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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!"
Ardourous process.
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
This same scenario has to apply to many others out there. My small group of musically talented friends can't be the only ones.
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
You know - I don't mean this as a troll - but I really have to wonder what the hell is going to happen to all the software developers working for closed source companies when mainstream users start adopting free products in droves.
After all, if Microsoft's Palladium is successful, that could mean the end of software piracy - which probably accounts for a good chunk of the market. What will all those users do? Will they go out and spend $200 on Windows, $500 on Office, and $600 on Photoshop? No, they'll come running to Free and Open Source Software! And pretty soon, they'll be able to find replacements for EVERYTHING they need.
(Sorry for jumping from topic to topic, it's late.)
A potential Linux user that doesn't have the luxury of a hand-holding-Linux-guru friend to help them install their desired software would view an easy to install binary application as a "big plus".
Well, it might be good for standalone audio-only projects with only a few tracks. One feature I do not see listed is timecode, and support for hardware sync clocks. Without that, you are out of the running for A/V production. In pro audio, media-independent sync is absolutely necessary.
Ah but the people who won't understand this, are the same people who don't understand why the lack of CMYK support is such a limiting factor for Gimp.
And was anybody else bugged by ... -- ?
Find free books.
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!
University of Maryland researchers were able to grow a checkers playing program out of nothing (it knew legal moves, that's it). Once they thought it had "cooked" enough, they turned it loose on yahoo games where it quickly reached an expert ranking.
To claim that white noise guided solutions can't give rise to more complex systems is to say that the premise of annealing processees are false. Yet molten rock sometimes forms diamonds, so there must be something to it!
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
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.
honestly it's not all that hard to compile from CVS if you're familiar enough with GNU/automake-type source packages. I think the total number of external dependencies I had to compile was 7? give it a shot. if you're willing to pay digidesign $?,000 for a full-fledged protools rig then the time out of your day to donate a little testing to ardour is a drop in the bucket.
and WTF, GIMP does CMYK just fine. *yes* the interface is a bit obfuscated, but it is there.
Ah, but it's not. How many people do you know that have done image manipulation at some point in their lives with a computer? Lots, I'd expect. I know I do. How many of them need support for professional printing equipment? None.
You'd be totally amazed at the number of people out there who write music using their PC, keyboard, sample editor and guitar. I know several. For people like that, who actually care about not warezing VST or SoundForge, this sort of stuff is a dream come true.
Of course, I am sceptical that anybody but those who do music professionally actually pay for that stuff, but hey. Here at work we all use the Gimp.
Errr... you must be thinking of something else, ardour doesn't have a phase vocoder.
FWIW I've also supplied a few patches to ardour and have written several phase vocoders for Linux.
- Steve
This whole thread makes me sad.
Somebody mentions that he goes to church and
instant flamefest (mostly about evolution)
ignites?
I hope most of you know that freedom of
religion is right there among other basic human
rights.
Would you eg. not hire somebody, because
you assume that he is stupid since he believes
in Jesus? What if he is from different culture
or perhaps physically different, but still fit
for the job?
Would you be friendly and polite to him?
How about trying to feel what he feels like,
or even helping him if he is abused somehow?
As a christian I would like to add that christians
are mostly just like everybody else. They come
from every possible background etc.
Naturally they have different explanations for
things and different ways to structure the world.
(If you ask me, I would say that Genesis happening
exactly the way it was written is nowhere near
the center of Christianity. I think many would
agree. What exactly is in the center is too
seldom discussed openly.)
Kudos are definitely in order for Paul and the others working on Ardour. However, I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that ProTools is an unreachably expensive system. ProTools comes in multiple versions which have different levels of hardware acceleration. The more hardware acceleration, the more expensive the version.
... many professional albums are made on it. It competes directly with the likes of MOTU Performer, Emagic Logic, Steinberg Cubase, and Cakewalk Sonar.
ProTools Free runs purely in software, using off-the-rack, home sound cards, and is free (beer, not speech). Nobody uses it for real work, but it makes for an okay functional demo.
ProTools LE is targetted at home and small studios, and uses generic pro-level audio adapters. The software and hardware together come out in the $500 to $1000 range.
ProTools TDM is what the big studios use. It requires proprietary hardware with extensive use of onboard DSP and dedicated control surfaces. This is the one for which the hardware and software together fall in the $10000 to $15000 range.
The mid-level LE version is not a toy
But my grandest creation, as history will tell,
Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.