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An Intro To Editing Audio On Linux

Posted by Zonk on from the talk-a-good-talk dept.

W-9z writes "Ars is running a guide to editing audio under Linux that I think is a great read for anyone trying to find new ways to flex that Linux muscle. There are some outstanding FOSS tools out there. They look at Ardour, Audacity, and SND. The author talks a bit about why Linux is a superior platform for this kind of work: 'FOSS software is, almost by definition, a work in process. If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself. With this possibility, the software no longer defines what I can do -- it's just a point of departure.' It's an interesting companion to the /. discussion of video editing earlier this year."

45 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Legendof_Pedro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, I never knew Linux was so good for that kind of thing. In fact, I might just stop using SONAR (Windows) and switch to Linux.

    I guess that means that the 1% market share just got a bit bigger.

    1. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Sure, no problem.

      The Gimp rocks. I have it installed under winxp, osx and linux.

      No rusty spoons needed. I know people complain about all the floating windows but under osx with expose this isn't a problem at all.

      The other poster really nailed it though. Syncing tracks in audacity is a bitch. Because of that fact alone, I dont like it.

      The ugly interface is really just a early warning indicator to not expect much. Sure, for cleaning up single tracks or cutting up some audio file it works. As a multitrack editor it's lacking and frankly I get the impression that the software development on it has stagnated. It feels like 'alpha' software, even though it's been out for YEARS.

      Just because something is OSS doesn't make it better.

  2. have to admit by CDPatten · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I usually don't turn to linux for day to day tools, but I have to admit, it is pretty good for editing large audio. Tools are lacking, but its pretty stable doing.

  3. Yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "FOSS software is, almost by definition, a work in process. If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself."

    But, what if you aren't a coder?

    1. Re:Yeah by bcat24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Find someone who is a coder and bribe them with money/pizza/Mountain Dew/etc?

    2. Re:Yeah by pe1rxq · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunatly the incentive is LOTS of money....
      A single request is going to be ignored as a wast of time and their money.
      And once this one company has said no it though luck, with open source you can find someone else to do it for a more reasonable price.

      Jeroen

      --
      Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
    3. Re:Yeah by AuMatar · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So hire an experienced DSP programmer. There are plenty of sites on the web dedicated to hooking people up to you. From monster.com to guru.com to rentacoder.com. Or use word of mouth. Or hire someone already on the OSS project. The point is you have a hell of a lot more options with OSS than you would with proprietary code.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    4. Re:Yeah by gauauu · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While all that you are saying is true, the funny thing about it is that open source fans will always go on about "oh, it's missing the feature I need? No problem, I'll just code it." While I'm glad that's possible, 95% of the time, it's not practical. Too much work/time/effort/money involved.

      So while it's true that it's possible, it's not quite as wonderful as the open source fans would like you to believe.

      (by the way, Hi! haven't seen ya in awhile!)

  4. The best quote from the article... by chill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On proprietary platforms, eventually you'll run into "you can't do that." On open platforms, you'll run into "you have to learn more to do that."

    That applies to so much more than just audio programs.

      -Charles

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    1. Re:The best quote from the article... by Qzukk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem with convincing people to use open source software is that when they hear "you can't do that" they say "Oh. Darn" and go on with their life. When they hear "you have to learn more to do that" they throw a temper tantrum then throw the computer out the window.

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:The best quote from the article... by torpor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with convincing people to use open source software is that when they hear "you can't do that" they say "Oh. Darn" and go on with their life. When they hear "you have to learn more to do that" they throw a temper tantrum then throw the computer out the window.

      Interesting observation. So, the proper respons might be more effective were it modified slightly: "oh, you can learn how to do that, if you want to..."

      i mean, 'can if you want', versus 'have to or its nothing' is quite a different kettle .. no wonder people fuse up over it. "do what you have to or have not" versus "can if you want to, or have not".

      --
      ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  5. Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by nifboy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself.

    Unless, of course, you don't know how to code it yourself, either because you don't have the technical know-how or the willingness to invest time investigating and learning how it works.

    This is becoming a pet peeve of mine when people espouse the benefits of FOSS; it only applies to tech-geeks. Great, programmers can do things with it that they can't do with closed-source. Now how about everyone else?

