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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.
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 does this software compare to Audacity?
It doesn't. Or hardly doesn't, at least. Ardour is a full featured professional recording application, designed to tackle any audio recording task you can throw at it. Have two studio quality sound cards, giving you a total of 20 cannels in/out, at 96Khz/24bit? Want to record a rock show, with live drums, backing vocals, and enough microphone cables to make AOL's server room look tidy? Ardour can handle it, and then some.
Want to take that 20 track show, and overdub the guitars in the studio, while the whole mess is mixed in real time? It can do that, too.
Ardour is the open source equivalent of Pro Tools (mentioned on slashodot a few days ago). Audacity isn't.
Now, if you're not interested in any of these things, Ardour is probably overkill for you.
And if anyone deserves the marketing here, it's Paul. Ardour is a massive piece of code, that took years of uncompensated full time work to get to its current state. It's well designed and well coded. No corners were cut in the making of this piece of software. Go get it, and pay for it.
Ardour is a bit overkill for my needs, and Audacity is too slow for my taste, so I wrote GNUsound. You might want to give it a try.
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.
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