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Linux Audio Developers Conference
Posted by
michael
on Wed Mar 12, 2003 12:04 PM
from the ear-candy dept.
from the ear-candy dept.
paulbd writes "This weekend sees the first Linux audio developers
conference at
ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. Gathering together many members of the
Linux Audio Developers mailing list and others, the conference will feature 2 days of in-depth technical presentations and demonstrations of many
cutting
edge Linux
audio and
MIDI
applications." Desktoplinux.com has a related story about using Linux in a professional recording studio.
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Where is the stream ? (Score:3, Interesting)
This all appears to be text, are they streaming the presentations, which would make sense at a conference like this ?
Re:Where is the stream ? (Score:4, Informative)
between ~ 2 P.M. and 9 P.M. on both days) is available at these LiveIce
servers:
x http://plugin.org.uk:2300/liveice (currently set to max. 50 clients)
x http://politik.uni-duisburg.de:2300/liveice (max. 20 clients)
As posted to the linux-audio-developers mailing list.
Parent
LADC? (Score:5, Funny)
could be big (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps this Conference can identify and deal with such issues as:
1. High Latency when performing other tasks such as opening windows or moving windows around. This leads to stutters in Audio and MP3 Playback.
2. Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware. Realistically, although most people use SB AWE64 and SB Live! sound cards, most Professionals use newer cards and many new computers have other cards. Linux is not compatible with hardware that is newer, cheaper or more expensive.
3. Poor feature support for Linux, because it is good support for features such as 3D Sound and MIDI Music playback.
4. Best Stability on Linux audio drivers. Other Operating Systems have drivers that crash less for Audio Hardware. Linux is a very much more stable Operating System in most respects, but the lack of stability in audio drivers is Irritating.
If these issues can be addressed then Linux could be a top quality audio platform!
Re:could be big (Score:4, Informative)
This is definitely being fixed in Linux 2.6. Between the new O(1) scheduler and the recent patches for interactivity, this SHOULD go away completely.
Parent
Re:could be big (Score:5, Informative)
pop along to kernel.org and get a 2.5 kernel. Oh, and make sure your graphics card is accelerated.
'Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware', wait till Mac becomes #3, also I think it's easier to write drivers for 2.5/6.
'Poor feature support for Linux', go get alsa (or 2.5 since it has alsa in the kernel tree).
'Best Stability on Linux audio drivers', now this is where you can help, since you want 1 2 and 3 why not goto kernel.org, get a 2.5 kernel, do some testing and report the bugs in the kernel bugzilla.
Parent
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:3, Redundant)
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Great -- I love when I preview something and it comes out formatted differently than in my original statement :-(
No only the purchase of Emagic, but the development of CoreAudio and CoreMidi at the kernal levels augmented by a simple to develop for interface in the form of AudioUnits, means Apple's OS is more than ready for pro-audio dominance.
Hell I was bitching about this over on my forum just today --
Sonikmatter Emagic Forums [sonikmatter.com]
I love Linux and I run a box in my own studio, but it won't be running ANY audio applications for a LONG time. Right now, its a file server to pass info between Studio A and B (ok, Studio B just happens to be my bedroom -- but since I remodeled my bathroom and put in marble flooring in there, its been a perfect vocal or acoustic guitar booth for mixing without synth effects :-)
Linux has a ways to go before anyone is using any of these applications from a standard musicians perspective. I know a lot of geeks that can grok this stuff, but not standard musicians. That and my time ain't worthless...I'd rather spend 3 minutes doing something on my Mac or PC and get the job done efficiently than to waste an hour getting something configured to do what it is supposed to do and loose all musicial motivation (if you are simply a music TECH then this doesn't really matter, now does it).
Clif Marsiglio
Sonikmatter.com
Parent
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't know what you are talking about. Thats as plain stated as I can make this.
The Mac is designed for folks that don't have the time or desire to deal with computers as anything but the tools they are -- they get their work done and get on with life.
Linux is designed for computer enthusiasists that want to know intimate details about their computer -- which you really have no choice under most of the popular distributions to do otherwise.
Linux is NEVER going to hit the #2 spot among those that need a professionally design GUI and consistancy and ease of use. Apple on the other hand is taking great steps to make certain they ARE the top of the list for usability by folks that need this purpose.
