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

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: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.

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: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

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: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: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: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: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: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: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.