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.

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 :)

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