Past that, whats the entire purpose of OSS? Software that doesn't suck. The Mac can run with some modifications a good deal of the software that doesn't suck from the Linux / BSD worlds. In such, they are taking over a good portion of mind share from those that would have otherwise used a pure unix workstation. The leaders of
What does Linux have going for it? Its a GREAT server environment. Its not 'enterprise' software by the definition of a lot of tech managers, but IMHO, its FAR more stable in most aspects than some of the Enterprise Ready crap I have to deal with day in and out (yeah, I program Windows Apps....unfortunately...as well as administering some of these boxes). Its cheap and its efficient. No OS Tax and I can take out to pasture Windows machines and turn them into powerhouse servers.
What doesn't it have for it? Quite a bit that the common user needs -- and especially in the music realm.
What doesn't Apple have? Cheap Servers. Who the hell cares...I have Intel for this...and when I need to develop for that Intel box, I can pull out my iBook and have ALL the same tools on it that I need. I have Perl, PHP, Apache, Sendmail, MySQL. The developer that cares about having a decent working environment will be running Macs. Heck, I even have VPC running Redhat 8.0 on my iBook incase I need to try out compiled stuff that I occasionally have to deal with when speed becomes and issue and I can't patch things with a scripted language (though the Bluecurve desktop is pretty slow on the 'book...I generally simply SSH into the VPC from the Mac side anyways and do everything in Terminal).
Macs and Linux have NOTHING in common from a common users perspective and as such, Linux will never take over their mindshare. This is Apples Advantage.
Macs and Linux have quite a bit in common when you get into the Sysadmin minds. Mac Users can now use Linux servers with exceeding ease and connectivity without having to install and configure Appletalk on the server side of things. This is a plus for the Linux Admin.
Macs and Linux also have a lot in common for the Developers. No Mac Developer is going to pick up a Unix box to develop against. A Linux Developer will feel at home on a Mac with X11 or Terminal as well as the semi-standard unix directory system. Advantage Apple.
The way I see it, servers are increasingly going Linux. Thats bad for M$. Desktops will stay Apple or M$. Developers will migrate SOMEWHAT to Apple -- though I wouldn't predict droves, thus your argument is simplistic and again bullshit.
This is NOT a troll -- Mod me down if you so desire, but don't mod this as a troll.
Clif Marsiglio
Sonikmatter.com
Re:could be big (Score:2)
-----
Sound whirrrrrrrrrrrsupport is one (crakcle)area where Linux akkkkpwhas consistly trailed more ptoo ptoo ptooimportant Operatin Systemshack hack such as Microsoft Windows pukpupupkkupuand Macintosh OS. Where thosewhirrrrrrrr systems have had Professional quality supportckckckckckckc for Professional quality hardware that whirrrrrrrrrrrrworks well, Linuxkkkkkkk has been stuck (snappoofbang)in the backgroundpokopokop.
I've had much better luck with OSS (although latency sucks) than ALSA. Also, what's the deal with ALSA not being able to handle 4 or 5 channel cards? That's like a 3d graphics card with the prereq of 2.5 d only.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
I wish Linux supported my Yamaha sound cards, Yamaha aren't interested in Linux drivers as I have asked them before. Something about giving away secrets of their chips etc.. bah.
I'm voting with my wallet...
Re:could be big (Score:4, Informative)
I don't have any problem with this on my Athlon XP 1800+ running Gentoo Linux. Although I did have some problems with these on my old Mandrake 8.1-based AMD K6/2 400, the problems were *more* pronounced in Windows 98 and Windows 2000 on the same hardware than they were in Mandrake.
Now I'm not sure whether the lack of these problems is due to Gentoo's high-level of optimization or my faster processor, but I suspect it's some combination of the two.
I paid less than $600 for the components to build the Athlon box last year.
Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware. Realistically, although most people use SB AWE64 and SB Live! sound cards, most Professionals use newer cards and many new computers have other cards. Linux is not compatible with hardware that is newer, cheaper or more expensive.
I don't know about higher-end hardware than the SB AWE64 and SB Live! cards, but you say that Linux doesn't work with hardware that's cheaper. I say sure it is. The aforementioned Athlon has integrated SiS 7018-based sound hardware that works absolutely fine and has 100% functionality with ALSA.
Best Stability on Linux audio drivers. Other Operating Systems have drivers that crash less for Audio Hardware. Linux is a very much more stable Operating System in most respects, but the lack of stability in audio drivers is Irritating
I've never had any audio driver crash on Linux, but then again I've only used 3 different drivers so what do I know?
Parent
Re:could be big (Score:5, Insightful)
Conflicts between sound servers. Under Windows and MacOS, I have no idea what the counterparts to Arts, OSS and ESD are, no idea whether there's a single one or if different servers can easily be run concurrently. And there's no reason why I should have to have any idea.
