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Interviews with Linux Sound Folks
Hexdancer writes "Linux MusicStation currently has an interview with Jaroslav Kysela from the ALSA sound drivers project as well as some words from the author of SLab (one of the two free HDD recording systems for Linux)"
Works fine on this NT Netscape machine. NT 4 SR3 NS4.51.
#insert "i_am_at_work.h"
Hmmm... Looks like I'll be yanking the 'ol SB for a card made by one of these folks....
Now if we could just get some sound cards on the list and in the catalog....
http://www.openhardware.org/
ICQ and Netscape are both very crash prone. That's why I stick to IE5 and a IRC client. I can't remember either one of them ever crashing.
I have a Roland RAP10 in my computer, and I'm trying to find some way to get digital audio out of it. (The UART401 driver works for MIDI) :(
The RAP10 is SoundCanvas compatible, though I've not been able to locate info on either card under Linux
I tried the 3.1 drivers, libs, and utils packages...the utils can't seem to see the drivers...and the drivers just muted everything so I can't use the OSS drivers for ym card now either :( (reboot time):
So does anyone know what the other main free hard disk recording program is?
And here was me about to (attempt) to launch into writing one myself.
I've been keeping tabs on the ALSA movement for almost a year now and I just don't get it. What is the point of ALSA?
.h file, but when the ALSA people start adding new "unique cool" features the interface will be in the GPL soundcard.h and the closed source folks will be out of luck.
Maybe the ALSA folks had a beef with the 4Front commercial audio driver company which owned (copy writed) the OSS audio drivers that every distribution currently ships. But that beef is over, Alan Cox was paid by Red Hat to modularize the audio drivers, and maybe Hannu gave up or was kicked out of the kernel. I don't know what but something must of happened.
Now that 4Front is out of the picture why continue on with ALSA? With kernel 2.2 most of the audio chip drivers are full duplex, so thats not the issue anymore.
* I don't get it, why is ALSA so great? Please tell me.
* Why is ALSA wasting energy by duplicating efforts?
* Why can't they just merge their stuff into the OSS free code and be happy?
* Why is this audio driver branching (splintering) good for the linux users?
I just don't get it.
But I do get this. The OSS free audio drivers that come with all distributions (because it is part of the kernel!) are FREE. They are free to use and modify, and they are free for closed source proprietary commerical apps.
Now ALSA on their webpage claim that their driver is part GPL and LGPL, their soundcard.h file is GPL, those bastards! They are closing the door on closed source proprietary commercial apps that would try to #include their main header file. Good thing that ALSA's soundcard.h header file is basically a complete rip-off of Hannu's OSS free
So here is my word out to the chipset companies like Cirrus and Trident. Force ALSA to change their licensing or don't work with them. We the linux community do NOT want another "Qt style" licensing fiasco. Please spare us that nightmare.
lilypond can do just that, take a midi input and from it create a typeset score. i haven't tested it so i don't know what the limitations are (or if it even works :). there aren't any gui tools available for lilypond that i'm aware of, so you have to learn mudela (lilypond's source format) to use it. if you just want to convert midis to scores you don't need to use/know mudela.
That still isn't a very elegant solution. What /I/ really want to see is something like Passport Designs' Encore. (OR even Noteworthy Composer...I've tried RoseGarden, but it seems a bit clunky...hopefully V3.0 will be better)
Recording, yes; I'm not sure about full duplex recording (haven't used it myself), but I assume so.
I got a plugin message window which I closed, but otherwise no problems in Linux.
However, I have to agree that Dr. Watson under NT has caused me unspeakable pain and agony under Netscape (and ICQ).
Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?
What is your Slash Rating?
This page is a good place for music/sound software for Linux.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
There is a small and powerfull sequencer package for Linux called Rosegarden. It's GPL'ed unlike all the other MIDI sequencers for Unix that I've seen. It may look outdated (it uses nothing but Xlib for the GUI), but it is intuitive and *very* fast.
Check it out at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/rose.html
A new version using the GTK+ and Gnome libs for the interface is at the conceptual stage.
Chris Wareham
I really like the idea of having the ALSA code added to the kernel. This will increase the multimedia viability of the system as a whole...which is a plus...and a needed step towards world domination ;)
Use the Z-modem protocol between Information Superhighway routers to compress the plaintext. ~LordOfYourPants
I've used it from everything from:
.wav's, .au, and .ram files...
1) Playing MP3's,
2) Microphone recording.
