Dave Phillips' Linux Sound Updated

f-matic writes "Dave Phillips' Linux Sound website has been updated (for the first time in a while) with lots of new software links and news from the recent BYOL conference, plus links to some interesting Linux multimedia articles. Seems like things are getting pretty interesting in the linux audio world, with a Supercollider port in the works, not to mention February's Linux article in the prestigious Sound on Sound magazine."

Comments

Linux sound

[Anonymous Coward]

I use linux as an audio recorder myself. I just use OSS/Free with my CMI8738 sound card to get great quality audio and pipe it directly into oggenc or flac. It works wonderfully, and doesn't crash. The best part with doing it with Linux - it runs only what I want it to. There's no windows interface that may crash if pushing it too hard.

Re:Linux sound

[psavo]

The best part with doing it with Linux - it runs only what I want it to. There's no windows interface that may crash if pushing it too hard.

The fun part is that with a GUI it's really hard to push a program hard.

Re:Linux sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange. I've been piping stuff into oggenc, and it crashes (as in quitting and generating a 0-byte file) if I do something else at the same time. Looks like a linux or oggenc timeout if the pipe stalls for a few milliseconds. Any advice?

Re:Linux sound

[Anonymous Coward]

Elaborate. What do you mean by "doing something else at the same time"? It shouldn't crash if there is no data going into the pipe. I have pushed the Linux pipe until I get kernel panics myself... but never oggenc crashing.

Nice to see this

[justsomebody]

The most recent version of PLANET CCRMA and AGNULA project, DeMuDi & RehMuDI, will be presented during the BYOL.

Anyone knows when those two will be out??

Re:Nice to see this

[justsomebody]

heh, my first reduntant:)

For a completely valid question:)

http://www.agnula.org//project/dynamic_schedule
Rehmudi (Agnula) seems to be a day or two late, or is it more than half year). I guess dynamic_schedule just isn't so dynamic

Hardware is still tough...

[teamhasnoi]

Here is a copy of an email I sent to Aardvark:

I am the proud owner of an Aardvark Q10. I have been very happy with it so far, and it is far more versatile than my freinds ProTools Digis and Mboxes. (Which I remind them of often :)

I have a few questions and concerns, however.

I realize that you are working on the OS 9 drivers with OS X to follow and must be rather busy with that. Now that OS X has matured and the G5s are out, I have considered investing in a new Mac for my Q10. Is there any sort of timeframe for OS X drivers?

Connected with this: When the OS X drivers are released, are there plans for Linux drivers? Support of Linux would drive hardware sales as there are many Linux users out there who would love to use Aardvark. (Linux users love your specs :)

Finally, I am a avid BeOS user. Be Inc. is no more, however OpenBeOS and YellowTab Zeta are bringing it back. OpenBeOS is an open source implementation of BeOS that is binary compatable, and Zeta is, for all intents and purposes, BeOS 6 (licensed from Palm). Development of BeOS software is on the rise, and there are several new Audio programs being worked on currently, as well as new drivers being released everyday. See www.bebits.com for details.

In doing some research before purchasing my Q10, I read that Aardvark was working on BeOS drivers, which influenced my purchase of your hardware to some degree.

On your (old) site: http://www.aardvark-pro.com/aark24_faq.html#17

Quotes from head honchos: http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/WNAMM99/Aardv ark/BeOS-Support.html

My questions: Are there beta/unfinished/finished BeOS drivers for Aardvark hardware? If so, can the drivers/source code/documentation be released or purchased?

I understand that you may have little interest in 'niche' or 'dead' OS support, but a release of drivers or specs would only drive adoption of your hardware. You could even release them as "unsupported", or as binaries (if opening the source is out of the question).

Be Inc. may be gone, but BeOS is being replaced as we speak. I have followed and used BeOS since 1999, and am seeing interest in it swell more and more. If Aardvark released drivers or source code, you would make many friends rather quickly and raise more than a few eyebrows (in a good way :). More people are trying BeOS every day, and would like to use it for the same reasons Aardvark had when announcing support.

I debated for quite a while whether or not to email and make these requests. I understand if releasing source code sounds impossible or ridiculous.

With Windows becoming more and more of a DRM crippled, embedded "Media" OS, I, as well as many others are looking for a new way to make and record our music. Personally, I think that BeOS making quite a comeback. I urge you to look into it, and the possibility of supporting or helping out the burgeoning community, which in turn will help you with sales of your hardware.

The Response:

Thanks for the email. Right now we're trying to finish up the Mac OSX drivers, which hopefully will be out in a few months. Beware though, Apple changed a lot of things on the G5 so all software and hardware will need some changes. For instance, they changed the PCI bus voltage so normal PCI cards won't work in the G5, they have to be redesigned. So for OSX I'm pretty confident it will be out and work flawlessly, however I can't say for the G5 yet until we get one in here. FYI - many hardware company's have the same issue.

There are still no plans for Linux of BeOS drivers. They're both great operating systems and we wish more end users would use them, but the cry is for Windows and Mac only, so we have to do those first.

Aardvark
www.aardvarkaudio.com

I would love to see linux and BeOS drivers for this hardware (obviously), and if you are the owner of Aardvark's hardware and reading this, you probably do too.

Please let them know that you would like to see drivers for linux/BSD/BeOS...

I know there is other hardware out there that supports linux (and BeOS), but the Q10 is really, really good. I want my cake, and eat it too :)

Re:Hardware is still tough...

[Anonymous Coward]

or instance, they changed the PCI bus voltage so normal PCI cards won't work in the G5,

Whoa whoa whoa wait a second here... the G5's PCI bus is different and my old PCI cards won't work in it?

Screw drivers. I've waited for years of Macs using commodity PCI to bring the prices on on mac cards down, and they are STILL overpriced.

Now they've tossed that out? It's back to the old days of $2000 for a NuBus card? Jesus fucking christ, Apple has shot itself in the foot again.

Re:Hardware is still tough...

[Anonymous Coward]

inspired by your email, i sent aardvark a message too. not as verbose as yours, but it's the thought that counts.

aardvark rocks! i hope they come through with the linux drivers some day...

Re:Hardware is still tough...

[Illbay]

LOL! "Can you please write drivers for every obscure OS with What's the matter, AmigaOS not good enough for you?

