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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."
Awesome... The only reason I still use Windows on my desktop is because the audio software I use is Windows-only...
:)
Let's hope this program will be good enough for me to be able to switch over to Linux full-time
That seems to be a pretty comprehensive recording package. I'm guessing this is more a mixing / editing / adding MIDI type of program?
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
seeing as they are running short of licenses of another piece of software....
Yes, it is great to welcome another program, aimed at normal production use for common users for working with sound, but I want to point out that it doesn't arrive in the empty place. We have Audacity, Ardour, MuSE, lot of other programms which slowly reach stability and production use. Also I should mention work on ALSA and JACK, which are critical components making Linux a profesional workstation for working with sound.
Of coarse, lot of work should still be done for getting serious for common recording pro's crowd, but we are moving here.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
A very important rule in software engineering (especially in OSS) is: A program should have as few dependancies as possible.
- >xgoofy) dependancy on a program who's main function is audio processing?
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
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.
Ardour multi-track sound editor (not MIDI, I think)
Rosegarden Audio and MIDI sequencer
The smaller Audacity A wave/AIFF/MP3/Ogg/etc editor
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
And it's good enough for the amature/prosumer enthusiest definately. If they have a strong computer background already.
/end of qoute.
t -plugi ns/
t utorials/a lsa_jack_ladspa/
Of course nothing will be good enough for the wannabees, which I suspect will come out in droves on this article. (which I hope not)
Linux has gotten very decent at audio production since Alsa drivers became standard. It makes this sort of thing much easier then compared to the old OSS stuff. Now you have stuff like gstreamer being developed, but that's desktop stuff, not audio developement.
There are lots of apps. Lots of information:
Linux audio developer's list
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/
google will show you the way.
A great app is Ardour, which makes your Linux PC into a audio workstation.
http://ardour.org/
From their website:
Ardour is a digital audio workstation. You can use it to record, edit and mix multi-track audio. Produce your own CD's. Mix video soundtracks. Experiment with new ideas about music and sound. Generate sound installations for 12 speaker gallery shows. Have Fun.
Ardour capabilities include: multichannel recording, non-linear, non-destructive region based editing with unlimited undo/redo, full automation support, a mixer whose capabilities rival high end hardware consoles, lots of plugins to warp, shift and shape your music, and controllable from hardware control surfaces at the same time as it syncs to timecode. If you've been looking for a tool similar to ProTools, Nuendo, Cubase SX or Sequoia, you might have found it.
And before you get all up tight about VST/VSTi plugins you can run many Windows plugins thru Wine
http://www.djcj.org/LAU/quicktoots/toots/vs
And there is ongoing work of getting native plugins developed/ported.
With audio backends like JACK and Linux 2.6's scedualling options you can mix outputs from various different applications and sources with garrenteed latency and quality.
http://www.agnula.org/documentation/dp_
Here is a audio specific distro:
http://www.agnula.org/
Linux audio Guide:
http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/index.php
And that's just scratching the surface. If your intellegent and you make sure to select the proper hardware and sound equipment you can setup a very effective Linux-based audio workstation enviroment for relatively low bucks compared to something like OS X or Windows and depending on commercial software.
Unless of course your a Warez'ng pigfucker and don't pay for crap in the first place.
Before you get all up tight about desktop quality or lack of hardware support and how windows kicks ass and such, just stfu. If I was going to do this professionally and I had a lot of money I'd use OS X on Apple hardware. Windows just blows goats for everything except generic desktop usage, unless your willing to just throw pockets full of cash at it.
But Linux is actually fairly decent. Not the greatest, but definately best bang for the buck.
As this is GPL, there is nothing stopping ports to other platforms :)
...you keep using that term. I think it does not mean what you think it means.
My other first post is car post.
Being both Linux and "pro level" I would imagine this would be a no brainer but I don't see it in the documentation...?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
You must be new here. This is slashdot, we don't rtfa around here.
don't worry, you'll get the hang of it soon.
Now Microsoft can afford to edit wav files legally.
One can hardly run a studio with only one software, I'll agree that the main required software has finally been made for Linux but there is a host of other software you need to actually run a studio. Librarians/editors, machine control for your automated consolle, track and cue sheet software, archival software (which surely exist on Linux), countless number of utilities; BPM to delay calculators, pitch to loop lenght calculators, you know, little utilities you just can't live without in the end when you get use to their function. You will also need, pitch detectors and a lot of pluggins, from noise reduction to convolution-based reverb and so on.
What I'm trying to say is that, this Wired software looks fun and potentially great but as of now it looks like it's not even on par with Cakewalk (or Sonar if you prefer) which in turn, aren't on par with anything they are the lowest grade wares you might find in a studio (I say might because I never have seen a studio running on Cakewalk or Sonar).
I sincerly hope some LinuxHeadz will be jumping at this and bring us back the good ol' days on the Mac, when the entire audio community was working on one platform making better and better by the day, now the devellopement effort are spread a lot less new wares and a lot more me-too wares are being made, Wired has the potential to change that. The Linux community has the necessary structure to bring this back and make this software evolve and get complete with an incredible assortment of companion wares.
So a first step it might be but it's a great one and the future will tell us if it was a leap...
go Linux!
Music tech has gotten extremely geekified in the past twenty years and its a shame tech sites don't embrace and report on some of the very-high tech stuff out there. Many "geeks" are either musicians or have dabbled in music. Many are also hardcore music fans.
I've found one blog that does this very well and its called MusicThing (I have no relation with the people there, just a fan). I wished slashdot or other high-profile tech sites would also report on pro-audio gear, audio software both free and Free, the digital revolution in music (not just in techno), etc.
I mean, one of the coolest pieces of tech I own has to be my Line6 amp, which models eight tube amps digitally. That's a little revolution in itself.
After reading this article I was wondering if there were open source equivalants or homebrew solutions like build your own analog synth, theremin, microphone, etc.
There is also advanced drum machine for Linux. It's called Hydrogen.
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.
For those who don't know, VST (Virtual Studio Technology) is a plug-in architecture engineered by Steinberg Media Technologies. VST plug-ins aren't limited simply to sound filters, but allow users to expand their host applications with elaborate third-party instruments that do things like, say, simulate a grand piano. Many regard it as superior to the competing DirectX-based plug-in system.
It's hard to overestimate the importance of VST instrument support in Linux-based audio applications. Many musicians depend heavily on specific VST instruments, and wouldn't dream of migrating without them. Also, VST allows for so many new possibilities with your host application, it would multiply Wired's potential capabilities tremendously, and would be tantamount to porting dozens of applications to Linux.
Since Windows has a long-standing reputation for latency problems in MIDI timing (especially with budget hardware), I can see how a new version of Wired with VST support could compel some Windows users to switch.
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.
--- ask me about nihilism, I will have nothing to tell you.
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com