It's absurd that there should be work involved if I want to play MP3's or streams with xmms AND CD's with the KDE player.
No doubt someone is going to tell me that if I don't know the fine points of sound servers, I don't deserve to have sound on my computer. Let me save you same time and preemptively reject that notion.
Parent
Re:could be big (Score:4, Informative)
Last time I checked up on this (a few weeks ago) there was a big discussion going on kde-multimedia about this very issue. KDE is really the key point here, as now GNOME is moving to GStreamer they are basically isolated from what sound server is used.
The main sticking points seemed to be: JACK is cool for pro audio, but doesn't have network transparency and is Linux only. aRts just blows goats, and needs to be phased out. MAS == Unknown?? GStreamer is being blocked by a few developers who aren't happy with GObject. Then there's this thing called CSL which is supposed to wrap the whole mess up into YAAA (yet another audio api).
Basically, the situation is highly confused, and I don't know if we'll get anything good out of it :(
Oh, and just to make things even more fun, it seems that at some point ALSA may get the ability to route its audio via JACK, so apps that are unaware of the sound server in use could end up being mixed by JACK.
Personally I'd favour JACK (or Jack) here, because firstly it's been designed by the linux audio community for low latency etc, so clearly real audio apps will be using it. Having to switch sound servers because you want to fire up a sample editor is stupid. Secondly, it's light and small enough to be accepted by most people, ie it's not a CORBA driven multimedia framework.
The main problem seems to be lack of network transparency, which isn't really of great concern to most users at this time and could be added to Jack anyway.....
Parent
Re:could be big (Score:5, Informative)
You have to invest both in skills (ability to set up the computer and apply patches) and in hardware (RME/Hammerfall or M-audio are well supported) to use Linux for pro audio.
1 High latency.
Use a kernel with Low-latency patches, and a low latency sound server like jackd. Do not use a journalling file system on your audio drives.
2 Poor compatability.
See the ALSA page for supported hardware.
3 Feature support.
3D sound and simple soundcard MIDI music playback are not much use in a studio.
4 Best Stability.
Audio drivers rarely if ever crash, you may be thinking of sound servers such as ARTS, or indeed a program like xmms.
I think that if Linux makes an impression in the pro-audio recording world, it will initially be as a replacement for dedicated systems like the Mackie HDR 24/94, Fostex MX-2424. These are the workhorses of studios, required to do a straightforward job, but with very high reliability.
Parent
Alsa 0.9.1 released (Score:2, Informative)
The linux sound community has been waiting for this for a long time. Congrats guys!
You forgot one (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You forgot one (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, Jack support is definitely coming, as soon as PortAudio v19 is finished.
- Dominic [Audacity developer]
Re:You forgot one (Score:3, Interesting)
Version 1.0 is based on a codebase nearly 18 months out of date. Try the latest code from CVS, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Full duplex on virtually all platforms, floating-point samples, real-time resampling, and lots more. We're hoping to release version 1.2 in a few short months.
- Dominic [Audacity developer]
Hardware support (Score:2, Interesting)
(On the plus side, Linux does have CSound and PD, which are excellent progs for electronic musicians.)
Re:Hardware support (Score:2, Informative)
RME and M-AUDIO are sufficient for me.
good quality + good performance == bliss
Re:Hardware support (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a pdf with latency tests [jhu.edu]
I think the sound managment in linux has improved quite dramatically in the past few years, and there are right now _a lot_ of projects which will make linux a reasonable choice for professional audio authouring, such as ardour, jack, alsa, etc. (look at links in the story)
I don't know what the current status on VST plugins in linux is, but there's still ladspa, which seems to be a very competent architecture. Steinberg's hesitation in this area might very well prove to be a mistake, costing them influence in a growing market.
I'm right now in the process of trying linux out for a synthpop project I'm working on, using ardour, and various softsynths and sequencers. If some interesting experience comes out of it, I'll make it known.
Parent
Andromeda (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry if that was too much of a self-serving plug.
