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Linux as A Musician's OS?
lazyeye writes "Keyboard Magazine has an in-depth article about the state of music production on Linux. While it does introduce Linux to the average musician, the article does get into some of the available music applications and music-oriented Linux distributions out there. From the opening paragraph 'You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.'"
As a musician, I prefer Windows Vista Musician 64-bit System Builder Edition.
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No comments and it's already slashdotted. Ah well. What are your thoughts on these products?
RoseGarden
Ardour
CSound
Do you really need anything else?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
and the problem he ran into was the lack of inexpensive hardware that worked on Linux.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.'""
Cubase?
this is music to my ears!
Is there a notation program on par with Finale available for Linux???
I'd like to run music software on my *nix systems - I have three - but have yet to be able to successfully get JACK to start a server. Somehow it seems that - if I'm going to run music software such as Rosegarden or Ardour - that I shouldn't have to setup a server to do it. Though I'm a huge Linux fan, I have found that Wintendo makes things easier with software such as Acid, on which I did this: http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/kai-groundforces .mp3 and this: http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/kai-giddyup.mp3 some years ago, with little to no effort.
Interesting article, none the less.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
RoseGarden fills one big gap (score editing, like Finale and Sibelius), but what I'd really like to see is an alternative to SmartMusic (practice music with the computer playing the accompaniment). Bonus points if it will playback scores prepared in RoseGarden.
(IANAL)
Also Jokosher ( http://www.jokosher.org/ ) is on the verges of having a stable release, for people that use a Gnome based system and want something as simple and easy as Garageband then it could be just the thing if Ardour and some of the others are too much like Darth's Vador's bathroom.
(BTW, I have no association with any of these projects).
My little Linux and tech blog
I would love for free and cheap solutions to present themselves, i think musical programs as well as most programs are overly expensive for what they are, but given the choice between a 600 dollar mac mini with garageband, or fiddling around in linux to get something to work, a lot of the type of people I know musicians to be are going to go with the former.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I'm not able to read the article, the page getting is slammed. I'm curious about driver issues, I have had several audio interfaces over the years, and don't remember seeing any Linux divers for any of them. I'm using a MOTU UltraLite ATM and they cant even get their Windows drivers to work right. That doesn't give me a lot in the way of hope. I'm also curious if any plugins I already own (VSTs and the like) would work under Linux? That would be a deal breaker as I have so much money invested in them :/
It can at least play C and C#.
Why bother when most I/O devices on the market come with 'Lite' versions of already tried and proven software from MOTU, Albleton, Steinberg, etc? For just the purchase price of a cheap USB or Firewire box you've got a really good software and hardware solution for creating music.
I wish my lawn was emo, so it would cut itself.
I have just recorded and mixed a live album with this software on Ubuntu Feisty:
http://ardour.org/
http://jackaudio.org/
http://www.ffado.org/ (aka Freebob) with a Mackie Onyx desk & firewire interface
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/
Very very good indeed, I vastly prefer it to my previous Windows based Cubase setup.
Goodness knows I've tried. But it's just not there yet.
Jokosher looks interesting, but it's still in alpha. I've tried RoseGarden and Ardour, but they didn't click. If they work for you, more power to you!
I've heard Audacity is moving in the direction of being usable as a multitrack, but it lacks specialized features of other music software.
Don't tell me about LADSPA - there's no real UI support. I know - I've written a couple plugins.
The most promising thing I've seen so far has been Reaper running under WineASIO, so I'm keeping my eye on that. Yeah, it's not a "native" Linux application. I can live with that. There have been rumors of a Linux version of Reaper, but support for VST/VSTi is important, and that's never going to run "pure" native.
wget is patient... :)
Linux: It's Not Just For Computer Geeks Anymore
By Carl Lumma | May 2007
You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.
For years, Linux has enjoyed market leadership as a server operating system -- Google's servers run it, for starters -- while struggling with the stigma that it isn't polished enough for desktop use. Those days are over, and word is getting out. Linux is quickly becoming the OS you'd set up for your grandmother, with no fuss over activation, software updates, or viruses. Unlike any version of Windows or Mac OS, Linux is open-source. What does this mean to musicians? For starters, there are no company secrets to keep or non-disclosure agreements to sign, so software developers and users alike can get on the same page very quickly, speeding the flow of bug fixes and feature additions.
Linux demands more nuts-and-bolts computer knowledge for pro audio than for web browsing, but if you've ever tried to troubleshoot a latency or driver issue on a store-bought laptop, you're probably still listening. If you upgrade your hard drive, you won't have to reactivate all your apps due to the hardware change, and when you discover a cool tool or workflow, you can share it with friends without them shelling out hundreds of dollars or resorting to piracy. With the exception of Linux versions that include commercial tech support, most everything in the Linux world is free for the asking, Many developers accept voluntary donations, which we encourage you to make.
HOW IS IT DONE?
Let's look over the shoulder of Aaron Krister-Johnson, the keyboardist and choir director at Temple Sholom in Chicago. He also composes incidental music for local theater, and is half of the electronica duo Divide by Pi, Keyboard's June '04 unsigned artist of the month. The core of his home studio is a PC running Linux (see Figure 1).
To obtain Linux, you download a particular distribution or "distro," which is a particular version of Linux someone put together, for free or a donation. Some distros are available boxed at very low cost. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is popular for home-computer tasks, but Aaron uses Zenwalk (www.zenwalk.org). Software compiled for a particular distro will only run on that distro, so most come with several free applications that you can install along with the basic OS. We recommend Fedora (www.fedoraproject.org), because you can then install the Planet CCRMA package (ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software), which includes just about every Linux audio application in existence.
Speaking of music applications, the most popular DAW for Linux is Ardour, and Aaron also uses JACK (see "You Don't Know JACK?" below), a soft synth called ZynSubAddFx, and an arpeggiator he wrote called Pymidichaos. Some distros come with binaries -- apps that have been compiled, i.e. converted from the programming language the developers used to the ones and zeroes computers understand at their innermost level. Three such distros are meant to provide install-and-go solutions for Linux-curious musicians: Studio to Go (www.ferventsoftware.com), Musix (www.musix.org.ar/en) and 64Studio (www.64studio.com).
But sooner or later (most likely sooner), you're going to have to take some groovy, free program you've downloaded and compile it yourself. This is where musicians used to commercial software might get scared off. Fear not, and remember that all the actual pr
1997 called. It wants its tech story lead back. Seriously: it's 2007: if "Linux" hasn't yet established itself as a brand name in the OS world, it never will. (Also, I'd love to see the looks on the average Red Hat or Novell employee's face if HR told each one of them that instead of a paycheck, they're all volunteers now.)
