versioning troubles, ensuring a virtually transparent initiation into linux as a mutimedia platform.
Nearly all applications, including their respective dependencies, build from source code on the local system, creating maximum compatibilty and performance, and providing users with access to the packages' lowest levels, either for custom configuration, or for development. Source-code level access is one critical benefit of using linux, and providing users with code-level exposure broadens the base of informed user-contributers, leading ideally to better feature suggestions and better apps.
The Turn-Key package shares its model with other all-in-one installs for audio, such as Demudi/Agnula, and PlanetCCRMA. It is similarily directed at a broad audience of home users, but has a particular place in its heart for students and the many under-staffed/under-funded computer music studios in institutions around the world.
In fact, the Turn-Key package began as a way to provide students at ECMC with the same tools used in the studio for use on their home systems (something only linux and open-source software can make possible), but the full installation is now being made available to the larger community.
- Kevin Ernste
Alternatively, each application (with dependencies and a TKLA install script) may be download individually (see the explore page for details.
Editors *
* Audacity - a fast multi-platform editor, includes multi-track capabilities.
* DAP - Richard Kent's port of the classic SGI version.
* MiXViews - a powerful editor from Doug Scott, includes editing tools for analysis data.
* Snd - Bill Schottstaedt's wonderful everything editor.
* Sweep - a very nice, newly updated editor from Conrad Park.
* Wavesufer - one of the best editors for Linux, from Kåre Sjölander and Jonas Beskow.
Analysis/Resynthesis and DSP *
* Ceres3 - the latest, greatest incarnation of the ceres spectral editor.
* Cecilia - more than just a graphical front end to the csound engine...a rich sound manipulation environment.
* LADSPA - a plugins package, including the CMT set, and a number of others.
* Mammut - a fun and useful analysis/resythesis tool with limited features but often suprising results.
* PVC - Paul Koonce's phase vocoding tools with ECMC templates/scripts/docs.
* SMS - Xavier Serra's Linux incarnation of his Spectral Modeling Sythesis application.
* Vspace - an excellent tool for ambisonic encoding/decoding and soundscape creation.
Sythnesis/Composition *
* Csound(1) - the composition app, richly expanded with dozens of scripts and templates.
* ngen - Michael Kuehn's powerful new event preprocessor for Csound.
* PD - The venerable MAX-like tool from Max''s own author Miller Pucket.
* RTCmix - The Columbia/Princeton extension of its Cmix music composition "language".
* RTMix - Ivica Ico Bukvik's exciting performance/real-time tool.
* Score11 - Alec Binkman's very flexible Csound score preprocessor, powerful and easy to use.
o TKLA includes a library of Score11 macros, templates, and examples
Players/Recorders *
* Alsaplayer - a very nice player with some added functionality for visualization and playlisting.
* Real Player (downloaded at install time) - a widely used streaming audio app, now for Linux.
* xplay - very handy, very simple, no frills player.
Mixing *
* Ardour (2) - Paul Barton Davis' impressive hard disk recorder/mixer.
* Mix - the venerable NoTAM 9 channel mixer, with some welcome additions.
* Ecasound - a rather deep hard-disk recording and playing/routing tool from Kai Vehmanen.
* MixMagic - a GNOME mixing application with some useful features.
* Rt - Paul Lansky's scripted mixer, ported and updated for Linux by Doug Scott.
Utilities/Other *
* ALSA - An advanced audio API for Linux with support for the venerable OSS in emulation.
* JACK - the Jack audio connection kit for professional audio under Linux.
* xsox (old version)- a graphical front end for the ubiquitous audio conversion utility "sox".
* Shorten - a program for lossless compression of audio files.
* Normalize - a command line utility for batch production of normalized levels.
* RipperX - a nice GUI front end to cdparanoia for ripping CD tracks to audiofiles.
