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Goodbye Apple, Hello Music Production On Ubuntu
Adam Wrzeski notes a piece up at Create Digital Music by musician Kim Cascone (artist's bio) on switching from Apple to Linux for audio production: "The [Apple] computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part. ... I loaded up my Dell with a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz audio with effects — not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer — a far cry from the $3000 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable."
He totally switched from Apple to Linux, and he does things with this computer just like everyone else! You should totally post his story on /.
Well, Apple DO encourage it...
This is really interesting considering how much bad press Linux gets concerning its ability to handle audio. From personal experience I haven't had any issues with it since the Audigy line was new, but there are still people who claim the Linux audio support is horrid.
nice to see a person that has the right tool for the job. BTW you wern't locked into Apple, you were locked into the software developers choice of OS and hardware.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I love using linux for as much as I possibly can, but I have noticed a distinct difference in the audio quality between my old power book Ti and a 'business' grade dell. The audio out my mac mini is MUCH better than what I get out of Dell desktops I've used, too. My eeePC 901 does seem to sound pretty good, though.
I'm all for open-source, but trying to do any music production on linux has been a headache to say the least. I'm more than willing to give it another shot, but I've had very little if any problems on my mac. Actually, all the problems came from it being a "hackintosh" Mac OS X was designed for audio unlike other OS's. Between it's ultra-low latency audio subsytem and the industry standard Audio Units plugin archetecture, it'll take a hell of alot for Linux to beat that. Plus Logic owns any program I've ever tried and I can only run it on a mac. As much as I love open-source anything, I spent too much time just trying to figure out Linux technical issues and not enough time actually recording. If there were less competing standards on the platform and less buggy software I'd probably be running a Linux DAW right now. Until then I'm more than happy with my "Mac".
So what? I'm not trying to troll here (well, maybe a little) but honestly, who cares?
This whole mentality of "Us against the world" is kinda amusing to me. I guess it's because I'm not a developer, or something, I dunno.
But this is one artist saying "Software X is/was expensive, so I'm using a different and free solution." Ok, great, good for her. So now what?
Sent from your iPad.
yay
Hardware has kept me from Ubuntu in this regard. I have an old Steinberg VSL ADAT card that has no drivers on linux or even OS X.
Honestly, I don't know the state of pro audio on linux past this, but it is keeping me for now.
Did the author manage to get anything other than a DAW and sound editor running under Ubuntu ? Max/MSP for instance ? Reason ? Ableton Live ?
I've given up trying to do anything musical with Ubuntu. Windows and OSX are still miles ahead in terms of compatible hardware and software that 'just works'.
Squirrel!
Anyone who believes this has never tried to record and mix multitrack audio on Linux
I agree with the premise of this article: Linux is a perfectly good platform for digital audio creation and editing. It might even be better than a Mac, depending on how you weigh different pros and cons. But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
As someone who's done some published research on audio latency/jitter issues in a former life, I'm also somewhat annoyed by how much these sorts of articles focus on tech like JACK and low-latency kernel patches. This used to be a huge issue, but I suspect it shouldn't be nearly as high up anyone's priority list as it used to be--- back in the 2.4.x. series kernels, when the default kernel's clock tick used 10ms granularity and scheduling was flaky, it made a much bigger difference. Today, I suspect this sort of behind-the-scenes performance is only infrequently the bottleneck in anyone's audio performance; when I see actual glitches in performances, they can often be fixed by much more boring scheduling tweaks like "nice -19" on the processes that are bottlenecks in the audio path, or finding bugs in how you're setting up your callbacks.
In any case, these days I see JACK as useful mainly for being a reasonably well supported audio-app-interconnection bus; as he says, the Core Audio of the Linux world. But that doesn't make it hugely unique either.
So I guess I'm in the weird position where I agree with the article's conclusions, and some of its specific points, but overall if I didn't already agree with it, this article wouldn't have sold me on why Linux is great for audio editing. Sorry. :/
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Site is dead
I've been using this for quite some time now. anyone else?
Warning, the above comment may contain sarcasm. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I stopped caring at this point.
I used to produce with Cubase VST/32 on OS9, which was an environment I enjoyed working in. When OS9 was abandoned and my mac died I continued with VST/32 on Windows2000, but it wasn't the same. Neither were the new versions of Cubase on OSX.
My biggest problem with this situation was my old projects were stuck in this archaic format with nowhere to go. Since then I've moved to Ardour on Ubuntu, I find the environment is even better than before and tools like Hydrogen are great. Best of all is Jack, there's nothing like it.
Linux audio is good and it's only going to get better, the price of the software isn't relevant in this assessment, only quality.
POKE 36879,8
...is that all his music creating can be summed up in him cutting and playing back audio samples with various effects on it - there is no actual sequencing or other advanced music creation involved.
Had there been, I'd say, with many years experience as a composer, that this article would not be.
I could certainly do it for under $500 with a good used MacBook. Does that make the $600 for the refurbished old-school Dell system "more expensive"?
Linux has probably the worst sound architecture(s). Hideous, hideous mess. Good luck trying to get through the nonsense of ALSA when the sound fucks up. Or is it PulseAudio now? Or is it back to OSS? Hahaha.
-a guy on a Linux computer whose sound is disabled because his webcam is plugged in (wtf)
For the new/seeking, see these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMMS
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/
http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=opera&rls=en&q=lmms&sourceid=opera&oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=FL14SrTCLYW0sgPfqe3xBA&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4#
http://keepthemfree.net/application/lmms-044
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/
http://linux-sound.org/notation.html
And a slew of others are starts if not replacements, depending on what any given person is after. If someone can top Rosegarden, Lilypond and LMMS, or combine the best of all these and some others, you'll probably see/hear Apple whip out the patent/copyright infringement... But, i DO have to say, Garageband is FANTASTIC. I watched a demon in the Apple Store, and it's hard (it appears) to beat GarageBand (for now?).
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
but this sounds a lot like a Dell ad.
