Linux Audio Development

JulesVD writes "There is an article from Linux Journal about the latest plans for Linux audio functionality from the first developer's conference in Germany. Developers from more than a dozen countries attended this successful conference, representing organizations such as SuSE, Linux Audio Systems, Stanford University, IRCAM and Centro Tempo Reale. Topic discussions included in-depth presentations of the rapidly evolving Linux sound system, a look at the details of programming for professional audio standards and a survey of recent applications and audio-centric Linux distributions." Mmm...interesting reading (blantant plug for cool program), but I think the most important question is will it make Scrubby happy?

Comments

Sound Support

[rf0]

ALSA is actually quite nice. It works on more cards than OSS, allows duplex on some cards and is still backwards compatible with the OSS API. However I still feel that audio support on Linux could be improved. For example in my latop Intel soundcard which seems to only play at 44 Khz if using xmms. Now I know this is a software problem but it would be nice if it worked out the box.

Not a major issue but annoying

Rus

Re:Sound Support

[0x0d0a]

ALSA is actually quite nice. It works on more cards than OSS, allows duplex on some cards and is still backwards compatible with the OSS API.

Agreed, ALSA *is* nice.

ALSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project). They feel that a user should use hardware mixing *or* software mixing provided by a sound server like arts, esd, JACK, etc. This produces less kernelspace code, which is good, but means that Linux cannot handle using hardware mixing until all channels are exhausted, then fall back to software mixing for additional channels.

Esd and arts do not provide solid enough latency and sync to be the sound server in this scenario. JACK may be enough -- haven't used it -- but it's not in common use outside of the audio content creation software area.

OSS/Free has a similar approach. Hardware or software sound mixing, no hybrid approach.

A mixer capable of supplying such mixing would need to intercept all ALSA calls and use realtime scheduling. Kinda nasty. It always seemed that adding mixing and resampling code to ALSA would be easier.

It *is* a bit of a thorny problem, though.

Re:Sound Support

[Anonymous Coward]

0x0d0a (568518) wrote:
> ALSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project).

Since 0.9.1 ALSA can do mixing itself, with the so called dmix-plugin. You can throw away soundservers now, except of course JACK which is a lot more than a simple mixing sound server.
-- fbar

Re:Sound Support

[13Echo]

OSS/Commercial is an exception. The problem is that the only cards that they seem to support with hardware mixing are the EMU10k1 and perhaps some Yamaha chips. I wrote 4-Front and asked them if they'd implement hardware mixing into the CS4630 drivers, such as those used in the Santa Cruz and Sonic Fury. The DSP does support it, for a limited amount of channels. But they don't seem to understand why it is a better choice. Their answer is that "Our software mixer (Virtual Mixer) supports playback of X amount more streams at any given time than the real hardware mixing". In my opinion, that's not the point. I think software mixing is a good fallback for hardware, when all hardware streams are in use, but seldom does that really ever happen in most cases.

In most respect, OSS's mixer is pretty good; light years ahead of ALSA or ESD, but it will never match the speed of hardware mixing. For a commercial product though, I'm a bit disappointed that they don't devote a bit more effort into implementing card-specific features into more of their drivers. I guess that you can't have enverything though, with two main programs and a billion DSPs to support.

Re:Sound Support

[13Echo]

Oops. Made a mistake. I didn't mean that OSS's mixer was better than ALSA... I meant to say ARTSD. ;)

Re:Sound Support

[paulbd]

LSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project)

This just is not true. ALSA now has the dmix plugin that handles software mixing in user space all by itself. Its very, very efficient and has no impact on latency (though it can't offer JACK-style sample-synchronous execution). dmix makes regular software mixing "servers" irrelevant, and JACK fills the remaining needs.

Re:Sound Support

[Lface]

For example in my latop Intel soundcard which seems to only play at 44 Khz if using xmms. Now I know this is a software problem but it would be nice if it worked out the box.

It's quite possible that the soundcard can't play anything but 44kHz, but xmms should convert the samplerate if necessary. If that doesn't happen there is a bug somewhere, probably in your soundcard driver.

Re:Sound Support

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

If what you say is in fact true, maybe one day we can hope to get support for this on the application level. As it stands, most apps are written for artsd, ess, or OSS and nothing else.

Re:Sound Support

[relaxed]

Can we please mod down people that advertise products or services not related to the article?

Re:Sound Support

[0x0d0a]

Facinating. The Open Source world changes so quickly. :-)

Does it handle automatic fallback? I.E. use available hardware channels and then fall back to software mixing?

Re:Sound Support

[RobPiano]

I've used a lot of software developed by IRCAM, CCRMA etc. The only thing I fear is reliability. jMax (a Max FTS/MSP/PD whatever you want to call it) used on Linux is insanely buggy. Its a cool program and obviously the people at IRCAM are qualified to make it, but by the time you finally have it configured, it becomes extremly unstable.

For all sound development I end up using an Apple. I'd like to use other varients, but I've just not had the same stability.

Best of luck to them though!
Rob

Re:Sound Support

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

doubtful. Though I could be wrong, this has never even crossed the minds of most people that work on hardware...

On the mailing lists, most people will tell you this is the last thing anybody developing could care for.

What we need is a seamless API so you can write applications for any sound card. If available mixing channels are there, use them, if not, mix in software. Windows has had this functionality since forever. Linux has never, and probably will not have it in the near future.

When I asked these questions on artsd mailing lists, nobody was interested in this basic functionality. Their opinion is that everything should be mixed in software, and nothing in hardware, negating the use of modern sound cards.

ALSA's attitude is that there is no need, because software mixing should be done in userspace. So they just dont bother offering any kind of seamless integration, rather, they leave it as an exercise to the user.

Re:Sound Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, let me share my experience with the dmix plugin for alsa..

First of all: finding the relevant docs ins not that easy. Well, it seems that the dmix plugin _could_ solve all these problems, if all apps worked with it.

I editied my .asoundrc to use the dmix plugin. I added a "pcm.mixed" device and a "pcm.plugger" de
vice. The first one makes use of the dmix plugin and the second of the "plug" plugin which is inten
ded to convert sample rates on the fly and stuff..

Here's the relevant excerpt from my .asoundrc:

pcm.mixed {
type dmix
ipc_key 98372
slave {
pcm "hw:0,0"
}
}

pcm.plugger {
type plug
slave {
pcm mixed
}
}

Well, the problem is now, that i can't get any alsa apps to work with this device (except for aplay, for which i would not expect anything else). I can simultaneously play sounds from different consoles using this command:

aplay -Dplugger sound.wav

For the record:

aplay -Dmixed sound.wav

also works simultaenously, but it plays with the wrong samplerate, therefore the need for the "plug
ger" device.

This looks good, but when i try to make mplayer use this device by this command:

mplayer -ao alsa9:plugger video.avi

i get an error:

alsa-init: testing and bugreports are welcome.
alsa-init: requested format: 44100 Hz, 2 channels, Signed 16-bit (Little-Endian)
alsa-init: soundcard set to plugger
alsa-init: unable to set periodsize: Invalid argument
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.

Pretty much the same for xmms and it's alsa-plugin. No worky..

So this looks like a good idea, it just doesn't work. Maybe i am just too stupid though..

Re:Sound Support

[Anonymous Coward]

I got xmms to work with it. Thanks to help from the alsa mailing list. The reason for xmms' failing was, that it coudn't open a ctl device by the same name as the pcm device. I just added and entry that points to the hw ctl-device. Here's the new entry:

ctl.plugger {
type hw
card 0
}

Now, if i could only get ut and mplayer to work with these, i would be happy :)

Re:Sound Support

[Anonymous Coward]

but still crashes when i try to play a second file :(

A pro audio platform would be cool...

[japhar81]

Something like Logic or Cubase on Linux would absolutely kick ass. My powerbook beats the hell out of windows for music apps, but an open-sourced suite would be worth it to switch. You have no idea how often I wind up thinking, geez, if only logic had an extra slider here to control this or that or the other...

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[fruey]

It's called Ardour, look for it at Sourceforge.

-Simon

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[SpoonPunk]

I can't agree more. I'd be happy with a Linux version of Cubase SX. I have been using Cubase on windows for quite some time now. Cubase SX has many improvements from a stability and functionality point of view. However, my biggest gripe with my current audio system is that Win2K seems to require a purging after about 4 months. On the contrary my Linux install has been through 3 motherboards, several hard drives and still works perfectly.