3) Playing Quake/Quake2/Civ:CTP
4) Creating CD's from audio tape (FD definately worked for that)
MIDI is coming but not here yet for general use. Anything else you would need it for?
jf
Having been involved with him for the last 3 years as a driver tester, it is nice to see Jaroslav (or Perex, his old handle) getting some attention and credit for his hard work. He is truly a quality human being and is one of the unsung hero's in the Linux world.
/dev/dsp emulation was almost perfect, and it had a very, VERY nice /dev/sequencer emulator that did patch management, MPU-401 emulation to the Ultrasound's onboard synth (which allowed the use of ANY MIDI program written for linux). I was quite happy.
.3.1 However, the PCM interface is pretty much completed and working great. The mixer interface is pretty much completed (after a recent major overhaul). The sequencer interface is currently under major development, and the onboard synth support for soundcards, with patch management, etc. is just starting to get going.
About three years ago, I had a Gravis Ultrasound. The DOS/Windows drivers were buggy, and the OSS drivers weren't much better. I suffered along awhile, having to load Windows to to anything sound related, until I found the UltraSound Project, Jaroslav's first driver project.
The UltraSound Project was an attempt to provide an OSS compatible driver, written from scratch, that 1) worked, and 2) supported all the features of the Ultrasound cards.
The project was wildly sucessful in both goals. At the end, the
On the sucess of the Ultrasound Project, Jaroslav started ALSA. The nice thing about ALSA, though, was that it was no longer a project to create an OSS compatible driver , but to create a better sound system (with backwards compatibility) with features like full duplex for every card that supports it, hardware mixing of multiple sound streams, RT (or close to it) recording, and an professional quality MIDI subsystem; along with an API (alsalib) for programmers to easily write software for it.
At this moment, ALSA is at version
I have found it very usable over the last year or so for day to day work, and I strongly encourage anyone who is interested to try it out. Here is a short list of supported soundcards (note this is PCM, no MIDI. MIDI support (as stated) is just starting for soundcards):
Gravis Ultrasound (Classic, Max, ACE)
AMD Interwave (Gravis Ultrasound PnP)
CS4232,CS4236,CS461x
OPL3-SA
SoundBlaster 8,16,AWE
es1688
es18xx
ess solo1
Ensoniq AudioPCI, SB PCI {32,64,128}
Trident 4DWave {DX,NX} (I have one of these! Works great)
S3 SonicVibes
MSS
And more coming all the time. And in case no one mentioned the web site, it's http://www.alsa-project.org. There are also developer and user mailing lists available..
Anyway nice article, and if you want to help, please do. Users and testers welcome.
jf
Sounds like we finally have a kick ass sound system. This should help make linux a viable multimedia platform. I personally feal that multimedia is this biggest whole in the linux stratagie/philiosophy. For me it's not a huge issue but it keeps me from moving my mom and fiancee to linux. They like there MM stuff.
"There is no spoon" - Neo, The Matrix
"SPOOOOOOOOON!" - The Tick, The Tick
now there's a good idea. it would be great to have a distro that automatically installs a lot of the great music programs out there. i think there are many musicians who would like to try linux, but are not technical enough to build up there own toolkit of software. but i could be wrong.
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
Netscape 4.06 on Windows 98, page makes it go boom after a few seconds. /me goes to run Lynx...
The link crashes Netscape in NT. Does Linux fare any better? I'm at work right now, unfortunately.
No sig.
great news that the kernel is going to get the addition of such a fully-featured sound driver, the future just keeps looking rosier...
it got me thinking about MIDI -- does anyone know of any MIDI sequencers for Linux? And what MIDI interface hardware is supported, if any. A quick search of Freshmeat simply shows MIDI players [presumably using soundcard wave tables and the like].
it'd be cool to think about using linux for my keyboard -- Cubase4PPC is damn unstable!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Me and my machine are both ludites, it's a very compromising situation... but I suppose the only way to run in place is to be constantly tying and untying your shoes. As the old addage says...
I'm just wondering, what is it that ALSA are very usable for? Just playing sounds, or for recording as well? And if for recording as well, for full duplex recording?
I'm asking because one of the two applications that keeps me attatched to the MacOS is ProTools, a very nice HDD recorder. I would defninitely like to be able to switch over to Linux entirely at some point. But it's really hard to record duets by oneself if you don't have full duplex recording! :)
I have earlier used the OSS/Lite drivers for my 3 Linux PC:s at home. The sound quality improved very much when switching to ALSA drivers.
The script for aoutoconfiguration of ALSA is a very impressive piece of art. It looks pretty small but does all the magic for you.
This project really deserves attention and support.
//Pingo
--- Linux or FreeBSD, it's like blondes or brunettes. I like both. ---
when did music inclined ppl become machine destroying political members?