If you're looking for a great alternative to expensive, bloated audio applications, check out Reaper. It's made from the guy who originally wrote Winamp. The licensing is very friendly and only costs $60 (discounted license). They're very responsive to user feedback and add features constantly (updates usually arrive every 2 weeks). I've used other tools in the past like Reason and Cubase, but ended up ditching them in favor of Reaper. Its built-in effects are quite good and it supports DX and VST plugin formats. Unfortunately it is only supported on Windows (32 and 64bit) and Mac OSX at the moment however
Seems like some enterprising individual could start putting together cheaper-than-dirt Ubuntu-based music machines by buying Dell Studio laptops (with Microsoft license rebate, naturally) and preloading everything necessary.
The complaint from non-geeks about Linux is you have to do it yourself. If you didn't have to do it yourself, and it really was that cheap, it becomes a lot more interesting.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
until it has this. i.e. something this cheap and useful.
This dude is not exactly producing musical scores using his Ubuntu rig. I mean, seriously... go check out some of the stuff on his store and you'll see why (examples):
Reaching Dark Stations
Recorded in Regina, Saskatchewan in 2007 at the Neutral Ground Gallery:::industrial factory sounds filtered through a turbine jet engine::Play loud, play often:::Statistically Improbable Phrases
30 minutes of sputtering modems and hacked sparking mainframes; the sound of technology gone awry mixed with submariner dark station dronescapes; briny chains scraping against the hulls of rusted ships. Recorded live in Paris at Instant Chavires
In short, he doesn't need the type of precision and accuracy provided by higher-end hardware and/or custom interfaces and plugins that one would need for 'serious' music (yes, I went there), so he can get away with using Ubuntu. After all, it's just 'bleepy shit' anyway.
Kim mentions the use of free audio production software, such as Audacity, as substitutes for commercial offerings. While an Audacity user is more than welcome to dive into the code base and make needed improvements, not every user has the time and/or ability to do such. In my estimation, neither Audacity 1.3.7 nor Audacity 1.2.6 are stable enough to be considered "professional-quality" software. I am not trying to insult the developers and their abilities -- they have a complex project on their hands. But Audacity's graphical interface has serious and repeatable bugs; Audacity's sound export facilities reliably adds spurious noise to sound. I admire Kim's decision to use Ubuntu as an audio workstation, but I don't think Kim has been forthcoming about sacrifices in software quality that a user must make to do so. Kim can easily translate most audio programming done in Max/MSP (the commercial environment he has worked with extensively) to the public domain environment "pd" -- but as an experienced user of both systems there are more functionality loses than gains moving from the commercial Max/MSP/Jitter environment to pd (Pure Data).
If the cost of an Apple system and the higher cost of outfitting it with professional quality audio production and performance software are bankrupting a musician, then I can see the logic of using an Ubuntu system at this time. Otherwise, I still believe the adage "you get what you pay for" applies. However, I believe with effort from open source audio developers an Ubuntu audio workstation with both cost and quality advantages is more than possible. The bugs I am seeing in Audacity today remind me of the bugs I saw in the comparable commercial application "Peak" ten years ago.
Actually, no1 really cares about the desktop anymore, an example:
http://www.itworld.com/open-source/72634/whats-linux-desktop-mean-when-we-dont-know-what-desktop-anymore
So maybe it'll never happen, you could also say, it has already happend for many, which is true.
New things are always on the horizon
See, I'm a seasoned musician and I understand that music has to have a little style. Linux is about as stylish as a garage. That Unbuntu might be okay for making some kind of blooping video game remix, but when you want to impress people with the rock'n'roll, you need a stylish machine like a Mac.
Musicians don't have a "workflow," they just plug shit in and expect it to work. They aren't about commitment, they don't want to shepherd some high-maintenance bird around that has to be hacked into giving a good performance. They want a seasoned pro that's been there before, and knows how to impress! Why, that's the Mac to a T! And when it's over, there are no feelings hurt. Just goodbye stranger, it's been nice. Hope you find your paradise!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
If a $600 laptop has enough horsepower to do what he needs, why was he looking at MacBook Pros? The $1,000 MacBook should have suited him fine. It's still more expensive, but as he says in TFA "invest money or time, never both" so that time savings would probably have been worth it.
And you can install Jack or Soundflower under Mac OS X's Core Audio as well.
until it has something like this. Something cheap and extremely usable.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No kidding, but this still.... seems to be a problem. And after that don't mention alsa, pulse, crap, crap, etc...
Wow! Kim Cascone! THE Kim Cascone! Why, we were just talking about him...
Oh wait, actually I have absolutely no idea who this guy is. Why do I care? I take it we're going to be finding random "I switched from OS xxx to OS yyy" stories on Slashdot now?
#DeleteChrome
informative? only the (not) obvious (to you) -- no need to spend thousands of dollars on mac hardware and software
I wonder how the vendors are going to support another OS when they can't even get their stuff working properly with different hardware configurations on TWO operating systems (Windows/OS X). I can't tell you how many problems I've had with FireWire audio interfaces.
Once this hurdle has been reached, I am all for whatever open source audio stuff comes my way. I use currently Audacity for editing samples and quick n' dirty recording. Audacity WORKS but it's interface is mediocre at best and if you want ASIO support you have to download an unsupported patch to get it.
Sorry. I'm a professional video game composer (and will remain anonymous), and I can tell you this will never fly, not until instruments/engines like Kontakt, Reason, PLAY, and Vienna Instruments all work on Linux. And that's not even counting all the plugins for reverb and such, like Altiverb. No freaking way could I produce compelling, high production quality material on a machine that didn't support these tools of the trade.
Heck. And that's just the plugin side of it! We haven't even talked about the sequencer, which has to beat heavy hitters like Cubase, Logic, and the few others that people tend to have in their arsenal. Linux has a very long way to go before it can be considered a professional music platform.
There is no doubt that Ubuntu notebook would be somewhat cheaper than Apple hardware of comparable specs. Although, your own comparison is terribly flawed by choosing refurbished and low end Dell laptop compared to high-end Macbook Pro. Regular MacBooks can be had in the ballpark of $1K and refurbished one might well be available for $600.
But a bigger problem is comparison between Linux open source and commercial audio apps for OSX. Apparently you are both a geek and a music guy and can manage fine. For one, I prefer Gimp to Photoshop as the interface of the former is much more logical from programmer's perspective. However, majority of non-geeks still prefer Word, Photoshop, Garage Band or Logic studio and value their time more than a couple grand to get the hardware platform.
