Goodbye Apple, Hello Music Production On Ubuntu 513
Adam Wrzeski notes a piece up at Create Digital Music by musician Kim Cascone (artist's bio) on switching from Apple to Linux for audio production: "The [Apple] computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part. ... I loaded up my Dell with a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz audio with effects — not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer — a far cry from the $3000 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable."
Think Different (Score:5, Funny)
Well, Apple DO encourage it...
Re:Think Different (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Think Different (Score:5, Funny)
I thought it was "Think Different, just like everyone else"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I thought it was "Think Different, just like everyone else"
Is it set to that old King Missile song?
Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
nice to see a person that has the right tool for the job. BTW you wern't locked into Apple, you were locked into the software developers choice of OS and hardware.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing the article's author was locked in to was the belief that they must have the latest and greatest version of everything. If it works, DON'T FIX IT.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
Having spent the last 6 hours writing music using a softsynth on linux (we're doing a 64k entry for the demoscene, on linux, so we have no choice), I have to say, in spite of the pre-emptive kernel, there need to be some serious kernel changes before it can stand up to the low latency requirements of music production.
My synth will happily plod away in interactive mode using about 30% cpu on windows (there's reasons why I can't just boot into windows and run it), and yet it munches about 40% whilst idle in its VST host on linux, and regularly spazzes out at 100% of the interrupt time given to it, requiring me to hit the panic button. That's with the pre-emptive kernel and realtime-everything switched on. All of this whilst "top" is showing that it's actually only using 30% of the total cpu time. It won't just ramp up to use the entire cpu. On the standard kernel, it's, erm.. well.
The problem appears to be the way in which the different applications are talking to eachother through processes which depend on eachother's data streams, but don't get called NOW when you need it. The previous version of my synth was a basic jack midi device, and that was even worse. Timing bugs all over the place. Occasionally it would miss entire notes.
Then again, if ubuntu are taking this seriously, hopefully we can see linux improve in this respect soon.
Either that, or I'm off to buy a quad-core xeon.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
...it's actually only using 30% of the total cpu time. It won't just ramp up to use the entire cpu.
It may actually be using the entire CPU, but not reporting it via "top".
Unless I'm mistaken, CPU used by the back-end IO processing - the act of the CPU coordinating traffic between the computer's bus and the devices that are being written to and from, are not actually charged to the process or thread.
That is, the details of how much CPU are used by the IO system aren't written to the process header, because the process header isn't in the computable scope (an area defined by a set of active register values). Ergo, "top" doesn't report that CPU because it isn't there. (Old VMS systems had a parameter that simulated this, called "Iota" (measured in microfortnights, oddly enough) that was added in back when charging for CPU usage was in vogue.)
What that seems to indicate is that the problem may not be in the operating system per se, but in the driver and/or the device. The culture of one IO per byte may still exist in some buried (or should be buried) hardware devices. The IO needs to be blocked up a bit I think to get the performance you need for seamless music delivery.
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting point.
In the early days of Windows audio, people found that their gaming graphics card was grabbing the PCI bus for incredibly long stretches at a time, as a side effect of the graphics card driver trying to max out performance and show great benchmark results. This would totally mess up any audio latency.
I wonder if the linux graphics drivers are doing similar games, causing all sorts of latency hiccups?
(As I'm typing this on a windows box the hard drive is causing seconds long delays as I try to type this!)
Linux audio is definitely not yet what it should be..
Re:Good on him (Score:4, Informative)
That is, the details of how much CPU are used by the IO system aren't written to the process header, because the process header isn't in the computable scope (an area defined by a set of active register values). Ergo, "top" doesn't report that CPU because it isn't there.
You can get some idea of that usage by looking at the "Cpu(s):" line in top. Specifically, "sy"=system (kernel) time and wa and hi are related to time dealing with hardware. See man top for more details. That information is not separated out by process, but you will be able to tell the difference between a program at 30% CPU usage because it is just not doing much and a program at 30% CPU usage because the processor is busy with other tasks (possibly the I/O for that process).