Around the turn of the century, Atari STs were the computer of choice because they had a built in MIDI interface. I imagine that musical instruments are making the move to USB, or some sort of USB/MIDI hybrid. That being the case, the choice of OS is going to be chosen by how technologically comfortable the musician is, with my guess leaning towards "not very" and thus Windows.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Rosegarden: Pretty good.
Ardour: The 2.0 release (just out last week) is AWESOME! Get it!
CSound: I like to leave my programming mind behind when I'm working on music.
Sooperlooper: very cool
Freewheeling: also cool
Music distros this summer ought to be pretty good - with new releases scheduled for many of the music distributions.
What bothers me the most these days is plugins and soft synths. There are not enough plugins, the ones we have (like swh-plugins, tap-plugins, caps-plugins, and cmt) aren't heavily optimized for modern architectures (I just spent a weekend working on that) and not enough people out there do dsp programming (myself included) to really gain critical mass for the "perfect EQ" or the "perfect reverb". Still, the plugin solutions are adaquate, just not generally something to rave about. If you know a dsp programmer bored in his day job, show him 64 studio or Studio to go and try to enlist his/her help!
Soft Synths are coming along. Linuxsampler is very nice. Bristol is coming along. There are quite a few more.
I think Linux music is on the brink of plausible promise. I've got 16 tracks of live audio working almost flawlessly right now.
If only there was support for Line 6's Guitar Port/Tone Port.
One notable flub in the article: There is a terminology section following the article. It takes the time to discuss free (as-in-speech) vs. free (as-in-beer) -- this is a good thing. However it suggests that pirated commercial software is free-as-in-beer, albeit illegal... That's like saying knocking off a beer store with pantyhose over your head nets you free beer. The article misses out on software that is free-as-in-beer, but not free-as-in-speech (i.e. some hardware drivers, etc.)
More Caffeine. NOW
There's two reasons for this. First, getting a software synthesizer to work was a royal PITA. MIDI isn't supported out-of the-box, and the directions online are both contradictory and useless. I know there's probably a way to get it to work, but for now it's a hell of a lot easier just to boot into Win2K and use Sibelius. The second reason is that the notation software itself isn't exactly the best-- I'm more into writing choral music, and Linux has yet to produce any software notation that matches Sibelius. Those that do come close often have stupid limitations, like NoteEdit-- which doesn't let you copy and paste, for instance.
As a musician myself (no kidding! I actually made music for some obscure PC and cellphone games, what i consider "extremely lucky" ;) ) , I am actually surprised by the progress most of these projects have achieved. I remember the times when not even making, but GETTING sound on Linux was troublesome - and that was, what, about five or more years ago? Now I see not only sound support has gotten good enough to actually be idiot-proof (myself-proof too actually ;) ), but the software evolved from a bunch of unusable dependancy-hell ridden projects to quality studio equivalents. Even my favored tracking type of software is developing nicely, although i always have some buts and mehs that keep me from using them and in the end i end up using the old ones with DOSBox instead.
;) ) in full, but i do see some interesting concepts that may make me shift my workflow to a double-boot system. And, keep in mind, as an amateur (or semi-pro ;) ) musician, my needs are quite low, considering, so it's a tough road ahead to get to the true professionals.
All in all, there still aren't "good enough" alternatives to make me revert from my windows-based software (FL Studio, Adobe Audition, Reason... and Impulse Tracker, just for the hell of it
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
I have tried a few applications like LMMS and Ardour and have installed them through the distributions package management system (particularly in Ubuntu). Adding these applications usually added all of the other necessary files such as JACK and whatnot. And for the most part, there shouldn't be too much tweaking by the user.
:-)) should make it easier for any musician to get up and running on Linux.
I've even taken the time to get this going on a Slackware box and downloading all of the files from the slacky.it website. Once everything is working, there really isn't much to it. I already have LMMS running with a synth connected to it through USB. Granted no end user is going to do what I did with Slackware, but thankfully distros like Ubuntu and even more so the music-oriented distributions like Ubuntu Studio Edition, 64Studio, and the others listed on that page (if it ever revives from its slashdotting
Here's a link to another site that lists the available apps and music-oriented distros out there:
http://linux-sound.org/
. . . but I gotta say there really is a lack of support for hardware in linux for real music production.
I had a real tough time just getting an maudio delta 44 to work and thats pretty standard, not to mention soft synths, there aren't really any out there that are as good as the stuff you can do in windows (fruity loops, cubase etc. )
I'd love to be able to record using linux, however I am using windows XP as a harddisk recorder as the software is much easier to configure and honestly, ease of use is much more important when you are dealing with something you create, you don't want to have to mess with configs etc to be able to record, you need to be able to hit a button and go, and interoperability between my 2 pcs is much easier to set up than linux to windows. Yes I know I can set up a samba server etc, however when I'm trying to move files between 2 PCs for editing quickly, I don't want to deal with it, I'd rather just turn on file sharing internetwork and get it done fast.
As far as worries about crashes etc, well, thats why I have 4 harddrives and 2 PCs, one PC has a dump drive I can slam all my files onto in case my main PC dies.
I guess it really comes down to the fact the software is relatively immature, and the OS is just not easy enough to configure hardware for.
I don't know about prottools setups or motu setups, but I have a sneaking suspicion you aren't going to get those working in linux, anyone got info on that?
Ardour is certainly looking better and better everytime I check on it.
The use of VSTs is a major point for me, but the article says they're supported only via a wrapper.
There is still a long way to go, before it can match something like SONAR or Cubase or Logic on features and flexibility.
At the end of the day, I would far prefer to use a linux system for music production, (rather than Windows), but for the time being, SONAR is my choice. Cubase is just too expensive and a little too quirky. Pro-Tools is just now catching up on MIDI features with the other big players, and MOTU and Logic are Mac only. I haven't looked at Orion, but I really do hope someday to be satisfied with Ardour or something very similar - but that's probably several years away still.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
I had this happen in the middle of a critical, paid gig, and I lost not only a lot of money, but a lot of respect from the customer. I was incredibly angry, as you might imagine, and resolved to never again be dependent on code I couldn't fix.
100 bucks a year for sonar upgrades wasn't worth it as my bugs weren't getting fixed.
So... After begging the motu guys *for years* for specs for their board so I could write a driver for linux, and/or begging them for a driver, and getting the same "hell, no" response over and over again...
1) I researched companies that had a good history of linux support, and chose the RME-audio multiface.
2) Publically denounced motu's squareheadedness as loudly and bitterly as possible. I sold my motu 24i's to a dedicated mac-head.
3) Threw out my windows PC and Sonar and upgraded to a dual opteron 64 bit linux box...
I sold the used Motu 24is for something like 400 dollars each. I haven't upgraded my sonar in a few years - so I've saved at least 300-400 bucks in upgrade fees, just on sonar. Gigastudio has come out with a few new versions (but is worth buying just for the sample libraries). There's a new windows version out - doesn't work terribly well for 64 bit, and costs some serious money.