Many people have problems with sound in Linux. The situation is certainly less than ideal. However, on most computers, sound in Linux works flawlessly. If you have problem with sound in Linux, you are part of the exception, rather than the rule.
While I have absolutely no doubt that music production on Ubuntu may be the right tool for some forms of production, a lot remains to be said about the state of applications, interfaces, drivers and importantly - sheer simplicity, which has a huge impact on workflow. In most music production situations I imagine that the most important job for a DAW is to offer unhindered access to the creative process behind working on the track, basic usability is where a lot of OSS software seems to fall short and audio platforms are no exception.
If you're lucky enough to be able to establish a workflow and sound around the software that you're using then an open platform is ideal, but most people are going to be bringing a sound and a workflow to the software, and the software must complement this otherwise it will not be used for many serious projects. The article talks about how concerned he is with maintainability and reliability, but in my experience I will happily use software such as ProTools and Ableton Live which have received years of commercial investment and refinement. It may come with a high price tag which some people might find prohibitive, but in my experience most audio software should fit within the budget of anybody earning a modest living from music, it's certainly eclipsed by the price of instruments or audio hardware.
What it comes down to. If you want to be musically creative you don't want your software or OS to get in the way, Linux with its myriad of audio-related subsystems and incomplete audio software has a tendency to do just that. I'm a competent system admin but only a hobby musician, and I will happily argue the merits of Linux and open source all day long, but unfortunately where audio production is involved I will definitely recommend a Mac platform to anybody if they'd like to be productive.
The only problem I have is that on Linux, when I hear about this fantastic package that supposedly runs on the distro du jour, I usually find that I have to download 5 or more different pieces of kit like libraries or audio driver special patches and low latency kernel patches then re-compile all of these with this switch set and hold my nose a certain way while tweaking this driver then recompile the kernel on Tuesday with my hair on fire then do it again Wednesday standing in a freezer. And when I finally get all that done I find that no one mentioned the package that already existed with half of it done for me but the other half is written in perl and then I have to update perl modules from some depository to the latest and greatest. Then the PHP modules required by the web interface aren't loaded by default and the PHP version is too advanced i have to install the old one but if I switch to this other distro all this other stuff is done then when I finally get all these ducks in a row my sound card isn't fully supported by any distro in existence so I switch to a USB sound card that is supposed to be universally supported except that the drivers are proprietary so they weren't actually included in my distro cause that gave somebody heartburn.
By the time I get it running I have to update the kernel again and that broke the drivers all over again.
So Sorry I'm saving up and buying the tools that have already been proven to work.
Why bother
And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
Wasn't cost the major reason he cited for the switch? (hint, it's in the summary - $600 vs $3000). Doesn't seem weirdly trivial to me.
cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio
No need for a fancy Dell either, it works just fine with any soundcard, and I bet it sounds a lot like whatever this dude's doing (maybe even better).
Try it sometime!
"We'll need 2000 crickets, 4 cans of Easy Cheese, and the fluid from 18 glowsticks for this plan to work...." - ph0n1c
But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
Yes, that's all he mentions. Never once does he mention price. Nope. Well, perhaps vaguely here:
A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadn't come along and spawn a price-wars on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt.
But he certainly doesn't mention it here:
The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer -- a far cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple.
Or here:
Not only was the expense of owning and maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to me.
Like most people, all of my Linux experiences are seen through the filter of whatever distro I'm using. When I wanted to try out music production on Linux, I installed Ubuntu Studio 9.04.
My experience was bitter-sweet:
So sadly, I didn't even get as far as seriously critiquing the apps. It's a pity, because there seems to be so much potential there.
It's Linux's fault because an app doesn't run on it? It's not the developers fault?
Yeah, that's fair. I suppose what I really wanted to read was an argument about why Linux is particularly well-suited to audio, which I think it is. But an argument that it's "good enough, and cheap" is, as you point out, also legit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Will this chink away at the myth that you need an Mac for anything creative?
Apple gives/sells cheaper Macs to school
School teaches students on Macs
Teacher knows only Macs
Students go to workplace and find Macs
Only Macs can do audio/video/image editing.
The same is true of MS, but for office applications. It's true because it's true.... i think in the world of Mac users, there seems to be a mindset of NO NO NO! PCs CAN'T EDIT VIDEO! LA LA LA LA!
i've done all three on both OSes. Having a right click is reason enough for me to use a PC. YMMV.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Oh, I dunno...I think there are several professional musicians using linux...they just don't know it!
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/11/09/inside-the-korg-oasys.html
http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12200#12200
It fixed all my problems with sound, anyway.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
About time this came up on /.
I am a recording engineer and a musician. Unfortunately I have a MOTU 24io which only works with OSx or Windoze. I've tried out Audacity and other stuff, and it works fine, but the drivers for audio cards work if I use only the correct stuff. Drivers Drivers Drivers! I mean getting VST's to work is great, but if I can only have 2 channels to record, I mean that's not gonna work.
I use at least 16 channels at once for recording. We need audio cards that handle 16 channels and drivers that work for me to rig up my studio for linux. God I would love to switch if I could get decent audio with Linux
You could buy a used (aka EBAY, craigs list, apple.com) macbook (which would blow the doors off of the mini) to replace your 5-7 year old powerbook for about $700. It would (or at least should) include the latest iLife bits. You'd be way ahead. Linux is a helluvalot better than OSX for stuff like databases and web servers, but there is no way that video or audio applications (or most any desktop app) are anywhere close. I used linux exclusively on my notebooks from 98-06 and I can tell you about 1000s of hours wasted (although I enjoyed it) getting everything to run. With OSX everything just runs. Plus, using the media apps is a breeze.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
No "first" there, either.
JACK is great for getting audio applications to talk to each other, but in my experience it is in no way ready for "professional" production. When you actually connect a couple of apps together, you can get drop outs all the time. I ran Pure Data in OSS mode because it didn't give me any gaps.
Granted, I don't know how to set up a low-latency kernel. But, I'm willing to pay to be able to ignore all that crap now.