If you want to mix Mp3's in realtime (Score:5, Informative)
GDAM is a digital dj mixing software package. It aims to be a powerful, professional-quality music mixing and remixing system, suitable for live performance. It was conceived on some beautiful summer morning (in 1998), and developed with drive and enthusiasm that seemed completely unnatural. Over four years later, we have achieved many of our goals; yet, development continues. Here is a list of features:
client-server architecture based around glib
streaming and mixing of any number of mp3 files
dynamic filter insertion and removal
multiple sound device support (see the faq)
plugin support
cacheing / playing loops
contiguous queueing - plays albums without gaps between songs, regardless of output buffer size
dj turntable-style interface
assisted beat matching
waveform viewer / beat calculator
sequencer
record from any point in the stream, to disk or another process
gtk gui's, with simple skin support
flexible command-line interface
gdam123 - an mpg123 clone that talks to a gdam server
Users Guide
hardware input support (midi and other)
support to use LADSPA plugins
support to create LADSPA plugins graphically
online help
Parent
Sonic Foundary niche (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sonic Foundary niche (Score:2)
Linux audio is still shakey to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been quite disappointed. Maybe I layered in too much.
Noatun plays MP3s with only modest smoothness. mpg123 suffers similar problems. Skips are common when switching or redrawing windows. Real users stick to command lines, I guess.
I haven't tried recording from a live source, but I'd be wary -- is that weird pause in the music because of the recording skipping, or the playback skipping? Which system do I trust?
Anyway. Perhaps I tried stuffing in too much compatability, and instead should have picked one system over the other. But then who knows which apps would work and which wouldn't?
Please please please -- can we have a standard layer that's easy to install?
GMFTatsujin
IMPORTANT:Little known Latency / Scheduler info !! (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some things to consider:
1) Did you compile low latency support with sysctl support? In that case you have to turn on lowlatency mode on your own , a little known and not widely documented feature!
2) I actually had worse performance, w/ the 2.4 tree, when both low latency, and the O(1) scheduler were enabled, and am now using just low latency. In 2.5, AFAIK, they play much better, and it's sensible to enable both.
4) Are you using OSS, or alsa?
3) Gentoo now includes a safe hdparm script (I think it's installed by default, at least on ~x86), which works great. Check for it in /etc/init.d
4) Be wary of the difference between march and mcpu optimizations! The choice makes a big difference!
Parent
Finally (Score:3, Troll)
Even a PentiumII 300Mhz running Windows has better audio capabilities than my P4 2.4Ghz running Linux.
Maybe the new patches [slashdot.org] the kernel developers are comming up with will help?
Re:Finally (Score:2)
The new patches should solve that and improve reaction times
Linux in a Pro Studio (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the synop:
We used Windows. It crashed and got viruses. We didn't want to upgrade to XP.
We played around with Linux. We decided on Mandrake. We went Ogg Vorbis. Life is grand.
Nothing on the implentation, nothing on what programs/hardware they used in Windows or Linux, nothing in regards to performace of said hardware and/or ported software.
Linux is great for them, but being too vague doesn't help small time studios understand how to use it in their shop, or how best to go about it.
Why not get a little more in-depth, such as what utilities they used, what hardware settings needed to be tweaked (if any), and how difficult it was to train for.
For example:
What was the hardest part to train/learn?
What features are you hoping Linux audio programs will add in the future?
What advice would you give to a small, struggling studio in regards to using Linux in a studio?
Do you know of any other studios who have utilized Linux?
The list goes on.
oggenc is great (Score:2, Interesting)
b) Speaking of Linux sound, a nice thing: the other day, I compressed some music (passengermusic.com is the band's site, though no music is on the site) for a musician I know, because I'd like to convince him to post some music in ogg vorbis format on the band's website.
Usually, I have used grip to do such compression (nice interface, easy), but this time I wanted to try a wider range of qualities without going in an changing grip's preferences several times, so I started up oggenc instead.
Compressed at q6, the sound was predictably good, and my tin ears on my low-end equipment could not tell from the original. Sadly, same is true at 3. Probably most of the other available integers, too.
For kicks (and since this is for web use, and since most people are still on dialup, and since long downloads are a pain in the tuchus
timothy
Standardize it damnit. (Score:2, Insightful)
It reminds me of the DOS days when you had to pick your soundcard from a list of 6 for each and every app/game you'd install.
I dont want to configure each seperate app for my hardware. This is the 21st century for crying out loud! So make some rules about how linux makes noise. Just writing to
I know such libraries/sound servers exist. Just pick one that works and run with it.
Radio Studio != Professional Recording Studio (Score:3, Informative)
Professional sound? What about desktop sound? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well fuck that. I just want to be able to listen to my MP3s and still be able to know when I get an e-mail or IM like I did when I was in Win2k.
OK, I CAN do that right now, using ESD, but it's a kludge that I'd like to see going away.
I'm looking forward to see the kind of sound quality we'll have at kernel level on 2.6.
Yes, I'm a happy user of a desktop Linux, after years using it on servers. But boy did I have lots of trouble trying to get the same desktop experience I had with Win2k...