Re:Hardware is still tough...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you saying? If you read (the post), you'll see that the company made the announcement of drivers in progress. If they are working on OS X drivers, linux isn't that far away. If the parent post was asking for Inty OS drivers, I'd 'LOL' as well. But he's not. I see you're new here - you don't have to read the articles, but it might be helpful to read what you are replying to if you don't want to be posting at -1.

argh

[stardome]

i'm deaf, you insensitive clod!

Re:argh

[ascalon]

So was Beethoven...

[Neo] Whoa! [/Neo]

[MsGeek]

I am impressed by the sheer numbers of Linux apps for audio now available. I suppose the question now remains: how mature are they? Can you rely on them like you can rely on non-Free stuff like Sound Forge and ACID and so on? When this question can be answered in the affirmative, it will be the day I can "deassimilate" my next-to-last Windows PC from the Redmond Collective.

Re:[Neo] Whoa! [/Neo]

[L-ViS]

Very good point. I run a semi-professional studio with a couple of friends - built around a PC running Windows 2000 and a HoonTech DSP24 soundcard along with Emagic Logic Audio. I would love to replace Windows with Linux and Logic with an open alternative (especially as Apple won't be supporting Logic for the PC from now on), but the alternatives are at best like an early beta Windows alternative.

This is not meant as being offensive towards free software developers, but there no open project that can replace or even threaten Logic, Cubase (et al) at this time. Right now (and for quite some time now) my favourite project on Sourceforge is Audacity. It looks like it could be a real competitor, but on the other hand that's what it's been looking like for years. Perhaps I should take that C coding class anyway so I could help out a bit.

L-ViS

Re:[Neo] Whoa! [/Neo]

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a profession studio environment and we've made a pretty complete transition from proprietary software tool, will never go back.

I like Sweep better than SoundForge: fast, light, looks great, has some extras, _free_. Then there's Ardour, set to release 1.0 in a matter of weeks, fast, stable Pro-tools/Nuendo rplacement, _free_.

And if you haven't seen it yet, there's also the JACK audio server, perhaps the best thing that has happened to real-time audio ever, allows you to connect I/O to/from any arbitrary applications with low-latency, sample-level precision, and it _free_.

Other favorites, Audacity, Jack-Rack, Ecasound, Freqtweak, Hydrogen (seq, drum machine), Muse. Have a closer look.

Re:[Neo] Whoa! [/Neo]

[Amizell]

24 bit audio file support? Standardized plugins? User interface that won't scare studio clients used to seeing Cubase and Pro Tools? Workable MIDI editing? High resolution file compatibility? Session import so I don't lose access to everything I've ever recorded?

Re:[Neo] Whoa! [/Neo]

[Unknown Lamer]

Ardour has 24-bit audio support (assuming that you can capture it) and uses standard LADSPA plugins. Basically every single Free Software audio application uses LADSPA. Midi editing is a bit weak in Ardour (well, it doesn't exist but it is possible for it to generate MTC or bind controls to MIDI control surfaces, which makes editing much nicer), but the unreleased version of Rosegarden in CVS is a huge improvement over the current release. If libsndfile supports a file format, most applications can use it (since basically everyone uses libsndfile).

The UI of things like Ardour, on the other hand, aren't up to par with the Windows equivalent. Stuff like rosegarden may have be up to par, but I've never really used much Windows audio software (or Windows software in general since I haven't had a copy at home for about three years now). I've done some low quality recordings with my SBLive on my 500Mhz k6-2 and everything runs in real time (Linux 2.4.21 + preempt + lowlatency patches, Linux 2.6.0testN already has these in the main tree). The only part the really sucks when recording a three man band through a two channel sound card is recording the drums...I am now trying to get enough money to by an RME Hammerfall DSP and all of the associated A/D converter stuff (oh, and a machine that can handle 32 24-bit/96kHz streams). When your car just died and you had to use the money you were going to spend on building a decent DAW, life sucks.

Re:[Neo] Whoa! [/Neo]

[WWWWolf]

Here are some of my experiences with Linux sound apps. Remember, I'm just a dabbler =) My general advice is that it's good enough to poke around and experiment with, and probably even good enough for serious work, but there are still rough edges and bugs and general unpleasantry. Save early, save often! People with adventurous minds may find the applications quite interesting; People who need rock-stable solutions they can trust their life on now will be disappointed. Unless it's typesetting.

Typesetting music is where Linux... er, excuse me, GNU/Linux shines, particularly due to GNU Lilypond, which (coupled with (La)TeX) produces amazingly beautiful scores. Woohoo. I'd (almost) trust my life on this thing.

MIDI editing is almost nice, once the apps get to the speed and we get everything up to ALSA. I recently tried to use Rosegarden 4, which was a pretty cool experience - it's just that it's a tad bit unstable. =/ Definitely needs some work.

Wave editing... Audacity is a very nice sound editor with some multitrack capability, but I believe the Windows version is better because the Linux version still uses OSS (and my SBLive! won't do full duplex on OSS...) Sweep is a pretty cool stereo-only editor, but I personally would like some of Audacity's features here too (labels would rule). Plus, Sweep has an annoying tendency to load everything to memory and won't do stuff on disk...

Ardour (and the low-latency Jack audio API) are pretty interesting and really make me wish I had a professional sound card =) Even with some glitches and oddities, Ardour seems to be pretty cool as far as multi-track editing goes. And Jack is also pretty interesting as far as sound processing goes.

We're almost there...

[soupforare]

I mostly use Cubase and FLStudio under Win2k/sp2 and am quite pleased with the set up. Low latency drivers, no random crashes or unexpected headaches.
I use debian for servers at work and at home
My continued use of Microsoft products, at home, once win2k is left by the wayside is unlikely.
Hopefully, by then, linux will have more support for custom music hardware and a port of Cubase.
I want to get my linux boxen out of the closet and into the studio!

Re:We're almost there...

[iread]

I use nearly that exact setup for my commercial work now, but for experimental music, I've used Planet CCRMA to move my setup to linux. Ardour is shaping up nicely and compares favorably to the wave editing capabilities of Cubase (minus a few features which I'm sure will be added as development continues), and jack is like having low latency ASIO and rewire wrapped into one (with a sophisticated and well implemented patchbay functionality). Give hydrogen LADSPA effects on individual channels and it will be like fruity a few versions back. The progression of linux audio software is fantastic and it's really hitting the threshold of accessibility to industry professionals with all the turnkey systems available.