I recommend using htop [wikipedia.org] as it gives a visual with all of the different types of CPU usage in different colors so you can get the information at a glance (and it can separate it by CPU/core).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I just want to be able to plug my rock band drums into my linux box and use with as a 0 latency "synth drum" box. I just don't have the time space or money for a full set of drums but it's been reported that rock band drums support velocity and something like 6 pads total (double up the pads to get a full set of drums including cowbell). The main drawback is that there's still a noticable delay even to the untrained ear, filtered through crappy youtube videos. I've been looking, but I haven't seen a drop in
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh man I'd love to see Windows guys try to use that same argument ...
They don't need to. Most software that works on Vista works just as fine on XP or Windows 2000. With OS X, on the other hand, you can't even get a modern browser running on 10.3,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With OS X, on the other hand, you can't even get a modern browser running on 10.3,
You say this like Microsoft is good and Apple is bad. The problem is that developers no longer target 10.3. But why target an old OS that has such low market share?
Microsoft's part in this is that Vista was a huge flop and they can't pry XP out of people's cold, dead fingers. Developers would be dumb to drop support for an OS still accounting for 67% of the market [wikipedia.org]. (And Windows 2000 is practically the same OS, from a development perspective.)
So if you call Microsoft's failure a success, sure, what you s
Re:Good on him (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You do realize that the 10.x the x is a major upgrade to the product. The difference between OS 10.3 and 10.4 and 10.5 is like the difference between Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. (well 10.5 isn't as crappy as vista is but you get the point) . The Current Version of OS X is 10.5.7 the .7 being the minor version which is free and most software works well being a few minor versions behind.
The differences between the OS 8, 9, 10 is like for Microsoft the difference between DOS, Windows(3.1-ME)
Yes, it is actually... (Score:4, Informative)
Apple has decided that they would write the JVM for OS X, citing better integration into OS X and making OS premium Java development platform at one point. Of course they back tracked on it and now Java on OS X is lagging behind 2-3 years behind major releases and versions on other OSes for which Sun and others are writing JVMs.
Usable hardware? (Score:2, Interesting)
I love using linux for as much as I possibly can, but I have noticed a distinct difference in the audio quality between my old power book Ti and a 'business' grade dell. The audio out my mac mini is MUCH better than what I get out of Dell desktops I've used, too. My eeePC 901 does seem to sound pretty good, though.
Eh... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Eh... (Score:5, Funny)
Some sort of agreed plan would be a good start.
Re:Eh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Never mind a plan, some sort of agreed specification would be wonderful! (And, no, a bunch of vendors locked away with OSDL or some other tiny group isn't any way to come up with a specification.)
I'd argue that JACK is probably the most Unix-like in passing data from A to B, where all components are special-purpose. I'd also argue that it's the closest to a true audio plugin system of any system out there for Linux. Thus, any specification would logically be derived from the JACK experience.
Why only the experience? Because JACK is linear, but audio processing may want more complex flows. There's a very nice package that lets you build up a synthesizer by running leads from modules to other modules, allowing you to split and merge the signal as you like. That would obviously be superior to single pipe in, single pipe out.
Another problem is that you want audio to be hard real-time, and only the kernel is currently capable of being hard real-time. The user space can only do soft real-time. But flipping between user space and kernel space adds enormous latency for each switch-over. It wouldn't take a long pipe to kill the audio entirely.
Thus, either real-time needs to make it to user space, OR there needs to be an ambivalent layer that is neither strictly kernel nor user, where you can have hard real-time without the horrible overheads.
At this time, neither option seems likely to happen, but until it does true HQ studio audio won't be possible in Linux. It'll come damn close, but it'll never reach the point hardcore professionals would take it on.
Re:Eh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Allow me to be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)
So what? I'm not trying to troll here (well, maybe a little) but honestly, who cares?
This whole mentality of "Us against the world" is kinda amusing to me. I guess it's because I'm not a developer, or something, I dunno.