So, all in all, throwing windows out of the studio entirely has resulted in:
1) Vastly improved reliability, with an os (linux-rt)truly targeted at multimedia
2) A huge cost savings in software, letting me buy much better hardware
3) I can run all my applications on a single dual-core machine with very low latency
4) A sense of satisfaction of "sticking it to the man"
5) The ability to participate in the process at any level you might choose. In my case, I've been speeding up plugins lately...
A windows based platform costs a lot more than linux platform. Windows + Sonar + Gigastudio is nearly a thousand dollar investment just in software. Linux + ardour + rosegarden + linuxsampler are subscriber supported.
I'd happily ditch Mac OS X and use Linux full-time if there were compelling alternatives to Final Cut Pro and other multimedia apps. Ubuntu Studio looks promising.
There's no place like ~.
I use XP Pro for my music (not Vista - I don't see the need for it). I backup to a Linux samba server. Linux is great and reliable but I don't have the same choices for software & hardware. I'm reminded of an AS400 - it's reliable, easy to use, and has a fractional amount of application/capability choices when compared to intel Linux/Windows (except the AS400 costs 4-10+ more than intel systems, Linux is less than XP).
I use/have Korg Legacy, DR8, Maudio delta, Sony Acid, loads of commercial and open-source VST plugins, and low latency monitoring via ASIO. These don't work or don't work as well with Linux.
I just bought the Keyboard issue and liked the article since it shows Linux as an alternative. For some who don't have all the equipment I own it might help them choose Linux. I got more from the other items listed as open-source like Audacity, several excellent VST plugins, etc.
Actually I've been using this for a while, for semi-/professional music and audio production. Ardour compares well to known DAWS like Nuendo and ProTools, and the power of jack is in many cases beyond what you can do with proprietary software. Also, all applications wich you can sync and use in conjuction with Jack make for an amazing software audio tool. For example, you can easily run a MIDI sequencer in sync with Ardour, even though it hasn't got MIDI editing features of it's own. Ardour, and generally all free music applications mentioned in TFA, are also quite better when it comes to speed and sometimes in reliability. Nice article, outlining the most important things and informative when it comes to setting a GNU/Linux DAW up.
I don't care about the source of the program (seeing it, Hax0ring it, whatever else you do with the source?!@?!), I just want an easy-to-use program that gives me the results I need, like Cubase. If that program runs on Linux, i'll take a look, but I don't care about 'seeing the source'....
Simple as That!
I've been producing music on my computer for the past 11 years in windows and linux --- I develop audio production equipment (hardware) professionally. My major indictment of the Linux audio community, and Linux software developers in general, is that they suck at packaging software in an easy to install way. So far I've had the best experience with Ubuntu, which has releases for many audio applications and is specifically designed with the goal of making things easy to install. Ardour and Rosegarden still can't touch ProTools, Cakewalk or Cubase. Seq24 is probably the most useful toy out for linux since it's especially good for sequencing live shows. Most other software synthesizers on linux aren't even worth the frustration with getting them to work. I find that I cannot install many of the software synthesizers and samplers out there usually because of problems with dependencies and incompatibilities with my distro (FC6). I'm not a novice at this, but I definitely can't imagine any newbie's to linux or to audio produciton getting anywhere with Linux audio production tools.
However, it's ridiculous to judge Linux as a "musician's platform", because that's far too general. Do you want to work with MIDI? Seq24 is great. Do you want to mess with synths? Amsynth and ZynAddSubFX are easy and powerful. Do you want to record your live performances and do some quick editing/mastering? Audacity and LAPDSA plugins. Using a $1000+ software suite to record your amateur musical ideas seems like overkill to me.
That said, if you do want to run a professional studio, you have a bit more configuration to do and a new learning curve. After you get qjackctl tweaked, patch a kernel for realtime (or whatever installation method is fashionable these days), and learn the basics of Ardour, you would have a professional quality DAW. Once Ardour gets full midi capability (thanks to Google SOC), it will probably be the All-In-One environment for Linux.
Oh yeah, don't forget EnergyXT2!!! It's only $50 and runs on Windows or Linux.
I've been an independant recording musician/songwriter for a number of years now, and have worked under Linux and Windows.
Linux is certainly a usable platform, but it can't do everything. Ardour is great (from the screenshots and reviews I've seen, at least - never been able to actually INSTALL the sucker, because of the dep. hell), but as far as synthesizing goes, the choices are less than ideal (in my opinion).
I use Windows for my needs, primarily, and it has served me well. There are a variety of great resources available - sure, for a cost - but the quality is superb. I use Reason 3.0 to sequence simple orchestral work for my new albums, and can do strings, piano, synthesizers, anything, with a rich, controllable sound quality. Not to mention the fact that there are a number of EXCELLENT refills/samples available for it. I also use Reason to sequence my percussion - ranging from funk jazz to industrial.
I use Cooledit Pro 1.2 - an old multitrack recording program - to record and mix. It's cheap, and it works very well without being resource intensive.
I'm not a fan of Csound, nor do I really like much of the other alternatives in the Linux market. I did use Audacity to record and master some monologues for a play a while back, and Rosegarden to do some sequencing/songwriting. Rosegarden is actually a superb piece of software - for sequencing. IIRC, that's all it can do. If you've got your external instruments hooked up properly, I'm sure it'd be perfect. I can't afford to buy all the outboard gear I'd need to match what I have with Windows based softsynths.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I know this sounds like a dumb little issue, but it was actually one that kept me from playing around with music production on Linux: finding MIDI-interface hardware that is known to work well under Linux.
I've got several MIDI keyboards that lack decent sequencers and sound patch managers. So being able to manage those details from a host computer (running Linux in this case) would be great. But when I asked around the message boards, I couldn't find anyone saying, "Yes, I use product XYZ to let my computer connect to MIDI devices, and it works great."
So I'm willing to play with Linux for multi-track recording and (if I can get the latency lower) real-time effects processing. But I'm not yet ready to plunk down $100+ on MIDI interface hardware to complete the system until I can get a strong recommendation.
More can be found on the Google cache (http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Zo5bcBIDaccJ: www.keyboardmag.com/story.asp%3Fstorycode%3D17973+ keyboard+magazine+linux&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us), but here is the main portion of it:
Linux: It's Not Just For Computer Geeks Anymore
By Carl Lumma | May 2007
You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.
For years, Linux has enjoyed market leadership as a server operating system -- Google's servers run it, for starters -- while struggling with the stigma that it isn't polished enough for desktop use. Those days are over, and word is getting out. Linux is quickly becoming the OS you'd set up for your grandmother, with no fuss over activation, software updates, or viruses. Unlike any version of Windows or Mac OS, Linux is open-source. What does this mean to musicians? For starters, there are no company secrets to keep or non-disclosure agreements to sign, so software developers and users alike can get on the same page very quickly, speeding the flow of bug fixes and feature additions.