    1. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Everyone else has their pick of tech-geeks to hire to do it for them, instead of relying on a single company to decide to add the feature.

    2. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by RatBastard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. Most users are NOT programmers and wouldn't know a function if it bit them on the ass. This whole "do it yourself" mantra is just justification for things not being finished. I have used so many "0.9x" versions of software on Linux that never get to 1.0 it makes me sick. Is it too much to ask that a developement team actually finish a release before sending it out in a non-dev package? Or is it assumed that everything Linux is a developer release? If that's the case Linux is doomed as the vast majority of users don't want to program, don't give a damn about programming and wouldn't be good at it in the first place.

      After years of being sick of Windows and repeatedly trying to get into Linux I finally bailed last year and bought a Mac.

      --
      Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
    3. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by pclminion · · Score: 2, Insightful
      First off coding is something anybody can learn and is improved by simple practice. Now there is no "anybody else" if people would just take the effort to learn a little.

      Bullshit. Anybody can learn to write "Hello, world," just like anybody can cut a tree down with an axe. But not just anybody can write a high performance 28-tap comb filter, any more than just anybody can hack a stump into a work of art with a hatchet.

      Even if a person was theoretically capable of doing it themselves, it would take months or years of trial and error and experience. That's months or years that are spent on bullshit not relating to the task at hand.

      But I fear for society in a world where people refuse to learn because they don't want to, instead of can't.

      You fear a world where musicians don't understand signal deconvolution?

    4. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This is the kind of unacceptable responses from open source proponents that assure people that open source community doesn't know what it's talking about.

      First of all, not everyone can just up and learn "coding". "coding" and "development" are very different. "development" and "software development" are even more different. Just to tell people to learn "coding" to be able to afford a feature in an app is not only ignorant and elitist but it just plain idiotic. Someone may want a feature but may not have the time to code it up. People have lives! They're not sitting in their parents basement with tons of time on their hands.

      But I fear for society in a world where people refuse to learn because they don't want to, instead of can't

      There's a lot of people that CAN learn stuff but don't want to and there's nothing wrong with that. I have personally been messing with recording audio and multiplexing audio signals and it takes time. When I was trying to render my wav files, I had to spend time learning the wav format and to code against it and to iron out the kinks. It took time. It took more time for me to render stereo files. All this is distracting from the main task which is to work on audio signals and so on. So yeah people can do just about anything they want, but how willing would they be, if you throw out an absolutely useless office suite (openoffice) and tell them to just code in whatever's missing. Don't whine, just code it yourself. The same about their favorite IM client. The same about internet browser. You know how many geeks/coder bitch about the greatness of firefox and how many actually do anything to help out?

      What the heck? Can you people not even think for one minute? Or must it always be about your precious little nerd box.

      -- For the record, I have good experience on *nix, C/C++, Delphi (ObjectPascal), VB, C#, and so on. And no, thankfully I was never interested in that crap of a resource hog most people endearingly call Java.

    5. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by RatBastard · · Score: 5, Insightful
      First off coding is something anybody can learn

      BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You don't know many "regular Joes", do you? Most people don't have the time or energy to devote to learning to program. And by the time the average non-inclined person gets good, they've long since given up and paid money to some company that made a product that does what they needed and have left Linux and the FOSS comunity behind and haven't looked back.

      But I fear for society in a world where people refuse to learn because they don't want to, instead of can't.

      People don't learn specialized (and to them esoteric) skills because they DON'T HAVE THE TIME! Most people have lives. They have things to do. Kids to feed. Jobs. Houses to keep in order. Lawns that need to be mowed. Friends. Relatives. Etc... It's not that people won't learn (well, the current state of the educational system does make it harder to learn new things, but I digress), it's that they have things they'd rather be doing instead of mastering a specialized set of skills to add some functionality to someone else's unfinshed work.

      Have you taken the time to learn how to fix every problem you might have with your car? I'm willing to bet money you know the absolute basics, at best. You can put fuel in it, check the radiator, fill the tires, change a flat, you might know how to check your fluid levels and maybe refill anything that's low. But can you rebuild the transmission? Fix the breaks? Probably not.

      Is it because you are lazy? No. It's because you have better things to do with your time. Please, for the love of Pete, stop thinking that everyone should have the same interests as you. That's the attitude that's kept Linux off of most desktops for the last 12 years.

