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Linux Audio Developers Conference

Posted by michael on from the ear-candy dept.

paulbd writes "This weekend sees the first Linux audio developers conference at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. Gathering together many members of the Linux Audio Developers mailing list and others, the conference will feature 2 days of in-depth technical presentations and demonstrations of many cutting edge Linux audio and MIDI applications." Desktoplinux.com has a related story about using Linux in a professional recording studio.

26 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. LADC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think they should be renamed "Linux Audio Realtime Developers And Sound Symposium".

  2. could be big by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sound support is one area where Linux has consistly trailed more important Operatin Systems such as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS. Where those systems have had Professional quality support for Professional quality hardware that works well, Linux has been stuck in the background.

    Perhaps this Conference can identify and deal with such issues as:

    1. High Latency when performing other tasks such as opening windows or moving windows around. This leads to stutters in Audio and MP3 Playback.

    2. Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware. Realistically, although most people use SB AWE64 and SB Live! sound cards, most Professionals use newer cards and many new computers have other cards. Linux is not compatible with hardware that is newer, cheaper or more expensive.

    3. Poor feature support for Linux, because it is good support for features such as 3D Sound and MIDI Music playback.

    4. Best Stability on Linux audio drivers. Other Operating Systems have drivers that crash less for Audio Hardware. Linux is a very much more stable Operating System in most respects, but the lack of stability in audio drivers is Irritating.

    If these issues can be addressed then Linux could be a top quality audio platform!

    1. Re:could be big by cxreg · · Score: 3, Informative

      1. High Latency when performing other tasks such as opening windows or moving windows around. This leads to stutters in Audio and MP3 Playback.

      This is definitely being fixed in Linux 2.6. Between the new O(1) scheduler and the recent patches for interactivity, this SHOULD go away completely.

      --

      God Fucking Damnit
    2. Re:could be big by oliverthered · · Score: 4, Informative

      High Latency.....
      pop along to kernel.org and get a 2.5 kernel. Oh, and make sure your graphics card is accelerated.

      'Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware', wait till Mac becomes #3, also I think it's easier to write drivers for 2.5/6.

      'Poor feature support for Linux', go get alsa (or 2.5 since it has alsa in the kernel tree).

      'Best Stability on Linux audio drivers', now this is where you can help, since you want 1 2 and 3 why not goto kernel.org, get a 2.5 kernel, do some testing and report the bugs in the kernel bugzilla.

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    3. Re:could be big by Surak · · Score: 3, Informative

      1. High Latency when performing other tasks such as opening windows or moving windows around. This leads to stutters in Audio and MP3 Playback.

      I don't have any problem with this on my Athlon XP 1800+ running Gentoo Linux. Although I did have some problems with these on my old Mandrake 8.1-based AMD K6/2 400, the problems were *more* pronounced in Windows 98 and Windows 2000 on the same hardware than they were in Mandrake.

      Now I'm not sure whether the lack of these problems is due to Gentoo's high-level of optimization or my faster processor, but I suspect it's some combination of the two.

      I paid less than $600 for the components to build the Athlon box last year.

      Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware. Realistically, although most people use SB AWE64 and SB Live! sound cards, most Professionals use newer cards and many new computers have other cards. Linux is not compatible with hardware that is newer, cheaper or more expensive.

      I don't know about higher-end hardware than the SB AWE64 and SB Live! cards, but you say that Linux doesn't work with hardware that's cheaper. I say sure it is. The aforementioned Athlon has integrated SiS 7018-based sound hardware that works absolutely fine and has 100% functionality with ALSA.

      Best Stability on Linux audio drivers. Other Operating Systems have drivers that crash less for Audio Hardware. Linux is a very much more stable Operating System in most respects, but the lack of stability in audio drivers is Irritating

      I've never had any audio driver crash on Linux, but then again I've only used 3 different drivers so what do I know? ;)

      --
      My journal has hot /. gossip.
    4. Re:could be big by Otter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The biggest problem for desktop users, IMHO:

      Conflicts between sound servers. Under Windows and MacOS, I have no idea what the counterparts to Arts, OSS and ESD are, no idea whether there's a single one or if different servers can easily be run concurrently. And there's no reason why I should have to have any idea.