As for software being cross-platform- just because it can run on both systems does not necessarily mean it runs equally well. I recently experienced this first hand with Inkscape, which is unusable on my 2.5ghz Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM.
There are also some awesome applications that are Mac only, take SuperCollider 3. I tried playing around with it on Linux with Emacs and it's terrible. And I'm a programmer (VIM guy though) ! However, on the Mac it runs flawlessly with a nice launch GUI, simple to use editor, easy to navigate help system, and SC GUI extensions.
One fantastic piece of software which works equally well is Mixxx...I'm glad it has perfect ports! Although on the Mac I can segway from iTunes into Mixxx seamlessly....Best of luck to Linux though....I love it but it's too young.
Me, I'd feel a lot better about that, because paying money for proprietary software.. it seems like it's just going into some black hole. For code that will be Free some day? That strikes me as more palatable. Like it's an investment in something bigger than just 1's and 0's on my own machine. Makes it seem more worth it, to me.
What gave macs the edge a decade ago was the powerpc architecture cpus. Schools and media production was better optimized for those systems. Mac had a problem though. Common use of the computer wasnt as powerful. So they went x86.
Now they have no advantage hardware wise and you still pay the MacTax.
In conclusion; you're a crazy person if you use a mac.
...you must be kiddin'!
First of all, Linux is not the guilty one for not providing software for musicians. It is the developers of the software, like Apple, Steinberg, Propellerheads and Native Instruments, to name a few big ones.
Second, without all that Software. And I mean specifically that software, it is literally impossible to create the wanted sound on a Linux platform.
My setup is nearly 100% software (with a set of MIDI devices and a powerful sound card), and includes Cubase, Reason, Reaktor, Absynth, DR-008, and pretty much every Software from Native Instruments. And that is only the base. You also have to add a ton of specific plug-ins. E.g. for reverbs using impulse responses, or very specific filters to create the sound of a vintage synth.
You can not ever possibly recreate this under Linux, without it becoming a main platform for music production, so that those companies port their software. Which of course is a vicious circle.
But if Steinberg alone would port their VST platform Cubase onto Linux (Don't tell me about using it in Wine. I tried it. For real songs with dozens of tracks. It's a total joke. And I don't even mean the latency.), the circle could be broken.
So please stop with your dreamy dreams from wannabe professional musicians telling me how they were able to create a simple four-track audio song with some amateur FX plugged in. Because it has nothing to do with even my semi-professional work.
P.S.: I may sound angrier than I am. In fact I really *really* wish I could help with some big thing, like persuade Steinberg.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
... Steve Jobs
What are these pro audio programs called? I produce music in Windows and I am pretty sure my hardware DAW interface requires windows and won't work on linux (lame), but I am a big ubuntu fan and it would be nice to know about these options....
Apple has decided that they would write the JVM for OS X, citing better integration into OS X and making OS premium Java development platform at one point. Of course they back tracked on it and now Java on OS X is lagging behind 2-3 years behind major releases and versions on other OSes for which Sun and others are writing JVMs.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Out of curiosity, did you write up any documentation and put it online? I'm sure there are other people who might like to know about all the crazy tweaks you have to do...
The [Apple] computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part.
In ten years, he's spent how much? He's still running a powerbook. What upgrade path? He's obviously still running the same software he originally obtained. Where's the expenditures?
I've periodically looked at Linux's audio production and always been left rather disappointed. It was just a bitch to get anything to work at all, much less to get a functional setup with multiple components working together. On Windows, well it has basically just been point and click. As such even if Linux could be the equal in technical terms, I don't know that I'd be interested in that I don't want to spend a lot of time fighting with it. I am willing to spend some money for stuff that just works.
Also as a practical matter, you may get screwed over in terms of creating synthesized music and most programs that do that are Windows and/or Mac only. The sample sets and the pure synthesis programs just only seem to run on those platforms. As such, even if you get a perfectly working Linux setup, you would likely lack access to the instruments you wanted. It might work for recording/mixing live music, but not likely for creating synthesized music.
I switched to Ubuntu two years ago and I have never had any problems sound card related. It really surprised me that there was so much sound related whining in this thread. However, I assume that if you use Ubuntu and your sound works great there's no desire to post in this thread. If you have any hardware issues do some research and find a sound card that works smoothly under Linux. I would research hardware before I bought it even under Windows. If I was buying a Video card I would make sure it worked great for whatever game I was addicted to at the time with my set up. Same with sound and otherwise. If you switch to Ubuntu and have hardware issues I would think it's premature to declare the OS sucks, ditch it, and then continue to whine about your experience for years to come on Slashdot. Something doesn't work in a new OS? Find out what does work and consider purchasing the hardware that works flawlessly. :)
I'm not doubting the OP claims, but there is a HUGE difference between playing/mixing prerecorded tracks or even recording instruments with a USB audio interface, and making music with Linux. That is, using software instruments to generate and play music on a Linux box. The latter being a totally frustrating situation for a hobbyist musician like myself. There is an option to play Windows VST synths on Linux with wineasio but it's far from a stable and reliable method IME.
Of course Linux is mostly not to blame, as most music software developers tend to just ignore the Linux platform since it is already a niche market that is very competitive and very hard to make a buck. You can read for youselves on the developers forums at www.kvraudio.com I recall one of the brilliant indie developers who said that the reason he didn't offer a linux version of his flagship synth (which was used on the score of the latest Batman movie) is because he is not familiar with the environment and he was afraid that anything Linux has to be 'free/open source/easily hackable' when the truth is almost the opposite.
The only freakin' reason I turn on my loathed Windows XP is to have some fun with the tons of free VSTs out there http://plugins.gersic.com/index.php?daCat=-3
Someone pleeeeeze fix this, I will donate money in the range of $100~200 to see this done if money is the issue.
"Everybody Needs A Hobby"
Professionals consider VALUE when choosing professional tools. Amateurs look at COST.
A professional couldn't afford his inexpensive route.
I'm using Linux on a Studio 15 and am interested in what software you installed, the distro issues you had with sound, etc. Yeah, it's probably listed on TFA but this is /. so I gotta ask before reading it...
