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Ask Slashdot: Best Cross-Platform (Linux-Only) Audio Software?
blogologue writes "I have played the guitar for some years now, and these days I think it's good therapy to be creative with music, learning the piano and singing as well. So far I've been using Audacity as the tool to compose improvisations and demos. I haven't done much audio work before, but it is already becoming too limited for my needs. Being a Linux-fanboy since the mid-nineties, I'm now looking for a good audio processing/editing/enhancing setup that can run on different platforms, the most important being Linux. Are there any suggestions for Open Source or proprietary audio editing software that run on Linux?"
"Cross-Platform"
"Linux-Only"
Pick one.
If Audacity is becoming too limited, perhaps you
1. Need more multitrack features (Audacity is more an editing tool than a mixing one)
2. Need a DSP (Digital Signal Processing) package so you can create your own audio processing patches
As Audacity uses LADSPA plugins, you'll have the same ones in Ardour and any other DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. Another DAW would give you other analysis and another UI, but unless it goes beyond LADSPA/LV2, you'll have the same audio processing plugins. A "next step" here would be working with audio directly by programming, designing synthesis models, filters and so on. Usually that's not easy, but that's what many contemporary music composers do all the time.
For the asked "good audio processing/editing/enhancing setup that can run on different platforms", I suggest you try AudioLazy (https://github.com/danilobellini/audiolazy) as part of this setup. It's an open source DSP for Python. Functions like "lowpass", "highpass", "resonator" gives you some common linear filters, and you can make your own [time variant] linear filter with the "z" object, besides basic operations (e.g. multiplying signals), synthesis (ADSR model, table lookup, FM synthesis, etc.), non-linear processing (e.g. getting the "arctan" of a signal to distort it), etc..
As everyone has noted, Ardour is great for recording. Another really useful tool is Guitarix which is a fantastic guitar amp and effects modelling piece of open source software. Plug your electric guitar directly into your computer via a USB interface (I use my Rocksmith connector) and you can amp/effect model in Guitarix and record as you play in Ardour. Add the Hydrogen and you've also got your drums playing and sync'ed as you record. As well recording, these make a great set of tools for guitar practice.
Hardware audio sync is antiquated and unavailable because audio chips are not running simultaneous A/D. They are doing multiplexed A/D (far cheaper) so there is no such thing as true zero-latency recording of multi-track audio on PC audio devices (or any others for that matter).
There is nothing you can do in a PC to correct this latency because the information is just not there. You get your track 2 sample a sample time after your track 1 sample. Of course, the chips are actually running samplerate*n_channels so the per-track sample rate is still what you want it to be, but the samples are all interleaved.
To do true zero-latency recording of multiple simultaneous tracks requires a multi-channel simultaneous A/D, which is rare anymore because of price competition. You can't hear the difference anyway, despite what "audiophiles" tell you anyway.
If you're serious at all about your music, you use OS X or Windows. That's where the action is. Full stop.... Why are you restricting yourself? You're killing your potential and being held back by insisting on using third-rate tools.
Please, revisit this preconception of yours. At first I was tempted to dismiss it with something antagonistic like "oh, shoosh," but that would be counterproductive. There's an underlying stereophilic assumption you're making here that I hope you will honestly revisit.
Consider a longer-term view: the past century of music reproduction technology. 100 years ago you'd be dealing with piano rolls, player pianos; a bit later, '78s. Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, even the earliest Miles Davis was recorded under these relatively primitive conditions, and the music transcends the limitations of the tools. A few decades later the Beatles were cutting Sgt Pepper's with a fucking four track. Less than a decade later Queen gave us Bohemian Rhapsody, again using tape. Pink Floyd's The Wall.
There are countless examples of great music with limited technology. The functionality that all of these production studios had was much more limited than what you can do with Ardour.
The "grow up!" part of your comment really irks me. There are long term, RMS reasons for using free software. Professional artists are faced with a complex IP structure in which the use of proprietary solutions risks unintentional effects on your artistic output, such as surreptitious audio watermarking.
I don't wish to sound dismissive. At the risk of doing so, it sounds like you're a sysadmin professional, not a music professional. I don't understand why you feel comfortable giving career advice directed towards those in the music industry. Can you explain a bit more about your own experience earning a living from creating and producing music?