Of course the only way Steinberg would make a Linux version is if they could make money and there were enough pro audio cards with drivers. I would assume that people wanting the stability of *nix with the price of a PC not a Mac, would go for a Linux version of Cubase. The big question is, are there enough customers to convince Steinberg Linux is a good investment? I hope so.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone should totally make a logic-like thing for supercollider 3. SC3 now works on linux and provides the potential for all the audio/midi stuff necessary to write something like that...
sf.net/projects/supercollider

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

its a hell to setup - try it for yourself. :P

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[mickwd]

A guy called Austin Acton has put together the Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo for Mandrake 9.1.

It uses packages contributed to Mandrake 9.1 to build an audio workstation (including a low-latency "multimedia" kernel) - using URPMI to simplify package dependency issues.

Quote from the HowTo: "You can setup a professional quality audio workstation in an afternoon or less, with Mandrake Linux. No compiling. No text editing. No dependencies. It's this easy.".

I don't know enough about computer audio to comment further, but you might be interested in checking it out.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can add extra faders to control about anything in Logic via the Environment window.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

You ever run cubase sx on xp pro? I am not trolling, just wondering.

I get great performance out of xp pro. Usually 6-7 complex synth plugins with 2-3 DSPs each along with several audio tracks. All on a PIII 800 with 256MB memory. On a dual Xeon with a half decent RAID and a GIG of RAM you can do way over 18 softsynths and 16 tracks of audio at the same time. I have never tried to push it further but I bet it would go.

I think the mac over PC thing is becoming moot. I use both and know others that do and they are starting to swing to the PC because you don't need to reinstall cubase and the OS a lot. I have been running XP pro with sx for over a year with no problem. In the same time period, I have reinstalled Mac-OS 3 times along with all of the software. I am simply more productive on the PC.

Of course logic is dropping PC support..., i never liked it anyway.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[blinder]

Ardour is nice... on paper. Compiling it is a whole other story.

I'm affraid its just a bit too immature right now to be considered a serious contender to ProTools because only the geek-elite can really get this thing compiled (which I sometimes consider myself at different times of the day) but I have yet to get this thing compiled.

If they would just release a stable build or just a stable distribution that could be built (ala configure/make/make install) then it it would be a serious contender.

I see from Ardour's mailing list that folks do have it up and working... ugh... guess I'll try again tonight to get it built :)

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[fruey]

Well it's on the way, and it's linked with Jack and a general effort to make Linux a pro audio platform, so it won't take long before stuff works

It already has the bare bones. It's not as useable as Sonar, but then it's free and will soon be a lot better, if the mailing list is anything to go by.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have it reversed moron. You installed XP 3 or 4 times. The PC is terrible in it's midi apps. And installing the Mac OS is a one time deal. Mac OS never crashes to a point where you need to reinstall. Never. In 12 years of using MacOS, it is totally reliable. Windows though........I could read War and Peace 10 times over for the amount of time wasted installing windows again and again.

Yeah, XP is a little better, but all the good software works better on a Mac. Protools, Cubase, Logic, Performer.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[BadElf]

Ardour is nice... on paper. Compiling it is a whole other story.

I couldn't agree with you more. I've yet to be able to compile Ardour -- every time you think you've got all the dependencies worked out, they slap you with another. And even when you have all the prerequisites installed, they can't be located during the compile.

I really hope they get this worked out -- it sounds like an awesome package -- but in the meantime I'll keep using my combo of Rezound and Audacity to get the job done.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Doc Hopper]

I ran into this same problem often with Ardour and others. I gave up, and installed Gentoo. Although it takes a bit of "geek eliteness" to get Gentoo installed (knowing how to compile a kernel, mount filesystems, work with Grub, etc.), it's worth the effort.

Once Gentoo is installed, installing Ardour is a one-liner:

# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge ardour-cvs

If your system is slower than 1GHz, check on it every few hours. You needn't do much else while it builds Ardour and all the dependencies to get there. I recommend starting this right before you go to bed, by morning it might be done. Gentoo is a bit like baking a turkey. Yeah, it takes a very long time to cook, but if you took the time to prepare it right, the result is beautiful and tasty. Unless, of course, you're a vegetarian...

That's really what it broiled down to with me. I'm far more patient with allowing stuff to build automatically over hours/days and not using my main PC (lucky me, I have three) for hours/days than with sitting in front of the console for hours working out dependencies by hand.

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Anonymous Coward]

and its callled nearly impossible to get ardour to compile.

crosses finger and waits for full builds of ardour

Re:A pro audio platform would be cool...

[Eric Gibson]

As a recording engineer I wait every day of my life for this to happen. If someone could write a solid cubase/logic/sonar replacement for linux, I'd switch immediately. There are some cool apps out there now that I check up on every once in a while, but if there was an app that could actually compete with the current windows audio production apps (WITH compatibility for vst/directx plugins and instruments) I'd open my wallet like the bitch that I am and fuckin shell it out yo.

I hate windows, it crashes to much. If I had the ability to kill -9 my apps when they hang, and not take down my entire operating system, I'd do... just about anything.

Aaah Sweep.

[gowen]

Sweep development:

Two messages in five forums

When the forums outnumber the posts, you know you've ound a real classical sourceforge project.

Re:Aaah Sweep.

[Monkey-Man2000]

It appears they are still active. Maybe they use the mailing-list instead of forums.

Re:Aaah Sweep.

[KoolyM]

Sweep is actually a pretty usable program - unlike Audacity, it lets you apply LADSPA effects to your audio. Unfortunately, it loads complete audio files into RAM, so for some projects you're still going to need Audacity.

Re:Aaah Sweep.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweep is alive and well. Mixmaster K gave some very impressive demos at LCA2003. The mailing lists are alive and well and where the action is. The developer is responsive amd cool. It should be noted that it is a _creative_ tool. The mixing interface is a thing of beauty and should be looked at if you ever plan on live performance work.

Linux Audio Development..........

[Mattygfunk1]

..... is like music to my ears.

______________

Cheap web site hosting from $3 a Month

the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything less than complete parity with Windows drivers FEATURE FOR FEATURE is unacceptable. Linux is STILL not there.

I installed Windows XP after 9 years of running Linux (various distros) because I was tired of only being able to use half the features of my hardware.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi microsoft employee How ya doing? How is it in the marketing department there?

This is obvious because anyone using linux for 9 years KNOWS how to get things to work and would puke uncontrollably at the abortion that is Windows XP.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. What is so hard about XMMS?

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[QuackQuack]

I get around this problem by buying only well supported hardware.

But what's really annoying is when features aren't supported on Linux for non-technical reasons. For example, Matrox has written Linux drivers for their graphics cards, but the Linux drivers don't support TV-out. Why?

It's apparently because Linux doesn't have Macrovision support, and I guess Matrox doesn't want to be sued by the MPAA for releasing drivers that "enable piracy". So Linux users can't have a feature that has many legitimate uses, just because someone might tape a DVD onto a VHS tape with it.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

There you go.

XMMS = half the features of my sound card.

Some people actually want to sample, edit, and manipulate audio, not just play the MP3's they leeched off of kazaa.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[stratjakt]

Matrox has written Linux drivers for their graphics cards, but the Linux drivers don't support TV-out. Why?

It's apparently because Linux doesn't have Macrovision support, and I guess Matrox doesn't want to be sued by the MPAA for releasing drivers that "enable piracy". So Linux users can't have a feature that has many legitimate uses, just because someone might tape a DVD onto a VHS tape with it.

That's a good conspiracy theory. Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices in userland at run time the way windows can.

You'd either have TV out enabled all the time, or CRT all the time, or both, but you wouldnt be able to switch at will.

It could also be because of the MODELINE nonsense in your xf89config. TV out has some pretty specific frequency requirements, and perhaps the ability to tweak those while enabled would damage the card, and then void the warranty - but if you voided the warranty with a matrox driver, you dont void the warranty, so they have to continually replace cards for all the 'tweakers' out there.

Or it could be that you're looking a gift horse in the mouth. Want all the features of the vid card to work? Fire up emacs and get a-crackin'.

BTW, IIRC macrovision is a hardware feature, not a software one. There is no 'linux support' to be written, save flipping it on via a hardware register. They're only required that it be present, it can be disabled as easily under windows (a registry tweak for most cards) as it could be under linux.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[molarmass192]

Ok Troll, I'll bite. Please do tell exactly which feature is missing on your specific sound card in ALSA (OSS is dead). I don't really expect you to reply to this because I don't believe you. Besides, all the Win users that use Win specifically for making music that I know of use Win2K and NOT WinXP so I immediately find your post suspicious. The only thing I heard that's lacking in Linux from these folk is on the music APPLICATION side, not the driver side. Now get back to work before Ballmer catches you goofing off.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand where it's coming from, but that's a dangerous attitude to take. The only reason Linux has problems with hardware support (along with any other would be OS), is that hardware vendors will not release development info. They want to keep it under NDA with Microsoft.