But this is one artist saying "Software X is/was expensive, so I'm using a different and free solution." Ok, great, good for her. So now what?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
after clicking a link, Kim is a "him". My bad. Damned gender-implying names...
slashdot requires you to wait 1 minute in between posting. Your time is not up yet.
doo doo doo doo doo doo doo....doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. doo doo doo duh duh duh-duht-bum-bum.
Re:Allow me to be the first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit like your child, or your sports team (when you're the trainer)... You love to see it grow, flourish, any become king of the world. Because in a way, this makes you the king of the king of the world. And who wouldn't love that?
Linux is the child of us all. And it just passed puberty, but still can't go get drunk and play with the big girls/boys.
Try adding some work to a Linux project, and then notice, how you start to get this feeling too.
Hardware (Score:2)
Hardware has kept me from Ubuntu in this regard. I have an old Steinberg VSL ADAT card that has no drivers on linux or even OS X.
Honestly, I don't know the state of pro audio on linux past this, but it is keeping me for now.
Waitaminute... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did the author manage to get anything other than a DAW and sound editor running under Ubuntu ? Max/MSP for instance ? Reason ? Ableton Live ?
I've given up trying to do anything musical with Ubuntu. Windows and OSX are still miles ahead in terms of compatible hardware and software that 'just works'.
This is a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who believes this has never tried to record and mix multitrack audio on Linux
Re:This is a joke (Score:4, Insightful)
We'll see how he'll like it once one of the components he's using gets dumped for a complete rewrite coming "real soon now"(TM), just use this 0.1.12alpha release in the meantime. And oh, you'll need to compile these parts from source 'cause there's no packages yet and now nothing works because the package manager just updated half the system and it can't find libc.so.5.
I mean really, he writes "mprove and update tools for JACK to make it easy for musicians to install, configure, and use." Was I ever that naive ? I might have been.
Re:This is a joke (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody who is serious about audio production attempts to sync two audio interfaces without an explicit sample clock (aka "word clock") sync connection. Whether this is done implicitly, as is possible with firewire based interfaces, or via an additional coax cable with suitable termination on a PCI card doesn't matter: you don't get sync out of two separate clocks without resampling, which is the enemy. You can even take out your soldering iron if you want and run a wire between two el-cheapo consumer inter
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree, but this article didn't really inform me (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the premise of this article: Linux is a perfectly good platform for digital audio creation and editing. It might even be better than a Mac, depending on how you weigh different pros and cons. But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
As someone who's done some published research on audio latency/jitter issues in a former life, I'm also somewhat annoyed by how much these sorts of articles focus on tech like JACK and low-latency kernel patches. This used to be a huge issue, but I suspect it shouldn't be nearly as high up anyone's priority list as it used to be--- back in the 2.4.x. series kernels, when the default kernel's clock tick used 10ms granularity and scheduling was flaky, it made a much bigger difference. Today, I suspect this sort of behind-the-scenes performance is only infrequently the bottleneck in anyone's audio performance; when I see actual glitches in performances, they can often be fixed by much more boring scheduling tweaks like "nice -19" on the processes that are bottlenecks in the audio path, or finding bugs in how you're setting up your callbacks.
In any case, these days I see JACK as useful mainly for being a reasonably well supported audio-app-interconnection bus; as he says, the Core Audio of the Linux world. But that doesn't make it hugely unique either.
So I guess I'm in the weird position where I agree with the article's conclusions, and some of its specific points, but overall if I didn't already agree with it, this article wouldn't have sold me on why Linux is great for audio editing. Sorry. :/
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
Yes, that's all he mentions. Never once does he mention price. Nope. Well, perhaps vaguely here:
A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadn't come along and spawn a price-wars on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt.
But he certainly doesn't mention it here:
The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer -- a far cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple.
Or here:
Not only was the expense of owning and maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to me.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, that's fair. I suppose what I really wanted to read was an argument about why Linux is particularly well-suited to audio, which I think it is. But an argument that it's "good enough, and cheap" is, as you point out, also legit.