Linux demands more nuts-and-bolts computer knowledge for pro audio than for web browsing, but if you've ever tried to troubleshoot a latency or driver issue on a store-bought laptop, you're probably still listening. If you upgrade your hard drive, you won't have to reactivate all your apps due to the hardware change, and when you discover a cool tool or workflow, you can share it with friends without them shelling out hundreds of dollars or resorting to piracy. With the exception of Linux versions that include commercial tech support, most everything in the Linux world is free for the asking, Many developers accept voluntary donations, which we encourage you to make.
HOW IS IT DONE?
Let's look over the shoulder of Aaron Krister-Johnson, the keyboardist and choir director at Temple Sholom in Chicago. He also composes incidental music for local theater, and is half of the electronica duo Divide by Pi, Keyboard's June '04 unsigned artist of the month. The core of his home studio is a PC running Linux (see Figure 1).
To obtain Linux, you download a particular distribution or "distro," which is a particular version of Linux someone put together, for free or a donation. Some distros are available boxed at very low cost. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is popular for home-computer tasks, but Aaron uses Zenwalk (www.zenwalk.org). Software compiled for a particular distro will only run on that distro, so most come with several free applications that you can install along with the basic OS. We recommend Fedora (www.fedoraproject.org), because you can then install the Planet CCRMA package (ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software), which includes just about every Linux audio application in existence.
Speaking of music applications, the most popular DAW for Linux is Ardour, and Aaron also uses JACK (see "You Don't Know JACK?" below), a soft synth called ZynSubAddFx, and an arpeggiator he wrote called Pymidichaos. Some distros come with binaries -- apps that have been compiled, i.e. converted from the programming language the developers used to the ones and zeroes computers understand at their innermost level. Three such distros are meant to provide install-and-go solutions for Linux-curious musicians: Studio to Go (www.ferventsoftware.com), Musix (www.musix.org.ar/en) and 64Studio (www.64studio.com).
But sooner or later (most likely sooner), you're going to have to take some groovy, free program you've downloaded and compile it yourself. This is where musicians used to commercial software might get scared off. Fear not, and remember that all the actual programming is alrea
I think you should be able to read it here.
RME-Audio Multiface - up to 14 channels of sweet sounding 96khz/24 bit converters - 8 line inputs + ADAT + SPDIF
Prosonus Digimax FS - 8 nice pre's with an ADAT out.
Dual processor opteron (3 years old) - with 3GB of ram. Given the huge samples I use (bardstown bosendorfer being one), I have linuxsampler compiled for 128 voices, and configured to use up 1.6GB of ram all by itself.
4 drives in a striped terabyte.
System works way better than my motu ever did under the evil os - works like a champ at latency levels down to 1.5ms. I generally run at 5.2ms however, as I tend to run linuxsampler+rosegarden+ardour+hydrogen a lot. One day soon I hope to get a dual core with 8GB of ram.
The RME-audio design might be 5+ years old, but it's still superior to "normal" firewire, IMHO. The fact that I have both PCI and PCMCIA cards for it means I can take the gear on the road easily...
Rest of the machine: a bunch of edirol midi converters (they just work), a roland XV88, and PodXT (fully supported by rosegarden) - the M-audio keyboard.... Dual heads provided by a 19 dollar matrox M450 card. I tried the latest nvidia card in this machine, could never get it to work...
Last important note:
[m@mingus ~]$ uptime 09:23:22 up 12 days, 6 min, 11 users, load average: 1.39, 1.31, 1.33
I was looking forward to Ubuntu Studio for Ubuntu 7.04 to pull together a useful collection of packages related to music production. But despite a website that shows a lot of polish, it's at least a month out of date (the homepage still says, "Coming in April").
Does anyone know what's up with that project?
How about software for learning music? In particular I'm looking for a 'teaches typing' for piano. Play and get feedback. Drills, etc.
It's not there yet but it's getting there. Last time I still needed to recompile my kernel, but that supposedly won't be needed anymore. Right now I'm waiting for ubuntustudio. Yes, it's late a bit. The team is not making estimates about how much longer it will take but I've overheard them saying 'maybe this week'. Ubuntustudio will include the Ingo Molnar low latency stuff by default. Most of the last bit of work is being focused on Ardour- the rest of the packages is already available on Feisty. There are a few tricks on getting audio to work properly on Linux. It helps to get a proper, supported sound card (EMU10k1-based sound cards such as the Audigy that are internally locked to a 48kHz sample rate will cause you a lot of frustration). It helps a LOT to have synaptic and/or apt-get. That said, I'm still running Dapper, which has been a big step forward since anything before it, but for actual recording work I'd still recommend a stand-alone solution, then mix the recorded audio 'in the box'. My Behringer DDX3216 and Alesis ADAT HD24 do the trick for me for recording purposes- but mixing on Ardour instead of the Behringer gives better sounding results. For all you HD24 users out there, go grab a copy of hd24tools.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I note that even more popular than Ardour 2 on linux is Ardour 2 on Mac OSX. It works pretty good on a mini - Aside from getting X installed, which seems to be a painful process for some users (answers for this are on the forums)
Ardour is much more sophisticated than garageband. For me, the killer app in ardour is the anywhere to anywhere routing model.
just some of my experiences as a musician and engineer:
i bought a 12" powerbook with the motu traveler, and it was a rock solid set up. i recorded and mixed a few albums on it last summer, and it stood up, and this is with 20+ tracks and effects (including altiverb) -- although there were a few times i thought the laptop was gonna melt. these ppc chips run hot.
this is why i won't be going open source for a while -- when you're with clients, it's a problem if you say, "oh hold on, i have to recompile the kernel". macs, for production, are solid -- which is not surprise since it's one of their major demographics.
but as a musician, i get the sense that linux is there. it would be nice if there was something like reason for linux, but that is asking quite a lot. otherwise, the freedom and programming-friendly environment of linux is very conducive to music-making (assuming electronic-based music, of course).
on windows, soundforge is the greatest 2 track editor evar. (problem is, you can't let anyone touch the machine, just looking at a windows box will get you a few viruses) i havce yet to use a 2 track editor as responsive as souindforge. i use audacity now, and it sucks for editing. also, it wants to save project files, which is ridiculous for 2 track files. it would be nice to know of a stripped down 2 track editor that let you zoom in to a sample level and out immediately, allowed for fades, crossfades, and basic stuff like normalization -- support for audio units, and that's it. i spent so much time just editing mixes -- it's nice to have a program that just let's you do that quickly.
i will say this, i had a PII 266 about 8 years ago, runnin linux 2.2 kernel with a low-latency patch. i could get audio in and out of that box in 8ms -- it still amazes me (i was using csound). i think this is where linux could shine, as real-time effects boxes -- you can strip all the other stuff away.
anyway, more and more i'm thinking of putting together a linux workstation, especially after reading about blender yesterday. i wonder how video is on linux?