I have worked very hard in the past to get this info from vendors in the past, both legitamately and by using my company and inventing "fake" projects just to get the data. The fact is, if you are not microsoft, they do not want to talk to you unless you're prepared to layout serious money. We're not talking $1,000 or even $100,000 either.

The only correct answer, as one poster explained, is to only buy well supported hardware. Reward the companies that play fair.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[gl4ss]

that's just a theory.

theres couple(many) cards which support tv-out on linux.

certainly any 'modeline nonsense' isn't the culprit, adding custom resolutions is possible in windows too by altering modelines usually(or not) found in the drivers(at least on nvidia) (much convinient is to use a program like powerstrip tho).

and yeah, macrovision is just a chip that's either enabled or not, though the 'scrambling' is a joke and my thoughts are that macrovision hit the gold pile when they got that into the dvd standard (selling licenses, chips, whatever, but those chips certainly aren't worth damn penny since they are so easily either disabled or the signal filtered back to normal).

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[cyb97]

Hopefully he changed some hardware in those 9 years, It'd be painful to run WinXP on a Pentium 75MHz...

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Doug Neal]

Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices in userland at run time the way windows can

Well, actually it can do that, and you can add and remove kernel drivers dynamically too (kernel modules). OK, so you might need to restart XFree86, but Windows makes you restart the whole OS for hardware configuration changes.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Shrac]

Windows makes you restart the whole OS for hardware configuration changes.

Not anymore. It's rare to have to reboot XP for any sort of hardware change. In fact, most of the 3rd-party drivers that tell the user they must reboot are wrong (or maybe covering their asses); simply click 'no' and you can continue working.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did audio in windows for two years and bought a mac when I could finally afford it. In a pro studio environment you cant keep saying, " oh wait the computer crashed, just hold on while I reboot, and were going to have to redo that song!!" Mac is the clear choice presently because of stability, Linux is clearly poised to match that stability and with all of the UNIX development surrounding OSX, it seems inevitable that Linux will benefit from this development.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

(I'm not the original AC, but...)

How about hardware wave synthesis MIDI(for cards that support it, obviously)? I've actually heard it's possible, but it's certainly not enabled out of the box.

How about any of the 3D audio features on the card?

How about Dolby Digital out?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but to my knowledge, the only feature beyond what an old SB-16 can do that ALSA supports is hardware mixing.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[CommandNotFound]

Anything less than complete parity with Windows drivers FEATURE FOR FEATURE is unacceptable. Linux is STILL not there.

This makes no sense, but nice troll. You could have just as easily said: "My XP ATI graphics drivers don't have the same options as they do on WinMe. Microsoft Windows is STILL not there yet."

Whose fault is it, Linux, or the hardware manufacturers whose job to write quality drivers is being accomplished by outside F/OSS developers? Anyway, I've found this (driver feature exclusion) to work both ways. My venerable old SB Awe64 always has been more stable than it ever was on Win9x, especially when loading in MIDI sound fonts. The Creative GUI would freeze while loading, and I had about a 20% chance of total lockup. The sfxload util has never failed in Linux and never locks the machine.

I also recall my old Riva 128 card magically was able to display 1024x768 x 16bpp when I went to Linux. The option never occured in the Windows drivers. Then again, my Laser printer only printed 300dpi in Linux when it printed 600dpi in Windows, but I've been told it only prints 300dpi in XP. I learned that lesson: don't buy WinHardware (I'm looking at you, NEC).

If you have a problem with drivers, write your hardware manufacturer, and don't use as many CAPITAL LETTERS when you do so.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[GreyWolf3000]

(I'm not the original AC, but...)

How about hardware wave synthesis MIDI(for cards that support it, obviously)? I've actually heard it's possible, but it's certainly not enabled out of the box.

How about any of the 3D audio features on the card?

How about Dolby Digital out?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but to my knowledge, the only feature beyond what an old SB-16 can do that ALSA supports is hardware mixing.

For MIDI, all you need is a decent wave table and timidity. This can get much higher quality than the often small, crunched wave tables of older crappy cards. This isn't a problem for great production cards like RME or Terratec, however.

3D audio is good for an 31337 gaming eXPerience, but not really useful for production use.

Again, when you're mixing your own digital tracks and want to hear what it sounds like, most generally feed their sound card's output to real monitors that sound full and clean. I don't even see this as a really important feature for home use anyways (the grandparent was talking about pro audio, however).

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[QuackQuack]

That's a good conspiracy theory. Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices in userland at run time the way windows can.

It's not a conspiracy theory, I've seen an admission from Matrox to this effect in their support forums. They did in fact release TVout support for one of their earlier cards (the G400), but at some point decided not to support Linux TVout in post G400 cards even though some of them are technically similar to the G400.

Or it could be that you're looking a gift horse in the mouth. Want all the features of the vid card to work? Fire up emacs and get a-crackin'.

Someone (not Matrox) has come up with a solution to get TV out working. My complaint was that the vendor's (who is willing to support Linux) hands are being tied for political, not technical reasons.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[QuackQuack]

BTW, IIRC macrovision is a hardware feature, not a software one. There is no 'linux support' to be written, save flipping it on via a hardware register. They're only required that it be present, it can be disabled as easily under windows (a registry tweak for most cards) as it could be under linux.

Macrovision is a joke, You know this, I know this. Most component DVD players also have a (Secret) way of disabling it. But just as you couldn't sell a component DVD player without macrovision without getting into legal trouble, it seems that Matrox chose to avoid potential legal trouble with their Linux driver, because Linux doesn't explicitly enforce Macrovision protection.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Gordonjcp]

I can do TV out on a plain vanilla Geforce 2MX 400 - no TV out at all. The RGB cable is simple - just connect the VGA RGB to the SCART RGB then mix the HSync and VSync signals and feed them into the SCART composite in.

There is a special modeline you need, which puts it into a 704x256 mode (really!) scanning at the required 25Hz. It would be pretty simple to adapt this for 30Hz for USian TVs.

As for switching modes on-the-fly, this has been possible for a very, very long time. Try pressing to switch modes...

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a special modeline you need, which puts it into a 704x256 mode (really!) scanning at the required 25Hz. It would be pretty simple to adapt this for 30Hz for USian TVs.

American TVs don't have SCART or RGB inputs.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[ModemShark]

My theory is as follows: In order provide Macrovision for DVD playback, matrox (as well as other companies) needs to add tv-out chips on the graphic cards which support Macrovision. As we all know Macrovision is patented and you have to sign contracts before you are allowed to use Macrovision.

Maybe there is a requirement in this contract which says that no one must be able write a driver where macrovision on the output will be activated without paying licensing fees. If the soure for tv-out is open this requirement would not be met since a different comany can use the matrox cards (don't ask me what kind of comany this would be) for getting macrovision output.

AFAIK the documentation for a lot of macrovision enabled tv-out chips is available online, maybe even for the matrox one. So matrox has the only possibility of meeting the requirements by means of not releasing the tv-out specs.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Doc Hopper]

I hate to reply to a sig rather than a post, but Gentoo is very relevant for GNU/Linux pro audio. Notably, Ardour is not yet distributed as a package, so compiling from source is currently your only option. Gentoo is ideal for this purpose, as it seamlessly handles building it. There are also other audio packages that have better support if you build for your particular environment.

However, I use Gentoo in one spot only and for that specific purpose: my pro audio GNU/Linux workstation. I use Redhat or Mandrake elsewhere...

Back to your post: 3D audio and full support is important for those musicians who wish to mix their audio in 5.1 channels. It's actually really a big deal for a lot of musicians. I'm disappointed that I can't use my Soundblaster Live! 5.1 in GNU/Linux to handle that well. There are some hacks around, but I've not yet gotten them to work (I haven't tried for about 3 or 4 months, about ready to try again).

Most wave table cards are a joke. I have a full-sized digital piano that, despite my best efforts to the contrary, refuses to budge when I hook up my game port MIDI stuff to it under Linux. Works all right under Windows, curiously. Once again, I'm building a new audio workstation right now, so maybe that will change by the time I get home from work.

Timidity is too resource-intensive for real multi-track work at this point in time. It can do if you're dumping a single MIDI track to an audio track, but the latency is pretty horrible, as are the dropouts. Latency I can deal with by bumping the MIDI stream to start a little sooner, but sound dropouts are just not acceptable, and seem to happen quite frequently with timidity. I'm rebuilding everything latest version right now on my home machine, so I'll have more results in a few hours as to whether this is still a problem, but it certainly was a quarter ago.

