Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

10 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.

  2. 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.
  3. Re:Yeah by bcat24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  4. 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 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.
    2. 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.
  5. Re:Yeah by Ingolfke · · Score: 5, Funny

    But, what if you aren't a coder?

    What are you some kind of ignorant n00b!? RTFM idiot! RTFC for goodness sakes. How hard is it to learn C, learn all 28 of the relevant libraries, learn how the code was implemented, write the code, test the code, and convince the maintainer to add the code to the core code base? You must be some kind of lazy ignorant wretch.

  6. 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?

  7. 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.