      It's absurd that there should be work involved if I want to play MP3's or streams with xmms AND CD's with the KDE player.

      No doubt someone is going to tell me that if I don't know the fine points of sound servers, I don't deserve to have sound on my computer. Let me save you same time and preemptively reject that notion.

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    5. Re:could be big by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      This is a conference for professional audio on Linux, and most of your points are from a amateur/consumer viewpoint.

      You have to invest both in skills (ability to set up the computer and apply patches) and in hardware (RME/Hammerfall or M-audio are well supported) to use Linux for pro audio.

      1 High latency.

      Use a kernel with Low-latency patches, and a low latency sound server like jackd. Do not use a journalling file system on your audio drives.

      2 Poor compatability.

      See the ALSA page for supported hardware.

      3 Feature support.

      3D sound and simple soundcard MIDI music playback are not much use in a studio.

      4 Best Stability.

      Audio drivers rarely if ever crash, you may be thinking of sound servers such as ARTS, or indeed a program like xmms.

      I think that if Linux makes an impression in the pro-audio recording world, it will initially be as a replacement for dedicated systems like the Mackie HDR 24/94, Fostex MX-2424. These are the workhorses of studios, required to do a straightforward job, but with very high reliability.

    6. Re:could be big by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Informative
      On Windows, I believe DirectSound does software mixing in the kernel.... the Linux guys don't want all that kind of crud in the kernel and for good reason. So we need to mix in userland.

      Last time I checked up on this (a few weeks ago) there was a big discussion going on kde-multimedia about this very issue. KDE is really the key point here, as now GNOME is moving to GStreamer they are basically isolated from what sound server is used.

      The main sticking points seemed to be: JACK is cool for pro audio, but doesn't have network transparency and is Linux only. aRts just blows goats, and needs to be phased out. MAS == Unknown?? GStreamer is being blocked by a few developers who aren't happy with GObject. Then there's this thing called CSL which is supposed to wrap the whole mess up into YAAA (yet another audio api).

      Basically, the situation is highly confused, and I don't know if we'll get anything good out of it :(

      Oh, and just to make things even more fun, it seems that at some point ALSA may get the ability to route its audio via JACK, so apps that are unaware of the sound server in use could end up being mixed by JACK.

      Personally I'd favour JACK (or Jack) here, because firstly it's been designed by the linux audio community for low latency etc, so clearly real audio apps will be using it. Having to switch sound servers because you want to fire up a sample editor is stupid. Secondly, it's light and small enough to be accepted by most people, ie it's not a CORBA driven multimedia framework.

      The main problem seems to be lack of network transparency, which isn't really of great concern to most users at this time and could be added to Jack anyway.....

  3. You forgot one by i0wnzj005uck4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Audacity is pretty good, and for linux too. Can't believe it missed the cut.

    --
    - Cloud
  4. Sonic Foundary niche by molarmass192 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know for a few migrations I've been asked about, the show stopper has been lack of tools like those provided by Sonic Foundary and other music maker tools. Vegas and Fruity Loops are the two that have lost me converts in the past and neither work in WINE. I'm not a music man so I didn't have anything to counterpoint with but this is one area where Linux apps (not the OS) need to play catch up since Win and Mac apparently have many good music composition apps available for them.

    --

    Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  5. Linux audio is still shakey to me by GMFTatsujin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I recently installed Gentoo Linux with modest optimizations for my processor (athlon-tbird 1GHz at -O2), expecting some pretty snappy response. Every app and driver was compiled from source with compatabilities built in for ALSA and OSS. I though it would be better than pre-compiled binaries.

    I've been quite disappointed. Maybe I layered in too much.

    Noatun plays MP3s with only modest smoothness. mpg123 suffers similar problems. Skips are common when switching or redrawing windows. Real users stick to command lines, I guess. :)

    I haven't tried recording from a live source, but I'd be wary -- is that weird pause in the music because of the recording skipping, or the playback skipping? Which system do I trust?

    Anyway. Perhaps I tried stuffing in too much compatability, and instead should have picked one system over the other. But then who knows which apps would work and which wouldn't?