It takes some work to get everything functioning properly, but the time you are investing in free software ultimately means that you are supporting software that everyone can enjoy and learn from. NOW is the time to get on board with linux audio software. . .already there is enough to keep an experimental and technically minded person busy for hours, but it won't be long until UI refinements make it friendly and practical for everyone - but only with the help of artists who get involved and express their needs to developers.

-e

Re:We're almost there...

[KoolyM]

I use Slackware for servers at work and for play at home. I can have great fun doing low level sound design with PD on Linux, fool around with the excellent modular softsynth SpiralSynthModular, edit the recorded output of PD and SSM in Sweep (or Audacity, if that's your thing - I prefer Sweep), but I've yet to find an app that makes creating music as uncomplicated and enjoyable as FLStudio.

So unfortunately I still spend *way* to much time in Windows :(

Re:We're almost there...

[iread]

It's true fruity is a simply amazing program, but to reference the original poster, there is *no* way I will move to XP for audio stuff and eventually, someday, 2000 will not be supported by fruity. so now I'm putting in time with linux because it's something I believe in... and hydrogen is much like the very early fruity, have some fun and jackrack it- record the wavs into ardour and go. what's been really interesting me now is the ecasound perl module... yummy audio processing scripting. PD is great and don't forget Csound is LGPL now! if you ever had an interest in audio development, linux is the platform.

for me in a way, fruity became too easy. maybe I'm a masochist, but it seemed like some of the sweat I was having to put in to music with I first started with external MIDI gear and Cakewalk for DOS really made my work edgy. don't get me wrong, I still use fruity, and it's great (the _best_ UI), but find me on my spare time and not on the 'clock' so to speak, and I'm all about gettin' freaky on linux trying to code algorhythmic beat slicing.

-e

Re:We're almost there...

[soupforare]

I'm with you on 2k.. and the 'insta-easy-l33tb33t-ocity'(?) of FL now.
Under the hood though, it's still a horribly advanced prog. A testament to Delphi's greatness ;)

*Anyway,* I mostly play windsynth, so my main gear is outboard MIDI stuff, too. I've been fooling around with Renoise a bit because I want to get back into trackers
I know, I know, trackers are the pits sometimes, but with a windsynth, I'm chucking a whole hell of a lot of CCs at my sequencer.
Cubase's midi is great, but it's a little bloated for what I'm doing. FL's midi is, er, getting there, but it's a little underpowered for what I'm doing.
I need to find a nice console/curses tracker that I can run on any random VintageTron 6000, yet isn't so horribly complex that I need a brain aug to understand it.

Re:We're almost there...

[iread]

I bought one of the fry's thizlinux $200 specials and am beating away with it. I got jack working on it even, but I know I need to tune it more. CCRMA works great. I love trackers, too, buzz has been a source of great joy for me.

I like fruity's piano roll better than cubase's, but I have sent large amounts of CC any further than my own computer.

No disrespect to fruity, it's amazing and _very_ versitle for experimental work, especially with all the great/unique/weird vsts and vsti's. for me it's just that the idea of scripted audio mulching has become a very fascinating subject, bordering on a perversion. all credit due to the makers of fruity, I would love to see such an interface developed for linux audio software- with the culture surrounding it, I believe it would be many times more versitile.

I still use fruity for experiemental work in collaboration with a friend of mine, but am starting to supply the project with samples generated on my linux box. My solo work in development is being done with linux.

-e

Sound Mixing....

[LamerX]

Yes, but when will my computer be able to mix sounds on the fly? I like to hear XMMS playing and have it not tie up the sound card for Xine, or even have it not tie it up for the system beep in KDE. I know that ARTS mixes sounds, but it's too delayed (the sounds play after a 2-3 second delay. Mabye it's just my sound card?

Re:Sound Mixing....

[Vann_v2]

Many ALSA drivers supports this in hardware if the sound card actually supports it. My emu10k1 card, for example, can play multiple sounds at the same time without using esd or arts. If your sounds card doesn't support this in hardware then you do need to use arts or esd, which cause a lot of headaches for people trying to configure them. I'm not sure about your problem specifically, but it isn't an issue with Linux in general.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[FrostedWheat]

Mabye it's just my sound card?

Yes.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[iabervon]

Ideally, ALSA would support mixing regardless of whether the hardware did it (that is, if the hardware or driver doesn't support it, it would be done in software). Probably the right way to handle it would be for ALSA to do it in userspace if the hardware doesn't support it.

Having only some machines need an external mixer (with a different API) is just a bad idea.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, and I was pretty happy to learn it the hard way.

Actually, if anyone cares, you can see with ALSA if your card supports hardware multiple outputs mixing. Just take a look at your /proc/asound/pcm file. My cheap 20 bucks ALS4000 has a playback value of 1 and thus can't mix multiple sounds while my emu10k1 has a playback value of 32 and thus can play/mix up to 32 simultaneous sounds.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[theno23]

For "professional" applications there is JACK (http://jackit.sf.net/) that allows applications to route audio between each other and the soundcard. The majority of the good apps for linux audio support this.

It requires apps to run thier audio thread with SCHED_FIFO scheduling though, so its not really ideal for simple mp3 players.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[13Echo]

When you buy a card with a hardware mixer...

The Alsa Soundcard Matrix lists all of the cards that support hardware mixing. And card indicated with a (4) next to it should support hardware mixing.

http://alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

An alternate approach is to buy (yes, I said buy) some drivers from 4-Front at http://www.opensound.com. They have a real-time software mixer that works with ALL chipsets. Latency is nonexistent, as far as I can tell. I use it with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card (I have the PRO upgrade with advanced recording) and it works great. However, when kernel 2.6 becomes mainstream, I may switch. The ALSA drivers have hardware mixing for the Santa Cruz cards, while the OSS drivers do not.

A final alternative is to buy a Soundblaster Live or Yamaha YMFPCI card. They have great support and mixing, regardless of the driver set. Even the simple kernel OSS drivers can handle it with those cards.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[IamTheRealMike]

In fact it does support this, look into the dmix plugin which mixes direct into the DMA buffers, with no sound servers necessary. It's still quite new though. I guess it's up to the distro to set it up correctly.

Re:Sound Mixing....

[0x0d0a]

Mike, this looks very interesting indeed. If this is what I think it is, and it gets the support it needs, it will finally fix a longstanding and huge hole in Linux desktop usability.

Just so that I'm sure (I've skimmed a few Google searchs, and am still not sure), is this a fallback-capable system, or just a mixer with an ALSA interface? Does it use hardware channels as available until out of them and *then* do software mixing, or is it just another software mixer?