      --
      Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
    6. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by chill · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Great, programmers can do things with it that they can't do with closed-source. Now how about everyone else?

      You're exactly the same place you were if you had chosen a closed-source app. You can ask -- or possibly pay, if it is important enough -- someone else to implement it for you.

      The apps being reviewed aren't some half-baked trash that no one but hardcore geeks use. They are complete, polished and professional. They just happen to include the ability to EXTEND IT YOURSELF IF YOU HAVE THE SKILL. For the record, that is a plus.

      If you're ranting about other projects that give you half-baked code and then get slammed by some FOSS noob with "the source is there, so stop complaining and start coding", then you're right. However, Ardour and Audacity don't fall into this category and it is unfair to rant about the EXTRA FEATURE of scripting languages and open source code when discussing them.

      If you need a feature bad enough, pay someone. Odds are a couple hundred $$ would motivate a rent-a-coder type whereas the big commercial software houses wouldn't look at you twice.

        -Charles

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    7. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by njh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      BByak, one of the lead developers for Inkscape knew nothing of programming until he wanted a better tool for his graphics business. He simply started with something simple, and learned the kinds of patterns needed for writing programs. It's not that hard if you are an intelligent, creative person. Try it sometime, you'll be surprised.

      (all the musicians in my band are computer programmers or scientists - and that is purely coincidental)

    8. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by RatBastard · · Score: 2, Insightful
      And I might want a new computer but not know how to put one together. SO I LEARNED HOW TO DO IT.

      I learned how to build my own PCs. That is, I learned how to screw the parts into the case, plug everything together and get it working. Hell, I even learned to fix IRQ conflicts and run low-level formatting tools built into hard drive controllers using DEBUG. But you know what? After 16 years of rolling my own PCs I just don't care to do it anymore. I use a new method to get it done. It's called "money".

      See, I use money in exchange for someone else's expertise. I don't have to learn a skill I don't care about and someone who knows how to configure computers and make all of the parts work smoothely together puts food on their plates.

      Am I lazy? Nope. I work every day for my money. After work I don't want to spend my time dicking around with my PC or learmn to code some missing function into a program. So I use the power of money to get someone else to do it for me.

      And no accomplishments ever get done without money. People need to eat. I'm willing to pay someone who can do the job to do it rather than get myself killed because I lack the skills to do it right. We didn't get to the moon because every Tom, Dick, and Harry tried to build rocket ships. We got there because a lot of people were willing to pay the people with the skills to do it. Look at the state of private rocket projects. Not even the great John Carmack can get a rocket going that doesn't crash.

      Did you sew youer own clothes? Grow your own food? Build your own house? Make your own medicines? No? Then shut the hell up.

      --
      Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
    9. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by black+mariah · · Score: 0, Insightful
      If you want something, PUT IN THE GODDAMNED EFFORT or shut the fuck up and leave the accomplishments of this world up to the people who have the guts to put in work.
      Or, even better, BUY a program that ALREADY WORKS CORRECTLY. You fuckers are pathetic, you know that? Put effort into getting things? Blow me, shitwad. I'm a musician. I put my effort into making music. I don't need to learn to write a fucking feature, I'll just use software that actually WORKS instead of some half-assed piece of shit that exists only to make the author's cock seem bigger in the mirror.

      Fuck you, and all you pathetic fucks that can't deal with society in general. Go outside and maybe you'll realize that beyond your circle jerk of Stallman-cum-guzzling online friends... nobody gives a shit about you or your sad fucking ideals. Fucking kill yourself.
      --
      'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
    10. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by JabberWokky · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Car broken? Buy a new one... or pay somebody to fix it.

      Feature missing? ... well, you can pay someone to fix that too.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    11. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      This is becoming a pet peeve of mine when people espouse the benefits of FOSS; it only applies to tech-geeks. Great, programmers can do things with it that they can't do with closed-source. Now how about everyone else?

      Funnily enough, your answer is a pet peeve of mine. The ability to contribute to Free Software projects is a major benefit for Everybody, whether they're a coder or not. The reason being that those who *are* able to contribute generally do contribute. Then, those contributions are freely available to all, including non-programmers. The number of problems which only one person encounters with a free software project are probably very small. Generally, if one person has a problem then several people will have the same problem. It only takes one of those to have the knowledge to fix the problem then everybody benefits from the solution.