Why would it be the developers' fault that they don't support an OS with a microscopic user base?
All the users are on OS X and Windows. If you want them to come to Linux, you must be better than OS X and Windows and market the hell out of it.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'll stick with my Mac, ProTools, and Digi002 interface thank you very much.
You actually READ the article?!
My God, man, STOP IT!
You're making the rest of us look bad.
Really? What sort of audio were you working with? In a recording-studio environment, it's still a critical problem; one of the biggest advantages Pro Tools has over native DAWs is that your headphone mixes will Just Work. I set up a 32-channel RME/Nuendo system on a dual-core XP box a few years ago, and it was always a tradeoff - do I want the built-in, zero-latency, zero-effect monitor mix, or do I ratchet down the buffer sizes and repatch everything so I can give the vocalist some reverb and still get it back to their ears in time, and hope something doesn't go awry to ruin the take?
View > As List
Yup, it's a List, Details, and Tree view, all in one.
If he didn't notice that feature staring him in the face, it makes me question how thoroughly he evaluated the two platforms.
Ubuntu Studio Edition comes with the real time kernel and most editing and sound applications installed. Add the MP3 driver and you are ready to go to work. I use it.
http://ubuntustudio.org/ Get it here.
The truth shall set you free!
I just finished recording and producing a jazz album using Project CCRMA hosted on Fedora. The recording through to the final mastering were all done using linux. Having read his article I was surprised to find he hadn't mastered his production using Jamin which, when used in combination with Ardour and Jack, gives the type of control over the production process I've not seen duplicated using a Mac (Windows is not capable at all in this regard). I suppose though that is the workflow he is used to.
The innovation is what it means to the production process. There is no mixdown to a 24bit 44.1Khz stereo track prior to mastering and you can render your tracks through the mastering software into the final tracks and tweak automation artifacts instead of compromising by using equalisation. Sure you still equalise but you end up doing less as you can refer back to the master if there is a problem and fix it there. Plus you have better control over (audio gain) compression to reduce transients and maintain dynamic range in the final product.
The bands that listen to my recording are amazed at the results (well my recording techniques *ahem* do play some part :-) and some asked me if it was done on analogue equipment - which is quite a compliment. The thing is sure, it's not perfect and sometimes frustrating because the your hardware is often pushed to it's limit, you find bugs you have to adjust your work flow around but simply put I don't think the capability *exists* anywhere else.
I've been using it since 2003 and have seen the foundation laid down by Alsa and Jack projects continually refined. Often the criticism is made that 'linux copies this or that' but after comparing it to existing processes it seems to me that audio production under Linux is on the leading edge of technology as the framework for innovation in music production.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You probably realized this already, but it hit me awhile back...
In grade school/high school back in the 80's, most schools had Macs. IBM PCs were totally inadequate at the time for educational purposes, they were meant for spreadsheets and business applications. Fast forward to 1998-2000...art departments started getting digital in large numbers, and who were the guys making the real decisions? Art directors and musicians and the like who probably never took a computer course in college and had never touched a PC, and if they had, their mind instantly conjured up images of a DOS command prompt vs. the Mac SE they took that keyboarding class on in high school. It's pretty obvious which direction they were going to go.
I really think those investments in getting Macs in public schools back in the 80's probably kept the whole company afloat. Apple might very well be dead right now if it weren't for that. PCs running Windows or Linux have been fully capable of doing everything that most of them need to do for a very long time now...and much cheaper to boot. But when you talk to these people, it's like they were never really aware of that fact until usually someone comes along and shows them.
>I used linux exclusively on my notebooks from 98-06
>and I can tell you about 1000s of hours wasted
Ive been working on Linux for 10 years and its been on my laptop since then.
I only decided to move my family and relatives to Linux in 2007 because I didnt think Linux on the desktop was ready before then (it was PCLinuxOS2007 and Mandriva that I chose for them),
Now that the desktop is finally raedy, you went a blew a bundle.
THats ass backwards.
I use Ubuntu Studio on the road and we do over 100 gigs a year. With the live recordiings Ive made weve even made some live bootleg cd's which are of equal quality that the sound guy does on his Mac.
Would I have done sound on Linux 2-3 years ago?
No.
Now? Of course.
Backwards.
The problem I have is that Linux score writing applications are primitive. They exist. And they "sort of" work. But only "sort of". I supposedly can import Finale export files into Linux, but that's not using Linux as a music score editor.
And also I'd really like an application that combined an svg editor with a pixel graphics editor. Inkscape is good for one, and The Gimp is good for the other. But a good replacement for my favorite graphics editor would be a combined editor.
P.S.: Can The Gimp2 do animation yet? I'd try it, but the version I currently have installed works, and apparently I can't have both installed at once. The last time I had any firm information the answer was "not yet". (It depends on an add-on toolkit in The Gimp v 1.x.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
No freaking way could I produce compelling, high production quality material on a machine that didn't support these tools of the trade.
No offense, but people have been producing high production quality material long before there were computers, never mind these specific apps.
The Linux sound packages are a mess. Also, I would love to learn about Linux solutions that can compete to Apple's professional studio software. These days, the cost of Apple's suite is down to less than a 1000$.
Ah yeah, I wasn't working with performance that involves non-electronic musicians with singers, so more focused on the output-only style of electronic music on laptops.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
At the very least $3000 isn't an accurate figure. Any plain jane white Macbook will perform just fine for audio ($1000). Discounting the fact that the FOSS audio apps he's using are also available on mac, Logic Pro 9 is only $500 brand new. Cute article but I'll skip the angst, thank you.
From the looks of it, all the anti-Linux, Linux is hard, you have to be a nerd to use Linux, folks are here in full force. I can't say that Linux is for everyone, but honestly it is a lot easier to use than what a lot of MS/Apple fanboys suggest. As for sound, this is an area that definitely needs to be improved, and I'm sure real cooperation with soundcard hardware companies would certainly help. I personally have had little trouble with sound.
So did he just remove pulseauio then? Was he lucky enough that his card has decent ALSA drivers? They're about 50/50 last I checked.
