Wired: Pro-Level, GPL'd Audio Editing For Linux

Sven Hertz writes "For all us music professionals who were longing to a promising music production and creation software on Linux, there is now Wired (screenshots). It supports unlimited Audio/Midi tracks playback and recording, and introduces a Plugin system for instruments and effects (VST support under way too). It can also read AKAI CDs and import 18 different Wave formats. The first test version was released a few days ago and its news made the rounds successfully on OSNews & GnomeDesktop while it was placed "app of the week" over at GnomeFiles."

Comments

Damn.

[Anonymous Coward]

A very important rule in software engineering (especially in OSS) is: A program should have as few dependancies as possible.

So this is for gnome. Next week we'll have a similar thing for KDE on qt. And next month another tool based on XUL that runs on all systems....

Why, did't they had to add the GNOME(->pango->freetype->xrenderer->xpat->rederer- >xgoofy) dependancy on a program who's main function is audio processing?

They will lose users because at the time the same thing appears with no WM dependancies, users will prefer that. Compare KDE-mail-app, GNOME-mail-app and mutt. Everybody except KDE/GNOME developers uses mutt.

Re:Damn.

[TheNarrator]

A very important rule in software engineering (especially in OSS) is: A program should have as few dependancies as possible.

The other far more important rule is don't reinvent the wheel. I think your attitude has come from years of Redhat/Mandrake/RPM dependency hell. I've been there, I know what it's like, I feel sympathy. You probably wouldn't have this gripe if you used Debian. I'll be able to install the whole thing with one command, dependencies and all when the deb package gets added to the repositories.

Re:Damn.

[TheNarrator]

The package maintainers know a lot more about their program's dependencies than I do and that's the way it should be. Managing them on one's own is just a big waste of time. Not using third party libraries is wasting a lot of effort on not much gain. There's already enough api fragmentation as it is on unix. Think of how many different config file formats we have. All because everybody had to write their own config file parser just to be a bad ass (I.E XFree/Apache/Passwd/Fstab/Sendmail/Postfix/ /Bind/Postgres/Every Single 31337 window manager out there) and then there's all the myriad font handling for X Windows, etc, etc. Anyway I think some people are starting to get a bit of stockholm syndrome with regards to these limitations. Meanwhile over in Java land there isn't a single library or program I've used recently that uses a config file format other than XML. BEAUTIFUL! One guy tried to invent his own XML like format just to be cool but I think he got talked out of it.

Re:OSX needs this

[jonwil]

As this is GPL, there is nothing stopping ports to other platforms :)

pro-level...

[Cryptnotic]

...you keep using that term. I think it does not mean what you think it means.

Re:pro-level...

[PasteEater]

***I have not used this software***

However, as a professional who makes a living both recording and doing live sound, I find this very hard to believe.

Let me explain, please....

I think that software deadlines are similar to professional audio deadlines- you just never have enough time. No matter what happens, you can always look back and think, "This could have been better."

However, you get no revisions with a song (or album, etc.) after it's been released. Once it's "done"... you're ass is on the line.

Here's the big finish: I don't know of anyone (and I don't know _everyone_) who would consider this "Pro-level". It's only pro-level when it does A) things better thanPro Tools B) things better than Logic C) things cheaper than both. Most importantly D) Has been through trial by fire.

Perhaps I've not emphasized enough that prefessional audio engineers are under a very tight schedule. Considering that fact alone, it's *very* difficult to call something "professional" when it's barely out of it's infancy.

I would really like to see something like this succeed. After spending a huge amount of money on pro gear, it would be nice to have some thorough, reliable tools that work well. Remember though, Pro Tools has the same thing Apple has going for them - tight software/hardware integration.

I don't care about the Open/Closed software discussion when it comes down to paying my bills or not paying my bills. If it works, you are going to have to *really* try to convince me that I should change my mind.

So... mod the parent UP, not only is he right, but dammit, The Princess Bride is a funny movie!

Re:This rules

[renoX]

Do you realise you advise him getting a new computer for an app?

Kind of expensive, don't you think? Especially since he has already a working solution dual booting Windows..

