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The Fix Is In: Ardour Set For Summer Release
uprightcitizen writes "Good news for the open source audio recording world! Ardour creator Paul Davis has announced a feature-freeze and has set a binary release date for the now-famous
GPL multitrack audio recording application. Ardour has recently been featured
in Sound on Sound and has been mentioned
on Slashdot many times (here(1), here(2),
etc..). The feature freeze is effective as of May 4 and the binary release date
is set for sometime in July or August. Good Job Paul!"
One more pro use of linux to knock the proprietary big boys down. The article doesn't say it, so I will here. We're gaining on those markets where Apple and PC hardware have been used and how, simply because there were once the only solution. Where there was Photoshop, now there is GIMP. Where there was film editing, now there is Film Gimp. Where there were proprietary rendering, now movies like XMen2 use Linux. Where there was Pro Tools, now we have our own solution too.
These may be relatively small markets compared to desktop users, but they are extremely solid ones. Once GPL software is usable there and the savings are being made (come on now, free software compared to over $14,000 for Pro Tools in audio) the hold will be unavoidable.
It's a coming of age
I recently set up an audio recording computer for a church. (433mhz, oss/free sound drivers, CMI8738 sound card) They were going to use windows, but I convinced them that Linux would be the better choice. I set it up so that recording is done from the command line, encoding ogg [vorbis.com] (ok, vorbis) or flac [sf.net] in realtime.
.5 seconds for every second of audio, and thus it sounded like it was in fast forward. (44100hz 16bit) After reading the driver line by line, I fixed it with a one-line shell script.
For shorter tracks, ardour is used for more user friendly recording. (Audacity and sweep cause choppy audio in my experience)
In addition, I have made command-line full duplex recording possible. (where the instrument track is done first, then vocals laid on top of it) However, be warned that you'll need to make a small program to write raw instructions to the soundcard if you want to turn off the audio loopback, as the CMI* OSS/free driver doesn't implement this for some reason. (I haven't checked if ALSA does this or not)
One major bug that slowed it down was only recording
I have been getting extremely good sound out of it, however. In addition, I have only had to write about 50 lines of code. So if anyone has tried without success to record with a CMI8738 soundcard on linux - don't give up. If you want me to send you the fixes to the problems that I have created, contact me.
Pro Tools is not just software - you'll normally find it installed as a hardware/software combo. This is in part due to the fact that modern CPU's can not handle mulitple high quality real time effects for larger studio projects. The other big factor with Pro Tools (and comperable systems) is the Control Surface. Sure, there are incredible MIDI controllers out there, but the proprietary Pro Tools control surfaces are second to none.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
And was anybody else bugged by ... -- ?
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Hate to tell you, but that 'legacy' CMYK technology is currently installed in just about every printer (think 'big book factory' rather than 'laser/inkjet/etc.') in the world. Not being able to submit graphic data in CMYK is a big limitation.
I've experimented with Linux and other open-source OSes for a while now, but I've never found one that can make a permanent home on my desktop. One major reason: No good multi-track recorder! Sure, there are options like Audacity, but there is nothing that can rival the mixing options of, say, Cool Edit Pro. For my mixing, I absolutely NEED features that I can control -- a good compressor, gain control, some decent effects, a reliable GUI, etc. Now, it looks like Ardour may offer that, and so I rejoice. This may be the last rail laid on my transitional track, and the golden spike is beautiful. So Ardour, I say bring it on. Lemme see what you got!
How about a grant model? This already works pretty well for research, where the results are made available to the public. An agency (government, consortium of corporations who realize software is useful, but don't want to develop it alone, etc.) puts out a call for proposals for desired project, and funds one which seems best (by reputation, plan, etc.). The grant covers the developers' time, administrivia, etc.
If this results in a smaller total number of employed software developers, does that mean the previous model was inefficient? Maybe eliminating that inefficiency is good in the long term-- the extra developers can now work on new challenges that will further increase our standard of living, instead of reinventing the wheel in all the proprietary software shops.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Yes, an official feature freeze and subsequent binary release have been announced. However, the release date of the binary is june 13. This will be followed by four weeks of the main developers absence. The binary is a 1.0.rc1. All the c++ dependencies will remain statically linked so it's likely that Debian won't be including this binary in official releases. I think the objective of this release is to increase testing from users but not create an all out marketing assualt.
Reguardless, the announcement is seriously encouraging.
IMO, a commercial studio owner and engineer/producer, professional audio production in linux is close to being a reality. To prove the point to myself, about six months ago I produced a commercial album from start to finish in Ardour. At the time, it was a serious challange which I expected. Since then, Ardour and JACK have seen alot of serious developement.
Unlike what one commentor stated, syncronization in the form of MTC and MMC does exist and it mostly works. You're probably well advised to inquire about syncronization on the mailing lists.
Equally interesting to Ardour is JACK which is a low latency, high bandwidth audio server. It enables port connections between software applications which is serious stuff.
While many linux audio solutions are not > 1.0 there are interesting solutions for preproduction, production and postproduction audio work.
My partners and I have been in business for 19 years. We've had four major studio redesigns and without hesitation I will say that the linux based solution is more interesting than any of the others.