Re:Sound Mixing....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's precisely what JACK does.

Real-time, low-latency, pro-audio, sample-synced, audio-data communication between and within any arbitrary app!

Re:Sound Mixing....

[Anonymous Coward]

It *IS* an issue with Linux, unfortunately. Either: Jack needs to be come THE standard user-land sound mixing daemon that everything uses, or the ALSA drivers need to transparantly do the mixing in software in kernel-land. (i.e. allow multiple open() on /dev/dsp even if the hardware doesn't support it).

Personally I'd like to see that latter, so that everything, regardless of it choosing to use OSS/ALSA or go through arts or whatever, will be able to be mixed in software as a fallback.

Of course the maximum number of channels to mix via this method should be control via /proc or /sys

Re:Sound Mixing....

[Anonymous Coward]

check this out:

http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2003/papers/TIw ai /soundsystems/

specifically: Section 3.2 ALSA dmix / dsnoop plugins

Re:Sound Mixing....

[runderwo]

An alternate approach is to buy (yes, I said buy) some drivers from 4-Front at http://www.opensound.com. They have a real-time software mixer that works with ALL chipsets. Latency is nonexistent, as far as I can tell.

So does ALSA. Check out the "dmix" plugin. It requires a fairly beefy CPU though (P150 or better).

amazingly article

[killthiskid]

I really like the fact that 3 paragraphs into the article there is a huge biline on how and why linux is good. It also explains the GPL, BSD, and it all seems accurate! I don't know who 'Daniel James' is (the author of the article), but it is obvious that he has done research... stuff like:

Of course, there is nothing to stop programs from the proprietary tradition being made available for Linux. As long as those programs don't make secret changes to Linux itself, then they are perfectly acceptable to most users and developers. The message that anyone porting their program to Linux will be forced to make it Free Software has been put about by the likes of Microsoft -- but this is clearly not the case. As one spokesperson for the company put it, IBM has a lot of intellectual property and a lot of lawyers, and they aren't worried about the possibility.

... now this is a good way to present open source software... and an accurate one, and he even throws in a little jab at Microsoft, allbeit a level headed one...

Another factor often cited by people who have migrated to Linux is the supportive and knowledgeable user community. If you have a problem with your Linux machine, there are lots of places to ask for help -- both with local user groups and on the Internet. Linux users tend to be self-documenting: when they find the solution to a problem, they will often create a web page describing the fix to share their knowledge.

Yeah, or the community might tell you to RTFM... =)

A greater problem could be back-catalogue work stored in proprietary formats. Most of the audio formats from Windows, Mac and UNIX are supported by the equivalent Linux programs, but complex projects combining multitrack audio and MIDI could be a problem. If the original software vendor supported open standards, it wouldn't be difficult to create a tool to transfer the project from one platform to another. Where that file format is binary and a trade secret, however, the user may have no choice but to fall back to standard file types for exporting projects, and some of the information might be lost.

This sounds familar... and I find it humorous that we just had a article about Gnumeric where leagues of people bitch about putting all that effort into supporting all of excel's formulas... this is way. Backward compatibility... if we are to generate the software of the future, it must work with the software of the past.

Thanks, Daniel, for a very insightful, level headed look at linux sound.

Re:amazingly article

[iabervon]

The self-documenting aspect of the community actually makes "RTFM" useful, because there is documentation written by people who have had your problem for the community to point you at. It's more helpful than people trying to write a new explanation of the solution every time someone has a question. Asking your question and getting told "RTFM" is sometimes more effective than trying to determine for yourself whether TFM will answer your question, or even finding the applicable documentation.

It also starts the dialogue about TFM, which may be out of date or have gotten lost somewhere, as was reported on linux-kernel recently about some documentation.

Re:amazingly article

[Eric Ass Raymond]

"RTFM" useful, because there is documentation written by people who have had your problem for the community to point you at.

RTFM assumes that you've already run into a problem.

In Windows installing new software means just a few clicks in the install shield. No RTFM. That's good software packaging. RTFM should be completely unnecessary.

Re:amazingly article

[killthiskid]

I don't think RTFM is unique to the process of installing software... many times user ask very basic questions that are easily answered by simple exploration of the software or even a cursory glance in the manual.

I'm fairly certain this doesn't have anything to do with 'install shield' or 'good software packaging'... I'm pretty sure this has to do with more complicated issues.

An example: a user in word wondering how to 'bold' text. The option is available in the toolbar and under formatting. IF you use help (or clippey) and put 'bold' as your keyword, the first thing that comes up will be how to bold your text. That is a RTFM situation.

A non RTFM situation is something more complex... the sort of thing you would expect to pay money for when calling or contacting microsoft support. In the case of MS, it will cost you money either way... but the cost deters those with simple probelms... in the case of community support, the RTFM is the equel of the 'please tell me your credit card number'... i.e., this is operator error, not the software's error... figure it out yourself.

hmm... interesting - RTFM:credit card number::linux:windows.

Re:amazingly article

[iabervon]

With a reasonable installer, installing new Linux software is a matter of determining the name of a piece of software you want. "apt-get install " should suffice, and shouldn't need anything other than your root password to complete. Good software packaging isn't exclusive to Windows, these days.

TFM generally doesn't have any information on installing stuff, although there's generally a lot on getting things configured the way you want, which is the stuff that the InstallShield wizard wouldn't support.

Other multimedia players

[Vann_v2]

He doesn't mention other, very nice multimedia players like Rhythmbox, JuK, or Zinf. For anyone like me who became frustrated with XMMS' slow development and lack of features these are the things you should check out.

Re:Other multimedia players

[0x0d0a]

Thanks for the links -- I knew about zinf, which is the old freeamp renamed (IIRC, development on it sort of foundered) The JuK website is certainly...brightly colored.

AGNULA is not what it appears to be:

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

Observe this quote from the article in the 'prestigious' Sound On Sound magazine:

The AGNULA project, the name of which is an acronym for A GNU/Linux Audio Distribution, has been created to design and build aversion of Linux specifically for professional musicians and recording engineers. (emphasis mine)

Clearly, we are being threatened yet again by the BSA/SCO/CompTIA FUD-brigade.

Re:AGNULA is not what it appears to be:

[Knos]

SoundOnSound is indeed prestigious. no need for cynic quotes.