ECMC scripts, utilities, macros, templates and examples * (downloads as a complete set)
* Environment variables and program aliases for audio
o soundfiles are stored, accessed, and manipulated in a separate but simultaneous directory tree (the users "working soundfile directory"-- pwdsf). Most common unix commands have a soundfile analog (i.e., cd has cdsf, ls has lsf, cp has cpsf, pwd has pwdsf, and so on). Applications which open, output, process, or create soundfiles do so to and from this directory (default is
* Soundfile utilities
o bounce - convert stereo files to mono
o cpsf.aif - convert/copy any format to
o cpsf.wav - convert/copy any format to
o fixaiff - repair broken aiff headers
o mkcaltones - outputs -15 dB calibration tone soundfile
o pitchshift - shift in semi-tones, or multiplier
o sfcheck - check and report soundfile header information
o sfinfo - display soundfile information: format, duration, etc
o sfnorm/stripnorm - normalize soundfiles (renamed
o sfpeak - find maximum amplitude value
* Playing, listing, and searching soundfiles
o findsnd - find soundfile by character string (-p will play them as they are found)
o playsnd (p) - a command-line player (batch tool)
o lsf - list soundfiles in current working soundfile directory
o players - opens soundfiles in separate graphical players for quick mix auditioning
o playlist - plays from a text file list
* Playing, listing, searching personal soundfile library (/sflib)
o findsflib - find soundfile in library by character string (-p will play them as they are found)
o playsflib (psfl) - play file in soundfile library
o lsfl - list soundfile in sflib
o sflibinfo - find file info for file in sflib
o sflibloops - finds loop points in files with extension ".loop"
* Csound tools, extentions
o chorus - for creating chorsused Score11 files
o lsexamples (lsex)/getexample(getex) - list and get tutorial examples
o lsscore(lssc)/getscore(getsc) - list and get ECMC score examples
o lsmidifunc/getmidifunc - list and get ECMC MIDI functions
o mkkeymap - creates keymaps for Csound functions
o mkmidikeymap - generates a MIDI keymap
o mkmidisffuncs - creates function definitions for use with MIDI and Csound
o mko - m4o expand macros into an orchestra from ECMC library...see below
o mksffuncs - make function tables for soundfiles
* Csound orchestra library--m4o expandable instrument macros (type lsins and mko)
o "sampler" instruments (transposing and non): samp, sampST, tsamp, tsampST, bigsamp, bigsampST, bigtsamp, bigtsampST, samplerpxsyn, samplertxsyn
o modeled instruments: bsn, carillon, cbsn, celesta,chorbsn, chorcarillon, chorcbsn, chorcelesta, chordrums, chorfmod, chormarimba, chorplunk, chortrpt, drums, marimba, plunk
o synthesis (granular, cross, etc): gran, xsyn, gxsyn, fmod
o anaylsis/resynthesis: phavoc, resyn
o global instruments and utilities: sf1to2, sf2to1, sfpan, sf, sfs, sfvpan, rev, rev2, delay
o Allan Schindler's Eastman Csound Tutorial examples (includes orchestra and Score11 files for each tutorial example)
* Score11/Csound score examples and templates (type lsex or lssc respectively)
o templates which write corresponding score files for all above orchestra library instruments, as well as multiple examples for each
* PVC (Paul Koonce) front-ends/templates (type pvcex)
o useful templates for each Phase VoCoder program (chordmapper, plainpv, harmonizer, etc), as well as musical examples (type
* SMS (Spectral Modeling Synthesis) examples and scripts (type lssmsex)
* Vspace ambisonic templates/scripts (type vspacetp or lsvspaceex to list examples) -- available for sampling rates to 96k
o for generating ambisonic B-format, as well as 9 channel
o Can be decoded to stereo, quad, etc with ambidec
* Help and musical information
o ecmchelp (a variety of help pages and charts for music and audio...Ex. ecmchelp pitchratios displays a table of interval ratios for the diatonic system)
o man pages for most tools
o utilities display usage statements when typed without arguments
* CD burning, copying
o mkaudiocd/burnaudiocd, mkdatacd/burndatacd, blankcdrw, cpaudiocd, cpdatacd
Well, their server is getting hammered pretty good. I've watched my download speed from their site drop by more than half between the time I started (0 comments posted) and now (10 comments posted). YMMV
Simply download onto your Mandrake workstation, untar and type # ./install.sh."