I wouldn't brand you as a troll, but as an "over-enthousiast"!

Re:This rules

[Bedouin X]

What does the Mac do out of the box that Windows doesn't do? Like you, I'm not trolling but I really don't see any evidence of this. I have been a Mac user for 15 years and have a dual G4 in my office and have been settng up a couple of dual G5 ProTools systems over the past few months so I have a decent cache of experience to go on.

Maybe in the Windows 3.1 days or even windows 9x I would concede that the Mac had better audio capabilities by default, but I really don't see it these days.

Worst UI Ever

[Nurgled]

It would have been better to use standard UI widgets for a lot of that stuff. When will people learn that rotary knobs do not work well in computer interfaces.

We use rotary knobs on physical devices because they are easy to manipulate by applying friction with our fingers. A far better alternative for a computer-based interface would be a slider combined with a text-entry widget to allow precise values to be entered, thus making the computer interface better than the real-life one, rather than reinventing all of the limitations of the physical interface with the extra pain of figuring out how to manipulate a turning control with a mouse pointer. They'd also have a bit more room to write a decent text label on the control, rather than the unreadable blurs they use now.

None of it goes together, either. If they'd just let the standard UI widgets render in the standard way it would have looked a lot more consistant across different parts of the application, and they'd only have had to implement special behavior for the more specialised widgets such as the waveform viewers and so forth. I suspect that as we reach higher and higher display resolutions that bitmap-based interface will end up tiny and unusable, too.

sorry...

[Rage Maxis]

this app isn't "pro quality". Its tinker grade at best, alot of the bargain bin software at your local music store is better at being amateur grade than this product is.

1) Lack of good low latency options for the MIDI, etc.

2) Where's the vocoder? the pitch matching? the multipass filters? the FFT-based filter? the automatic noise reduction based on a noise sample?

3 examples (of many) of why this isn't *PRO* software. I already saw many posts "WOW! FINALLY ANOTHER REASON I CAN GO 100% TO LINUX!!!!"

This release and any number of previous sound software releases suggest that but I dont see anything from 1 hr of reading on the website about this package that suggests it even competes with Samplitude releases from 1995 or Sound Forge in 1995 in terms of even single channel editing.

Windows and Mac still and always will rule for "pro" sound editing, unless protools, samplitude, propellerheads or any number of other companies port to windows.

It's raining bile, hallelujah!

[billcopc]

I hate to rain on everyone's parade here, but every time a "great" linux app comes out, it turns out to be a pale mockery of some "great" Windows app. Here's my opinion on this project:

It is (at least to me) obviously mimicking Cubase. Cubase is a serious application, used by serious musicians and audio engineers. I use Cubase, almost daily, and I find it kind of backwards sometimes because it is designed from a musician's point of view, making it look like conventional rack equipment, while I am a code guru and I'd rather have extreme control over everything.

Now we have Wired, which is a virtual studio app built for a coder/hacker's operating system; why are we imitating the rich fool's interface when we could instead be designing one that is better suited to the target demographic ? I'm not saying this app does not belong on Linux, but instead of blindly copying an existing app's look and feel, why not start with a clean slate and build it RIGHT ?

And VST support ? that's a pipe dream if you ask me. Running Win32 video codecs in MPlayer is one thing, running Win32 VST plugs is a whole different ball game. One thing I learned over the years is that most people who are good at music, suck at code, and vice-versa. I am one sexy exception =) What I mean is that the typical VST plugin is kind of rough around the edges.. they look pretty and sound kinky, but under the hood it's grossly inefficient and poorly debugged code. VST plugs tend to crash often, and most likely depend on a few Win32 support DLL's for a handful of stupid non-audio tasks. Lots of nasty stuff to "emulate" if you want it to work good (and fast).

What I think Linux needs is for people to accept a common audio interchange format and protocol. VST is just a standard for software plugins, but it is Steinberg's intellectual property. What if Linux had a license-free standard for audio chains, let's call it LinVST for fun. Write one linux app that takes LinVST Input, does a few nasties then spits out LinVST Output. Then that conformant app can be plugged into any LinVST-aware host.