Re:AGNULA is not what it appears to be:

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

I notice that you once got a 'funny' mod for one of your posts.

My advise to you is to try and recapture that bouyant spirit that you seem to have lost...

Steinberg, Digidesign, MOTU, Cakewalk ... when ?

[Anonymous Coward]

When will be available one of the professional music software with linux (I mean real music software, not brahms or Muse) ? As a musician I am unhappy with linux, and that's the only thing that keeps me under macOS today.

linux quality

[Coneasfast]

Well, i'm sorry but i found sound drivers is the one thing that can't be matched in linux.

Sure older cards such as the Creative AWE32 can be easily matched, but newer cards are much more complex.

My Live 5.1 has about 50 mixer controls with alsa drivers (most of them dont do anything), so it can be very inconvenient at times. The routing to the ac97/i2s output is very messy in linux. In windows i can easily select 'microphone' as recording input, and it will route it to ac97 and mute i2s. In linux i must set it as recording device, set the microphone volume to 0 (to mute i2s) and then raise the 'igain' volume, if that isn't logical i don't know what is. Sometimes the best drivers are the ones created by the manufacturer, unfortunately Creative's work on their drivers have been limited (and only for OSS).

Also such 'extra' features like EAX is not to be even talked about.

I'm not sure of experiences with other modern sound cards, but mine with the live 5.1 is poor.

Re:linux quality

[13Echo]

Then buy another card or get different drivers. A lot of those "features" that you get in Windows are useless Creative Labs software effects and things.

Plus, ALSA is a bit immature right now, but development is moving fast. You claim that the routing in ac97/i2s is messy in Linux, but I've got totally different experiences. Maybe its just that I've got a different card and driver set than you do (not to mention that I use the OSS API instead).

http://zborgerd.freeshell.org/mixer.png

As for EAX, such things exist in Linux. They just aren't used because nobody cares at this moment. We need more games before we need them to support such things. OpenAL and OSS do support these things, though.

Re:linux quality

[StarTux]

"Sometimes the best drivers are the ones created by the manufacturer, unfortunately Creative's work on their drivers have been limited (and only for OSS)."

Probably because its proprietry? And as for only with OSS, thats actually not true:

http://www.alsa-project.org/

They use Emu10k also, oh and there is no mention of just using OSS, but more on OpenAL.

Yes it can certainly be improved and the best people to tell is not here, but Creative Labs.

Re:linux quality

[Coneasfast]

Then buy another card or get different drivers. A lot of those "features" that you get in Windows are useless Creative Labs software effects and things.

you are kidding right? im not going to buy another card just so it works with linux..

this is quite wrong, just because these features are useless to you, doesnt mean it is to everyone...

but I've got totally different experiences

probably card dependant, and yes OSS mixer is cleaner..

As for EAX, such things exist in Linux. They just aren't used because nobody cares at this moment.

oh dear you are misinformed....

first of all, you are again assuming things, i use EAX just to listen to mp3's in windows.... i would do such things in linux too.. it doesn't need software support... the live drivers in win32 support it directly ....

the openAL is i believe software only, (not supported by my live hardware), so my guess is it will only work with software that use it...

the OSS drivers support is only for dsp effects, it is a pain to enable (requires weird command line options) and nevertheless it is *not* EAX..

Re:linux quality

[13Echo]

I purchased my 4-Front OSS driver set because I use only Linux, and I'm serious about getting the most out of my card. I see that you'd feel differently about some things, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get what you want.

If Creative was more interested in developing more feature-rich drivers for their cards in Linux (they've stopped assisting with OSS driver development some time agao), then we'd probably not be having this conversation. EAX isn't exactly the best documented API, from a non-commercial developer standpoint. It's not like some of us can just pick up EAX documentation and implent it into our drivers. What you don't realize is that EAX *is* largely software based. Just as OpenAL's 3D capabilities (and other features) are.

I'm just not certain how one would benefit by "ruining" MP3s with some form of EAX effects. Just what do you use it for? EAX is most useful (in my opinion) for gaming.

Re:linux quality

[Anonymous Coward]

ruin MP3s? I can't stand to listen to them on my Nomad Jukebox without EAX on, they just sound crappy without it.

Re:linux quality

[Coneasfast]

I'm just not certain how one would benefit by "ruining" MP3s with some form of EAX effects. Just what do you use it for? EAX is most useful (in my opinion) for gaming.

i just like messing around with it, for fun, it doesn't ruin it, it just gives the sound an effect which i occasionally like, also sometimes i like using effects like this for watching movies to give it a 'theater-like' sound...

but yes it is very useful for gaming, but i dont think EAX will come to linux though, it will just be openAL....

Re:linux quality

[Anonymous Coward]

You can simulate the 'Tunnel' EAX option under Linux by placing your speakers in empty coffee cans and turning the volume up slightly. Other effects will be forthcoming in future releases.

---
Creative Technical Support
Linux Division

Re:linux quality

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't really talked about drivers at all here, but rather about the mixer application.

For a card as complicated (unnecessarily so, really) as the SBLive series it makes sense to have a custom mixer GUI, certainly Creative include one for Windows. A generic mixer, especially one like alsamixer can't hope to be as well suited to your specific card.

Custom ALSA mixers do exist for pro cards where it's a real essential, and it sounds like you need to find someone who could write an SBLive one. This doesn't require any audio skills, just a basic idea of how to make GUI Linux software and input from you, the user, like "when I hit the record from Mic button, mute this channel over here". If you know the right person they can knock version 1.0 up in Python or something in half an hour. A fancy version with VU meters etc (does the SBLive support in-lined metering?) would take longer obviously.

Re:linux quality

[viperblades]

how did you get multiple sound cards working?

Re:linux quality

[i_am_nitrogen]

Such sound distortions are not desired by the audiophile or professional community. Additionally, there are plugins for XMMS that can do anything you can do with Creative's drivers, like chorus, reverb (see Freeverb), echo, etc.

Gaming doesn't require hardware 3D; I can usually tell when, for example, someone's behind and to the right of me in Counterstrike with software.

