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Linux Audio Developers Conference
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.
I think they should be renamed "Linux Audio Realtime Developers And Sound Symposium".
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!
Audacity is pretty good, and for linux too. Can't believe it missed the cut.
- Cloud
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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
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!
- 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.