I couldn't see myself doing serious audio work without dropping in OSS or something... ..or is this guy only using the system to output audio? If you can't even play games with Pulseaudio I can't imagine it would be very good for pro audio...
Bottom line is this :
Does Linux provide enough application support for all the tools of the trade
Does Linux provide studio level stability, and performance
The first thing I notice about the posting, is that the user does not state which applcaitions they are using and why.. they also dont really seem to have a proper grasp of what most people want to do with audio... which is production. Having a WAV file play, or 4 x wavs play back is childplay compared to running, multiple VST's with hardware synths sync'd sample perfect... Id be wanting to know.. a) whats the killer studio app (think cubase SX) and what other supporting apps are available on Linux. Also some info on people willing to run Wine with Linux and Windows based audio needs to be addressed.
Damn, did you just open one hell of a can of worms...Because there is a hell of a big world beyond Cubase and ProTools.
Cubase hasn't been considered a joke for a while, which is good. It's not a bad program.
A large number of the current DAW systems are very, very good, and have a place amongst serious musicians, mixers and composers.
Digital Performer still ranks supreme for a lot of music producers and film/TV composers (Zimmer, Elfman)...And it can utilize the PT audio system, cards and interfaces. It still has superior MIDI capabilities in some areas and does some nifty things with monophonic pitch detection.
Logic also has a place amongst the serious, though a smaller place.
And speaking of Steinberg, Nuendo is Cubase+everything needed for film, complex surround, specialized file formats etc. Cubase is the low-midgrade Steinberg product: Nuendo is, and always has been the flagship, dating back to its very, very brief days on the Irix platform (no, really).
Now, if we look at the very high end, we have some tools like Merging's Pyramix, Fairlight's impressive stuff, and for hardware, Euphonix, Harrison, Studer (yes, they make digital consoles), and even Otari for broadcast. But I digress.
Of course, the biggie DAW on Linux is Ardour. It supports CoreAudio (OS X) or ALSA/FFADO...No support for Windows users though. But why bother trying to program around Microsoft's inefficiencies? Ardour is very much a serious player. They had a partnership with Solid State Logic for a while, and put out a good package.
Cubase occupies a place in the market that I would describe as prosumer to pro...I wouldn't describe it as one of two 'serious' options. I would describe Cubase as the Honda of the audio production world: It does everything it needs to, but it's no Cadillac, no Rolls, and definitely no Oshkosh truck.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
As somebody who writes and performs music professionally, AND as an avid Ubuntu user, I would be hard pressed to find any competent recording engineer using Linux, simply for the fact that competent engineers want to RECORD, not compile device drivers and tweak kernel flags.
Linux has some good audio apps that can fill certain niches. If a musician's need coincide with these niches--then they can probably effectively make music on Linux. But when you look at the big DAWs on Macs or Windows--Logic, Cubase, Cakewalk, Digital Performer, etc. these apps have a breadth that is lacking in anything I've seen to date on linux. Some Examples: Are there pro level multi channel interfaces that work well under linux? If a single interface doesn't provide the IO you need, can linux address multiple audio devices simultaneously (I'm actually not sure here.)? Within a single app can I:destructively edit audio? non-destructively edit audio? Compose using notation/score editing? Interface with external, multiport MIDI interfaces? Run MIDI softsynths? Do I have the breadth and quality of softsynths that I need? Audio effects processors on both the soft synths and recorded tracks? Dolby Surround mixing? Does the DAW have the UI niceities, like take folders, loop record? I am far from a power user, but that only scratches the surface of what I want in a DAW, and I haven't seen anything on Linux that even comes close to this--no matter whose fault it is. When you actually look at the functionality of Logic Studio--for $500 it is a pretty amazing deal.
seriously ubuntu, wtf? Everything worked last month, now nothing works?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Ah, so keeping a Linux system up-to-date to the latest of all your apps, all of a sudden is easier and less time-consuming than keeping a Mac up-to-date?
Personally I did it the other way around.
I used to use Ardour, Rosegarden, Jack and Jazz and screwed about with Alsa until I got things working. It was pretty good considering the cost.
However, much as I dislike OSX (and I do with a passion), what you can achieve with something like Logic on a Mac is so far ahead of the Linux solution it is hard to believe.
This is a perfect fitting niche case - apparently the guy does a lot of recording and audio track editing. Linux/FOSS has many apps in that field that easyly rival and outperform close-source competitors. If you only do that kind of stuff Ubuntu actually *is* the cheaper alternative to anything else.
Here's a counter-example: I'm a very long term Linux user and plan on getting back to some video editing after an 8 year break. Video NLE still hasn't moved very much on Linux since then, so I guess I'll be working on my Mac with Premiere for doing that. Cinelerra and Blender Sequencer just aren't quite there yet.
There are special cases where you need Windows or OS X to get the job done (yes even Windows has those - some engineering stuff that only runs on MS for instance) but if your task is well specified it may be that you get the best option for free. On a FOSS operating system.
Bottom line: Allways check the alternatives. Or ask a non-zealot expert if FOSS has any boundaries for your field compared to the usual suspects.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
".[..] have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable"
Well that's great but is it actually any good?
A brick can be flawless, stable and reliable but it wouldn't be much use for making music on.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Configuring audio on Linux can be tricky, but that mostly affects casual users. If you're a professional audio user, you need to fiddle around a lot to set things up on any platform, and Linux is no harder than other platforms.
I think the point is that this kind of work has gone from "hard" to "feasible" on Linux. And in some areas, Linux actually has significant advantages of OS X, so that Linux now is a platform worth considering.
(Personally, I wouldn't dream of doing any kind of audio work on OS X anymore.)
And some Linux musicians told me Reaper is currently the only viable music production software for Linux. Rosegarden and Ardour being the two open source contenders not quite there yet.
I was recently kicking off a recording project with my sister, who lives in the US and uses Vista. I use OSX and live in Sweden. I did a complete market survey, trying to find a cross-platform solution for OSX and Windows (also taking Linux into account, since I'm a geek that way) and there was simply nothing that measured up to Cubase in terms of compatibility and interoperability and capability.
