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.

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: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