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Does the DAW support my I/O interface?
Does the DAW support my software plugins and hardware inserts?
Does the DAW support my control surface?
Does the DAW export sessions in a pro-tools compatible way so that I can share the session with others who may not be using pro-tools, but are using a DAW that reads/writes pro-tools sessions?
If you answer yes to all the above, it doesn't matter what the OS is...
it's not that well supported. Works fine as a sound card, but it's a bitch getting all the inputs working. Also, he's got a cheap 'Guitar Pod' I think it's called that works great for recording, but doesn't work under Linux. There's a ton of cheap USB input and mixer devices out there that don't work in Linux.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Umm I use rosegarden hooked up to a yamaha keyboard, midi guitar (EZ-AG), and midi trumpet (EZ-TP). It works great. You don't know what you're talking about. Also... who wouldn't use midi? Do you not like having the flexibility of notation?
Muslim terror is bad.
Women's rights is worse.
You are gay(?).
One of the major problems (for me) with MAC/Windows audio software is it's high price, which is unusual considering that most musicians are poor and starving. For this reason, I've dropped Sony Soundforge and now use Audacity as my primary wave processing tool. However, Audacity only supports VSTS under Mac/Win and until there is stable VST host support in Linux and a sequencer comparable to Cubase/Logic/Sonar, it will not good enough to run a modern, competitive, software-based DAW.
Linux: It's Not Just For Computer Geeks Anymore
By Carl Lumma | May 2007
You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.
For years, Linux has enjoyed market leadership as a server operating system -- Google's servers run it, for starters -- while struggling with the stigma that it isn't polished enough for desktop use. Those days are over, and word is getting out. Linux is quickly becoming the OS you'd set up for your grandmother, with no fuss over activation, software updates, or viruses. Unlike any version of Windows or Mac OS, Linux is open-source. What does this mean to musicians? For starters, there are no company secrets to keep or non-disclosure agreements to sign, so software developers and users alike can get on the same page very quickly, speeding the flow of bug fixes and feature additions.
Linux demands more nuts-and-bolts computer knowledge for pro audio than for web browsing, but if you've ever tried to troubleshoot a latency or driver issue on a store-bought laptop, you're probably still listening. If you upgrade your hard drive, you won't have to reactivate all your apps due to the hardware change, and when you discover a cool tool or workflow, you can share it with friends without them shelling out hundreds of dollars or resorting to piracy. With the exception of Linux versions that include commercial tech support, most everything in the Linux world is free for the asking, Many developers accept voluntary donations, which we encourage you to make.
HOW IS IT DONE?
Let's look over the shoulder of Aaron Krister-Johnson, the keyboardist and choir director at Temple Sholom in Chicago. He also composes incidental music for local theater, and is half of the electronica duo Divide by Pi, Keyboard's June '04 unsigned artist of the month. The core of his home studio is a PC running Linux (see Figure 1).
To obtain Linux, you download a particular distribution or "distro," which is a particular version of Linux someone put together, for free or a donation. Some distros are available boxed at very low cost. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is popular for home-computer tasks, but Aaron uses Zenwalk (www.zenwalk.org). Software compiled for a particular distro will only run on that distro, so most come with several free applications that you can install along with the basic OS. We recommend Fedora (www.fedoraproject.org), because you can then install the Planet CCRMA package (ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software), which includes just about every Linux audio application in existence.
Speaking of music applications, the most popular DAW for Linux is Ardour, and Aaron also uses JACK (see "You Don't Know JACK?" below), a soft synth called ZynSubAddFx, and an arpeggiator he wrote called Pymidichaos. Some distros come with binaries -- apps that have been compiled, i.e. converted from the programming language the developers used to the ones and zeroes computers understand at their innermost level. Three such distros are meant to provide install-and-go solutions for Linux-curious musicians: Studio to Go (www.ferventsoftware.com), Musix (www.musix.org.ar/en) and 64Studio (www.64studio.com).
But sooner or later (most likely sooner), you're going to have to take some groovy, free program you've downloaded and compile it yourself. This is where musicians used to commercial software might get scared off. Fear not, and remember that all the actual programming is already done. To compile a given program, you use a Linux command called "make," and with a little practice, it becomes just one of those things you do when installing software. Though a complete how-to is beyond the scope of this article, there are many tutorials on the web, and Linux music software authors are usually happy to point beginners in the right direction by email. When was the last time you got support directly from your music software's d
I'm sorry but Rosegarden and Ardour are not able to replace Cubase or Ableton Live for me. No, not LMMS either. If they were able I seriously wouldn't have switched back to this horrible piece of shit windows OS. Jack is the only thing that Linux has that I have used and thought was useful. I have been a Linux User for probably 8 years, but when I started making music, it had to go, and don't think I didn't try for a solid year to produce music with Linux before I gave up. Linux can potentially do everything, but it cannot actually do everything yet, it is no musicians OS.
Isn't finding Linux drivers for your high-end audio hardware the real problem with making music on Linux, not the lack of sound editing programs?
Creative Demolition
But does it run Linux?
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/dublinclontarf
Did you even READ my post? I actually thought Rosegarden was good for the reasons you specified. I just never mentioned MIDI because, well.. It is implied that you would probably be using it. Ugh. Smooth one.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I'd like to see the guy who was interviewed put his python program up on sourceforge... it's neat and small and could do with more exposure... currently, there are precisely 4 links on Google for it, and one's in the article and I haven't a clue what licence he's got for it as there's nothing mentioned in the actual code or anywhere... I really want to know what licence he plans to let us use it under before I start messing with it myself...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Cubase isn't easy to use. nor is it beginner friendly. having installed versions of practically every music software package I have to say I still don't understand cubase...
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
I use drums++ (http://dpp.mikekohn.net/) to do my drum programming on Linux and record with either Timidity or a Dr. Rhythm drum machine into a Tascam digital 8 track.
Yea but I don't understand why you wouldn't use MIDI.
Wavs suck compared to the acctual Notation that Midi provides.
Also are you pro or anti women's rights.
I think women's rights is bad for men and thus should be abolished.
Don't be gay.
Ardour: The 2.0 release (just out last week) is AWESOME! Get it!
What's the hardware support like in Ardour for multitrack interfaces? I've always been intrigued with it (sent them some money once, just because I thought the project sounded cool) but IMO, the success or failure of a DAW is driven not only by its functionality and ease of use, but also by its compatibility with hardware. First, there's the I/O itself, but then things like control surfaces and MIDI.
