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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."
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.
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 :)
i'm deaf, you insensitive clod!
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.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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!
--- Do you believe in the day?
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?
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:
... 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...
Yeah, or the community might tell you to RTFM... =)
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.
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.
Clearly, we are being threatened yet again by the BSA/SCO/CompTIA FUD-brigade.
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.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
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.
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".
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)
-- the cake is a lie
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
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Try the The Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo at:
http://groundstate.ca/mdkaw.html
Well, don't worry about that. We can get you back before you leave. (Dr. Who)
This puzzled me. I went and searched around.
from http://www.pcisig.com/specifications/pcix_20/pci_
from http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/faqs
So. What's the damn use of having a PCI-X bus backwards compatible in therms of clock frequency if it's volt incompatible?
Jag pratar lite svenska.
...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.
hard drives, memory sticks
/dev/sda1 /mnt/usbdrive (or similar)
modprobe usbstorage, mount -t auto
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.
A solution to the problem with music today