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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.'"
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!
"But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.'""
Cubase?
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 :/
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!
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.
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
"Due to unforeseen circumstances, the release of Ubuntu Studio 7.04 will be delayed. Progress is happening rapidly, but we will not be estimating the duration of the delay."
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
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.
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.
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.
Musicians should not rely on Pro Tools. That's all.
~ C.
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
I am none the wiser after reading your comment.
So are you the pot or the kettle?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.