With Garageband or Logic, it's pretty easy to tell if something's going to be compatible -- either it'll work with CoreAudio or it won't, and generally if it will, it'll be advertised as such -- is there a comprehensive HCL around for Ardour somewhere, that I'm just missing?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I have to agree that lilypond http://www.lilypond.org/ really is good. It can be used to typeset music into a book or paper so that is useful to music students. It produces MIDI output for quick checks. AND, it is cross-platform so that it can be shared easily. My nine year old caught on to the coding in just an hour or two.s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar for a song: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
The situation with VST works like this....
There are several solutions that use wine to run Windows versions of the VST plugins but there are complications between Steinberg's licencing and the GPL.... Although Steinberg make the VST SDK available free of charge they do not permit redistribution of the code which makes it pretty much impossible to include in gpl software or rather it is illegal to distribute that software. In english this means if you want software that supports VST you have to compile it yourself. Though projects that do not realie on other GPL code can grant a specific exception for the VST SDK... and some of those solutions should show up soon. Steinberg have said that they are not opposed to changing the license to make it more GPL friendly but have not done so yet.
If you are still with me still there are further complications. The VSTUI library is not supported by the current libraries so you don't get the fancy graphics and nice looking nobs. It also means you generally don't get the feedback scopes etc though this can be worked around. Also there doesn't seem to be any mechanism by which a VST plugin can report its latency therefor auto latency compensation does not work. Not all plugins work well using wine (a compatabilty layer that maps windows win32 library calls to corresponding Linux library calls)... and there is a new project that uses natively compiled vst's the catch here is that your vst vendor would have had to compile the plugin for linux (just as they would have to compile it for mac to run it on a mac)...
So basically I have managed to get some VSTs to work in Ardour enough for my purposes but YMMV.
I believe that to a point Linux is ready for musicians, but not totally ready yet. As mentioned in an earlier post, composing and arranging is still lacking. I am a total Linux nut, microsoft sucks, bow before the penguin, etc. I also arrange music for high school marching bands and there is nothing on Linux that rivals Sibelius or Finale. I personally use Sibelius and other software such as Virtual Drumline, and it is the only reason I still dual boot my primary desktop. I have tried getting my windows composition software working under wine and virtual environments but it has always been a complete failure. I don't mind dual booting, and I am sure that as Linux becomes more mainstream maybe some of these software companies will start porting their software to the Linux platform.
Missing option? VioLet Composer http://sourceforge.net/projects/buzz-like
I regularly record on my dual core AMD (4 GB RAM, 1.1 TB on 3 HD multi-headed [3x20" LCD screens]) using qjackctl (jack), Ardour, Rosegarden,and linuxsampler/qsampler. I use the built in sound card plus a 1012L card plus I can plug in a usb midi interface.
I currently have my Studio Logic midi controller hooked up to it for keyboard entry into the sequencer (Rosegarden). I run the sequencer to LinuxSampler (qsampler) to render to audio using gigastudio samples. When I got tracks working, then I assign many audio channels to linuxsample and record these simultaneously using Ardour. Then I add voice, guitar, wind synthesizer, etc... via the audio input ports using Ardour.
I think Rosegarden is much improved but it lacks a good midi filter (i.e. that can change controllers) but I found something that runs stand alone which utilizes ALSA (could patch it with jack) so that my footpedal could be mapped from Sustain to MSB Foot channel.
So full audio production can be done with Linux and the above mentioned tools.
To overcome voice limitations when rendering midi to audio using linuxsampler I recompiled it to take up to 350 voices and have observed a usage of up to 317 simultaneous voice renderings without any kind of voice dropouts or sound distortions. That's almost twice as many voices as my now retired Gigastudio 160.
When Ardour adds a full blown sequencer it will be very much like Cubase but without the blue screens of death.
I like to play music with my friends as a hobby, and looking for free options i stumbled upon Musix . Having used a mac with Reason and found it a little lacking and a bit expensive, i found Musix very usable. Not only it had most things that Reason had, but also came configured to use jackd server with a bunch of applications with no real work involved. Using it in a laptop I did have to use the command line to configure the wireless card but it was easy. I have to say that Linux is ready to be in the studio, yet as all things linux most of the software is in beta stage so bugs might appear. Just don't be afraid of the command line and you will be fine.
I use Sonic Foundry's Acid Pro (Not Sony's version) heavily, I haven't found an application for Linux that is similar. I like Soundtracker for some simple sequencing (I come from the days of Soundtracker, Protracker, Octalyzer, etc.. on the Amiga so I'm still kind of stuck on those kinds of apps). But using ModPlug I can convert my sequences to mp3 to "mix" within Acid Pro, but I have to use Windows to use Acid Pro and ModPlug. If anyone could suggest an application that is similar to Acid Pro for Linux I'm all ears.. I also really like Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge (Again -NOT- Sony's). It's a -very- powerful audio editor - Any good Linux Equivilents?
Thanks,
I can't read TFA - probably Slashdotted.
Did they mention JackLab - http://en.opensuse.org/JackLab ?
From their page: "JackLab would like to stimulate an entrance CD ISO with the help of openSUSE community that contains a complete music production environment."
Maybe of interest to musicians.
Shameless plug for attention on my add-free blog: I wrote about almost getting Reason going on Linux.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Linux will be a musicians OS at some point in the future after they include MIDI support in the kernel. For some audio programs I had to recompile the kernel with a faster clock resolution. Not to mention the mess (mind you, a functional working mess) that is Jack. Simply put: 3-5 hours of work to get a midi keyboard to play a note is unacceptable.
I have a few Linux geeks on my studio recording forum that get a lot done with multimedia production, but it's not for the masses yet, every now and then a greenhorn will try and end up frustrated and angry... And I have yet to see a Linux based tracking app that even comes close to Sonar, Cubase, ProTools or anything like that...until that happens, forget it...it doomed to a niche' life.
dB Masters
when Linux gets stable ASIO support, and they port propellerhead's Reason to Linux, I'll switch
I'm a certified Linux sysadmin and a jazz musician.
It's not there yet.
They're using their grammar skills there.
For multimedia *playing*, Linux is mostly there these days, although there are probably people who would even disagree with that assertion.
;)
Saying however that Linux is remotely close to being suitable for people to *produce* multimedia with is almost exactly like saying, "You too can live in the vastness of space! All you need is an oxygen tank and space suit!"
In other words, although it might be entirely inhabitable by the terminally autistic, this is one environment which still requires terraforming on a rather massive scale before it's ready for life as most of the rest of us know it to be able to move in.
if you dont want to install linux, then try the programs via a VmWare image.