I'd really love to build a pro-audio "device" that runs Linux under the hood for non-gearheads to use to record audio. But as of right now, when I compare Cakewalk Sonar to what I have on GNU/Linux... GNU/Linux leaves much to be desired. Doesn't mean I'm not working my butt off testing the stuff, because I want to have a wholly free home recording studio. But it still lacks, a lot. I figure in about 1-3 years it will be much, much better as more amateur and professional musicians get into recording on GNU/Linux.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[GreyWolf3000]

Great post, and I'm not offended (it's not a shameless plug).

However, I personally find that plenty of other distributions fill the same needs. In my case, I've started using a lightweight distro called CRUX, which installs as binary packages, but has a ports utility with which you can easily streamline building from source. When you're done building, you have a tar.gz binary package that you can use over and over :)

Any distribution that's not built around a huge binary packaging system like CRUX or Gentoo is good for this. Though if I were using Mandrake or Redhat, I'd just build ardour in /opt/ardour (that's what /opt is for).

I think ardour will get as good as you need for most ameteur and a lot of professional use. Remember that famous albums like Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska and the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper were recorded on old four-tracks.

Ardour will be great if you do a lot of your eq/compression/fx before you hit the soundcard. It will not be as good as Cakewalk or other apps if you want to use it as an all-in-one mixer/fx/kitchen sink.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[mrmeval]

If you can code try to fix it, if not donate money.

Matrox has been the tops when it comes to providing enough information to program it's hardware (ok so they took convincing). There are a lot of linux workstations sold commercially with Matrox and Linux (compaq)

It's may be a legal problem:
This concerns the HAL portion that turns on dual head (exerpt from readme):
"Due to certain legal liabilities and for the protection of intellectual property, Matrox reserves licensing rights to the library and prohibits reverse engineering but allows free distribution under any operating system. Matrox encourages members of the open source community to freely distribute and assist in the further development of this driver."

For pointers to TV-out:

http://www.bglug.ca/matrox_tvout/

From that you can make it work or see this mention in the page authors howto:
"The latest version (0.9.16) includes TV-out support for the G400/G450/G550"

I have a G450 and am !very! happy with it. TV-out was a toy to me and if it were a problem I'd just buy a VGA-video converter. Or build one or just buy a 100inch SharpVision projector (drool drool), I've played quake on one(drool drool).

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[damiam]

The drivers (alsa, OSS, or Creative's own) for the Audigy don't support EAX processing or easy configuration of surround output.

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen, asshole, I have TWO boxes here both w2k pro, and sound works on NEITHER of them.

On one, it kept getting choppy and often would just go away. Now it requires the sound driver to be reinstalled after every boot.

On the other, it mysteriously vanished one day. No amount of reinstalling or repair or service packs have helped.

The hardware is fine: both machines boot Knoppix and play sound perfectly.

And as far as what's "unacceptable" for you, who really gives a shit? What have you ever contributed?

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Gordonjcp]

What do you use to connect DVB receivers and DVD players?

Re:the drivers need to work. period.

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] and inventing "fake" projects just to get the data.

And, you're wondering why they don't like to give stuff out?

Drivers?

[Drathus]

Isn't the largest issue with any support on Linux still the fact that very few companies are willing to put in the time to create Linux drivers let alone have have the decency to release the information on the chipsets to the public to allow 3rd party drivers to be created?

Maybe what should be looked into is the creation of a vested interest just to deal with sound card companies and try and negotiate accessability to chipset information to create drivers for their cards for other OSes than they're willing to develop for in-house.

Re:Drivers?

[rf0]

The only company that I know is producing commerical drivers for linux is 4Front Technologies. No idea on the quality though
Rus

Re:Drivers?

[Drathus]

Well, they don't need to be commercial drivers per-se (where the drivers are sold as-is) but rather a commercial body (who knows, maybe sponsored and funded by the for-sale Linux distros) which would negotiate and create the drivers to distribute back to the community which funded them.

They'd just be the central group who'd be dealing with the companies to get the information.

Re:Drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real, serious companies are actually providing information (sometimes even with dedicated support) to linux developers. For example RME (superior hardware architecture + sound quality), M-Audio (very nice quality/price ratio prosumer hardware) have excellent support on Linux already.

Re:Drivers?

[goosman]

http://www.digigram.com/digigram_news/latest_news. htm?o=full&news_key=280

Digigram is making headway into Linux. I will be supporting these folks when I can, they make excellent sound cards. They were one of the few companies that didn't give me blank stares when I inquired about Linux support at the recent 114th AES (Audio Engineering Society) convention.

Re:Drivers?

[stratjakt]

Isn't the largest issue with any support on Linux still the fact that very few companies are willing to put in the time to create Linux drivers let alone have have the decency to release the information on the chipsets to the public to allow 3rd party drivers to be created?

It's not like they're jerks about it. They dont make money from drivers, after all, so it's really in their best interests to create linux drivers.

But here's the rub.

#1) Releasing specs on chips like the EMU101k (for example) hurts their market position. That stuff is trade secrets, and patents and whatnot. nVidia doesnt just give out schematics for their new FX chips, after all. Nor does creative (or whomever) want to hand out their fancy-dancy sound chips.

#2) Creating drivers for linux is different from say, windows. To do so for windows, you get the Windows DDK (driver development kit), and create your driver. You need not interact with MSFT, unless you want the drivers signed when finished. There are rules set up for a windows driver, specs and all that. It's basically a matter of filling in the gaps with your code.

Contrast with the monolithic kernel that linux has. Creative would need to participate and coordinate with linus et al from start to finish. It's all still uncharted waters, largely, and just takes more man hours, and more expensive hours, as they pay higher-up engineers to deal with the whole thing.

If the linux kernel crew can nail down a 'spec' of sorts for drivers, and not require hardware manufacturers to deal with the kernel hackers to get their stuff directly supported, then they'd have no problem at all churning out a linux driver.

In short, the monolithic kernel is an albatross around linux' neck when it comes to wanting hardware support from the manufacturers.

Re:Drivers?

[Adnans]

Contrast with the monolithic kernel that linux has. Creative would need to participate and coordinate with linus et al from start to finish.

Erh no! Most, if not all drivers in ALSA were written without any interaction from the kernel folks. ALSA is now integrated in the 2.5.x kernel, but that doesn't mean driver developers will have to deal with Linus et al. They just deal with Jaroslav, the ALSA maintainer. All mainstream cards are already supported by ALSA. If a company doesn't want to provide docs it can always choose to write and distribute their driver on their own.

In short, the monolithic kernel is an albatross around linux' neck when it comes to wanting hardware support from the manufacturers.

Nonsense.

-adnans

Re:Drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

And ALSA is the way every card will work from now on? Or will it change to something else with kernel 2.6?

The windows sblive driver hasn't fundamentally changed since the card was released, mostly just bugfixes and i's dotted and t's crossed. The linux kernel has a habit of reinventing itself between major versions.

Vendors like standards and specifications. They dont like researchers and academics and expiriments.

Re:Drivers?

[Nosher]

Creative are actually pretty good about supporting their soundcards under Linux (http://opensource.creative.com/) with their EMU10K1 project. I have an Audigy running in Mandrake 9.0 and it sounds pretty good (not much difference to an Audigy Platinum EX I've got running in a Windoze PC - both run through a decent amp and good speakers). All it takes is a bit of compilation (of the driver) and a change to /etc/modules.conf. I even use an Audigy in a custom "suitcase PC" running Mandrake to do the occasional disco (line up a few tracks and head for the bar :-). It has been frustrating though that it's taken *sooo* long just to get to this point though...

Re:Drivers?

[Adnans]

And ALSA is the way every card will work from now on? Or will it change to something else with kernel 2.6?

The ALSA API in kernel 2.5.x will be the same one in kernel 2.6.

Vendors like standards and specifications. They dont like researchers and academics and expiriments.

Vendors look at the bottom line. If there's enough incentive they will write against any API (*cough* Windows *cough* :-).

-adnans

Re:Drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

First: ALSA already has drivers for a whole bunch of pro-audio cards like the RME or M-Audio-Delta cards. Buy those, don't buy cards from companies who refuse to give out the specs (i.e. don't buy Nvidia)

Second: ALSA is much mor than just a stupid hardware driver. This point often is missed by those, who don't know ALSA but like to diss it. ALSA includes a whole *architecture* for audio production, this even is in its name: "Advanced Linux Audio Architecture"! ALSA in this regard is more like OpenGL (I know, silly reference, but anyway). It supplies the developer with a whole bunch of format conversion functions, of timing functions and much more. You out there should really read the slides from the conference regarding a comparision of ALSA and the old-fashioned OSS interface. In OSS everything audio was on a simple Soundblaster-level format. But pro-audio hard- and software just doesn't work this way. And to say it again: XMMS is *not* pro-audio software at all, it's is consumer level and can't even change the volume on my pro-level Delta card because that card just doen't *have* a mixer on soundblaster level!