    Please please please -- can we have a standard layer that's easy to install?
    GMFTatsujin

  6. Finally by FullCircle · · Score: 3, Troll

    I hope they do something about the audio issues in Linux. When playing an mp3 is a frustrating, skipping nightmare on even high-end systems, something is wrong.

    Even a PentiumII 300Mhz running Windows has better audio capabilities than my P4 2.4Ghz running Linux.

    Maybe the new patches the kernel developers are comming up with will help?

    --
    If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
  7. Linux in a Pro Studio by Obiwan+Kenobi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wow. I've never read such a vague article in my life.

    Here's the synop:

    We used Windows. It crashed and got viruses. We didn't want to upgrade to XP.

    We played around with Linux. We decided on Mandrake. We went Ogg Vorbis. Life is grand.

    Nothing on the implentation, nothing on what programs/hardware they used in Windows or Linux, nothing in regards to performace of said hardware and/or ported software.

    Linux is great for them, but being too vague doesn't help small time studios understand how to use it in their shop, or how best to go about it.

    Why not get a little more in-depth, such as what utilities they used, what hardware settings needed to be tweaked (if any), and how difficult it was to train for.

    For example:

    What was the hardest part to train/learn?
    What features are you hoping Linux audio programs will add in the future?
    What advice would you give to a small, struggling studio in regards to using Linux in a studio?
    Do you know of any other studios who have utilized Linux?
    The list goes on.

  8. If you want to mix Mp3's in realtime by oliverthered · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try gdam, I havn't seen it in any distros yet.

    GDAM is a digital dj mixing software package. It aims to be a powerful, professional-quality music mixing and remixing system, suitable for live performance. It was conceived on some beautiful summer morning (in 1998), and developed with drive and enthusiasm that seemed completely unnatural. Over four years later, we have achieved many of our goals; yet, development continues. Here is a list of features:

    client-server architecture based around glib
    streaming and mixing of any number of mp3 files
    dynamic filter insertion and removal
    multiple sound device support (see the faq)
    plugin support
    cacheing / playing loops
    contiguous queueing - plays albums without gaps between songs, regardless of output buffer size
    dj turntable-style interface
    assisted beat matching
    waveform viewer / beat calculator
    sequencer
    record from any point in the stream, to disk or another process
    gtk gui's, with simple skin support
    flexible command-line interface
    gdam123 - an mpg123 clone that talks to a gdam server
    Users Guide
    hardware input support (midi and other)
    support to use LADSPA plugins
    support to create LADSPA plugins graphically
    online help

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  9. Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? by Black-Man · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If that's what you are waiting on for more drivers... good luck. Apple's purchase of EMagic shows they are serious about pro-audio dominance to continue on the Mac.

  10. Re:Hardware support by lightcycle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Linux doesn't use ASIO, it uses ALSA, which in addition to being much faster (lower latency) than ASIO also supports quite a few soundcards, both consumer and professional grade.

    Here is a pdf with latency tests

    I think the sound managment in linux has improved quite dramatically in the past few years, and there are right now _a lot_ of projects which will make linux a reasonable choice for professional audio authouring, such as ardour, jack, alsa, etc. (look at links in the story)

    I don't know what the current status on VST plugins in linux is, but there's still ladspa, which seems to be a very competent architecture. Steinberg's hesitation in this area might very well prove to be a mistake, costing them influence in a growing market.

    I'm right now in the process of trying linux out for a synthpop project I'm working on, using ardour, and various softsynths and sequencers. If some interesting experience comes out of it, I'll make it known.

    --

    The stars that shine and the stars that shrink
    in the face of stagnation the water runs before your eyes
  11. Professional sound? What about desktop sound? by jagripino · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most comments here are discussing the lack of quality professional sound apps for Linux.

    Well fuck that. I just want to be able to listen to my MP3s and still be able to know when I get an e-mail or IM like I did when I was in Win2k.

    OK, I CAN do that right now, using ESD, but it's a kludge that I'd like to see going away.

    I'm looking forward to see the kind of sound quality we'll have at kernel level on 2.6.