Type? Doesn't sound too "turn key" to me buddy!
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
I've been waiting for a package like this for 4 years. I can't believe someone actually did it. Just one more application needs to arrive and I'll leave Windows behind forever. What is that application?
Does it really matter what my particular missing app is? Everyone that can't migrate yet has one. I suppose my point is this just goes to show that eventually all the missing apps will be there and then:
IT'S A FREE SOFTWARE WORLD BABY!
Mostly mirrored page at:
t urnkey/
:)
http://209.152.2.3/lulu.esm.rochester.edu/kevine/
now play nice with my server
Linux has nothing to compare to Finale, Sibelius, or Score. This is the gaping hole in Linux audio software, and the reason most musicians cannot switch completely to Linux.
Lilypad, etc. are not professional quality notation tools.
WINE has trouble with non-text fonts like Maestro which Finale uses.
I don't have a # key on my keyboard, you insensitive clod! I can't find the key for my computer, either! I'm so insulted!
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Mostly because it was ready a couple of weeks ago when I was looking at Dave Phillips' page. This is where to find it. It runs on Red Hat 8 and everything seems to install well - I'm still casually working out some things here and there but Snd, Rosegarden and a few other things are working - haven't had a chance to try everything. One thing I've noticed is that other software packages I've downloaded elsewhere don't always get along with the libraries, probably because they were written with older distributions in mind.
One of the advantages is a special low latency kernel with ALSA built in. I've installed this and it's working.
I'll probably download the Turn-Key Linux Audio disc and see what I can get to work on my current installation - I downloaded and installed Red Hat 8 so I could check out Planet CCRMA, and don't really feel like switching to Mandrake.
website for a Linux Audio project gets slashdotted in the middle of the day, does it make a sound?
---
I still haven't found the "any" key.
1) What would you use to convert (english) sentences to speech samples (in real time, if possible perfomance-wise). ..and to stream combinations of these samples with a modified pitch per sample to the client.
2) What to use to alter the pitch of the samples in "real-time".
3) merget these samples together with a base beat/rythm (basic jazz, techno, whatever)
4)
Talking about a set of command-line tools or a easy to use API.
This is great and all, but does it come with drivers that will let me play my Dolby Digital (AC3) DVDs and AVI files, in full surround, using my 4 channel soundblaster live? So far, I haven't found any linux drivers that support all four separate channels on this very popular sound card.
After all, it's their board, and if they want increased market share, either write their own drivers, or include subcomponents that have decent driver support.
Mind you, we bought a couple of cheapie boxes last month, you know the kind, all sorts of integrated shit, and ... surprise ... all the stuff works OK under linux. Mind you, we put in GeForce video cards, so it's not a fair comparison (and we took the video out of one box after anyway - I just telnet into it as needed).
The only solution I see is to ask the sales staff if the board works ok under linux, and, after they tell you "yes", if it doesn't, return it. If they say "I don't know." - offer to test it for them, in-store (did that once - it was fun watching the store staff going - wow! that's linux? I thought it couldn't run Windows programs! Then I had to explain that Gnome, KDE, et al aren't Windows).
I know that the large frothing masses LIKE to worry about libraries and dependancy, but there are also a lot of us who like ease of use. With bandwidth and high capacity media so cheap these days, I believe most if not all programs should be self contained non-dependant entities. Just like Office for Mac's, one folder drag it over and run. Or even better, the Phoenix browser... fully self contained AND small. I think this is the future of software, and Linux should really jump on this if it wants to be a player in the desktop market. (not trolling, just looking for some discussion)
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
Brought me back to the good ole days of DRSBAITSO from my 8-bit soundblaster card.