-- fbar

Re:Drivers?

[Mr. McGibby]

If there's enough incentive they will write against any API

I agree. They wrote drivers against the Windows 95, 95, 2000, XP, NT, APIs. Moving from NT to 2000 to XP isn't as big a difference as moving from Windows 9x. I doubt (but don't really know) that the move from linux 2.4 to 2.6 will be as big as the difference between the 9x series and the NT series, probably about the same difference as 2000 to XP.

Re:Drivers?

[Apreche]

Damn straight. When my SBLive! works in linux properly then, something awesome. Currently it works, but sound only comes out 2 of 4 speakers. There's no way to fix it that I've found. Creative, write a driver!

Re:Drivers?

[Dysan2k]

#1) Releasing specs on chips like the EMU101k (for example) hurts their market position. That stuff is trade secrets, and patents and whatnot. nVidia doesnt just give out schematics for their new FX chips, after all. Nor does creative (or whomever) want to hand out their fancy-dancy sound chips.

I'm a little curious just because I've not had to do any driver hacking except fixing/tweaking, but is it really possible to duplicate someone's chipsets with the driver info released? I mean, as far as I knew, you just need the timing, addresses, and buffer sizes to fire up most pieces of hardware. Is there something that I'm just missing? (Honest question here folks.. not trying to troll or anything)

Re:Drivers?

[carlos_benj]

They wrote drivers against the Windows 95, 95, 2000, XP, NT, APIs.They wrote drivers against the Windows 95, 95, 2000, XP, NT, APIs.

Mod this up as insightfull. Most folks don't realize the subtle differences between Windows 95 and 95....

Re:Drivers?

[Wumpus]

M-Audio (very nice quality/price ratio prosumer hardware) have excellent support on Linux already.

I would hardly call my M-Audio Delta 1010 a "prosumer" part. I don't think I'd call anything with a 19" rack mountable component a prosumer part...

Their sound quality is indeed very good for the price, and the ALSA support for it is excellent. The box even had a little penguin on it, next to the Windows logo.

Re:Drivers?

[Mr. McGibby]

Why I oughta...!

Re:Drivers?

[damiam]

They did.

Re:Good for Linux Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good news for Windows lusers with their heads
up their asses too. There's always hope (but not much).

After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years.....

[mao che minh]

"Topic discussions included in-depth presentations of the rapidly evolving Linux sound system..."

I hope so. After working with Linux for three years I have come to expect little in terms of audio. Hell, I was taken completely by suprise when the Redhat 8.0 install actually had a "play sample sound" button. It was like first time I witnessed scaling effects on the SNES. Inspiring.

Re:After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years.....

[The_Spud]

The sound support in linux is ok if you are not using anything too wierd it works out the box with distro's like mandrake and has done for ages. Even newer hardware like the audigy card I have is usable with a bit of tweeking. This is not just a linux thing to get my original yamaha soundcard to work under win 98 was a nightmare. Smart ass features like 5.1 and eax would be nice but isn't really necessary for most of the work i'm doing.

Re:After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years.....

[ajuin]

If I recall correctly, Red Hat 5.1 had a sample sound as well.

Of course, it was a really low-quality .au file of Linus Torvalds pronouncing 'Linux'..

Re:After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years.....

[hitmark]

and for some strange reason it seems that in the latest mandrake releases you have to use that very tool to set up a isa soundcard. why they droped it from harddrake i will never understand...

EAX?

[antdude]

Does ALSA have EAX support for the newer Sound Blaster cards? OSS and emu10k1 driver from http://opensource.creative.com/ don't.

Re:It's BLANTANTLY obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's looking forward to a linux box that does more than beep through the PC speaker

Wow you are so blantantly stupid it's staggering.

Please come into the year 2003 and see that Linux has MORE hardware support than Windowx XP and 2000.

your level of stupidity is so massive I wonder if you forget to breathe at times.

Yet a long way to reach DirectX....

[WARM3CH]

Yet there is a long way to have an API with DirectSound/DirectSound3D/DirectMusic/DLS features in Linux. (I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?) Sound is one of the major obstacles for the games to come to Linux....

Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX....

[Dr. Manhattan]

I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?

Well, there's OpenAL, which is sort of equivalent, like OpenGL vs. Direct3D.

Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX....

[Sloppy]

I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?

You get EAX if you run Linux on a 386sx or better. The PPC, Alpha, and SPARC ports don't have it yet, though.

(PS: I apologize.)

Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX....

[damiam]

EAX is an audio processor present on Audigy, Live!, and various other sound cards. It has nothing to do with OpenAL or DirectSound.

Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX....

[Dr. Manhattan]

EAX is an audio processor present on Audigy, Live!, and various other sound cards.

Well, the original poster referred to it specifically, so I went with it that way. But if you prefer...

<pedant mode>EAX is a hardware interface and an API for that interface, like Aureal's A3D. OpenAL, like OpenGL and DirectSound, try to abstract away the essence of 3D sound hardware, so that it could be implemented on top of EAX or A3D, like OpenGL works on video hardware from ATI, NVidia, SiS, SGI, and lord knows who else.</pedant mode>

Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX....

[damiam]

True, but AFAIK current Linux drivers don't support the EAX processor, so the point is moot.

Mixing...

[ElGuapoGolf]

I may be wrong, but whatever. It seems to me that Linux *really* needs a decent stream mixer.

I hate not being able to play more than 2 sounds at once (and that's only because that's supported in hardware by my card, my old card could only play 1). Neither esd (does anyone use this anymore) or artsd cut it. They're too laggy to be usable for games, and in order to increase their response time, you have to increase their priority, thus slowing everything else down.

Say what you want about Windows, but at least it gets this right.

So, anyone know a soundcard that will let me play mutiple streams WITHOUT having to use esd/artsd, and is decently well supported under Linux? Anyone? BTW, can we keep it under $100 (USD) if possible?

Re:Mixing...

[Adnans]

So, anyone know a soundcard that will let me play mutiple streams WITHOUT having to use esd/artsd, and is decently well supported under Linux? Anyone? BTW, can we keep it under $100 (USD) if possible?

Trident 4DWave NX/DX based cards are excellent! Not sure if they're still available though. For about $20 you get a card with S/PDIF out and at least 16 stereo pcm devices with ALSA. I bought a couple of them at Hoontech Taiwan (just checked. no longer available from their site).

But check out the ALSA Soundcard Matrix and look for entries which have Note (4), hardware mixing support.

-adnans

Re:Mixing...

[IamTheRealMike]

I may be wrong, but whatever. It seems to me that Linux *really* needs a decent stream mixer.

Well the ALSA guys are working on that in the form of the dmix plugin for libasound, that mixes in the DMA buffer.

So, anyone know a soundcard that will let me play mutiple streams WITHOUT having to use esd/artsd, and is decently well supported under Linux? Anyone? BTW, can we keep it under $100 (USD) if possible?

All you need is one that supports hardware mixing. They aren't necessarily expensive but are getting hard to find, sounds cards are like modems these days, many manufacturers shift the processing onto the CPU via Windows :(

Re:Mixing...

[stem]

We're working on MAS.

Public CVS is more up-to-date than our 0.6.0 release , so if you're going to check it out, get it from CVS.

It mixes multiple streams, can convert sampling rates, and doesn't need a half-second long buffer. We haven't got it to slice and dice yet, though.

The API that is in there is VERY low level. We've been working hard on a high-level "soundserver-style" API that'll allow esd and OSS apps to be ported easily. It'll be out when-it's-done, which will be soon.

-Mike

Re:Mixing...

[sopwith]

Actually, for the system as a whole, Windows just gives exclusive sound device access to whichever application owns the window with the foreground focus.

Re:Mixing...

[Unknown Lamer]

Alsa now has a client named dmix that you can use to do software mixing. I don't know how to use it, but it is included in Alsa 0.9.0 (not the RC8+) and I believe that all you have to do is tell Alsa to use it and then it mixes any streams above what your hardware supports in software.

Re:Mixing...

[Hydrogenoid]

My Live! does 32 channels, and I guess you can find one for less than that... And I find the Linux drivers far less messy than the Windows ones, acutally. ^^

Re:Mixing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mixing is already there in ALSA: dmix

Re:Mixing...

[Lface]

Trident 4DWave NX/DX based cards are excellent! Not sure if they're still available though. For about $20 you get a card with S/PDIF out and at least 16 stereo pcm devices with ALSA. I bought a couple of them at Hoontech Taiwan (just checked. no longer available from their site).

