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

This rules

[necro2607]

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 :)

Re:This rules

[krymsin01]

I use a program called Buzz. It's a windows program, and was once the only reason I used windows at all. Buzz is a modular synthesizer/composer, and a very powerfull tool once you get used to it. I tried to get it to run under wine, but never with much success (various dlls would kill wine). Eventualy, I found a good tutorial on how to get it working under wine. Haven't used buzz on a windows machine since.

Re:This rules

[CowboyBob500]

For Mac:-

CakeWalk -> Logic Audio/Cubase/ProTools/GarageBand
BeSweet -> FFMPegX
VirtualDub -> ?
TMPGEnc -> FFMPegX
Alcohol 120% -> Dragon Burn
DVD Decryter -> MacTheRipper
DVD Shrink -> DVD2OneX
? => DVD Studio Pro -> Sizzle
Nero => DiskBlaze -> Dragon Burn

For Linux:-

CakeWalk -> Rosegarden/Ardour
BeSweet -> Mencoder
VirtualDub -> KDenLive
TMPGEnc -> Mencoder
Alcohol 120% -> K3B
DVD Decryter -> AcidRip/Video-DVDRip
DVD Shrink -> ?/DVDShrink runs under Wine
? => DVD Studio Pro -> DVDAuth
Nero => DiskBlaze -> K3B

Bob

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.

Re:This rules

[Lumpy]

for mac -> seting up any of these audio tools is easy.

for linux -> getting alsa and JACK running together correctly is a nightmare.

getting some of the apps to recognize your version of JACK is also a fight, give up on binaries, try to compile and then can not figure out why rosegarden will not see your installed JACK libraries and therefore refuses to compile with JACK support making it 100% useless.

Fight to get your midiman MIDI hardware recognized. Get pissed because your nice 8 channel USB midi rackmount device is not supported yet, you need to downgrade to the 2 port cheap model.

Be happy that your pro soundcard is supported, format your linux partition and go back to windows in hopes of tyring this while dance again in another 6 months.

I am a huge support and user of linux, the only 2 machines in my home that run windows are my video editor and the dedicated audio PC in the music studio.

I would love to get microsoft completely out of my house but it is not possible yet again.

Re:This rules

[Bedouin X]

Seriously, this sounds like it either happened back in the early Windows 9x days (or earlier) or on poorly maintained Windows installations. My Mac digital audio experience mainly consists of MAX and ProTools and I'll tell you that I've had ProTools on my G5s crash more in the last three days than I've had Sonar or Nuendo crash in the past few years on Windows. The Mac also has a much larger propensity to randomly crash or lock up. I hear Mac users say what you've been saying all the time but it just doesn't jibe with my real world experience. I think that people are just so used to saying it that they haven't bothered to check recent developments.

This has generally been the case since Windows 2000 dropped. I've been using and setting up Macs and PCs in studios for 15 years and it appears as if the tables have pretty much turned. Well, not really as the Mac doesn't suck on digital audio like Windows did, but Windows certainly has earned its stripes and is - at minimum - a peer to the Mac in digital audio.

Maybe Microsoft should take a look at this...

[cybergibbons]

seeing as they are running short of licenses of another piece of software....

Linux sound is start to pick up

[Pecisk]

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.

Cool, but what about...

[AceJohnny]

There are other "professional audio" tools for Linux out there. Now I'm not into this, but how does Wired compare with these?

Ardour multi-track sound editor (not MIDI, I think)

Rosegarden Audio and MIDI sequencer

The smaller Audacity A wave/AIFF/MP3/Ogg/etc editor

Re:Cool, but what about...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a beliver, all pro audio software more or less sucks, so take what I say in context with that.

Ardour is closest to a how a pro DAW should be with a plain workman like interface that inspires confidence. Rosegarden is obviously inspired by cubase, I've fired it up but never used it on a project because I can't stand QT apps. Audacity is a great editor, it's always built without error for me and despite a couple of minor niggles it's solid and usable.

Ardour is the most solid, workman like DAW I've used since the Otari RADAR; if you want to work with sound and not look at pretty brushed metal UI crap that is.

Linux Audio developement is fairly decent nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's good enough for the amature/prosumer enthusiest definately. If they have a strong computer background already.

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. /end of qoute.

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/vst -plugi ns/

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_t utorials/a lsa_jack_ladspa/

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.

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!

SMP support?

[Thaidog]

Being both Linux and "pro level" I would imagine this would be a no brainer but I don't see it in the documentation...?

Re:Audacity?

[rethin]

the app mentioned in the article looks very polished.

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.

deepZ0ne

[Anonymous Coward]

Now Microsoft can afford to edit wav files legally.

The first step, no more

[NeedleSurfer]

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!

Re:The first step, no more

[micromoog]

There's already a gigantic shitload of good audio software for Linux . . . I'd call this a "minor addition" rather than a "first step". Here's a listing. There's also an entire Linux distribution set up for audio.

Here's what I use:
multitracking: Ardour
MIDI sequencer: Rosegarden
editor: Audacity
drums: Hydrogen
softsynths: Alsa Modular and QSynth

There's really a ton of stuff out there . . . it just (like almost all free/OSS) doesn't get as much exposure as commercial work.

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.

Other PRO-Level audio software for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

There is also advanced drum machine for Linux. It's called Hydrogen.

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.

VST Support in Linux Applications

[base_chakra]

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.

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.