I really wanted to NOT come to that conclusion, but I couldn't. I didn't want to support Big Software, but I couldn't get around it for professional use. I've tried Ardour with Jack and all that, but except for the simplest projects, it just doesn't make it. And I just couldn't possibly support someone else in trying to get all that installed and working on another OS on another continent.
Sometimes you just have to bite the sour apple, as they say in Sweden.
Vaya con huevos, my darling.
Life is better inside the walled garden (topped with razor wire).
Here's my market survey (of serious contenders) -- it doesn't mention Reaper, though we checked that too.
-snip-
OK, so we seem to be slightly cutting edge with our hy-tek plans for fame and glory. As I kept searching, I could hardly believe that there was such a gap in the software market between Macs and PCs. It all seems so very 1993 or something. I mean they all run on Intel processors now, so WTF, mate?
By my market survey, here's the options...
Tracktion -- Mac & PC, slightly dodgy, but it's 100 bucks (or free if you want to try the keygen).
Cubase -- Mac & PC, not at all dodgy, but it's 500 bucks.
Audacity -- Mac, PC, Linux, but please...way too limiting even for us.
Traverso DAW -- Mac, Linux, Windows, kinda better than Audacity, but not really. Need I say more?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Logic 8 -- Mac Only
Protools -- Must have Digidesign soundcard
Cakewalk -- PC only
Ardour -- Mac, Linux
So, 400 bucks difference is a lot of beer money or like a plane ticket to Berlin or something.
Vaya con huevos, my darling.
I too am bugged that when Apple or Microsoft upgrade their OS, it breaks applications and some are lost forever. I used Vision and still would be using it if it were available. But when Apple moved to a different chipset and Opcode sold out to Gibson, all hope was lost. I've poured thousands of dollars over the past 20 years into hardware (serial MIDI interface anyone? how about a nubus digital audio interface?) and software that will never work in the future (Rebirth? tons of others I haven't seen for nearly 10 years)
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
"reverbs using impulse responses"
The technical term you were looking for was "convolution reverb" and of course if you'd known that you could easily have found that one of the most popular plugin suites for LADSPA (the Linux plugin API) includes such a reverb and user-customisable impulse recordings.
I wonder how much, if anything, that you actually do is hard, let alone "impossible" with a Linux audio setup...
I love Ubuntu, and use it for almost all my non-audio related computing, but this really doesn't say much of anything about real audio production -- he is simply mixing and matching a few samples together and playing them back. He can come back and talk to me when he manages to record 16 simultaneous tracks of input, and then mix down 96 tracks with heavy editing and processing. I can do this with ease on my Windows* recording rig, but the tech really isn't there to do it in Linux. Hardware support is abysmal (and don't even try running a 32 I/O Firewire interface on third party drivers), and Ardour really is your only choice as far as recording software goes. I have used Ardour, and it is okay, but it is simply not even close to being a match for Cubase or ProTools. With how CPU intensive and finicky these programs can be (especially with the cost of a crash, nothing is more frustrating than losing the perfect take) you would be insane to even try running them in Wine. It is nice to see that Linux is starting to come into its own, but you can take it from me, this guy is doing little more than tinkering. Real audio production is still firmly in the realm of Windows* and Mac.
*Yes, Windows is every bit as good as Mac for audio production. Please stop with the lunacy that Mac is the go to platform for sound, I have used both extensively and honestly don't even notice the platform once I start mixing. I have had just as many crashes with Mac. The only reason you really need to go Apple is if you want to use Logic. I know Mac handles audio routing slightly better by default, but that is irrelevant in any professional environment as you will be using the DAE if you go the ProTools route, or ASIO if you use Steinberg software. There really is no advantage.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The guy only seems to record. That's the easy part. He says that he makes master mixes without compression or EQ. True, mastering engineers like to have that. However, the main reason he does that is because those tools simply don't exist on Linux. If you want to do your own mastering, where are the Waves plugins? The IKmultimedia Fairchild and Pultec emulations? Can you even hook up a UAD card to Linux? Same story for software synthesizers. With Logic you get more synths (and effects) than you'll use in a lifetime. Where is the physical modeling synth on Linux? An analog emulation of the quality of ES2? Or of Pro53, which is Mac/PC? Where are the innovative synths such as from Camel Audio? Doing my music on Linux, I'd feel like having only a recorder to score a symphony. V.
Try Renoise for linux! It's a great audio sequencer.
Wavosaur a windows editor wav editor, but runs well in wine. It's free!
I'm sure that there are many distributions like this. But this one is for the artist which I found with my 3d work..
(is based on ubuntu but is heavily modded and packaged)
Open artist fo 2d,3d, audio, video, vj
www.openartisthq.org
More info here: http://www.nabble.com/announcing-openArtist-linux-distribution.-td24110606.html
Audio section
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/331020/Mindmap/flash.html
Nb) Site is made with open source mind mapping software: freemind
As so many people who have been moderated "5 insightful" and "5 informative" have pointed out, either Linux is unusable for what you claim, or it is only usable by people who make crappy music. So which is it, are you a liar or a bad musician?
To me, this is a shameful topic for Linux... There may be others, but this is the only one that bothers me. It's truly the only reason I haven't made at least a 90% switch to linux as a desktop...with windows basically acting as a game console on another partition.
When trying to play HD on marginal systems. Pretty easily configurable in Linux. Google lspci (as I recall).
I have used a vast array of music production software, too many to list here, on Linux, Windows and Mac. While the open source software out there for Linux is respectable, and definitely usable, it's nowhere near the commercial products that exist for Windows and Mac. If music were my career, there's no fscking way I would use Linux. As a hobbyist, it suits me fine. Taking a Linux laptop on stage would be terrifying for me. I would sooner use a Windows solution than Linux. But then, if it's your career, you should really be putting more than $600 into it.
My day job has me as a Linux/Unix/Win32 admin/architecht. I fiddle around with the stuff all day long.
On my lunch hour, some evenings and weekends, I work on music.