5 6
http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/8
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
I've been using linux for music production for over 5 years, have produced about 5 albums and EP's and am starting to get into scoring films. The Linux audio domain has shown a huge amount of improvement over that time. Ardour has evolved from a crash-happy hair-tearer to a stable recording and mixing package. The number of sound editors out there is astounding and each has their own strengths and weaknesses that you can exploit. But then there's the command line, which let's you do things like this:
for i in *.wav; do out=${i/.wav/_mono.wav}; sox $i -r 44100 -b -c 1 $out; normalize $i; done
which will convert all samples in the current directory to mono and normalize them in no time at all.
The amount of audio software for linux is astounding, from programmer synths/sequencers like ChucK, Common Lisp Music, and CSound, to modular synths like Alsa Modular, PD and the super powerful keykit (the Emacs of MIDI sequencers). There are command line sound mushers and generators, mixers and so many effects it's hard to know where to start. But there really are no limits, if you're willing to put in the time and learn the system and how to tie everything together...
As a side note, I volunteered to help setup a new Pro-Tools setup at the local Film Pool, and after a week of trying to get all the licences in order, I wondered why anybody would pay for it at all. That was my first time using Pro-Tools for real, and it was just astounding that *every* (extra) plugin had to be registered, you still had version compatibility hell (could only use this driver with this version of PT, etc) and even after a week the system still didn't work right. After using Pro-Tools I'd take Ardour any day, if only for the lack of registration hell (which an audio engineer friend of mine teaches a day long course in; not how to use Pro-Tools, just how to register it!) and the massive amounts of high quality, free LADSPA plugins that are available.
Right now, Gentoo is my distro of choice and it has a huge amount of audio apps in portage as well as a Pro Audio overlay that's available through layman. Needless to say, I would concur that Linux is ready for the audio desktop workstation market, and has been for some time.
The only thing that linux is lacking is "instant gratification" music apps (although the playfield is getting better with LMMS and such programs). The tools available take some time to learn, but that's also half the fun of it, since once you learn the basics a whole new world opens up as you learn more and more about what's available. Jumping in takes a while to learn how to swim, but the only limits on how far you go depends on the amount of time you put in...
Listen to my music.
As soon as they can run Guitar Rig 2 and the entire suite of native instruments applications, I might consider it.i tarrig2swe_us
http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=gu
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
In typical Linux fashion, the *tech* side works fine, but the UI side is lacking.
Almost all the musician's apps apart from Ardour look like something out of the 80's, really awful. Yes, we *can* still use them, but come on, it's 2007, our expectations for UIs are a bit higher than when Gtk or Qt just came out.
And while Jack provides very good audio linkage, everything else seems totally ad hoc, with minimal interoperability, and even MIDI integration is poor.
The really big thing that's missing though is a central framework to bind them all, something like Reason3 + ReWire in the proprietary world. However, it should not reinvent everything like Propellerhead did, but just bind all our existing tools together through ALSA, MIDI, and Jack, and provide a MODERN and powerful graphic interface and a full-featured programmers' API. (QJackCtl is about 5% of the way there, but it looks dreadful and doesn't have an API.)
Ardour could have been that central framework, but despite huge numbers of requests, the main devs don't really want to tread far into MIDI waters. Well fine, but in that case some other app needs to take on the mantle of coordination, and Ardour will have to become slave to it.
We really need that badly. Once we have it, Linux music will conquer the world.
Musicians rely heavily on their tools (Pro Tools, pun not intended) and software intstruments (VST/VSTi, which are normally released for OSX and Windows only) to do what they do.
Now, music is an art, you can do music with a garbage can and chicken bone if you want. Thus Linux could be used for that, but no serious musician would inconvenience himself and forget about the plathora of processing plugins, instruments, effects, sequencers, remixers, audio editors on Windows/OSX to go for Linux.
For the most part, musicians use computers to make music, not follow misguided attempts to prove Linux best in everything.
Ardour is great (from the screenshots and reviews I've seen, at least - never been able to actually INSTALL the sucker, because of the dep. hell)
My experience was different. Is this a case where you shouldn't be blaming Ardour but be blaming your Linux distribution or the way you've installed libaries? Having installed the Ardour release candidate about a month ago, I had no problems getting the dependencies installed. The installation page describes exactly what dependencies are needed http://ardour.org/building
For Ubuntu, it was very easy to install the needed -dev libaries, then compile Ardour as described.
There is this as well: www.lilypond.org but I wouldn't vouch for it as I haven't had the time to try it out yet.
Courtesy of my boyfriend's sisterm, CS prodigy and Ubuntu user (name concealed out of fear of buttkickin':D)
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
I've been writing music for 10 years and doing my own sound production for almost as long. Use Linux for this? Ha!
The proposterous ideas that people come up with.
Seems like an odd dealbreaker to me.
I'm not the parent to whom you replied, but your defence of the lack of MIDI integration is churlish. It's 2007, fer crissake, and musicians have acquired certain fundamental expectations of their music frameworks. And you don't get more fundamental than MIDI. No excuses.
What do you use a DAW for exactly?
Do you know what the 'W' stands for in DAW? Well, let me give you a clue: it doesn't stand for Recorder.
Just because *you're* happy with Ardour as nothing more than a recorder doesn't mean that that's enough for an audio workstation.
I was installing it under Slack a while back, so yeah, it could just be the fact that I was being stingy with how I handled my deps (since I was installing manually). Now that I've got an Ubuntu box, I may give it another go.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
We've interviewed a few musicians that use Planet CCRMA and Fedora when recording their music. One such artist is RachelAPP. You can read more at http://ind-music.com/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=74&Itemid=1
Support Open source and open music.
I have nothing clever to put here...
Man, seems like all of the Slashdotters brought Keyboard Mag down to its knees! Right now, going to the main Keyboard Magazine website brings up a Music Player Network page saying, "We're sorry this site is temporarily unavailable." I've always known about the Slashdot effect but I've never seen it in action as it takes place. All I can say is Holy Smokes! I kind of feel bad for the Slashdot-effect victims now... :-p
...a dedicated Linux-based VST host: http://www.museresearch.com/receptor.php .
I've used one briefly; doing the VST-over-VNC thing was a bit painful, but it seemed to work well enough. Certainly, there's a lot to be said for having a rugged rackmount box with all the connectors onboard.
http://www.artistx.org/
see additional links down teh page.
I'm impressed with dynebolic...as well as with some of the others.
ArtistX probably has most all music based programs available on linux included.
Now they have mirrors - it was tough when I had no choice but to use bittorrent.
Linux has a long ways to go before it becomes a viable alternative to windows. Im a big linux nut and use linux everywhere. But as a recording studio it doesn't cut it. Ardour is great but it lacks functionality to make it useable in the real world i.e. vst plugins. Hydrogen is great for free software, but I would never use those drum samples even on a rough demo.
Linux has a long ways to go and in the past 2-3 years isn't hasn't even got on the road to get started moving yet.