Re:linux quality

[Coneasfast]

Such sound distortions are not desired by the audiophile or professional community. Additionally, there are plugins for XMMS that can do anything you can do with Creative's drivers, like chorus, reverb (see Freeverb), echo, etc.

fyi, it's not called distortions, it's called DSP... big difference :)

and yes, like i said not everyone wants it or cares about it.... that doesn't change the fact that it is a feature that is not supported by the linux drivers, this alone isn't a reason to not implement it .. that would be like saying, "nobody uses midi, we won't put [much] effort into implementing support in the drivers" (people do use midi im just saying this to make a point)

and yes, if you just want simple effects xmms plugins are fine, but these do not give the same effects that you can get via the emu10k1 processor...

i know what you are thinking, "hardware, software, whats the difference?" the difference is the chip is so versatile, if you open up the EAX control and tweak the internal features you will see how complex it is...

if there was an xmms plugin that could do the same, sure that would be sufficient, but nothing comes blatently close.... i guess like you said, the general population don't want extra features....

Re:linux quality

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "Digital Signal Processor"?

A DSP is a DSP, even under Linux. And, by the way, your "hardware" effects with the EMU10k1 are actually software effects via DirectSound, and they work with ALL DirectX compatible cards.

Re:linux quality

[13Echo]

My card has dual DSPs. The Crystal CS4630 is actually actually a CS4297A and a secondary AC97 CS4294 chip. This is typical of cards like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, Videologic Sonic Fury, and Hercules Gamesurround series.

However, I believe that the OSS/Commercial drivers can handle multiple cards at the same time.

Re:linux quality

[forgotmypassword]

this is quite wrong, just because these features are useless to you, doesnt mean it is to everyone...

You seem to be misinterpreting what he meant, as you left out the word software.

Lots of stuff on newer Creative sound cards is done in software and has little to do with the actual sound card. Take for instance my SB PCI something. It claims to have have wave table synthesis, but that in fact is a lie. It effectively has a second dsp and a big chunk of memory. In windows it runs a process that loads samples to the extra sound card memory on the fly to play midi files on the second dsp. So basically it has ghetto windows only wave table synthesis. And there is no point in wasting time on writing a program that would use the second dsp and the memory to play midi music when TiMidity already exists. So what does the Alsa driver do? It enables the second dsp to act like a second sound card.

Basically it is a waste of effort to give software effects to specific sound cards, when you can do the same thing for all sound cards. Now I have no idea if there is a way to do EAX with Alsa, OSS, or esound; but from my example you can see that there are specific examples of software existing.

Re:linux quality

[Coneasfast]

You seem to be misinterpreting what he meant, as you left out the word software.

ahh, you are right, my mistake... i didn't see the word software

i did have SB PCI, and everything seemed to be software, even the bass/treble controls,

NOT in Emu10k1 though, everything is done via the ac3 chip... not via software,... he may think this because the dsp effects/tone controls can only be applied to one source, that's because only one analog source can be routed through to the ac3 chip at a time, this is because of some ac3 standard i believe...

if he thinks that this is software, he is just mistaken even more...

Re:Steinberg, Digidesign, MOTU, Cakewalk ... when

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that you will have to stop being gay if you drop MacOS for Linux, don't you?

Where is good sound support for regular distros?

[Radical Rad]

I had given up doing much with sound under Linux because everytime I tried something that looked interesting I would have to compile from source and it wouldn't compile because I needed some library or other. Then those libraries couldn't compile until I had installed some other library or created some device or something. It was always a huge hassle to even look at a sound program which was of dubious usefulness to me anyway. Then when I upgraded my system and loaded a newer distribution sound wouldn't work at all. Turned out there was a kernel bug that causes USB devices with sound capabilities to pre-empt the soundcard's DSP devices. I couldn't plug in my webcam (w/mic) because it that makes sound stop working on my SB card. I wonder if that bug has been fixed yet. I don't want to have to load a separate distribution just to play with cool sound apps.

Re:Linux printer support

[Anonymous Coward]

Get something with native PostScript suppoert and networking.

Anything else (USB in particular) is just asking for trouble on Linux. I don't know what it is with USB on Linux anyway. I've never been able to get any USB peripheral except a mouse to work. I've tried external hard drives, scanners, printers and memory sticks. Just won't work with my Debian.

linux quality-Gratitude

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm not sure of experiences with other modern sound cards, but mine with the live 5.1 is poor."

Yeah, yeah. I'm working on it. Keep your pants on.

"Also such 'extra' features like EAX is not to be even talked about."

Talk with Creative about it. I'm certain they'll listen to you.

Beware "supported" cards

[marvin2k]

While a lot of cards are listed as "supported" on the Alsa soundcard matrix that doesn't mean that it is actually fully functional. I bought an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card a while ago and Alsa doesn't seem to support it's midi capabilites and you cannot control the volume in a decent way. There is a tool available with Alsa that looks like the Windows version of the cards control panel but the routing seems to be broken and you can only control the volume for each individual analog channel and not both of them so if you want to turn up the volume you have to do so for the left and right channel individually. Luckily I was able to hack that tool so I can control both channels at the same time but I still cannot control the volume through e.g. mplayer or xmms.

Sadly I still have to do all my audio work on Windows because of that which is the only reason I still have Windows on my HD at all.

So if you plan to do audio stuff on Linux be very carefull what card you buy even if the card is known to be "supported".

Re:Beware "supported" cards

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you missed the envy24control panel available for your card (the spitting image of the M-audio control panel for win/mac? You might do well to post your problem on the ever-active alsa-user mailing list. Issues I have had in the past have been solved neatly within a matter of hours.

I can't believe there are no karaoke players!

[MarcoAtWork]

Just yesterday I was looking for a karaoke player for linux and there are NONE! there is kmid (which outputs only to external midi devices and hangs all the time) kmidi (which doesn't give you the words until they are due, so what's the point!) and that's about it....

Tried using vanbasco's windows karaoke player under wine, but no dice either, the program worked but wine didn't seem to want to play nice with midi (arts driver doesn't have it, OSS driver didn't work either)

Re:I can't believe there are no karaoke players!

[po8]

Keith Packard's midiplay may do the right thing if you can figure out how to obtain and build it. I don't recall. I know it displays lyrics.

Re:I can't believe there are no karaoke players!

[TCM]

I don't get it. Where's the funny part here?

Re:Linux printer support

[Anonymous Coward]

As already mentioned, for the best support in Linux get something that`s PostScript compatible (like the Laserjet 1300). I`ve got a Laserjet 1200 (with added memory to take it to 72 megabytes - cost about 25 U.K. pounds - don`t buy your memory from HP, it`s expensive) - it`s fine.

Re:Steinberg, Digidesign, MOTU, Cakewalk ... when

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't make me question your anonymity...