    12. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by gaspyy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Everyone else has their pick of tech-geeks to hire to do it for them


      Then where's the benefit for me as a user?

      Scenario A: I download an open source software, version 0.7.8.1 that does 80% of what I need. The project is either not in active development 'cause the developer got bored, or he/she/they refuse to add the features I want. I then look for a freelance programmer. I can expect at least 3 months of work; even at $8/hour, that's still $3840 for someone who works 40 hours per week.

      Scenario B: I go out and buy Adobe Audition for $300

      What scenario makes more sense?

      Case in point: for years we've been using at work a Linux Debian as firewall / gateway / DHCP server. Every time we needed a new feature (VPN, bandwidth management) we needed to call a specialist. The box itself was free, but each configuration cost us about $250. I couldn't find my way through all config files in the Debian box - I'm not a Linux programmer / geek - I'm a user. after paying $2500 I went out and bought a Zyxell Zywall 10W with wireless for $200, that does 98% of what I need. It's so easy to configure and work with I didn't need to use external help.

      Since then I keep asking myself: why couldn't be Linux so easy to use, with clearly organized menus for everthing?
    13. Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I have used so many "0.9x" versions of software on Linux that never get to 1.0 it makes me sick.

      Most open source programmers have different quality standards than those you're used to from Windows. It won't get to 1.0, until it's *stable* and it *works*. If the same programmers were setting the version numbers for Windows, XP would be the 0.9pre2 version - i.e. almost stable enough to be called 0.9, but far away from 1.0.

  6. How about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    An intro to getting your goddamn sound card to work on linux?

    1. Re:How about... by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From the article:

      The kernel (2.6.12) does not have realtime scheduling support built in, which is very popular with computer musicians. More on that later. Additionally, the hard drive is not tuned with hdparm, which is recommended for serious audio work.

      And with that, most musicians turn away in disgust. Let's recompile the kernel and tune hard drive parameters on the command line!

      Meanwhile, DAWs on Windows and Mac just work. Seriously.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
  7. Superior? by TheRealSlimShady · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The author talks a bit about why Linux is a superior platform for this kind of work: 'FOSS software is, almost by definition, a work in process. If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself

    It's only superior if you have the ability to code the feature you need. There's a huge assumption there that someone who is skilled at using a DAW is even inclined to code new features for an application. Personally speaking, I lack the skills to approach that, so a superior platform is one that lets me do what I want without having to code the feature. That's not to discount the value of being able to do that, but really, most modern DAW's are extensible in some way or another (be it via VST, or some API). Having said that, Audacity rocks!

  8. musicians don't want to code by know1 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    look, i love open source software as much as the next man, and it's price really goes with my poor musician ethic, but to be honest, as the man said it's a work in progress. Configuring a number of audio programs to run togehter, such as a drum machine and a synth or sampler, through jack and rosegarden is a royal pain in the arse.And musicians don't want to code new bits to their software, they just want it to work. so for now i'll still keep that windows box that doesn't go anywhere near the net....gotta love reason and acid pro...and keep this freebsd box for the net

  9. Mid level editing, yes by dada21 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My brother owns a recording studio, and Linux wouldn't compete in that arena. For a home studio, these apps + a SB Audigy are fine, but no talented band, producer, editor or mastering engineer will look twice. The midlevel sound cards don't approach the quality and power of the high end (even rotools HD) vehicles.

    For me, I want to see Linux drivers adapted for the high end hardware. Windows isn't an issue as most high end studio apps offload the processing to the hardware. The software is just a window to what the hardware is doing in the recording.

    If you're just mixing tracks for a garage demo, this software looks great. I paid a fortune 3 years ago for Win32 software that didn't approach this level. I see great things ahead as hardware gets better.

    For now, though, the SB cards don't offer the best input quality. I can tell the difference in noise floor, transparency, and soundprint signature. When I've listened to demos, I can pinpoint quality gear versus prosumer gear.

    In the end though, a 4track tape is enough if you have talent. Most bands don't.

    1. Re:Mid level editing, yes by paulbd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately you don't really know what you're talking about. Or maybe fortunately.