My primary PC/DAW has a Fedora 10 install on it. I have Ardour, Jack, Rosegarden, and LMMS installed, configured, tweaked to hell, and working... Yet I NEVER use it. The sheer effort it took to get all of that stuff talking to one another PLUS getting a handfull of my VST's working under LMMS was Herculean. Then I realized... I can't make much music with this stuff. I tried LMMS... I REALLY wanted to get my head around it 'cause it's multi platform, so whatever I make while under Linux, I can pull over to the WinXP side and work on it some more. Sadly, it never panned out that way. Ardour, for all it's good, still suffers from a lack of a sequencer, making it the rough equivalent of ProTools 3 or 4 (we're at 8 now). I'm not productive at all with this stuff. When I'm in "musician" mode, I don't want to tweak ANYTHING. I just want to sit down and create. I don't want to screw with jack to get stuff flowing from LMMS to Ardour. In fact, I don't want to have to run them both at the same time at all. While in WinXP, I pull up FL Studio, create, and I'm done. When it's time to master it, I open up SoundForge, drop in T-Racks or my SSL plugins and make it happen from there. If the mood calls for it, I pull up Sonar 7 and compose from there. I have dozens of plugins from freebie VST's to good Waves and NI plugins I paid for. I don't have this under Linux.
I think it's good that someone is trying to bring this stuff to Linux, but until I see the ability to use my apps and plugins, I'll pass.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
Then I have wade through a mess of acronymns I don't completley understand. OSS? ALSA? JACK? PulseAudio?
Can somebody point me to a newbie's guide to Linux audio? Anything I've ever read (including tfa) is over my head, but I'd like to understand it.
What you really want to do is ...
Run it ALL on a nice new Mac 13" AL Unibody, refurb, for $900, http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB466?mco=Njg1Nzg4Nw#overview
Load Unbuntu and your software on it, add Windows if you must and ditch that crappy De/ull machine, MAN THAT WAS A WASTE OF MONEY !!!!!!
I'm convinced 99.9% of issues people have with sound hardware are due to the bios. Linux has always supported my.... Let me start over. I have always purchased Linux compatible hardware for the device I'm making. I've had laptops with compatible hardware that did not have sound. Everytime that happened it turned out to be a bios issue.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Yes, that's true, but in a world of shrinking deadlines, increased competition and a dying music industry, you still have to be competitive. These tools do enhance workflow and they enable you to be more productive. As the parent would very well know, when you work in professional audio, even a couple of hours of computer downtime (be it configuration issues or restarting things or whatever) is disastrous.
Oh, and the cost of hardware/software is only a small factor when you're actually doing this for a living.
probably some kind of "deep" john williams soundtrack scores? "it's just bleepy shit anyway?" hey einstein, don't talk about something you don't know anything about. let's see you do it and then come and tell me how it's not "serious." what a pompous ass.
I know Linux has its appeal, but this is frankly ridiculous. At best it is a stunt. At worst it is a complete waste of time.
It's like recommending Windows for a Web server. Yes, you can get a Web server up and running on Windows. But why? You can get a free modern Linux or BSD for the same hardware and it is not only 98% set up for you already, but when you deploy it to the Web it will do the job much better. Thousands or perhaps millions of people were there in Linux or BSD land before you, optimizing those systems in innumerable ways to be a better Web server. When you set up a Web server on Linux, you stand on the shoulders of giants from the first moment. It's that way also when you set up a music and audio workstation using a Mac. It's not just that the hardware and software is optimized for the task over years and decades, it's that the relevant community is there now and has been there for many years. There are a million benefits to that. Enough music and audio -related technical problems have been solved already on the Mac that you can work on your musical problems and audio problems without having to stop to do technical or I-T work.
If you buy any stock Mac and add no 3rd party hardware and software, you already have a better music and audio system than anything you can build with Linux. You will get all these for free with the Mac, already setup and working: GarageBand (music and audio workstation based on Logic), CoreAudio (multichannel pro audio subsystem that supports simultaneous use of multiple 32-bit/192kHz audio hardware as well as multiple pro audio software apps), CoreMIDI (ultra low-latency MIDI subsystem with compatibility with all MIDI devices), QuickTime (backbone of digital media production for 20 years now and the basis of the MPEG-4 standard that replaced the CD and DVD), and iTunes (which is scriptable on the Mac, so you can, for example, create a script that stamps arbitrary tracks with all of your own artist info). The software you get with the Mac is worth the price of the Mac; the hardware is free. If you try and replicate this functionality on another system, you will spend the price of the Mac just attempting to do it. Further, every Mac except MacBook Air has built-in 24-bit optical digital audio in and out, as well as analog audio in and out. So you don't even have to buy audio hardware to make a decent 24-bit recording. A Mac mini is $599 and it has all of this already setup and working to very high specifications and can share the Linux system's display if you already have a Linux system. It's small enough to travel. It has a FireWire 800 port to hook onto an audio interface or fast hard disk. It backs up all your work automatically, including versioning, if you just give it access to a second disk. It can play 24-bit audio in any context, even within 3rd party apps such as MS Word that are not audio-related.
If you do want to add hardware or software to the Mac, there are about 10 digital audio workstations for the Mac, some of which go back to the 1980's (e.g. Logic Pro used to be called Notator back then) and you can run 2 or more simultaneously and share hardware also. You can not only plug in pretty much any pro audio interface, you can plug in 10 of them at once if you want and they will all work simultaneously. You can plug in any MIDI instrument. There are dozens of highly creative Mac-only music and audio apps like MetaSynth which simply don't exist on other platforms. And if you are doing any soundtrack work, the fact that the Mac is the best video editing platform will benefit you in many small and large ways.
Even the iPod can do better than this Linux system when it comes to music. You can buy an iPod touch for $229, and an app called "FourTrack" for $9.99 more and you have a 4-track recorder and player with multitouch transport controls, pan pots, and faders. A key thing is that with multitouch, you are essentially working with a little hardware mixer. You can drag 2 sliders down at once, for example, so you can do an awful lot on stage with
... LMMS, it's a great music production software, sequencer, supports MIDI, and had many bells and whistles. My son produced much of his music using that software.
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That's the most vigorous beating of a dead horse I've seen in a while.
While I'm a huge fan of the CLI, I'm not trying to fool anyone that it's easier than a visually oriented interface. In a GUI, things *can be* self evident. In a CLI, it's all >. ;-)
-Matt