There is channel locking in alsamixergui

[Anonymous Coward]

If your're talking about alsamixergui to control volume, there is a lock icon below the volume bars that can lock both channels. Then lowering/increasing volume affects both channels. The only complaint is that channels aren't locked by default- I think they should be. Any alsamixergui coders around?

BTW, i have Hercules Fortissimo III, and I'm happy.

--Coder

Re:Where is good sound support for regular distros

[LinuxGeek8]

Try the The Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo at:
http://groundstate.ca/mdkaw.html

PCI-X voltage?

[krilli]

"Apple changed a lot of things on the G5 so all software and hardware will need some changes. For instance, they changed the PCI bus voltage so normal PCI cards won't work in the G5, they have to be redesigned."

This puzzled me. I went and searched around.

from http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pcix_20/pci_x :

"[...] if conventional PCI devices are installed in a bus capable of PCI-X operation, the clock remains at a frequency acceptable to the conventional device, and other devices on that bus are restricted to using conventional protocol."

from http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/faqs :

"Q: All of the recent technology releases from the PCI-SIG are built to 3.3V. What is happening with 5.0V?
A: The PCI-SIG believes that migrating to 3.3V signaling is keeping pace with the industry's migration to 3.3 volt technologies and the need for higher performance within the system. Both high-end and mobile environments currently implement 3.3V signaling (no 5.0V) and this trend will soon migrate to the workstation and desktop level (3.3V signaling will replace 5.0V signaling when the newer technologies can no longer support 5.0V signaling)."

So. What's the damn use of having a PCI-X bus backwards compatible in therms of clock frequency if it's volt incompatible?

Re:PCI-X voltage?

[0x0d0a]

So. What's the damn use of having a PCI-X bus backwards compatible in therms of clock frequency if it's volt incompatible?

Probably due to the fact that it's pretty easy to change voltage, but a pain in the ass to generate a host-synchronized, extremely precise different clock signal. So it's easy to wrap an existing 5V system in a 3.3V card. It's a wee bit more difficult to take existing circuitry and redesign it to work at a different clock rate.

It doesn't affect users directly, just engineering firms.

Re:PCI-X voltage?

[krilli]

I see! Thanks.

The actual magic of Slashdot. Mmm.

There are no decent Trackers

[polyp2000]

Its all very well, but Im still hankering after a half decent tracker. Most of the ones I have tried are truly awful.
I survey them a couple of times a year to see if there is anything like rbf software's Med Soundstudio but nothing comes close to the mark.

reinventing?

[Anonymous Coward]

As with other real-world applications where Linux has been offered as an option (server, office, web), it's rather narrow-minded to look at Linux as _merely_ a replacement for MSFT.

How is it we spend hours discussing what a shame it is the rest of the world can't see Linux as more than an inexpensive desktop (OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, GIMP), but with audio we demand a Pro-tools shoe-in before even looking at what might be available beyond the usual multi-track models. Must we _always_ reinvent the wheel?

Take a read through Mr. Phillips' page and you'll see many tools which give composers/musicians music-making capabilities that simply exceed anything Windows will ever have.

Re:reinventing?

[KoolyM]

How is it we spend hours discussing what a shame it is the rest of the world can't see Linux as more than an inexpensive desktop (OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, GIMP), but with audio we demand a Pro-tools shoe-in before even looking at what might be available beyond the usual multi-track models. Must we _always_ reinvent the wheel?

Inexpensive desktop apps in the audio realm (for creating audio, that is) would be

• a CoolEdit/SoundForge replacement - we have those: Audacity or Sweep, take your pick
• a Buzz replacement - nope
• alternatively (much more useful, IMHO): a Fruityloops/FLStudio replacement - nope

What we do have is some hard disk recording apps that probably will get the job done in 90% of the cases where on the Windows side you'd use a (warezed, probably) copy of CuBase, some seriously good modular software synths (SpiralSynthModular - yum!) and some miscellaneous software that isn't really all that useful. Yes, there's PD and CSound as well, but those also exist for Windows and most musicians don't use them - they're academic playthings.

Audio on Linux right now is where it was on Windows seven or eight years ago - tons of fairly cool toys, but nothing to tie it all together. Think of it as just minutes before the "everyone is a musician" computer music revolution, but not quite there yet.

Re:reinventing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Audio on Linux right now is where it was on Windows seven or eight years ago - tons of fa"irly cool toys, but nothing to tie it all together. Think of it as just minutes before the "everyone is a musician" computer music revolution, but not quite there yet.

Every heard of JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit)? It "ties it all together" better than anything I've seen in MSFT land.

Besides, Linux is modular, so how things work together is really only limited by you. I routinely use ten or more apps in any given project, ideally suited to there own particular application. Why wait for Steinberg to make some giant $1200 'all-in-one'?

Re:Where is good sound support for regular distros

[Medievalist]

Testify, Brother.

I spent hours trying to get my FX-3d card (AD1816 chipset) working in Red Hat 9. No joy, regardless of whether I used Red Hat's system (that used to support this card, but no longer) or loaded OSS, or built ALSA from scratch.

Seems like linux sound is there for those with lots of money or time on their hands, but those of us who scrounge hardware from the recycling bin are out of luck.

I hope this isn't the future of linux...

You audio junkies...

[GooberToo]

...be sure to test with a 2.6 test kernel to see if things react and work as you would hope and expect! Better to help shake things loose now rather than wait until after 2.6 is finally released.

jMusic

[Anonymous Coward]

jMusic isn't listed in the right section though.

jMusic is a Music V based compositional language written in Java which allows the user to do some pretty cool software synthesis, at low level, or upper levels, run realtime synth instruments, live samples, or MIDI data. It can be used for MIDI and audio composition. It contains tools for filtering, granular synthesis, FFT, and heaps more stuff. Check it out @ http://jmusic.ci.qut.edu.au

WHeres the apps?!

[nmoog]

I know a lot of people who own their computers solely to run Fruityloops/Cubase and the ZILLIONS of VST Synths and plugins out there. None of them are going to ditch there Fruityloops in favour of SoundTracker (Yes its got effects, vibrato, um, volume control...) I just killed my Windows for ever but am still hurting a bit from the lack of audio apps on linux. No use complaining, I guess. I have a copy of gcc. Better get crackin'.

Re:Where is good sound support for regular distros

[i_am_nitrogen]

You hope the recycling bin is the future of Linux? Uh, that doesn't make any sense!