      RME Hammerfall and HDSP series (26 channels), M-Audio Delta 1010 (10/12 channels), AudioScience (8 channels) and at least 4 others fully and well supported on Linux are at least equal to the quality of ProTools HD. In fact are generally up with the best you can buy (for all digital interfaces, quality is most defined by your A/D + D/A converters, which have nothing to do with what you install in the computer. They cost significantly less than PT HD hardware. I leave it up to you to figure out why that is.

      Linux does have a gaping hole right now with Fireware-based external audio interfaces, which is soon to be filled in by the FreeBob project. Linux also cannot support h/w from several manufacturers who refuse to provide information required for drivers (MOTU is a particularly blatant example). Note that you cannot use your PT h/w with non-PT software, at least until very recently and even then only on OS X with particular caveats. Wanna take another guess at why it costs so much?

      Disclaimer: author of Ardour, the RME Hammerfall & HSP drivers, and an RME reseller

    2. Re:Mid level editing, yes by slashdotnickname · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In the end though, a 4track tape is enough if you have talent. Most bands don't.

      The same could be said about people that own recording studios. A talented sound engineer can make do without the high-end equipement, just listen to some of the many amazing albums made a generation ago.

    3. Re:Mid level editing, yes by paulbd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The same PT HD setup that crashed for Maria Carey before she sang in the superbowl, so they had to transfer the stuff onto a RADAR system (with their own proprietary audio interfaces that sound better than almost anything) ?

      Or the same PT HD setup that can't touch apogee converters with a 10 foot pole? Or the same PT HD setup that most reviewers don't think is actually that much better than a mid-level A/D-D/A setup?

      Oh, and is this same PT HD that is marketed to waste 2 times the disk space without a single verifiable double blind test showing 192kHz SR's to be detectably different from 96kHz?

      Yeah, probably the same PT HD setup that you paid US$10-20,000 for, to get some overpriced DSP power that a dual opteron can walk over in its sleep?

      That must be the one. Now I know why it costs so much.

      The "prosumer" cards (coupled with appropriate A/D-D/A converters, of course) that you dismiss with a wave match or exceed the quality and specifications in use in any top end studio worldwide as of 5 years ago; they match what almost all but the most capital-rich studios have today. Stop being such a junkie for Digi's marketing BS, and do some research.

  10. What about hardware? by mOoZik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ProTools is industry standard, period. No FOSS is going to conquer their market share. In fact, outside of the /. crowd, this will remain small. Lack of hardware support for most popular interfaces will doom it so, not to mention Linux's inflexibilities to the average user.

    --
    A blog like any other.
    1. Re:What about hardware? by paulbd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      its interesting that this was said about 1 or 2 "industry standard" video editing suites when apple released final cut (pro). final cut pro is now probably the most widely used video editing suite, even including all the big video studios. it has simply evolved to the point where it pushed the existing "industry standards" out of the way.

      i doubt that ardour can do this (and i wrote ardour so i know what i am talking about), but we'll give it our best shot, ok?

  11. Not exactly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't know about the author of this article, but I am certainly NOT an audio engineer, so I could not "code it myself". In fact, most end users probably aren't even developers. And even if you are a developer, you will have to spend a good deal of time getting intimate with the architecture and framework of the application. Sure, you can hire somebody to code something up for you, but that's not the same as doing it yourself. If you're going to pay somebody to change something, why not request a feature from the author and give him a "donation" in return?

    On the other hand, many audio editing tools have some kind of relatively simple, well-defined plugin architecture, so if you have the skills it is quite possible to write your own plugin (or modify someone else's). Even many closed source solutions have an open plugin architecture, so I don't really see the necessity of having the main application open (though it doesn't hurt). So, in essence, I don't really how Linux is a "superior platform" for audio editing. Yes, it encourages open source software, but a lot of the software is available for Windows (i.e. Audacity, but it doesn't look like the other two have been ported).

    The platform shouldn't matter; it's the applications, stupid! Once again, use the right tool for the job. If Audacity on Linux works for you, fine. If CoolEdit on Windows works for you, fine. If something else on another platform gets the job done, more power to you.

  12. Re:Ardour is moving in a big way by stubear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "What's insane is the pro proprietary companies charge prices in the four figures just for some of their software alone. Can't be justified when you have the same abilities free."