No, they are no longer available, and haven't been for a while either.

The SoundBlaster Live is an example of a cheap soundcard that does hardware mixing.

Re:Mixing...

[radish]

So how do I have multiple apps all playing sounds at once?

For another example, I'm a DJ and one time when editing a set recorded live with SoundForge I heard what sounded a lot like the windows "Ping" sound halfway through one of the tracks. Turned out I had Outlook running in the background and got a new mail during the recording :) I guess that shows that minimised, background apps still have access to the sound hardware.

If you want more evidence, try launching a bunch of instances of media player or winamp and hitting play on them all at the same time.

Re:Mixing...

[checkyoulater]

So, anyone know a soundcard that will let me play mutiple streams WITHOUT having to use esd/artsd, and is decently well supported under Linux? Anyone? BTW, can we keep it under $100 (USD) if possible?

How about a Soundblaster Live 5.1 OEM? I picked one up for ~59$ CDN about 5 months ago. I am sure they are even cheaper now. No ESD, ARTS, whatever is needed. Just install the OSS drivers and it works. You can playback ogg's and still have the dsp ready for more (flash, cd, whatever)

Re:Mixing...

[damiam]

All Creative cards (including Live!, Audigy, and Audigy 2) have excellent Linux support, including 32-channel hardware mixing. You can pick up a Live for $30 or an Audigy for $60.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

...gimme something that can deal with Cubase VST plugins and I'll be happy...

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you are:
http://www.notam02.no/arkiv/src/snapshot2.png
http://www.notam02.no/arkiv/src/vstserver-0.2.5.ta r.gz

:)

Cool!

[BMonger]

I'm down with Linux audio stuff as long as we don't have a ton of different apps and stuff.

If by more you mean LESS then its true

[Anonymous Coward]

Retard, I hate you.

And supporting hardware means more than detecting it and recompiling your kernel and manually editing a bunch of text files. It should be able to use all of the features which almost none of the linux drivers really support.

Cool

[IamTheRealMike]

The most amazing thing about the Linux audio scene is how well organised it's been since day one. All the key players work together, and are putting together a seriously sweet pro audio architecture. The same people who write ALSA collaborate on Jack, LADSPA (which looks like an open alternative to VST plugins), write sample editors - the works.

It's too bad that the desktop audio scene is such a shambles by comparison - in 2003 there is still no standard way of mixing and resampling (sound servers). What I expect will happen at this point is simply that once 2.6 is rolled out, distros will simply start shipping with the ALSA dmix plugin which mixes at the hardware level by writing into a sound cards DMA buffer (iirc), making most desktop uses of sound servers obsolete (though they can still be useful for network transparent audio and jack style synchro).

Oh, and GStreamer kicks ass :) It's messy right now, but I think Linux multimedia could become really great.

Re:It's BLANTANTLY obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Linux has MORE hardware support than Windowx XP and 2000

It does? Oh, you count all those builds for different architecture.

Under x86 architecture, I'd love to see you give ONE example of something linux supports that windows doesnt.

I have 10mbit phoneline networking cards that linux wont recognize. I have a lexmark printer that only half works under linux (300dpi in greyscale, when it's capable of 2400x1200 photorealistic color), a radeon card that sort of works in 2d mode..

Bah, it's not even an argument worth having.

VST and ASIO

[blueworm]

Linux needs VST, and most importantly, ASIO support before it can even begin to be remotely considered for professional use.

Re:VST and ASIO

[oscillateur]

Linux doesn't *need* VST/ASIO support for "professional" use.

LADSPA, ALSA, JACK etc. do similar things and in the case of Jack are even more advanced as far as features goes.

If there isn't one yet (I haven't researched this), a VST to LADSPA converter could certainly easily be implemented. And anyway, VST support is easy to add to an application, even though Steinberg hasn't yet released a vst host SDK.

ASIO is linked to the apps you use. And it's a protocol designed by Steinberg for windows iirc. If someone codes an audio application for linux there's no need for asio as something similar exists (and anyway, lower latencies *will* be achieved ;).

The work of IRCAM/Tempo Reale/etc. (DeMuDi and RehMuDi, i.e. debian and redhat music distributions) and of a few similar groups of people on linux audio is not finished but it progresses. There are also quite a number of audio geeks/developpers who use applications like Pure Data of jMax that make everything go forward.

Still, and people working on these apps/distributions agree on this, there's some work to do to make all of this usable by an average (i.e. not complete geek) musician...

Re:VST and ASIO

[Anonymous Coward]

Download the Wine VST wrapper for Linux, and you can use some windows VST plugins as LADSPA ones.

Linux already has ASIO support with jackd, but it's not needed as the latency of alsa is very very low.

Do you know what ASIO is? :)

Re:VST and ASIO

[IamTheRealMike]

ASIO is a Windows specific hack around the lack of low latency audio on that OS I think, so it doesn't apply to Linux/ALSA which has some of the lowest latencies around with the right kernel patches.

Re:VST and ASIO

[sh0rtie]

wrong, its a hardware and driver standard, hence why it is also present in a Macintosh
Both platforms running Logic Audio or Cubase use ASIO if the hardware supports it.

All You Need To Know About ASIO
As computers become more commonplace in recording and home project studios, so does the demand for faster, more responsive sound cards to work in these systems. A sound card is expected to enhance the recording process by handling many jobs at once. At any given time it's expected to be recording audio from a single or multiple inputs, playing back audio from multiple sources such as audio from the hard drive or virtual synthesizer instruments, and doing it all in a synchronous manner keeping in step with MIDI or other time dependent devices. These requirements are steep and often leave an ill-equipped system at a grinding halt.

In order to create a more direct path to the hardware, and also make the hardware more responsive to the software's needs, Steinberg of Germany (developer of the popular Cubase digital sequencer and Nuendo digital audio workstation) developed Audio Stream In/Out (ASIO) technology. ASIO has made its mark as the driver standard for delivering low-latency transfer of digital audio. This means that hardware supporting an ASIO driver is able to deliver low-latency recording and monitoring to hard disk.

http://www.soundblaster.com/resources/read.asp?art icleid=60&cat=2

you can grab the Steinberg ASIO SDK or jump on the mail lists here

Re:VST and ASIO

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, speaking as someone who's worked with VST on several platforms, and had a shot at designing a few of my own plugin systems, I can tell you 3 very important things.

1 - VST is ugly. OK, so long-term VST developers have become accustomed to it I guess, but seriously folks, this thing is kludgey. Download the (free) SDK from Steinberg and have a look for yourself. Its no wonder AudioUnits are taking off on OSX.

2 - Virtually everyone in the Windows crowd use VST because of the same reason they use Windows - because lots of people use it (round and round, etc, ad infinitum). So, no doubt its a very convenient bandwagon to jump on if you're not really interested in innovating.

3 - At least VST is administered by someone outside of the OSS sphere. Not trolling here, but seriously, I don't see a lot of real standards emerging from Open Source in the audio field (of course, I'm very aware that OSS is all about embracing existant and open standards - Mozilla et al are excellent evidence for this). What I'm saying is - good luck getting a team together and trying to force a plugin standard on the Linux world in the current climate.

So, taking all this in consideration, VST is a bad choice idealistically, but possibly the only choice in practical terms.

Re:VST and ASIO

[Anonymous Coward]

While ASIO definitely addresses the latency problems inherit in the other Windows driver models, it means far more than this from a developer perspective.

It represents a common interface (and crossplatform, at least as far as "the big 2" (Windows/MacOS) go), for audio driver developers _and_ application developers.

And (unlike) VST, its actually pretty clean.

Re:VST and ASIO

[Anonymous Coward]

You can use ASIO under Linux too.
Just start jackd with the -a flag.

One question

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it play ogg files?

cropping mp3 files

[Anonymous Coward]

will there finally be an app, that i can use to crop mp3 files, record mp3 files from LINE IN, not simply rip mix and burn?

its not funny to allways record to wav, when your using it to encode a sound archive thats not on CD. in fact most of todays music is not on cd.

bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont want to even comment on this,
but having developed several audio
apps for linux, and being subscripted
to the LAD mailing list for years,
besides doing all my audio work
(sequencing/mixing/mastering)
in linux with existing aps,
i can sure say this guy is saying
totall bullshit.

Just check ladspa,xap,jack,alsaseq,etc
they are here, they work, most linux
audio apps use them. period.

If you mean audio for games, the
i'm sorry to let you know "directmusic"
is also total crap, and no game development
company bothers to use it.

What I want.

[/dev/trash]

I'd like my Aureal based sound card to work, out of the box.

I have to say...

[SatanicPuppy]

I've had a better audio experience with Linux than I ever did with windows.

Case in point: I recently was bequeathed a SB Audigy card (Platinum...Oooooooo.) with no driver disk.

So whay you say! I can download the driver no problem, you say!

NAY! I say, they have restricted the downloads to driver "upgrades" only. If you don't have the original, then you get NOTHING! I had to go rip off a damn copy of the original driver CD to use a physical piece of hardware. Severely annoying.

This is in windows. In LINUX, I found the driver and it worked perfectly. Took like 3 minutes. It was GREAT! No pops or crackles, just pure wonderful SOUND!

My Name is SatanicPuppy, and I'm a switcher.

=P

Re:I have to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

creative labs is rapidly outliving their usefulness in the soundcard arena.

Re:I have to say...

[JKR]

Er, what exactly was wrong with these, posted on 31 Dec 2002?

Your Name is SatanicPuppy, and you're an idiot.

Jon.

Re:I have to say...

[MattElmore]

On that page it has the following: Note:- Please ensure that the installation CD must be installed first before running this update. Your name is Jon, and you're a retard. Thanks for playing.

Re:I have to say...

[JKR]

Here is your free clue for the day.

Have you actually TRIED installing them? The only reason they want you to use the installation CD is so you get all the other junk that's on it. Now, I suspect like me the parent poster could give a shit less about having Creative Keytar & some talking parrot installed, thankyouverymuch. Every machine I build has a Creative sound card installed, and that's how I do my driver installs; I never use the fucking installation CD, precisely because it's usually only the drivers that are needed, and drivers on CDs are so out of date as to be worthless.

Jon.

Re:I have to say...

[k8to]

I think it's pretty reasonable to believe the stated installation requirements given with software. That the vendor provides misinformation about the requirements does not earn any brownie points in the simplicity and clarity arena. At least, it doesn't in my book.

The big advantage of Linux installation over Windows installation, in my experience, is that I don't have to dork around with all these brain-dead installers and web pages all of which are full of misinformation and poorly-crafted installers. If I want a linux soundcard to work, it's generally just 'alsaconf' and I'm done. One command, one action, one minute.

Primarily this disparity has to do with how coordinated the Windows drivers are with Microsoft central (not very) and how often the Linux releases are made to include new card support (often!)

Re:I have to say...

[JKR]

The big advantage of Linux installation over Windows installation, in my experience, is that I don't have to dork around with all these brain-dead installers and web pages all of which are full of misinformation and poorly-crafted installers. If I want a linux soundcard to work, it's generally just 'alsaconf' and I'm done. One command, one action, one minute.

I agree that the quality of OEM drivers from many manufacturers (sound cards and video cards are the worst) is pretty pathetic. You have to remember that this is NOT due to Microsoft - drivers can be as simple as a .SYS file and a .INF file, and maybe a .DLL if the driver has a userland interface. If Creative feel the need to ship a 25 MB behemoth with a DVD-Audio sample clip, two Flash presentations, multimedia speaker "calibrator", garishly-skinned mixer application (application skins, what IS the point?) and a stupid start-up splash screen that runs on every boot, it's THEIR fault.

Microsoft have a strategy of shipping Windows with approved minimal-functionality drivers, which does mean that MOST hardware works out of the box, for some value of "works". Both OSes have problems with bleeding edge stuff. Building my new machine, I found Windows XP needed OEM drivers to support the S-ATA controller and the Gigabit Ethernet controller on Asus's new Granite Bay boards, for example. This wasn't exactly an earth-shattering discovery, and I'd already collected the latest versions from the net; I'd have to do EXACTLY the same for Linux, with the additional step of integrating the driver source into the kernel build, or worse, installing binary-only modules for a specific kernel version whether I wanted that version or not.

On that basis, I think the Windows driver architecture (WDM) is better than Linux. Factor in power management and wake-from-sleep support and WDM is streets ahead.

Jon

Re:I have to say...

[SatanicPuppy]

I'm not a complete idiot; I did try to download them first. It did a prior install check (like you get for the annoying windows "upgrade" disks.) and found I had no software, and then prompted for me to insert the original disk.

The worst ever driver experience wasn't sound at all...I bought a fancy 3com nic, which came bundled with some lame windows "home networking" software. I don't know why I bought it...some stupid part of my brain saw the high price tag and said, "Wow! This thing must be bad ass! Look how much it costs!" Proving conclusively that I am, indeed, a sometime retard.

So I installed the damn thing, and ended up having to spend an extra hour or so getting the damn drivers disentagled from the awful "home networking" software. Anyway, it worked, and I forgot about it.

Until my windows install crapped out...probably about 5 months down the line (Win 98). I found that I had lost the CD. Who the hell would keep a CD for NIC drivers? So I switched over to my linux box, and went looking for the driver download.

And looking.

And looking.

3com had every damn driver in the world except mine. Finally I found, down in the small print, that, since windows software had been included (Remember the crappy networking stuff?) I had to get the driver from Microsoft.

So I went to microsoft, and they claimed that I had to go to 3com. I argued with them for a while, and then, it turns out that the driver had been included on win2k, and I had to go buy a win2k disk in order to install the damn driver for the massively over-priced NIC!

Finally ended up tossing the damn thing, and picking up a 12 dollar soho-ware nic, which has performed flawlessly up until the present day (3?) years later.

Not sure what the moral is. I have to say though, I've never really had problems with linux drivers: if there actually is one, it works great.

no VST on Linux

[onash]

I can't switch to Linux on my desktop machine because I would have to stop making music. I haven't found any sequencers that support VST instruments or even a VST host for Linux yet, so this talk that musicians can easily switch to Linux doesn't really make sense to me.. unless all those who make music on Linux have tons of hardware synths and don't need soft synths like poor me :P

If anyone knows about any open source Sequencer with planned VST support, let me know, I would love to help. I searched Sourceforge for Linux VST.. and found nothing.

Re:no VST on Linux

[Adnans]

If anyone knows about any open source Sequencer with planned VST support, let me know, I would love to help. I searched Sourceforge for Linux VST.. and found nothing.

http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/jackit-devel/thi s-month/0020.html
Google around for details...

Re:no VST on Linux

[IamTheRealMike]

As pointed out in an above post, there are experiments with using Wine to let Linux apps use Windows VST plugins, in a similar fashion to how mplayer allows you to use Win32 codecs. That's one of the cool things about Wine. It lets you do seamless integration.

Anyway, I expect the next problems once VST compatability is conquered will revolve around making sequencers comparable in power - for various reasons I think VST itself won't run under Wine (needs the windows equivalent of kernel modules?). Oh yes, and file format compatability as well.

Re:no VST on Linux

[Freedryk]

Soft synths are the real problem here. Reason and VST are the two things that keep me from wiping my windows hard drive for good. We need stable, working, effect and synthesis plugins; it's LADSPA that needs the most dev work. Ardour and Rosegarden are great, but I need some synths to work with or my setup is useless.

Re:no VST on Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use jack-capable softsynths, and connect them to your multitrack host. With alsa you'd be able to route midi to them anyway you want.

I have a single question

[fredrikj]

Where can I find a MIDI sequencer for Linux, that:

1. Is powerful, but yet *simple* (cmp Phoenix vs Mozilla)
2. Doesn't use some awful customized interface
3. Doesn't only exist in an unbuildable alpha source version from 1997

I'm currently using an age-old version of Cakewalk Home Studio in Windows under NTVDM emulation, and it amazingly satisfies those points.

I guess it might be possible to run it in emulation under Linux, but it sounds uncomfortable.

I've tried searching for a Linux program with similar qualities for a while, but haven't found anything yet. Ideas, anyone?

Re:I have a single question

[Nosher]

I'm not sure whether it counts as having "some awful customised interface" or not, but I've used the (now) open-source Jazz++ sequencer (http://www.jazzware.com/cgi-bin/Zope.cgi/jazzware /) with some success...

Re:I have a single question

[Consul]

A popular program, under active development, is Rosegarden4.

I haven't used it much, but I was able to get it to run stably, and talk to my soundcard just fine. Many people on the Linux Audio Users mailing list like it a lot.

Re:I have a single question

[Anonymous Coward]

> 2. Doesn't use some awful customized interface

Rosegarden 2.1 has an awful, counter-intuitive X-Windows interface.

> 3. Doesn't only exist in an unbuildable alpha source version from 1997

There are no official RPMS for Rosegarden 4.0 and I could never get it to compile. I looks like it has dependencies on beta-version KDE libraries.

beep beep beep

[makapuf]

It seems Ellen Feiss should have a quote here ...

My head hurt

[NorthDude]

How can ALSA play on more card then OSS if ALSA *IS* OSS?

Oups, not this OSS, it was about the other OSS, the OSS OSS.
Now I understand better. I think.

Re:My head hurt

[Anonymous Coward]

The backend drivers are all new. The frontend API is compatible with OSS so all OSS sound apps work just like they did before.

Re:My head hurt

[Doc Hopper]

Most people who are familiar with GNU/Linux audio development refer to the "Open Sound System/Free Version" as "OSS/Free". Unfortunately, this is often confused with "Open Source Software/Free Software", which is also sometimes abbreviated "OSS/Free".

Even better, I often talk about running something in "UML", or "User-Mode Linux", at work. Until I explained, many people were thinking I was talking about "UML", (I think it's an abbreviation for) "Unified Markup Language". They thought it was amazing I could do all this cool stuff with kernels and isolation using a prototyping & flowcharting language.

When in doubt, use the full name first and the abbreviation later...

Re:My head hurt

[pxpt]

Just for the record the 'other' UML you were thinking of is an abbreviation for 'Unified Modelling Language'.

No one will see this, but

[Ricky M. Waite]

I need some suggestions on good WINDOWS audio editors. I run Windows XP Professional. Thanks.

Re:No one will see this, but

[dmnic]

for free, you have Audacity.
for professioanl results, Soundforge 6, Cool Edit Pro, Cakewalk, Logic, N-Track, etc....

Re:No one will see this, but

[TheAwfulTruth]

Wavelab is very nice. $600 full or $300 upgrade which is still the full version but without the manuals. Look it up in google for details.

Re:Good for Linux Nerds

[wsherman]

All this Linux audio stuff is great for Linux nerds with no friends because now they can sing in harmony with recordings of themselves and not get the nasty distortion that results from trying to use a taperecorder for that purpose.

Maybe it wasn't that funny but it wasn't a troll. The point I was making was that the conference was about serious recording audio rather than comsumer entertainment audio. Recording audio is about being able to playback and record multiple tracks simultaneously so the point is that Linux is becoming a viable platform for people who want to do multitrack recording and editing in digital rather than analog format.

Re: OT, joke explained :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

:-(
it was a joke...
OSS: Open Source Software
OSS: Open Sound System...

O well, I'll try it another day then :-)

Creative Open Sources their drivers

[brunes69]

Not only do they create drivers for their chips (SBLive! and Audigy series, OpenAL), they release the code as Open Source. The driver sin the Linux kernel came from Creative, not some 3rd party. Another reason to support Creative (as if having the best stuff wasn't enough of a reason)

http://opensource.creative.com

Re:Creative Open Sources their drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And the binary drivers that were apparently meant to offer soundfont MIDI/EAX support are due for release in 2000.

ALSA offers MIDI support, but still no EAX effects, so they sound flat and boring.

Re:Creative Open Sources their drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I can't speak for Linux (having only used Creative drivers for Creative cards in Windows), but the drivers for everything since the SBLive (ie everything that was attempting a stab at the 'prosumer' market) have been absolutely awful. I mean, really really nasty. 23megs of EAX support and flashy interfaces for crap you'll never need, and the drivers at the heart of it all suck.

Everyone Creative-card-owning Windows musician I know is using the KX Project drivers (kxproject.de), which show amazing improvements in latency and reliability.

Remember folks, just because you can view the source, doesn't mean it doesn't suck...

Re:Creative Open Sources their drivers

[brunes69]

Well this is the exact opposite of the Linux drivers. They work flawlessly and install easily and give you advanced options and direct access to the hardware through simple perl scripts.

Move along, no Linux info here...

[Anonymous Coward]

CoolEdit 2000 - great all-round mono/stereo editor
CoolEdit pro v2 - very good multitrack audio editor
http://www.syntrillium.com

Sound Forge
Vegas
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/

nTrack - surprisingly good multitrack editor for $60. I like it.
http://www.ntrack.com

SAWStudio - if you're really pro and want the leading edge plus ultra stability. $1200 to $2500. It's not for kids.
http://www.sawstudio.com/

The previous SAW product (SAWPro) is discontinued, but solid as a brick if you can find it.

Still a few years away.

[DaveOf9thKey]

These are all heartening developments, but I have a feeling I'm still a few years away from being able to make music with any Linux system as easily as I can with Cakewalk Home Studio 2002 in Win2K, especially with all the plug-ins and software synths I'm using now. Once Linux audio gets to the point where I can:

1. run a pro-quality sequencer/studio that can mixdown audio fairly intuitively (Under-the-rader programs like Muzys and Tracktion qualify here...),
2. use software synths and effects plug-ins in said sequencer/studio,
3. wrap at least some of the existing VST and VSTi plug-ins I have now (and that list grows every day), and
4. do all of this in an environment that doesn't crash or dump core more than once a week,

Then I'll switch to Linux, and I won't look back. I'm happy to see progress in the 2, 3 and 4, but 1 is the dealbreaker. The lack of the decent software sequencer/studio with soft synth support is the one thing keeping me from making the switch. On the other hand, the fact that it's gotten this far gives me some faith that I won't have to wait forever...

Re:Still a few years away.

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not have to wait that long for Tracktion.

From the site.....

"By August 2003 versions for the Mac and Linux will also be available"

Homepage and ML of the Linux Audio Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

the home of the Linux Audio Developers is www.linuxaudiodev.org

If you want to develop audio applications for Linux please join the linux-audio-dev mailing list

If you are an user of audio applications for Linux please join the linux-audio-user mailing list

As someone that does sound for a living...

[DaveCBio]

I would be interested in Linux audio apps only of they supported all the DirectX and VST plug-ins I use on a regular basis as well as all the file formats I need to work in. I am always on the lookout for cool audio processing apps. If Linux had a killer app for audio that was compatible with pro hardware I'd consider using it for sure.

Please! A Turtle Beach Montego II Driver!

[JThaddeus]

I'd love for them to come up with a quick hack for the Turtle Beach Montego II card that this Dell came with. (But why should the purchasing department listen to the employees!) The Aureal Vortex Linux driver kinda worked under RH 6.2 but it won't build for me with RH 7.3. You can bet I'm avoiding Turtle Beach from now on.

OT: typo

[Anonymous Coward]

xf89config

How does one make a typo like that? Was your keyboard up-side-down?

Re:OT: typo

[Zork the Almighty]

look at the numeric keypad

Re:It's BLANTANTLY obvious...

[sirinek]

The Creative Webcam II USB.

Creative can't be bothered to write Win2K or XP drivers for this nice USB camera. Pisses me off.

It works fine under Linux though.

Creative Open Sources only some of their drivers

[200_success]

Beware, though, that Creative doesn't open-source drivers for all of their products. I bought their very inexpensive Webcam, for instance. I was only able to find this independently produced driver, which I haven't been able to get working.

Re:VST

[acb]

Linux only doesn't need VST if you believe that (a) companies like Steinberg, Waldorf and Native Instruments are going to start writing LADSPA plugins, or (b) open-source plug-ins can do anything those can do and more. In practice, a look at the state of LADSPA plug-ins (which are mostly DSP textbook code examples and simple hacks) vs. commercial VST plugins (many of which do innovative things) disproves (b).

The good news is that it is possible to run (some) Windows VST plugins under Linux; someone has written a WINE-based VST server, which loads Windows VST plugins and runs audio through them on request from client. Source code for it (and Pd and LADSPA code for accessing it) may be found here.

Btw, I heard a rumour a while ago that Steinberg had a proof-of-concept port of Cubase SX to Linux working a while ago.

Are you sure you're not joking?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have NO standards for mixing, NO support for VST or other plug-ins -- in short, we have the same crazy do-it-yourself catch-as-catch-can mishmosh of proposals, ideas, and standards that has plagued Linux "development" (what a word) since day one. No serious musician uses Linux -- it's Windows or Mac now (about neck and neck from what I see, esp. since Windows hardware is cheaper on the whole).

This is just symptomatic of what's wrong with Linux as a whole. Everyone wants to do everything their way. That's great for some abstract notion of "diversity" and lousy for the end user, who has to pick his way through a minefield of 0.x-stage development crap to find anything useable -- provided it hasn't turned into abandonware in the time he's figured it out.

How anyone can pass this sort of chaos off as "progress" and "the health / strength of Linux" is going to make for a great a case study in mass self-deception.

"Linux multimedia COULD be really great." No one who wants to do serious work is interested in "could." They are interested in what they CAN do, NOW. Linux users of all people should know this, and they should be ashamed of themselves for passing this insanity off as "a good thing."