IBM has a suite of programs called ViaVoice that allow you to do text to speech or vice versa. It has a full API and is fully programmable. You can emulate an adult male or female voice, and you can also do children's voices. It works remarkably well. Unfortunately, it's not on the IBM site anymore, but you can still get it here . I'm not sure how long it'll stay there, so I'd get it now... It allows you to set the spacing or cadence of the speech, but it has no facility to merge with a base beat. I suppose you could do that by saving a .wav and bringing it into your audio editor. For general TTS, you may just want to check out festival. I've never tried it, but I've heard good things.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
Not everybody markets to the same market. The only ways to increase market share are:
- Price
- Features
- Promotion
- FUD
If you are a board manufacturer, and you can move an extra 100,000 units by making sure that your components are linux-compatible without increasing your cost, you're going to do it.It's nice to walk into a store and see motherboards that list linux as a supported OS. This wasn't the case 5 years ago. Watch what happens in the next 5 years.
Besides, 95% of the planet doesn't use Windows. 90% of the planet don't own a computer - and they are the prime breeding ground for linux. As for what you might have meant - "95% of computers run Windows" - that's never been true either.
I think sometime in the future chipset manufacturers - not motherboard manufacturers - are going to produce decent drivers.
Does it try to download stuff from that server? This is important because I'm sort of the netadmin (more like network liaison) for the subnet the server is on and the Slashdot Effect has wiped out the whole subnet. We're going to have to talk to them if the package pulls stuff from their server.
BTW, I'm not sure what their server's hardware is but from loooking at it, I'd guess no better than a Pentium MMX.
People do pay for quality audio drivers. They are the turnkey drivers from 4-Front. They work with most any card (autodetencts) and uses a simple install program. Aside from that, they have loads of other cool features like real-time mixing (works like DirectSound). Many people that I suggest them to online, however, won't buy them because "they have a problem with paying for sound drivers". I use them, and they are well worth the $25-$30 to get those features that you commonly only see in Windows. I even have more advanced recording capabilities and control over each channel's playback with a simple, low cost driver upgrade.
You won't, however, get a lot of the same features out of ALSA or standard OSS drivers. There are certain NDAs that the 4-Front guys probably had to sign to write their closed-source drivers.
Check out a demo at www.opensound.com if you are interested.
Totally. The whole subnet is thrashed, its 10Mbit uplink is maxed out The whole package is 116MB, I'm thinking someone is going to get a pound^H^H^H^H^H talking to.
* MIDI workstation: logic audio | cubase | or even (puke) cakewalk
:)
I've heard that MusE and Rosegarden are pretty decent, though I haven't really used either.
* Powerful trackers: buzz | FT2 | IT
Have you tried SoundTracker? I don't know much about tracking so I wasn't able to evaluate how good it is.
* Advanced outboard softsynths: reaktor | absynth | Q1 | grainlab
What about Spiral Synth Modular?
* Powerful sample editing tools: cool edit/96/pro | soundforge
I think Audacity is pretty capable. There's also WaveSurfer, and Sweep.
Btw, I'd be glad to be wrong, if someone would only point out the links to *stable* and *feature-filled* tools.
I see I've been conned into doing your homework for you.
can we agree on 2 years behind in many areas, 1 year in quite a few, and 1 year ahead in some?
ardour already has the infrastructure in place for everything you can imagine with audio, and will support BWF by the end of the day (OMF right now is a proprietary standard). it doesn't do MIDI and won't till v2.0, but its audio capabilities are at least as sophisticated as any of the DAW apps that you mention. no, its not a replacement yet, but it will be and pretty soon too.
LADSPA actually has more plugins available at this point than TDM, let alone HTDM, and more than MAS as well. The problem, if there is one, is that most of these are relatively simple plugins because the primary author (steve harris) tends to focus on building blocks rather than finished FX unit replacements.
In the synthesis arena, Linux lacks only for graphically driven tools - stuff like Csound, as complex as it is, is a lot more capable than Reaktor, for example. Even here, with tools like AMS and SpiralSynth, we are getting there.
so yes, your basic presmise is correct, but you phrase it so pessimistically that nobody would guess that we're about to catch up on windows/macos and move on to build a vastly more flexible system. in particular, one not dominated by current fads.
to be allowed to do this. Some of them literally. Hundreds of letters have been written to the OEM's offering to write top quality drivers for free. The OEM's have, for the most part, refused, even to requests from the major distros who are legitimate firms that could be contracted with and NDA's signed.