    $1000 is a drop in the bucket for most professional studios whose bread and butter work utilizes these tools. Photoshop is expensive but with the amount I make using teh software, it's nothing. if you're looking to purchase this software to goof off and do some amature stuff, then I can see you having a problem with the price. If you're a professional, these licenses are nothing in the overall scheme of things.

  13. Re:Ardour is moving in a big way by dada21 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    IMO, Ardour is my least favorite but has the brightest future.

    I know 2 Pro studios that made the switch from Pro Tools and both were financially unstable. Pro Tools still reigns supreme for me for the moment.

    The 4 figures for software is worth it when the $150/hour mastering engineer spends 2 days at the studio and works with what he knows. The 2 studios I know running Ardour have released relatively mediocre sounding albums that had great content. I can tell they didn't have a good engineer handling the mastering.

    Remember, $2500/album pays off Pro Tools in 8 weeks. Many bands and engineers are familiar with Pro Tools, which is a huge selling point.

  14. When stability counts - it's the hardware by flinxmeister · · Score: 3, Insightful

    An engineer friend of mine just recorded 80 tracks of audio simultaneously using protools (dual G5 mac)...over an hour solid. It was a large live event with no second chances, and it went without a hitch.

    I think one huge advantage of the commercial apps is the associated hardware. The DACs and off board procs do far more than a single workstation could do, and unfortunately open source hardware can't really be free. For big tasks, professional recording is much more than software.

    There may be a way to cluster some slave workstations or something to provide the required horsepower, but some time-sensitive situations are going to require that such a system be very, very stable.

  15. Hmm... by MaestroSartori · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I spend a great deal of time doing home audio stuff, and I was interested to read the article. I've used Ardour and Audacity for a little while in the past, but I find I'm still using my Windows audio apps (Ableton and Soundforge, if you're interested). Why?

    Well, the article itself touches on a few of my reasons. Ardour, specifially, is very "Linuxy" in its interface layout and design, reminding me in many ways of the old Dos version of 3D Studio. It definitely looks like a programmer-designed UI, it's very stark and bare-bones, and things are never quite where you expect them to be. It's clearly a Cubase/Logic inspired design and layout, but without the years of fine-tuning those have had to get to their current states. I prefer Ableton's more unorthodox approach anyway, but that's just me :)

    The other is, as always, hardware support. Getting less important now in some ways, for some uses (I use quite a lot of virtual instruments, so not a huge deal for me) the lack of hardware DSP support is a killer. Proprietary developers are to blame here, in fairness, but it's still a problem.

    Probably most importantly for me is the real killer, and I suspect the reason most audio folks won't move to Linux for some time to come (and coincidentally the reason so many of them use Apple machines): we don't want the software to get in the way of the creation of music any more than it has to. At the moment, many parts of Linux are unhelpfully complicated, especially to non-technical people.

    A final thought, based on the quote from the article repeated in the summary:

    If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself. With this possibility, the software no longer defines what I can do - it's just a point of departure.


    Quite apart from ignoring the fact that almost every major audio app can use various forms of plugin, which have relatively easy to obtain SDKs, and that various generic programmable plugins (like MaxDSP) exist for which one can do the same, it ignores maybe the most obvious point of all: not all musicians are programmers.

    --
    Game dev and music blog
  16. Re:Mackie Tracktion Ported To Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Link please?

    Here is a quote from Jules on Sep 29th, 2005

    "Yeah, there's a few things not done in the linux port yet - audio and file choosers are amongst them.

    (actually, I think those might be the only major things still missing from the linux port.. sorry if they happen to be the exact things you need!)

    Haven't got a timeline for doing them, I just fit things in when I get the time to do it, but they'll happen eventually."

  17. Re:FOSS!=Linux by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Two major likely reasons:

    1) FOSS people tend to be Linux people. Many of them are highly idealistic, hence why they opt to do FOSS. That idealism leads to sometimes a fanatical level of hatred for Windows. That means that they aren't very inclined to port to Windows. However it also usually mean a severe lack of knowledge about Windows. Windows IS different than Linux and unless you cop out and use Cygwin, there's some porting work a head of you to make a Linux app in to a Windows app.

    2) Competition. Often, FOSS tools liek this are written because there isn't something else that does what they do. For audio at least, there are tools that do all these do and a whole lot more. They do cost money, but they are out there. It's easy to shine when there's nobody to compete against. Much harder to go up against a polished, well maintained commercial product and look as good.