Why don't you submit a bug to the sound driver developers? They might have some suggestions for you to help them figure out what's wrong.

Re:Where is good sound support for regular distros

[i_am_nitrogen]

You know, it probably just gave /dev/dsp0 to the webcam and /dev/dsp1 to the SB. So, change your software to use /dev/dsp1, or set up your audio drivers to load after the USB/webcam drivers, and voila.

As for dependency handling with source code distribution, you should try Gentoo. The installation is about as hard as installing DOS back in the day (partition, format, install software), but software's a lot easier to install.

It's definitely worth learning the command line just to be able to type "emerge ardour" to install Ardour or "emerge alsa-driver alsa-lib alsa-tools alsa-utils ; rc-update add alsasound default" to install the latest sound card drivers.

It's really less intimidating than it sounds.

USB/Webcam AFTER Sound Card drivers...

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be transposed in the parent post.

Re:Linux printer support

[i_am_nitrogen]

hard drives, memory sticks

modprobe usbstorage, mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive (or similar)

printers

Check out the CUPS web page, or if it's an HP, check out hpijs.sourceforge.net.

scanners

Check out the SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) project. I personally like the xsane-gimp program for scanning.

The section could stand some clarifications.

[jbn-o]

I really like the fact that 3 paragraphs into the article there is a huge biline[sic] on how and why linux is good. It also explains the GPL, BSD, and it all seems accurate! I don't know who 'Daniel James' is (the author of the article), but it is obvious that he has done research...

I had some problems with that section of the article. In general, I found the section could have been significantly shorter and less confusing had it referenced clearly written essays distributed by the GNU project.

• The way "Linux" is used confuses the reader because James uses the term to describe an operating system and a mysterious project somehow related to "Linux". James never clearly identifies that Linux is and always was a kernel--a typically user-invisible chunk of a complete GNU/Linux system. It is now possible to run the GNU operating system under a kernel replacement (such as the GNU Hurd). When James talks about "GNU" you don't really know what relationship GNU and Linux have to one another:

• It's a common misconception that Linux was created by a lone student in Finland. In fact Linus Torvalds still leads the project to this day, more than 10 years after he began it, but the operating system has been contributed to by thousands of people. It builds on the considerable work of developers who had dreamt for many years of making a free UNIX, many of whom worked on the GNU project.

  The project Linus Torvalds works on is the Linux kernel. James would be better served by referring to any of the GNU project's works on the topic ("Why GNU/Linux", "Linux, GNU, and freedom", and the "GNU/Linux FAQ") more clearly explaining the distinction between GNU and Linux. These essays also introduce and link to essays on software freedom (which James addresses later on).

• Later James talks about "open source software" even though he just spent time explaining software freedom. Perhaps James is unaware of the differences between the two movements and that the GNU General Public License (which he talks about later) was written by and exemplifies the thinking of the Free Software Foundation, not the Open Source Initiative. The Open Source Initiative merely added the GNU GPL to a list of approved licenses years after the GPL was already in widespread use in the community. You can't understand what makes the GPL so special in terms of the Open Source movement. While it is true that the Open Source movement brings users to the GPL, and that's great, this movement champions a development methodology, not software freedom (the issue at the heart of the GPL).

• James says, "It [the GNU GPL] insists that any improvements to GPL-licensed source code have to be made available under the same terms..." but that is not quite right--the GPL only compels publishing the source code to distributed copies and derivatives. Private derivatives are a requirement for software freedom, as the definition for Free Software points out:

  You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

  Perhaps this would have been a good place to point out the GNU GPL FAQ, another GNU project publication. If one is going to take the time to clear up Microsoft's distortions (as James does below), noting that the GPL allows private derivatives should be okay.

• James also says, "This co

MOD up Parent

[thanjee]

One of my friends is a developer for jMusic. Whilst I have never used it personally, I have seen some fantastic musical tools he has produced with it.

Dave Phillips' Linux Sound was an excellent read. I am glad to see him keeping everything up to date.

Re:MOD up Parent

[Anonymous Coward]

The book was a nice read, I got it personally from him a couple years back.

Nice to see he is still on it and nice too see, that the whole stuff developed way beyong my imagination, I remember back a coupel years, when we wrote a soundeditor as case study (it was included on the books CD-ROM) there was hardly anything around.

And yet, I am still missing a lot of stuff out there ... I just saw today there's a general Plugin architecture, but to be honest, it's way too poorly designed to be of any use :-(.

Unfortunately I never had the time to do a rewrite of our work back then and add all the features and scalability we wanted to include.

linux tack recording software

[golgotha007]

if we're on the subject of linux and sound, then Ardor, the multi-track hard disk recorder for linux deserves a mention and check out.

Bah

[QuackQuack]

This is just a ploy to get us to buy more CD-Rs. The key to long CDR life is proper storage and
handling.

For instance,
If you will be storing your CDRs in the hot sun, be sure to apply a layer of SPF 40 sunscreen.
If you will be using them as frisbees, be careful not to get fingerprints on the unlabeled side.
similarly, if they will be doubling as coasters, be sure the unlabeled side is down so that the coffee rings only form on the labeled side.
Sandpaper makes a poor choice of material for storage sleeve, unless the sandpaper has previously been use in a sanding operation.
If your CDR warps, use a hot iron to flatten it before attempting to use it. If there's one thing that's bad for a CDR, its spinning a warped disc at high velocity!

If you follow these simple steps, your CDR should last virtually forever. In next weeks lesson, we shall see how to protect the DATA on those discs.

Re:Where is good sound support for regular distros

[Anonymous Coward]

I like recyling bins.

In re: submitting a bug report, "As you have commanded, so I shall do".

I inherited some assorted gear...

[Lodragandraoidh]

I inherited some assorted gear that my daughter decided she did not want anymore (she got other gear to replace it):

1. RCA Kazoo mp3 player (usb interface)
2. Lexmark usb memory card reader.

I am just delving into trying to connect these things to my linux box, and wonder if there are any drivers out there?

Where would the best place to look for this, as well as soundcard configuration information beyond the basic howtos?

Re:Where is good sound support for regular distros

[Radical Rad]

Yeah that's exactly what happened and I did just make a link to dsp1 instead not really understanding why it happened. But later I moved stuff around on my systems and it stopped working again. It took a while to find out what was going on. It's not a major thing now that I know. I may have to check out Gentoo since so many people speak highly of it.