OS X and ProTools isn't going to be losing steam anytime soon.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux
The Planet CCRMA distro (actually it's a pile of RPMS, that turns Fedora Core into, effectively, a whole new distro) combines all the greatest Linux audio tools with a low-latency kernel and fully configured JACK and ALSA setups.
Setting up all the tools on a general purpose machine can be very tedious, so I dedicated a machine to music with this.
I slapped a couple M-Audio Delta 1010s in there and now I have a 16-Track recording studio on the cheap. It's great!
-- The reader anything less than completely failing to not misunderstand this sig is cursed.
Its clear from listening to the multitude of anecdotal, ignorant, out of date, always wrong, partially wrong and flat out whining comments that the posters here don't read Windows/OSX music forums (product specific and otherwise).
/. that criticized the kernel or Firefox or Apache or Python in the same inane and utterly ridiculous ways that people criticize audio stuff, there would be a flood of informed, witty, and incisive corrections to the point that frequently the original post is lost. But not audio ... with this stuff, the ignorant get rated +5, the experienced post comments that receive little attention, and the misinformation continues to spread. Sigh.
Is it really hard to get pro-audio working on Linux? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, its basically impossible. Is it really hard to get pro-audio working on Windows? Sometimes yes. Forums are full of people for whom stuff just didn't work. Is it hard on OS X? Well, easier than Windows or Linux, for sure, but there's still a rich supply of problem cases on the product and general forums (e.g. gearslutz.com) many of which are replicated by the more substantive criticisms here.
It is frankly amazing that a community like Slashdot, which frequently yields many interesting technical insights and ideas (at least if you browse at +3), is so predictably ignorant when it comes to commenting on audio software on Linux. Every time Slashdot runs a story on this topic, the same stupid ignorant out of date and often simply wrong comments surface. And invariably, there are only a couple of people around to correct the nonsense. If there was a post on
At first I misread that as a DRM solo, but that made no sense.
:-)
I'm sure they'd add those by default and only prompt you with allow or cancel if you wanted to add anything like music to it
Ardour 2 is in the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn repositories and ubuntu studio. No compiling (unless you need VST-- that has patent problems though).
cplay is pretty cool for a music player. Browse dirs, create a playlist, and play/pause/stop/ff/rew , prev/next/first/last all your tracks from a curses ui. It's a 1Kloc python script and uses a couple auxiliary programs. Who needs a 10Mb GUI to play a few tunes?
The goal here is low cost performance, not high aviability.
I am sure that he keeps his data files saved on safer media.
But seriously this is intended for realtime performance. That is you copy down the data your using as a working set, and run with it. If you loose a drive then you loose a days worth of work.. at most.
You use systems like this as just a way to have your working data set stored in a fast manner. Raid5'ng it would be totally counterproductive.
If you want performanec and data redundancy the step up would be a Raid10 array, (which Linux has special configurations for that go beyond the old Raid 1+0 concepts). RAID5 is simply unsuitable.
The link appears to be broken; perhaps they took the page down when they were slashdotted.
Regards, Martin IT: http://methodsupport.com Personal: http://thereisnoend.org
I am not much of a music-man, but I know enough about Linux music stuff to know that this is trivially possible.
You use the JACK audio system. Think of it like a router for audio PCM streams and Midi. You can route I/O from audio cards, from programs, from anything that Jack supports.
For example... Keyboard Midi-USB ---> Jackd ---> RoseGarden ---> Jackd ---> Software synth (dozens to choose from) ---> Jack ----> audio filter/recording/plugins/whatever ---> Jackd ---(split a) ----> monitor ----(split b) ---> recording software.
All sorts of stuff like that is possible. Say you like a paticular Software Synth, but you don't like the echo/reverb settings on it?
Take the audio PCM out of that, feed it in to Jackd, route it through AMS and build a complex filter (all still graphical, mind you) and using various plugins and drop-offs or and subtle-ized echo effects to accurately recreate the effect of a spacious hall.
I made a el'cheapo M-audio usb/midi controller sound like a grand piano in some vast studio appartment and then again made it sound like some out of tune harpsichord, and then made the house shake like it was a full sized church organ. The sky is the limit.
Now I don't know if you care or if this would suite you or whatever. I do know that it's trivially possible once you understand how to work Jackd and combine many small applications into very complex arrangements.
I'd like to post a link for the CLAM project, which is an open source (GPL) C++ framework for processing audio. It has nice visualizations that show the chord and key being played. It seems to support all the jack/ladspa connectivity and it has a rapid development tool for connecting networks of audio analysis/synthesis processing nodes (the gui is implemented with qt). It's currently being supported by google summer of code. Here's the link:http://clam.iua.upf.edu/ . I'm affiliated with the clam project so I might be biased, but since I didn't see it mentioned here, I thought I'd add it in case it strikes anyones interest. --why procrastinate today what you can procrastinate tomorrow?
I thought Linux was just for games.
I'm not sure what to say, other than thanks
for your interest!
-Carl
http://lumma.org/microwave
Linux has not a correct DMA timing behavior to be used as a music machine. ive tried it a LOT of times. And the worst part is that EXT3 does not help in linear recording. you need HUGE amounts of ram to make the hard drive to behave for recording multichannel I still think there are some issues inside the kernel who can be replaced to ensure better task switching proficiency Application mostly are made in GKT which means slow frame refresh and thats like using cooledit or smething like that. There are NO CONSOLE recording tools for multritrac as it would be an WAVELAB 3.. I would prefer Solaris or BSD along the way. BSD Slices work a lot better to recording heavy tracks but the audio interface is still buggy which means you can hang the BSD in the middle of a process. I still use some quite antique Os to do the dirty work.
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Damn! I try so hard, not to make fun out of the last sentence... The first one will make me look like a hippie, if i do...
Couldn't agree more. Do as I said and mod the parent up.
The viability of Linux as a music OS depends on what you are trying to achieve. IMO, it is an excellent tool for creating electro-acoustic music or anything experimental. Working with csound or Pure data is an great way of escaping the "notes on a keyboard" or "strings on a guitar" mindset, it forces you to think about music in a different way.
I am none the wiser after reading your comment.
So are you the pot or the kettle?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This article barely even talks about software real musicians would actually use, namely scoring software. I would very much like to have the likes of Sibelius or Finale, as some have already mentioned in this thread. Rosegarden isn't there yet. Lilypond doesn't apply, since -typesetting- is unrelated to music and very different than actually creating music.
Regardless, why is there all this emphasis on so-called "pro-audio" software and all this other nonsense? What is the point? I don't understand what it's even used for. Simply editing a recording is a pretty simple operation. I don't think a real musician has any need for all these other programs. They might be useful if you want to work for Brittany Spears, but such a person could hardly call him or herself a "musician".
Can someone tell me please, once i'd made a beat in hydrogen, how can i import it from another app and add base and melodies to it? what other app should i use?