  18. Linux Audio.. What its really like by zenbot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is one of those areas where Linux frustrates me the most. I would not use Windows at all if the audio/midi apps for linux were more mature. Ardour for example is great if all you want to do is multitrack audio, but even in this area it does not come close to say Cubase or Sonar. For example Ardour does not feature hitpoint detection, non-destuctive time stretching, audio warping, groove templates, offline per-clip effects, track freezing and on and on. MIDS is coming but who knows how many years that will take. I'd add it, but I'm not a good programmer and dont have the time. The features it does have work great but it still doesnt really compare to the commercial offerings. VST support.. This is a joke. Last time I checked there were three or four different alternatives for linux here, all using wine and all have dead for at least a year.. MIDI? Linux has some good midi apps which still dont have near the features of the windows ones. Some of these, namely Rosegarden and Muse, even have audio track support but these features are so primitive that they are nearly useless and really Ardour is the better choice here.. But someone will then say but Linux has Jack and you can hook together whatever apps you want. Jack is sort of like Rewire on steroids. So you load Qjackctl which is a nice app for connecting Linux audio apps. Ok. So you load up Muse for its midi capabilities, maybe load up some soft-synths in it, maybe the ones you want to are plugins for Muse, but probably not so you load up two or three external soft-synths and route muses midi output to those one at a time, then you hook the output of those soft synths into ardour via jack. So now there are 5 programs loaded, took you 30 minutes to load and connect everything. You make some changes to the patches in the soft-synths, write some midi tracks in muse and then record a bit of it into ardour. Then think gee I'd like to save my song so I can unload all these programs and do something else with my computer. So you save in muse, save in both synths, save your hookups in qjackctl, save your session in ardour, write a little note so you remember everything you need to do to load your song again. This takes you another 30 minutes.. But really whats more likely to happen is: you will hook everything up and one of the crappy soft synths will crash before you have a chance to save everything and take out the other audio apps forcing you to start over or your whole computer will crash because you were using the realtime-lsm patch to make the thing responsive. Or you will close Ardour before disconnecting it from muse and muse will crash. etc etc. There are nice proposals like LASH, formerly LADCCA which would let all Lash compliant apps be saved in their current states and then reloaded that way but most programs dont use LASH. Not to mention the time it takes to get all there programs and a proper kernel compiled and downloaded if you are not using some pre-made solution like CCRMA, Demudi or Studio to go. Many distro have these apps as packages, but something is always out of date. I have been watching Linux audio grow for years and years and really its going to take years more before all of the features I listed above exist in a single app. With Cubase I open one app with synthesis, sampling, Midi and Audio editing under one roof. When Im finished I save and close, done. I am a huge Linux fan, but I really hate Linux audio. Maybe next year.. Ardour really is awesome though..

  19. Re:Yet both of you fail to justify the summary. by omeomi · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I do audio professionally and I'm also a programmer. In my home, I have 2 Windows machines, a Linux server, and an iBook. I do use Audacity from time to time because it does a few things better than even the high-priced editors. As I've told many people, Audacity will open damn near anything...I also frequently use Supercollider, which is a stellar synthesis/dsp programming language that runs natively on OSX, but has been ported to Linux and Windows. However, most of the Linux audio projects are not stable enough to get real work done. I try them from time to time, and some things are getting better, but it's just really not there yet. There's nothing that really stacks up to any of the big 3 sequencers or to Pro Tools. That, combined with the fact that it's very difficult to find professional-grade audio cards that even work with Linux currently make it a lackluster platform for doing any sort of serious audio work. You can make write the best audio software, but if I have to use a shitty soundblaster, I'm not even going to consider it...

    --
    ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
  20. Re:Yet both of you fail to justify the summary. by chronicon · · Score: 2, Insightful
    You can make write the best audio software, but if I have to use a shitty soundblaster, I'm not even going to consider it...

    At the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF) I attended a session with Paul Davis, author of Ardour DAW, and he was using RME Multiface.. Hardly a shitty soundblaster, I'd say, although I do think he coded the alsa driver himself.

    RME cards are well supported under Linux w/ ALSA and they definitely fall into a superior category...