In point of fact there is a Microsoft memo that leaked that pointed out the ease of writting hardware drivers for Linux as one of the strengths that Windows couldn't compete with. In the words of the memo "Even a complete programing novice with a copy of Writing Linux Drivers could write a driver in a couple of days."
But, writing a good driver *requires* the cooperation of the maker. Writing a good driver requires *intimate* knowledge of the *internal* design of the board.
Makers of sound and video cards consider the knowledge a trade secret. They are afraid that if they tell *anyone* how their board is put together this knowledge will make it to their competitors and they will suffer in a highly competitive market that can see the market leader be out of business a couple of years later.
Some drivers for some boards can be written to the point where they work by doing some good guessing and hacking it up as best as can be. These drivers don't work *well,* but it's a really remarkable thing that they're made to work at all.
The point is it isn't the hacker's "fault" that there are no good drivers. The OEM has to write them or offer actual support to someone else. Period. There's no other way. It *all* comes down to the willingness of the OEM to have good drivers for their own equipment.
Talk to them kid. Maybe they'll listen to you. They sure ain't listening to anyone else.
KFG
I'm hoping to get up and running on MacOSX in January, and undertake the fairly major task of porting the software and revising it to the new environment. If I can do that, the resulting still-GPLed software will be more easily ported to Linux.
One of the Linux DAW projects (I forget which) once asked me to teach them about dithering and why it mattered. I can only say that if the tendency of Linux audio software to be consumer-level 16-bit stuff bugs you, I can't do anything about that directly but I will say this again- I'm always ready to drop everything and help out a Linux audio project with this stuff. I know what the professional studios and mastering houses require, in terms of resolution handling, and what kind of internal bussing and processing are required. For instance, Pro Tools suffers badly simply because all internal processing involves repeated truncation to 24 bit linear, and the 2-buss requires submixes that themselves involve more truncation. You wouldn't be able to hear any of it as just one stage (maybe sense it vaguely) but it's cumulative.
I can say that and expound about how TPDF decorrelates additional moments of distortion but I haven't got a clue how to code GTK interfaces or anything like that :) it's all a matter of what you devote time to doing, I guess. But I wanted to take a moment to say again that if anyone wishes to add dither and noise shaping to their Linux audio project, I'd love to help teach this stuff...
I'm one of the LilyPond developers, and I'm jumping in even later.
The original remark is a little ambiguous. In most cases, LilyPond's default formatting will blow Finale's out of the water: spacing, beaming and fonts are much better. However, to meet the requirements for professional music typography, you have to tweak a lot of details easily, and Lily falls short in this area. In this sense, Lily can be compared better to Sibelius, since it Sib also has nice default output, but --as I have been told-- sucks in tunability.
SCORE is a different beast altogether, it's text based, and completely layout oriented.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
well, as a font designer, I have very high standards for music fonts :), except for feta the only thing I think looks good the most Finale "Engraver" style font. (IIRC). For example, most fonts get the half-notehead wrong; that should be diamond shaped, not elliptical.
I just went to Coda's website to see if I could see some examples of Finale output in PDF or whatever, and all I could find was a bunch of things [codamusic.com] that call for "the SmartMusic Viewer plug-in", which obviously I can't use. I guess it's the same idea as Sibelius's Scorch plugin, which I can't use either. Scorch uses the same file format as Sibelius proper, I believe; any idea whether these Finale SmartMusic files are the same format as the ETF files that Lilypond can import?
Don't know about the smartmusic files (send me one, and I'll have a look), but I guess it's not ETF. For PDF, head over to CPDL or www.lightandmatter.org. Most freely available finale stuff hasn't been layouted by professional engravers, which is why they usually look sucky.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond