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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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
...gimme something that can deal with Cubase VST plugins and I'll be happy...
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.
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...
It's too late for me to die young
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.
May we never see th
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
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
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.
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"You spilled my egg... I needed that egg."
its a hell to setup - try it for yourself. :P
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)
-What have you contributed lately?