    Yes, I'm a happy user of a desktop Linux, after years using it on servers. But boy did I have lots of trouble trying to get the same desktop experience I had with Win2k...

  12. Advanced sound applications? by NineNine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'd be happy with ANY sound! You gotta walk before you can run, and in my experience, Linux is still in the pre-walk stage when it comes to sound. How about something that, when I install a Linux distro, makes whatever sound card I have actually work without having to play around with wierd downloads, configuring text files, etc.? I know that's a bit advanced for 2003, and maybe I'm asking for too much, but it's something that I'd really like to see.

  13. Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? by clifyt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Great -- I love when I preview something and it comes out formatted differently than in my original statement :-(

    No only the purchase of Emagic, but the development of CoreAudio and CoreMidi at the kernal levels augmented by a simple to develop for interface in the form of AudioUnits, means Apple's OS is more than ready for pro-audio dominance.

    Hell I was bitching about this over on my forum just today --

    Sonikmatter Emagic Forums

    I love Linux and I run a box in my own studio, but it won't be running ANY audio applications for a LONG time. Right now, its a file server to pass info between Studio A and B (ok, Studio B just happens to be my bedroom -- but since I remodeled my bathroom and put in marble flooring in there, its been a perfect vocal or acoustic guitar booth for mixing without synth effects :-)

    Linux has a ways to go before anyone is using any of these applications from a standard musicians perspective. I know a lot of geeks that can grok this stuff, but not standard musicians. That and my time ain't worthless...I'd rather spend 3 minutes doing something on my Mac or PC and get the job done efficiently than to waste an hour getting something configured to do what it is supposed to do and loose all musicial motivation (if you are simply a music TECH then this doesn't really matter, now does it).

    Clif Marsiglio
    Sonikmatter.com

  14. Mandrake audio workstation by G�tz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's a recent project that tries to integrate all the best audio software into Mandrake Linux 9.1, including a patched multimedia kernel for the low latency, the ardour sequencer and other stuff.
    It's all explained in this howto.

  15. IMPORTANT:Little known Latency / Scheduler info !! by MarkWPiper · · Score: 5, Informative
    I am also a gentoo user.

    Here are some things to consider:

    1) Did you compile low latency support with sysctl support? In that case you have to turn on lowlatency mode on your own , a little known and not widely documented feature!

    2) I actually had worse performance, w/ the 2.4 tree, when both low latency, and the O(1) scheduler were enabled, and am now using just low latency. In 2.5, AFAIK, they play much better, and it's sensible to enable both.

    4) Are you using OSS, or alsa?

    3) Gentoo now includes a safe hdparm script (I think it's installed by default, at least on ~x86), which works great. Check for it in /etc/init.d

    4) Be wary of the difference between march and mcpu optimizations! The choice makes a big difference!

  16. Re:Where is the stream ? by theno23 · · Score: 4, Informative

    - The live audio stream to be broadcast on Friday and Thursday (probably
    between ~ 2 P.M. and 9 P.M. on both days) is available at these LiveIce
    servers:

    x http://plugin.org.uk:2300/liveice (currently set to max. 50 clients)
    x http://politik.uni-duisburg.de:2300/liveice (max. 20 clients)

    As posted to the linux-audio-developers mailing list.

  17. Mostly usable by eGabriel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I used to just use linux for sequencing and mixing down to digital, but now I have been playing with Ardour, JACK, LADSPA, and it's a whole new ball game. I can't wait to try the latest RoseGarden; it looks like it has come a long way. With JACK I can use my Delta 1010 sound card, and it sounds like a million bucks, and has fair support, including a mixer control panel very like the one it has under windows. I haven't tried recording under Windows since 3.1, but the software is all very expensive. I love software like Vision, but it's just not worth it to me anymore.

    I tried Be, which was supposed to be low-latency this and multimedia that, but nothing I recorded with it ever turned out very well. At the time, one couldn't even purchase a decent sequencing or multitrack recording app, even if you had the money.

    Lots of work has been done in the Linux kernel to address latency. It still is jerky sometimes, but a multi-processor system might help address that.

  18. Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? by clifyt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bull Fucking Shit.

    You don't know what you are talking about. Thats as plain stated as I can make this.