Professional linux audio workstation (Score:3, Insightful)
Spiralsynthmodular (Score:5, Informative)
It is a softsynth (a program that generates sound mostly based on algorithms).
It basically provides a framework to connect modules (that are called plugins for confusion's sake
SSM can connect to other applications via JACK [sourceforge.net], a low-latency audio server.
Advanced sound applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Advanced sound applications? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can honestly say that (with execption to an anceint AWE-64 ISA card about 4 years ago) I've never had to dick around with anything like that. And the AWE was still fairly easy; sndconfig setup the AWE card working 100% fine in about 20 seconds. These days I just make sure the module for my card is in my kernel, and that's it. Reboot (to init the kernel). I use Gentoo, so I compile my own kernels, but with a more mainstream distro, all that stuff is already there in the binary package they hand out.
Granted I've used fairly generic cards (meaning I don't have an Audigy or something), but I've been using linux (and several flavors of it) since RH 5.2 (or something like that, I forget... it was 5 something) and I've never had to really dick with the system for sound to work.
This is wonderful but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I love to hear linux success stories -- especially ones about Mandrake, don't get me wrong. The article, however, mentions that this person paid $69 for a Mandrake powerpack and installed it on three machines. He claims that this made the cost $23 per machine. Don't the commecial pay-for-media distributions usually have a caveat that the license is for one machine only and that additional machines require separate licenses?
His claim is kind of like me going to BestBuy and buying one copy of XP, installing it on 165 machines and claiming I reduced our licensing fees to $1 per machine.
Trust me, I'm not a licensing nazi or anything like that but, being a software developer myself, I strongly believe that if you like a certain piece of software, you should pay for it. Even more so in this case because this is in a corporate environment and because Mandrake is having financial difficulties.
If everyone in the corporate world adopts this attitude that "just because it's linux, we don't need to pay our licensing fees", theres not going to be much commercial linux left after awhile.
If I were this guy, I'd run over to MandrakeStore.com and buy another two powerpack licenses just to help out the company that cut his costs so much.
Mandrake audio workstation (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all explained in this howto. [groundstate.ca]
Grr (Score:3, Interesting)
Mostly usable (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried Be, which was supposed to be low-latency this and multimedia that, but nothing I recorded with it ever turned out very well. At the time, one couldn't even purchase a decent sequencing or multitrack recording app, even if you had the money.
Lots of work has been done in the Linux kernel to address latency. It still is jerky sometimes, but a multi-processor system might help address that.
What a puff piece (Score:3, Insightful)
I would GLADLY build a home studio around Linux if I could figure out which distro, which sound card, and which EASY TO USE APPs to use to do the same kind of Cubase VST stuff I've previously done.
Some package from some obscure German FTP site with a command line interface that doesn't even compile doesn't rate as "easy to use".
If you're going to say how great your system is, please let some of us in on what it was you eventually used?
Maybe the reason for the complete absence of detail is he didn't want to go into the endless kernel recompiles, header file and package searches (no no no you need ALSA_dev_package_weirdo_tool_support.h, that's available from ftp.godknowswhere.com) the frustrating incompatibilities with the top-end hardware, the latencies, etc.
Much more rah-rah to say he installed Mandrake and suddenly he had no support costs.
Annoying adjacent links (Score:3, Insightful)
(The domains are only shown in-line when they're part of the comments, not stories).
- With a high resolution display, you can barely see the pixel or two gap between the underscores. It just looks like one big long link.
- To find out what each link is for I need to mouse-over each one individually. But Slashdot doesn't even make of the TITLE attribute of A tags, so I need to look at some cryptic URL in the status bar to figure out where it will take me!
- The Related Links section is automatically generated from the links within a submission. But it's now rendered useless since it contains link titles such as 'many' and 'cutting'.
A longer more-descriptive sentence would allow easier embedding of links, even though it may sound awkward when read aloud.Oh, well. (Score:4, Funny)
With several more years of improvement, Linux and other free operating systems are starting to gain on the technical advantages present in that several year old operating system. I feel confident that given a few more years and the efforts of individuals and companies worldwide, Linux will soon be the operating system of choice for everything from coffee makers to the next generation space shuttle. So I'm happy to hear about this conference and all this exciting stuff.
Re:Maybe these tools.... (Score:2)
Re:Radio Station != Recording Studio (Score:3, Interesting)
No I just have to find out if it has some standard effects or not. I need at least compression and reverb to save having to buy an expensive outside effects box.
Re:Gimme a break.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent