An Intro To Editing Audio On Linux

W-9z writes "Ars is running a guide to editing audio under Linux that I think is a great read for anyone trying to find new ways to flex that Linux muscle. There are some outstanding FOSS tools out there. They look at Ardour, Audacity, and SND. The author talks a bit about why Linux is a superior platform for this kind of work: 'FOSS software is, almost by definition, a work in process. If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself. With this possibility, the software no longer defines what I can do -- it's just a point of departure.' It's an interesting companion to the /. discussion of video editing earlier this year."

Wow

Wow, I never knew Linux was so good for that kind of thing. In fact, I might just stop using SONAR (Windows) and switch to Linux.

I guess that means that the 1% market share just got a bit bigger.

Re:Wow

Also, another easy way -- next to Debian -- to use Ardour, Audacity, Jack, LADSPA or anything else, is to use Stanford's Planet.CCRMA [stanford.edu] project for Fedora.

It contains just about any decent audio app for GNU/Linux, including the ones mentioned in TFA, but also has custom kernels with the real-time patches and everything.

Definitely worth checking out!!

h357

Re:Wow

As crude as this comment is, I agree on some points.
When working with like 40 tracks at once, LOTS of vertical scrolling is involved, which seems unnecessary. Frequently, audacity will chew up disk space saving a million possible 'undos' (can be handy, though...)
It doesn't always get timing perfect on recording, and if playback is interrupted momentarily (another process grabs the cpu, etc), the tracks will get out of sync. The compressor plugin needs work (it actually seems to function as an expander most of the time!!), there needs to be a sliding window extension to the normalize plugin (and some better way of finding a DC offset than taking a pure average, which is what I think it does?), and I wish I could make the equalizer remember my settings.

All of that being said, I don't think the GUI is bad. Audacity has tons of really nice features. It is a shame it moves so slowly, though.
I managed to record something with it recently, though; in fact, most of my recent recordings [orangesquid.net] (yes, i know, i suck) have used audacity (most anything with a .flac file).

ecasound does some things audacity doesn't do, or ecasound does them better, though, so mixing the two can prove helpful.
I used to use purely ecasound, but you just can't go in and align things, or easily apply plugins to fractions of a file, not at least without a lot of effort...

Audacity isn't protools, but it has the possibility of getting most of the way there (to be honest, most of protools' fancy features come from 3rd-party plugins, anyway).

Also, it's very difficult to scrape out eyeballs with a spoon; usually, a spork, or grapefruit spoon, yields better results, while still retaining the scooping effect.

Re:Wow

The audacity project is actually just gearing up for some new releases: a 1.3 beta and 1.2.4. The latter mostly just fixes some long outstanding bugs in 1.2.3 (such as problems with the compressor ^_^.)

1.3 introduces some new features such as multiple clips per track. (And I think you can now minimise the tracks verticly to save space.) Although there was a long gap between releases, the project now seems to be getting back up to speed.

have to admit

I usually don't turn to linux for day to day tools, but I have to admit, it is pretty good for editing large audio. Tools are lacking, but its pretty stable doing.

Yeah

"FOSS software is, almost by definition, a work in process. If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself."

But, what if you aren't a coder?

Re:Yeah

Find someone who is a coder and bribe them with money/pizza/Mountain Dew/etc?

Re:Yeah

Same thing that would happen with non-free software, except here you can hire any coder to fix it, and there you could only hire one company.

Re:Yeah

Unfortunatly the incentive is LOTS of money....
A single request is going to be ignored as a wast of time and their money.
And once this one company has said no it though luck, with open source you can find someone else to do it for a more reasonable price.

Jeroen

Re:Yeah

But, what if you aren't a coder?

What are you some kind of ignorant n00b!? RTFM idiot! RTFC for goodness sakes. How hard is it to learn C, learn all 28 of the relevant libraries, learn how the code was implemented, write the code, test the code, and convince the maintainer to add the code to the core code base? You must be some kind of lazy ignorant wretch.

Ardour is moving in a big way

A friend in the industry tells me he's converted at least a dozen pro audio editors to ardour, leaving behind pro tools and logic for good. This looks like it's one of the killer apps that's going to take linux far. We already have several that are making F/OSS well known in the wider world like apache, blender, gimp and the rest.

What's insane is the pro proprietary companies charge prices in the four figures just for some of their software alone. Can't be justified when you have the same abilities free.

What about hardware?

ProTools is industry standard, period. No FOSS is going to conquer their market share. In fact, outside of the /. crowd, this will remain small. Lack of hardware support for most popular interfaces will doom it so, not to mention Linux's inflexibilities to the average user.

Re:What about hardware?

its interesting that this was said about 1 or 2 "industry standard" video editing suites when apple released final cut (pro). final cut pro is now probably the most widely used video editing suite, even including all the big video studios. it has simply evolved to the point where it pushed the existing "industry standards" out of the way.

i doubt that ardour can do this (and i wrote ardour so i know what i am talking about), but we'll give it our best shot, ok?

Re:Ardour is moving in a big way

"What's insane is the pro proprietary companies charge prices in the four figures just for some of their software alone. Can't be justified when you have the same abilities free."

$1000 is a drop in the bucket for most professional studios whose bread and butter work utilizes these tools. Photoshop is expensive but with the amount I make using teh software, it's nothing. if you're looking to purchase this software to goof off and do some amature stuff, then I can see you having a problem with the price. If you're a professional, these licenses are nothing in the overall scheme of things.

The best quote from the article...

On proprietary platforms, eventually you'll run into "you can't do that." On open platforms, you'll run into "you have to learn more to do that."

That applies to so much more than just audio programs.

  -Charles

Re:The best quote from the article...

The problem with convincing people to use open source software is that when they hear "you can't do that" they say "Oh. Darn" and go on with their life. When they hear "you have to learn more to do that" they throw a temper tantrum then throw the computer out the window.

Re:The best quote from the article...

The problem with convincing people to use open source software is that when they hear "you can't do that" they say "Oh. Darn" and go on with their life. When they hear "you have to learn more to do that" they throw a temper tantrum then throw the computer out the window.

Interesting observation. So, the proper respons might be more effective were it modified slightly: "oh, you can learn how to do that, if you want to..."

i mean, 'can if you want', versus 'have to or its nothing' is quite a different kettle .. no wonder people fuse up over it. "do what you have to or have not" versus "can if you want to, or have not".

Audacity

No linux has the audacity to play audio

Warning: rant approaching at high speeds

If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself.

Unless, of course, you don't know how to code it yourself, either because you don't have the technical know-how or the willingness to invest time investigating and learning how it works.

This is becoming a pet peeve of mine when people espouse the benefits of FOSS; it only applies to tech-geeks. Great, programmers can do things with it that they can't do with closed-source. Now how about everyone else?

Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds

Everyone else has their pick of tech-geeks to hire to do it for them, instead of relying on a single company to decide to add the feature.

Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds

BByak, one of the lead developers for Inkscape knew nothing of programming until he wanted a better tool for his graphics business. He simply started with something simple, and learned the kinds of patterns needed for writing programs. It's not that hard if you are an intelligent, creative person. Try it sometime, you'll be surprised.

(all the musicians in my band are computer programmers or scientists - and that is purely coincidental)

Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds

First off coding is something anybody can learn

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You don't know many "regular Joes", do you? Most people don't have the time or energy to devote to learning to program. And by the time the average non-inclined person gets good, they've long since given up and paid money to some company that made a product that does what they needed and have left Linux and the FOSS comunity behind and haven't looked back.

But I fear for society in a world where people refuse to learn because they don't want to, instead of can't.

People don't learn specialized (and to them esoteric) skills because they DON'T HAVE THE TIME! Most people have lives. They have things to do. Kids to feed. Jobs. Houses to keep in order. Lawns that need to be mowed. Friends. Relatives. Etc... It's not that people won't learn (well, the current state of the educational system does make it harder to learn new things, but I digress), it's that they have things they'd rather be doing instead of mastering a specialized set of skills to add some functionality to someone else's unfinshed work.

Have you taken the time to learn how to fix every problem you might have with your car? I'm willing to bet money you know the absolute basics, at best. You can put fuel in it, check the radiator, fill the tires, change a flat, you might know how to check your fluid levels and maybe refill anything that's low. But can you rebuild the transmission? Fix the breaks? Probably not.

Is it because you are lazy? No. It's because you have better things to do with your time. Please, for the love of Pete, stop thinking that everyone should have the same interests as you. That's the attitude that's kept Linux off of most desktops for the last 12 years.

Re:Warning: rant approaching at high speeds

Agreed. Most users are NOT programmers and wouldn't know a function if it bit them on the ass. This whole "do it yourself" mantra is just justification for things not being finished. I have used so many "0.9x" versions of software on Linux that never get to 1.0 it makes me sick. Is it too much to ask that a developement team actually finish a release before sending it out in a non-dev package? Or is it assumed that everything Linux is a developer release? If that's the case Linux is doomed as the vast majority of users don't want to program, don't give a damn about programming and wouldn't be good at it in the first place.

After years of being sick of Windows and repeatedly trying to get into Linux I finally bailed last year and bought a Mac.

Studio to Go by fervent software.

fervent software [ferventsoftware.com]

Offers a Linux distribution based on Debian designed for audio work.

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/ [stanford.edu]

Offers packages to be installed over Fedora for audio.

Superior?

The author talks a bit about why Linux is a superior platform for this kind of work: 'FOSS software is, almost by definition, a work in process. If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself

It's only superior if you have the ability to code the feature you need. There's a huge assumption there that someone who is skilled at using a DAW is even inclined to code new features for an application. Personally speaking, I lack the skills to approach that, so a superior platform is one that lets me do what I want without having to code the feature. That's not to discount the value of being able to do that, but really, most modern DAW's are extensible in some way or another (be it via VST, or some API). Having said that, Audacity rocks!

musicians don't want to code

look, i love open source software as much as the next man, and it's price really goes with my poor musician ethic, but to be honest, as the man said it's a work in progress. Configuring a number of audio programs to run togehter, such as a drum machine and a synth or sampler, through jack and rosegarden is a royal pain in the arse.And musicians don't want to code new bits to their software, they just want it to work. so for now i'll still keep that windows box that doesn't go anywhere near the net....gotta love reason and acid pro...and keep this freebsd box for the net

Mid level editing, yes

My brother owns a recording studio, and Linux wouldn't compete in that arena. For a home studio, these apps + a SB Audigy are fine, but no talented band, producer, editor or mastering engineer will look twice. The midlevel sound cards don't approach the quality and power of the high end (even rotools HD) vehicles.

For me, I want to see Linux drivers adapted for the high end hardware. Windows isn't an issue as most high end studio apps offload the processing to the hardware. The software is just a window to what the hardware is doing in the recording.

If you're just mixing tracks for a garage demo, this software looks great. I paid a fortune 3 years ago for Win32 software that didn't approach this level. I see great things ahead as hardware gets better.

For now, though, the SB cards don't offer the best input quality. I can tell the difference in noise floor, transparency, and soundprint signature. When I've listened to demos, I can pinpoint quality gear versus prosumer gear.

In the end though, a 4track tape is enough if you have talent. Most bands don't.

Re:Mid level editing, yes

Unfortunately you don't really know what you're talking about. Or maybe fortunately.

RME Hammerfall and HDSP series (26 channels), M-Audio Delta 1010 (10/12 channels), AudioScience (8 channels) and at least 4 others fully and well supported on Linux are at least equal to the quality of ProTools HD. In fact are generally up with the best you can buy (for all digital interfaces, quality is most defined by your A/D + D/A converters, which have nothing to do with what you install in the computer. They cost significantly less than PT HD hardware. I leave it up to you to figure out why that is.

Linux does have a gaping hole right now with Fireware-based external audio interfaces, which is soon to be filled in by the FreeBob project. Linux also cannot support h/w from several manufacturers who refuse to provide information required for drivers (MOTU is a particularly blatant example). Note that you cannot use your PT h/w with non-PT software, at least until very recently and even then only on OS X with particular caveats. Wanna take another guess at why it costs so much?

Disclaimer: author of Ardour, the RME Hammerfall & HSP drivers, and an RME reseller

Re:Mid level editing, yes

Hammerfall is top notch and I didn't realize it had solid Linux support, so I'll look into it. I know numerous people who had problems with alsa and HDSP even very recently.

M-Audio Delta I know has been supported for years (4Front? Can't look it up easily from my PDA) but I didn't think it was pro quality. Did they get ADAT support stable yet? I figured they lost the battle with PT at the highend and were going to chase the LT market. I've seen numerous studios dump Midiman over the years due to product constraints and limited end user support.

AudioScience seems very friendly for the not-for-profit studios (and churches) on a budget, but I think the higher end hardware is priced out of the picture. Radio stations and high budget companies seem to love it. I don't know anyone in my area using it in the studio, Win nor Lin.

I guess that's my problem with many of the companies I've seen supporting Linux: end user support problems. PT's end user support is fantastic even for small budget studios. The interface is known by every producer and engineer.

For me, initial cost means little. Low training costs, good support, and user friendliness are just as important as sound quality.

Ardour is a good product with, IMHO, the brightest future. We've screwed with it, and I believe are integrating it in a cheap portable studio.

Re:Mid level editing, yes

The same PT HD setup that crashed for Maria Carey before she sang in the superbowl, so they had to transfer the stuff onto a RADAR system (with their own proprietary audio interfaces that sound better than almost anything) ?

Or the same PT HD setup that can't touch apogee converters with a 10 foot pole? Or the same PT HD setup that most reviewers don't think is actually that much better than a mid-level A/D-D/A setup?

Oh, and is this same PT HD that is marketed to waste 2 times the disk space without a single verifiable double blind test showing 192kHz SR's to be detectably different from 96kHz?

Yeah, probably the same PT HD setup that you paid US$10-20,000 for, to get some overpriced DSP power that a dual opteron can walk over in its sleep?

That must be the one. Now I know why it costs so much.

The "prosumer" cards (coupled with appropriate A/D-D/A converters, of course) that you dismiss with a wave match or exceed the quality and specifications in use in any top end studio worldwide as of 5 years ago; they match what almost all but the most capital-rich studios have today. Stop being such a junkie for Digi's marketing BS, and do some research.

Re:Mid level editing, yes

What do Apogee converters have to do with the prosumer cards that were listed?

You plug them into those cards. Digital data moves between them. The sound is phenomenal (mostly because 95% of audio quality issues arise from the sample clock and related issues, and apogee have probably the best clock in the business.

Oh...okay, I'll believe what "most reviewers" say. :) Let me know when you name them.

i never saw a single review of HD that was really glowing about the sound quality unless it was clearly just pulling from the PR. people like it, but nobody in Mix, EQ, TapeOP or SoundOnSound thought it was that compelling, at either 96 or 192 kHz, especially when compared to other systems at the same SR.

> Yeah, probably the same PT HD setup that you paid US$10-20,000 for, to get some overpriced DSP power that a dual opteron can walk over in its sleep?

Haha. Try recording 80 simultaneous live tracks as someone else posted about. Your dual opteron will never "walk over in its sleep" hardware-based DSP. Or do you play your 3D games entirely on CPU? No, you use a dedicated 3D card.

One of our beta testers regularly records 32 tracks live on a small laptop, and runs sessions with 80 tracks. People have used Ardour to record 100 tracks simultaneously onto a RAID5. Simultaneous track count for recording is disk-io limited, not DSP related. For playback, it obviously depends on the FX level, but see below for a link to my take on this.

Pro Tools doesn't even have a "freeze track" feature. It doesn't need one, like the other DAWs do. DSP is processed off the CPU so you can keep working without having to stop what you're doing and keep your computer from coughing blood when you're pushing Ivory, Rebirth, BFD, Ozone, etc.

My take on DSP vs. native [ardour.org].

I love how anyone who points out that cheesy little prosumer products don't compare with the high-end stuff are suddenly "junkies" or "shills," which tells me you don't know how to argue in a debate. Ended with the classic "Do some research." Why don't you offer me some research? You're the one claiming I'm wrong.

If all those cards have really exceeded and matched today's top studios, nobody would be using Pro Tools as the industry standard. You just can't beat Pro Tools, and it's a standard for a reason...get over it.

I never called you a junkie or a shill, and I actually regret the tone this has taken on. But seriously, PT h/w is nothing particularly special, and everyone I've spoken too who knows anything about their technology agrees. In fact I find it interesting that I've never met anyone who actually likes PT at all, even though I've met many people who use it. PT's h/w is acceptable, but supports the profit margins digidesign needs, not what smaller studios and other organizations should be paying. Their s/w's audio capabilities have always been excellent, the MIDI is so-so and getting better, but there is very little in PT that isn't done better by someone else (problem is, its always different other systems). Studios that I know who care about quality sound use apogee converters and skip the PT h/w for that functionality entirely. Studios who care about modularity, flexibility and lack of vendor lock in certainly don't go the PT route, they use Nuendo, Sonar or others that can be used with various h/w. I've not heard any of them complaining that their stuff is worse quality than PT, in fact, I've heard the opposite.

Mackie Tracktion Ported To Linux

Traction2 [mackie.com] is built using JUCE [rawmaterialsoftware.com]. JUCE is an all-encompassing C++ class library for developing cross-platform applications. Both of which were built by Jules of Raw Material Software [rawmaterialsoftware.com]. On April, 25th 2005 JUCE was released with Linux support.

There is talk that this powerful, unique, and user-friendly audio application could be ported to Linux. If anyone else wants to support such an idea, e-mail Mackie or see this thread [kvraudio.com] on KVR.

Arbour schmarbour....

great read for anyone trying to find new ways to flex that Linux muscle.

Real men flex their muscles by editing raw sound:

% cat /dev/audio > /im_the_man/raw.snd
% hexedit /im_the_man/raw.snd

FOSS!=Linux

Is there some reason why FOSS audio tools will not work in Windows? I'm just puzzled, because I don't understand the jump from "here are some great FOSS audio tools" to "this is why Linux>Windows." I used FOSS on Windows all the time; it it was coded well it works perfectly fine. Or are these FOSS-tools platform-dependent on some specific distro of Linux?

Re:FOSS!=Linux

Audacity being the one major exception that I can think of where a FOSS pro-grade audio app will run on windows, Audacity also has a weakness on the linux platform that the other FOSS Linux-only tools don't have: compatibility with the Jack Audio Connection Kit.

Jack also runs on OSX but for some reason beyond my research/understanding does not run on windows. Jack allows you to route audio and midi data through virtual channels between other jack compatible clients, making it an extremely powerful audio environment. Rosegarden and Ardour, the two most critical apps to doing pro-audio on linux, are generally dependant on jack (rosegarden will do midi-only without jack) and therefore Linux (or OSX) would be required to use either of these (very powerful and professional) tools.

that clarify things?

Audaity

There is a Windows version too. If you think you're not into music editing, well, ever get an mp3 that was just too low in volume? Audacity can easily fix that - amplify, under the effect menu. Not suprisingly, Audacity is also open source. Not a big download either, but you will need to get the LAME codec to import/export mp3s. There's a link on the Audacity page to the codec and it tells you how to load it into the program. Just do a search; the Audacity home page should be enar the top.

Not to get into the giant pissing match here, but music sounds better on Linux (at least with classic rock and old blues). It's got more clarity. Windows palying music seems to have a little muffling effect by comaprison. You might be able to adjust the settings somewhere in Windows to sound that good, but I've never found out how. If you know, please post it here or post a link.

Not exactly.

I don't know about the author of this article, but I am certainly NOT an audio engineer, so I could not "code it myself". In fact, most end users probably aren't even developers. And even if you are a developer, you will have to spend a good deal of time getting intimate with the architecture and framework of the application. Sure, you can hire somebody to code something up for you, but that's not the same as doing it yourself. If you're going to pay somebody to change something, why not request a feature from the author and give him a "donation" in return?

On the other hand, many audio editing tools have some kind of relatively simple, well-defined plugin architecture, so if you have the skills it is quite possible to write your own plugin (or modify someone else's). Even many closed source solutions have an open plugin architecture, so I don't really see the necessity of having the main application open (though it doesn't hurt). So, in essence, I don't really how Linux is a "superior platform" for audio editing. Yes, it encourages open source software, but a lot of the software is available for Windows (i.e. Audacity, but it doesn't look like the other two have been ported).

The platform shouldn't matter; it's the applications, stupid! Once again, use the right tool for the job. If Audacity on Linux works for you, fine. If CoolEdit on Windows works for you, fine. If something else on another platform gets the job done, more power to you.

When stability counts - it's the hardware

An engineer friend of mine just recorded 80 tracks of audio simultaneously using protools (dual G5 mac)...over an hour solid. It was a large live event with no second chances, and it went without a hitch.

I think one huge advantage of the commercial apps is the associated hardware. The DACs and off board procs do far more than a single workstation could do, and unfortunately open source hardware can't really be free. For big tasks, professional recording is much more than software.

There may be a way to cluster some slave workstations or something to provide the required horsepower, but some time-sensitive situations are going to require that such a system be very, very stable.

Hmm...

I spend a great deal of time doing home audio stuff, and I was interested to read the article. I've used Ardour and Audacity for a little while in the past, but I find I'm still using my Windows audio apps (Ableton and Soundforge, if you're interested). Why?

Well, the article itself touches on a few of my reasons. Ardour, specifially, is very "Linuxy" in its interface layout and design, reminding me in many ways of the old Dos version of 3D Studio. It definitely looks like a programmer-designed UI, it's very stark and bare-bones, and things are never quite where you expect them to be. It's clearly a Cubase/Logic inspired design and layout, but without the years of fine-tuning those have had to get to their current states. I prefer Ableton's more unorthodox approach anyway, but that's just me :)

The other is, as always, hardware support. Getting less important now in some ways, for some uses (I use quite a lot of virtual instruments, so not a huge deal for me) the lack of hardware DSP support is a killer. Proprietary developers are to blame here, in fairness, but it's still a problem.

Probably most importantly for me is the real killer, and I suspect the reason most audio folks won't move to Linux for some time to come (and coincidentally the reason so many of them use Apple machines): we don't want the software to get in the way of the creation of music any more than it has to. At the moment, many parts of Linux are unhelpfully complicated, especially to non-technical people.

A final thought, based on the quote from the article repeated in the summary:

If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself. With this possibility, the software no longer defines what I can do - it's just a point of departure.

Quite apart from ignoring the fact that almost every major audio app can use various forms of plugin, which have relatively easy to obtain SDKs, and that various generic programmable plugins (like MaxDSP) exist for which one can do the same, it ignores maybe the most obvious point of all: not all musicians are programmers.

Re:Hmm...

Well, the article itself touches on a few of my reasons. Ardour, specifially, is very "Linuxy" in its interface layout and design, reminding me in many ways of the old Dos version of 3D Studio. It definitely looks like a programmer-designed UI, it's very stark and bare-bones, and things are never quite where you expect them to be. It's clearly a Cubase/Logic inspired design and layout, but without the years of fine-tuning those have had to get to their current states. I prefer Ableton's more unorthodox approach anyway, but that's just me :)

Ardour's UI is based almost entirely on ProTools, which most casual users of audio s/w have never used, and many have never even seen. The people who use ardour professionally (and there are a few!) comment that its UI is the most efficient they have used, including ProTools, which most people say is the most efficient in the proprietary world because of its extensive use of keyboard shortcuts. Ardour's development and design has been geared toward learning as much as possible from the years of fine tuning done with other DAWs, although we have been a little hampered by some issues with our GUI toolkit (GTK+ v1). We are currently about 60% done porting ardour to GTK2, and plan to be quite focused on usability issues after that (among many other things).

Re: h/w DSP support: first, DAC's don't have anything to do with this, and even when they are internal to the audio interface, they use no CPU cycles - they are always h/w! But more generally, see: my position [ardour.org] on this issue.

What about sound synthesis?

As TFA says, there are lots of audio editing apps out there. I'm looking for apps that can create the sound as well. I know about the Beast [gtk.org]. Any one have any other ones they know of and like?

Great start but...

...I'd like a similar post like "An Intro To Editing Video On Linux." Nor production quality, but something I can edit the commercials out of the shows I record. A product like Womble MPEG-VCR [womble.com] for Linux. Yes, I know how to use Google, but I've never found anything remotely capable of doing what I want. I can hack together MEncoder commands, but that is a pain. This is one of the few areas where a GUI is better than the CLI.

Edit audio

I'm lucky if I can get audio to work properly half the time. With some applications only talking to OSS, some to only Arts and some others only speaking directly to ALSA (with about a million other variations on this theme) I'm happy if I can get the damn machine to play an MP3. We really do have an wealth of sound applications just a shame they don't play nicely together. Looks like this is going to continue in the future as well with everyone and their uncle producing a next generation sound server.

Only thing I use windows for is audio...

I record an average of 2 to 3 nights a week at 24bits/96khz using a Sound Devices 722 [sounddevices.com].

Unfortunately, the tools under Linux just don't come close to those under Windows. Linux lacks good dithering tools. Audacity does not work well at 24 bit. It lacks multiple levels of undo and many, many other basic UI features. It will take a great deal of time to implement those features with comparable attention to detail and reliability. Ardour is interesting but seems focused on

I've been using UNIX for 20 years and as my desktop for 18. The only other thing I use windows for is Visio. I hate having to use windows.

Any of these have automated splitting?

I'm in a foreign language course, and I'd like to find something that can split the vocab audio on the CD so I can match it with flashcards. Anyone know if any of these can do it w/o days worth of tinkering and research?

Ardour is pretty cool

I especially like it's loop recording function - the existing tracks will continue to loop over and over while you record as many 'takes' as you like in a new track.

The other app I use (Garageband on my iBook) doesn't offer this feature, and cuts off audio recording after the first take.

You can get around this by simply repeating your tracks so you have more repeats in the loop to record over, but then youre not really 'loop recording' any more, and ardour's approach to this is so much more convenient.

I was able to crash ardour by dragging audio around on it's timeline, but I expect this bug has been fixed by now.

I see lots of exciting things happening in the Linux audio world, apps like seq24, ardour and hydrogen make it hard to justify using anything else for the niches that these apps fill.

Still nothing like FL Studio =/

I still wish there was something as simple and complete as FL Studio that was OSS. I'd love to not have to reboot.....

VST support in Audacity

The article states that Audacity supports VST plugins. This is only partially true. VST plugins run (with the VST enabler installed), but they use a default interface - not the interface that was designed for each plugin. Many of the designed (non-default) interfaces have data displays that give feedback on the setting being adjusted (such as a meter showing audio levels relative to an adjustable threshold). Using these plugins without the feedback from the data displays can be difficult. I believe few new users would put up with this limitation if they have used competing apps that fully support VSTs and their interfaces. Saying that VST plugins are supported without explicitly mentioning this limititation, as the article does, is quite misleading.

APU Array

FTA: "Support for dedicated DSP processors is somewhat controversial. A DSP processor is like a graphics card for audio--it can accelerate DSP operations, reducing the load on the main CPU. The problem here is that since DSP cards are such a niche market, the only ones available are proprietary add-ons for proprietary software. They use proprietary protocols, closed source, and are locked down to be used with only one piece of software, eg. ProTools."

Why can't these apps just use a PC stuffed with DSP soundcards?

My question is...

Can you use more than one sound application at the same time?

I still remember when gaim used to queue up sounds while I watched a movie... then they would all play once I shut off VLC. :) Hopefully things are getting better, but I know in my case Knoppix isn't configuring the ALSA mixer for my soundcard. I guess if I was interested in "pro-level" audio I'd be willing to dig into it a bit more. As things stand, I just listen to one app at a time. (Might have something to do with my antiquated, integrated audio: Intel Corp. 82801AA AC'97 Audio (rev 2).)

Sound Mixing

I do some of the sound mixing for my band, while some is done by a professional. I use windows, and he uses Mac. I use SONAR, and he uses Logic. Let me say, even as a PC person, that Logic is an AMAZING program. It is incredibly simple, much more so than SONAR, but at the same time just as powerful, if not more so. Instead of having to apply filters with a drop down menu, you drag them to filter slots on a track. Buttons you need are big, the ones you don't are small. Filters have clear labels on their settings that allow even a novice to see what each does. Not only does a good interface and powerful engine make mixing much faster, but the output sounds better as you spend more time on the mix, not navigating menus. Linux is not an audio editing platform. Companies invest lots of money making quality realtime audio drivers for expensive equiptment for Windows and Mac, not for Linux. Sure, you can do some decent stuff with a P4, 1 GB RAM and an Audigey Basic, like this guy does, but thats not real audio editing. My system, let me stress I am an amerature, is a Dual P4 1MB cache x64, 2GB DDR2, 520 GB HD, and 7.1 Channel soundcard for regular stuff, and a 24bit external input box for audio recording. The professional mixman we work with has a dual G5, 23 inch monitor, Firewire 32 input 24bit A/D converter, and Mackie control surface, in addition to the regular 48 channel mixer he uses. I have used Audacity. I have nothing against it. It is the MS Paint of FOSS sound editors. You can have tracks, and cut them, and move them about, even put on some reverb. That is not real audio editing. For recording a band in a studio setting, you need hundreds of tracks and takes (sometimes), powerful compression, reverb, phasers, and environmental filters, support for recording 12-24 simultanious 24 bit uncompressed tracks to hard drive, support for professional zero latency real time firewire, usb and pci audio input cards as well as professional control surfaces. Does linux have that yet? I have no problem with linux, or people how dabble in cutting up a few audio files. But this guy has no right to declare that linux is now BETTER than windows or mac os x because he can record off the "line in" on his soundblaster. The arguement that you can add whatever you want to FOSS software, making it better than closed source, is getting tiring. Sure you can. You can also jump to the moon if you want to. Do you really think anybody has sat down, installed Audacity, and said "This doesn't have the features of SONAR or CUBASE", then proceeded to open emacs and write all those features into it? I though not. Linux is good for somethings already, and getting better at others. It is not by any strech of the imagination ready for professional audio editing.

