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An Intro To Editing Audio On Linux
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."
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.
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.
"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?
A friend in the industry tells me he's converted at least a dozen pro audio editors to ardour, leaving behind pro tools and logic for good. This looks like it's one of the killer apps that's going to take linux far. We already have several that are making F/OSS well known in the wider world like apache, blender, gimp and the rest.
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.
RST
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.
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?
fervent software
Offers a Linux distribution based on Debian designed for audio work.
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
Offers packages to be installed over Fedora for audio.
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!
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.
Traction2 is built using JUCE. JUCE is an all-encompassing C++ class library for developing cross-platform applications. Both of which were built by Jules of Raw Material Software. On April, 25th 2005 JUCE was released with Linux support.
There is talk that this powerful, unique, and user-friendly audio application could be ported to Linux. If anyone else wants to support such an idea, e-mail Mackie or see this thread on KVR.
Real men flex their muscles by editing raw sound:
% cat /dev/audio > /im_the_man/raw.snd /im_the_man/raw.snd
% hexedit
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Is there some reason why FOSS audio tools will not work in Windows? I'm just puzzled, because I don't understand the jump from "here are some great FOSS audio tools" to "this is why Linux>Windows." I used FOSS on Windows all the time; it it was coded well it works perfectly fine. Or are these FOSS-tools platform-dependent on some specific distro of Linux?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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.
Record withPlay with
There is a Windows version too. If you think you're not into music editing, well, ever get an mp3 that was just too low in volume? Audacity can easily fix that - amplify, under the effect menu. Not suprisingly, Audacity is also open source. Not a big download either, but you will need to get the LAME codec to import/export mp3s. There's a link on the Audacity page to the codec and it tells you how to load it into the program. Just do a search; the Audacity home page should be enar the top.
Not to get into the giant pissing match here, but music sounds better on Linux (at least with classic rock and old blues). It's got more clarity. Windows palying music seems to have a little muffling effect by comaprison. You might be able to adjust the settings somewhere in Windows to sound that good, but I've never found out how. If you know, please post it here or post a link.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
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.
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.
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:
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
...I'd like a similar post like "An Intro To Editing Video On Linux." Nor production quality, but something I can edit the commercials out of the shows I record. A product like Womble MPEG-VCR for Linux. Yes, I know how to use Google, but I've never found anything remotely capable of doing what I want. I can hack together MEncoder commands, but that is a pain. This is one of the few areas where a GUI is better than the CLI.
I'm lucky if I can get audio to work properly half the time. With some applications only talking to OSS, some to only Arts and some others only speaking directly to ALSA (with about a million other variations on this theme) I'm happy if I can get the damn machine to play an MP3. We really do have an wealth of sound applications just a shame they don't play nicely together. Looks like this is going to continue in the future as well with everyone and their uncle producing a next generation sound server.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
I'm in a foreign language course, and I'd like to find something that can split the vocab audio on the CD so I can match it with flashcards. Anyone know if any of these can do it w/o days worth of tinkering and research?
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
I especially like it's loop recording function - the existing tracks will continue to loop over and over while you record as many 'takes' as you like in a new track.
The other app I use (Garageband on my iBook) doesn't offer this feature, and cuts off audio recording after the first take.
You can get around this by simply repeating your tracks so you have more repeats in the loop to record over, but then youre not really 'loop recording' any more, and ardour's approach to this is so much more convenient.
I was able to crash ardour by dragging audio around on it's timeline, but I expect this bug has been fixed by now.
I see lots of exciting things happening in the Linux audio world, apps like seq24, ardour and hydrogen make it hard to justify using anything else for the niches that these apps fill.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I still wish there was something as simple and complete as FL Studio that was OSS. I'd love to not have to reboot.....
Chaos is Divine *
The article states that Audacity supports VST plugins. This is only partially true. VST plugins run (with the VST enabler installed), but they use a default interface - not the interface that was designed for each plugin. Many of the designed (non-default) interfaces have data displays that give feedback on the setting being adjusted (such as a meter showing audio levels relative to an adjustable threshold). Using these plugins without the feedback from the data displays can be difficult. I believe few new users would put up with this limitation if they have used competing apps that fully support VSTs and their interfaces. Saying that VST plugins are supported without explicitly mentioning this limititation, as the article does, is quite misleading.
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."
Im a fan of open source and communal development but I do not think Linux is superior to windows. For example (and some kind of attempt to backup my arguement) professional tools such as reason and Cubase struggle if not fail completely to run under a Linux environment, VST support within linux is limited (but there). There are many ways in which linux is superior to windows, but I feel this is not one of them, surely the tools are adequate, but for a user who is interested in business, compatibility aswell as music, the fact that most tools are windows based (most tools that have a company to support them instead of voluntary developers) will probably be enough to keep them out of linux. I have always seen linux as interesting and innovating, but perhaps releasing professional tools is a bit out of it's scope. Just to summarise, as a hobbyist producer I feel that linux is not a suitable direction unless more commercial software were willing to actively support the migration, so even though linux audio is interesting it will be a while before I use it, that's just my opinion.
*Every* professional audio interface that is worth laying out the money for is supported by ALSA. Between ALSA and jack, you can get stunning results even from crappy hardware. I can get below 5ms latency with an el-cheapo SB Live! card. I know a few people using ardour with extremely expensive cards, and getting a hell of a lot more for their money than with crappy ASIO drivers.
"If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself." Most people can't program themselves and would rather buy something that already has the feature they want...
The best time to start a large coding project is in the middle of a recording project.
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..
Linux Format, July 2005, from the local magazine rack,
rated "Sweep" as the best sound editor.
Sweep development was funded by Pixar Studios,
although I believe sweep does very little development now.
While sweep seemed good for quick results,
I prefer "Rezound" over sweep, ardour, and audacity.
I use a sound editor to edit speeches and music from Ethical Society meetings,
previously recorded on cassette tape.
Both sweep and rezound have multiple undo/redo edits.
Rezound, like most sound editors has LADSPA and JACK.
One thing I'd like in rezound is a wave pattern while rezound records
-- I only get the wave pattern after I stop recording (I suppose this prevents
excess demand on the processor).
When I tire of using menus or the mouse, shortcuts like
ctrl-z
implement the infinite undo.
While a couple techniques weren't obvious, I found rezound more transparent than audacity.
I use mp3gain to adjust the gain/volume to a standard, rather than using tools in rezound.
I use a somewhat professional M-Audio Delta 66 audio card, which has 4 input and 4 output 1/4" plugs
in a break out box, although I had to compile "envy24control" on Debian Linux
to control this sound card.
I occasionally try other tools, because I use an audio editing tool over 100 hours a year.
Yet I keep returning to rezound.
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...