    The Mac is designed for folks that don't have the time or desire to deal with computers as anything but the tools they are -- they get their work done and get on with life.

    Linux is designed for computer enthusiasists that want to know intimate details about their computer -- which you really have no choice under most of the popular distributions to do otherwise.

    Linux is NEVER going to hit the #2 spot among those that need a professionally design GUI and consistancy and ease of use. Apple on the other hand is taking great steps to make certain they ARE the top of the list for usability by folks that need this purpose.

    Past that, whats the entire purpose of OSS? Software that doesn't suck. The Mac can run with some modifications a good deal of the software that doesn't suck from the Linux / BSD worlds. In such, they are taking over a good portion of mind share from those that would have otherwise used a pure unix workstation. The leaders of /. profess to enjoy their Macs quite often and vocally.

    What does Linux have going for it? Its a GREAT server environment. Its not 'enterprise' software by the definition of a lot of tech managers, but IMHO, its FAR more stable in most aspects than some of the Enterprise Ready crap I have to deal with day in and out (yeah, I program Windows Apps....unfortunately...as well as administering some of these boxes). Its cheap and its efficient. No OS Tax and I can take out to pasture Windows machines and turn them into powerhouse servers.

    What doesn't it have for it? Quite a bit that the common user needs -- and especially in the music realm.

    What doesn't Apple have? Cheap Servers. Who the hell cares...I have Intel for this...and when I need to develop for that Intel box, I can pull out my iBook and have ALL the same tools on it that I need. I have Perl, PHP, Apache, Sendmail, MySQL. The developer that cares about having a decent working environment will be running Macs. Heck, I even have VPC running Redhat 8.0 on my iBook incase I need to try out compiled stuff that I occasionally have to deal with when speed becomes and issue and I can't patch things with a scripted language (though the Bluecurve desktop is pretty slow on the 'book...I generally simply SSH into the VPC from the Mac side anyways and do everything in Terminal).

    Macs and Linux have NOTHING in common from a common users perspective and as such, Linux will never take over their mindshare. This is Apples Advantage.

    Macs and Linux have quite a bit in common when you get into the Sysadmin minds. Mac Users can now use Linux servers with exceeding ease and connectivity without having to install and configure Appletalk on the server side of things. This is a plus for the Linux Admin.

    Macs and Linux also have a lot in common for the Developers. No Mac Developer is going to pick up a Unix box to develop against. A Linux Developer will feel at home on a Mac with X11 or Terminal as well as the semi-standard unix directory system. Advantage Apple.

    The way I see it, servers are increasingly going Linux. Thats bad for M$. Desktops will stay Apple or M$. Developers will migrate SOMEWHAT to Apple -- though I wouldn't predict droves, thus your argument is simplistic and again bullshit.

    This is NOT a troll -- Mod me down if you so desire, but don't mod this as a troll.

    Clif Marsiglio
    Sonikmatter.com

  19. Oh, well. by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 3, Funny
    Ah... I remember the good ol' days when there was this operating system called BeOS. They were going to be in all kinds of high-end audio equipment. I remember getting excited that after being somewhat involved in the tightly-knit community of BeOS users and developers for a number of years, the software started to gain recognition in one area of its technical superiority over competing systems of the time. Then, when a number of high quality audio and graphics applications were being produced by some of the biggest names in the aforementioned subjects, they made an announcement that they were shifting focus to refrigerators with email access. And everything went into the trash. Developers couldn't distance themselves from this crap fast enough.

    With several more years of improvement, Linux and other free operating systems are starting to gain on the technical advantages present in that several year old operating system. I feel confident that given a few more years and the efforts of individuals and companies worldwide, Linux will soon be the operating system of choice for everything from coffee makers to the next generation space shuttle. So I'm happy to hear about this conference and all this exciting stuff.

  20. Re:Gimme a break.. by entrigant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Perhaps you missed the point. See these people are attending this thing to discuss the future of linux audio, and how they want to procede getting linux audio to the point you so nicely put that it is NOT at. Give US a break and quite pretending like every sentence with "linux" in the word is secretly meant to say "linux is perfect for X app, USE IT!"