Audio Linux

Im a fan of open source and communal development but I do not think Linux is superior to windows. For example (and some kind of attempt to backup my arguement) professional tools such as reason and Cubase struggle if not fail completely to run under a Linux environment, VST support within linux is limited (but there). There are many ways in which linux is superior to windows, but I feel this is not one of them, surely the tools are adequate, but for a user who is interested in business, compatibility aswell as music, the fact that most tools are windows based (most tools that have a company to support them instead of voluntary developers) will probably be enough to keep them out of linux. I have always seen linux as interesting and innovating, but perhaps releasing professional tools is a bit out of it's scope. Just to summarise, as a hobbyist producer I feel that linux is not a suitable direction unless more commercial software were willing to actively support the migration, so even though linux audio is interesting it will be a while before I use it, that's just my opinion.

geek stereotypes

Wow! I better start drinking Mountain Dew!

Linux Audio.. What its really like

This is one of those areas where Linux frustrates me the most. I would not use Windows at all if the audio/midi apps for linux were more mature. Ardour for example is great if all you want to do is multitrack audio, but even in this area it does not come close to say Cubase or Sonar. For example Ardour does not feature hitpoint detection, non-destuctive time stretching, audio warping, groove templates, offline per-clip effects, track freezing and on and on. MIDS is coming but who knows how many years that will take. I'd add it, but I'm not a good programmer and dont have the time. The features it does have work great but it still doesnt really compare to the commercial offerings. VST support.. This is a joke. Last time I checked there were three or four different alternatives for linux here, all using wine and all have dead for at least a year.. MIDI? Linux has some good midi apps which still dont have near the features of the windows ones. Some of these, namely Rosegarden and Muse, even have audio track support but these features are so primitive that they are nearly useless and really Ardour is the better choice here.. But someone will then say but Linux has Jack and you can hook together whatever apps you want. Jack is sort of like Rewire on steroids. So you load Qjackctl which is a nice app for connecting Linux audio apps. Ok. So you load up Muse for its midi capabilities, maybe load up some soft-synths in it, maybe the ones you want to are plugins for Muse, but probably not so you load up two or three external soft-synths and route muses midi output to those one at a time, then you hook the output of those soft synths into ardour via jack. So now there are 5 programs loaded, took you 30 minutes to load and connect everything. You make some changes to the patches in the soft-synths, write some midi tracks in muse and then record a bit of it into ardour. Then think gee I'd like to save my song so I can unload all these programs and do something else with my computer. So you save in muse, save in both synths, save your hookups in qjackctl, save your session in ardour, write a little note so you remember everything you need to do to load your song again. This takes you another 30 minutes.. But really whats more likely to happen is: you will hook everything up and one of the crappy soft synths will crash before you have a chance to save everything and take out the other audio apps forcing you to start over or your whole computer will crash because you were using the realtime-lsm patch to make the thing responsive. Or you will close Ardour before disconnecting it from muse and muse will crash. etc etc. There are nice proposals like LASH, formerly LADCCA which would let all Lash compliant apps be saved in their current states and then reloaded that way but most programs dont use LASH. Not to mention the time it takes to get all there programs and a proper kernel compiled and downloaded if you are not using some pre-made solution like CCRMA, Demudi or Studio to go. Many distro have these apps as packages, but something is always out of date. I have been watching Linux audio grow for years and years and really its going to take years more before all of the features I listed above exist in a single app. With Cubase I open one app with synthesis, sampling, Midi and Audio editing under one roof. When Im finished I save and close, done. I am a huge Linux fan, but I really hate Linux audio. Maybe next year.. Ardour really is awesome though..

Gimmie a rubber biscuit. Quick.

I find tools like Ardour and Audacity exciting because they let me, Joe Slob With No Money, play with the kinds of sound engineering concepts that have unavailable without an actual studio (or at least, a lot of gear in the closet). LADSPA plugins are awesome and, frankly, fun. Ardour is a great multitracker, and Audacity excels at editing single tracks. (I find Audacity too clunky for mixing lots of tracks together, but the keyboard shortcuts are easy and quick to use. YMMV.)

If I may blatently self-promote for a moment, I produce a role playing game 'cast, Dice Make Bonk [noirchickenstudios.com], that is 100% made with FOSS. I'm proud of what I've pulled off with it so far. I could not have done it without free open source. (Which may be a great counterargument, I know . . .)

The fact that I can put a fair-sounding, multilayered show like that together using the same computer I balance my checkbook on is pretty incredible to me.

I have no skill points put into Profession (Studio Engineer), so while DMB is not the most finely crafted example of what Hydrogen, Audacity, and Ardour can do, it is certainly more than I would have been able to do without buying lots of specialized equipment -- or at least a new iBook. Total equipment expenditures so far: ~$70 for the mics, another $40 for the mixer. Any more would have crushed my miniscule budget.

It's just a hobby, after all. With capable FOSS like Audacity and Ardour, though, it's a hobby I can take to a significant level of quality as I teach myself new skills.

linux for live performance!

The URL under my name says it all. I've been using Linux for audio performances lately, using my LoopDub software. It's kind of like a real-time loop sequencer, with a few effects. Actually it uses PortAudio so I'm planning on a Windows and Mac version, but so far I'm quite happy with using Linux for my own shows. It's GPL if anyone's interested in helping me develop it into something more professional. I have personal experience showing that it's quite successful, if you're into loopy music.

As for sound editing, although Audacity is okay, I have to admit I still use SoundForge in Windows a lot. And I absolutely love Renoise, which I REALLY wish was available on Linux. (Yes I would pay for it, I even paid for the Windows version but I'd love to be able to run it without rebooting to Windows.)

Rezound and Sweep sound editors

Linux Format, July 2005, from the local magazine rack,
rated "Sweep" as the best sound editor.
Sweep development was funded by Pixar Studios,
although I believe sweep does very little development now.
While sweep seemed good for quick results,
I prefer "Rezound" over sweep, ardour, and audacity.
I use a sound editor to edit speeches and music from Ethical Society meetings,
previously recorded on cassette tape.
Both sweep and rezound have multiple undo/redo edits.

Rezound, like most sound editors has LADSPA and JACK.
One thing I'd like in rezound is a wave pattern while rezound records
-- I only get the wave pattern after I stop recording (I suppose this prevents
excess demand on the processor).
When I tire of using menus or the mouse, shortcuts like
      ctrl-z
implement the infinite undo.
While a couple techniques weren't obvious, I found rezound more transparent than audacity.

I use mp3gain to adjust the gain/volume to a standard, rather than using tools in rezound.

I use a somewhat professional M-Audio Delta 66 audio card, which has 4 input and 4 output 1/4" plugs
in a break out box, although I had to compile "envy24control" on Debian Linux
to control this sound card.

I occasionally try other tools, because I use an audio editing tool over 100 hours a year.
Yet I keep returning to rezound.

I don't think so

This is one area of software where OSS is lagging WAY behind. Sorry, those audio recording alternatives are pure crap compared to the offerings on OSX and Windows.

aight!

I'm buzy in media & other stuff. I can tell you one thing > 99% of the audio engineers, musicians don't want the abillity to program something if it doesn't have the necesarry function. they just want it to work easily, look good and is bundled in one screen&program like for instance sequoia and others. Still imho (i like usability) they can still be a lot easier to use and that my friends can also be the power of the flexibility of linux. Do like japan did with electronica. Mimic en become eventually waaaay better than the original!

A good livecd to try out

You might want to try out http://www.dynebolic.org/ [dynebolic.org]. From the Features page, some of the included software:

"Mp4Live, lets you stream mpeg4 audio and video on darwin server | FreeJ, to perform on video livesets as a freejay | MuSE, to mix and stream your voice and sound files live on the net HasciiCam, to have a cool (h)ascii webcam, also on low bandwidth | TerminatorX, GDam, SoundTracker and PD, to perform with live audio | Kino, Cinelerra and LiVES, to edit video and publish clips | Audacity and ReZound, to edit audio and add effects on it"

Mandrake or SuSE

Over the past two weeks I have been discussing which route to proceed w/. This thread has been extremely helpful. I haven't messed around w/ linux in about 3 years, but about to embark again. Can anyone comment if audiocity, ardour, jack or other linux music apps work under Mandrake or SuSE? or just Debain and RedHat

Give me a Break

does linux run Sibelius? no.
does linux have drivers for either of the (good) audio cards i already own? no.
does linux run Finale? no.
does linux run Gigastudio? no.
does linux run ANY of the big three or four sequencers? no.

do i want to learn a non-standard sequencer, when the moment i step into a recording studio to do some work over expensive monitors, i'll be using cubuase, or logic audio, or maybe sonar or digital performer? NO.

will i use linux for audio? what the hell for?

Re:An Intro to Frost Posting On Linux

The best and most feature complete audio program for linux is the Creative Audio Tool.

Record with

cat /dev/dsp0 > file.raw

Play with

cat file.raw > /dev/dsp0

Re:How about...

Done!

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Sound-HOWTO/ [tldp.org]

1997 called...

...they want their complaint back.

Re:How about...

From the article:

The kernel (2.6.12) does not have realtime scheduling support built in, which is very popular with computer musicians. More on that later. Additionally, the hard drive is not tuned with hdparm, which is recommended for serious audio work.

And with that, most musicians turn away in disgust. Let's recompile the kernel and tune hard drive parameters on the command line!

Meanwhile, DAWs on Windows and Mac just work. Seriously.

Re:"If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need...."

"If Ardour doesn't have a feature I need, I can code it myself." Most people can't program themselves and would rather buy something that already has the feature they want...

The best time to start a large coding project is in the middle of a recording project.