Ubuntu studio?? (Score:4, Interesting)
BFD (Score:2, Funny)
I stopped caring at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
What, you wanted Linux support for a Fender Twin Reverb?
Re:BFD (Score:4, Funny)
The article doesn't mention it, but Linux laptops are actually just as good as Macs for acoustic guitarists, too.
Similar story (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to produce with Cubase VST/32 on OS9, which was an environment I enjoyed working in. When OS9 was abandoned and my mac died I continued with VST/32 on Windows2000, but it wasn't the same. Neither were the new versions of Cubase on OSX.
My biggest problem with this situation was my old projects were stuck in this archaic format with nowhere to go. Since then I've moved to Ardour on Ubuntu, I find the environment is even better than before and tools like Hydrogen are great. Best of all is Jack, there's nothing like it.
Linux audio is good and it's only going to get better, the price of the software isn't relevant in this assessment, only quality.
What he fails to mention in his article... (Score:3, Insightful)
...is that all his music creating can be summed up in him cutting and playing back audio samples with various effects on it - there is no actual sequencing or other advanced music creation involved.
Had there been, I'd say, with many years experience as a composer, that this article would not be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I noticed that too. There's not really any composition or...well, anything, really. I guess that if you're not doing anything really hard, it works OK.
I'll stick to Reason and Live though.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thank you. That's what I noticed as well. Yes, anything can do that, because all you're really doing is the same crap that you used to do on rackmount samplers back in the 80s. If a modern computer--even a netbook--can't handle that, we have problems.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Had there been, I'd say, with many years experience as a composer, that this article would not be.
Thanks for the hardest sentence I've ever had to parse.
I can do it for even less! (Score:3, Insightful)
I could certainly do it for under $500 with a good used MacBook. Does that make the $600 for the refurbished old-school Dell system "more expensive"?
Nothing beats Reaper! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is not the first time I've heard that you can't beat the reaper.
Re:Nothing beats Reaper! (Score:5, Interesting)
sounds like a bundling opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like some enterprising individual could start putting together cheaper-than-dirt Ubuntu-based music machines by buying Dell Studio laptops (with Microsoft license rebate, naturally) and preloading everything necessary.
The complaint from non-geeks about Linux is you have to do it yourself. If you didn't have to do it yourself, and it really was that cheap, it becomes a lot more interesting.
Come on, let's be honest here... (Score:5, Insightful)
This dude is not exactly producing musical scores using his Ubuntu rig. I mean, seriously... go check out some of the stuff on his store [anechoicmedia.com] and you'll see why (examples):
Reaching Dark Stations
Recorded in Regina, Saskatchewan in 2007 at the Neutral Ground Gallery:::industrial factory sounds filtered through a turbine jet engine::Play loud, play often:::Statistically Improbable Phrases
30 minutes of sputtering modems and hacked sparking mainframes; the sound of technology gone awry mixed with submariner dark station dronescapes; briny chains scraping against the hulls of rusted ships. Recorded live in Paris at Instant Chavires
In short, he doesn't need the type of precision and accuracy provided by higher-end hardware and/or custom interfaces and plugins that one would need for 'serious' music (yes, I went there), so he can get away with using Ubuntu. After all, it's just 'bleepy shit' anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly, linux or not, the build in sound card on almost all PC's is utter crap, filled with buzzing squeaks from the internal PC switching power supplies.
This guy wouldn't notice. Try recording a nice acoustic guitar sound with a good mic..
This alone means you need some decent quiet soundcard, and it then has to talk with linux audio drivers..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
(yes, I went there)
Someone had to.
I've actually made "music" like this before. It is a hell of a lot easier than making actual music, where you have musicians and machines that all have to work together, and you need it to actually sound like something at the end. If your chain scrape sound comes in 500ms too late, no one will notice. Any instrument, though, and it is dicking around in editing or recording that again or whatever.
Music is hard work. Any fool with a Linux box can make "atmospheric" crap.
But with Disappointing Authoring Software? (Score:4, Interesting)
Kim mentions the use of free audio production software, such as Audacity, as substitutes for commercial offerings. While an Audacity user is more than welcome to dive into the code base and make needed improvements, not every user has the time and/or ability to do such. In my estimation, neither Audacity 1.3.7 nor Audacity 1.2.6 are stable enough to be considered "professional-quality" software. I am not trying to insult the developers and their abilities -- they have a complex project on their hands. But Audacity's graphical interface has serious and repeatable bugs; Audacity's sound export facilities reliably adds spurious noise to sound. I admire Kim's decision to use Ubuntu as an audio workstation, but I don't think Kim has been forthcoming about sacrifices in software quality that a user must make to do so. Kim can easily translate most audio programming done in Max/MSP (the commercial environment he has worked with extensively) to the public domain environment "pd" -- but as an experienced user of both systems there are more functionality loses than gains moving from the commercial Max/MSP/Jitter environment to pd (Pure Data).
If the cost of an Apple system and the higher cost of outfitting it with professional quality audio production and performance software are bankrupting a musician, then I can see the logic of using an Ubuntu system at this time. Otherwise, I still believe the adage "you get what you pay for" applies. However, I believe with effort from open source audio developers an Ubuntu audio workstation with both cost and quality advantages is more than possible. The bugs I am seeing in Audacity today remind me of the bugs I saw in the comparable commercial application "Peak" ten years ago.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
However, since I moved my own production setup to Linux, I've found that I rely even less on software than I did under Win/Mac, and more on hardware and open standards. The hardware I buy is more expensive, but it's Linux com
Linux won't make it for audio (Score:2)
Kim Cascone switched! (Score:2)
Wow! Kim Cascone! THE Kim Cascone! Why, we were just talking about him...
Oh wait, actually I have absolutely no idea who this guy is. Why do I care? I take it we're going to be finding random "I switched from OS xxx to OS yyy" stories on Slashdot now?
Re: (Score:2)
Actual he has done some good stuff with the talking heads and HeadSpace, Thomas Dolby's studio.
He is a hardcore music guy that know his chops. This is why it is interesting that he switched to Linux; which ahs notorious issues regarding music.
It's not like some garage band decided to use Linux to save bucks.
I wish there was more real information. I would love to see a Slashdot interview about this guys set-up.
As a musician (Score:4, Interesting)
Once this hurdle has been reached, I am all for whatever open source audio stuff comes my way. I use currently Audacity for editing samples and quick n' dirty recording. Audacity WORKS but it's interface is mediocre at best and if you want ASIO support you have to download an unsupported patch to get it.
Applications are everything (Score:2)
There is no doubt that Ubuntu notebook would be somewhat cheaper than Apple hardware of comparable specs. Although, your own comparison is terribly flawed by choosing refurbished and low end Dell laptop compared to high-end Macbook Pro. Regular MacBooks can be had in the ballpark of $1K and refurbished one might well be available for $600.
But a bigger problem is comparison between Linux open source and commercial audio apps for OSX. Apparently you are both a geek and a music guy and can manage fine. For on
Linux is well... (Score:3, Funny)
By the time I get it running I have to update the kernel again and that broke the drivers all over again.
So Sorry I'm saving up and buying the tools that have already been proven to work.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm convinced Linux is about the process of Getting It To Work, not about Working With It. I really think that its a hobby unto itself to say you "made it work" without actually getting any substantial use out of it or looking at the dozens and dozens of hours that went into getting even that far.
I've been doing this for years in Linux... (Score:2)
cat /dev/urandom > /dev/audio
No need for a fancy Dell either, it works just fine with any soundcard, and I bet it sounds a lot like whatever this dude's doing (maybe even better).
Try it sometime!
Ubuntu Studio (Score:2)
Like most people, all of my Linux experiences are seen through the filter of whatever distro I'm using. When I wanted to try out music production on Linux, I installed Ubuntu Studio 9.04.
My experience was bitter-sweet:
So sadly, I didn't even get as far as seriously critiquing the apps. It's a pity, because there seems to be
What a waste of effort (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a musician, and... (Score:5, Insightful)
...you must be kiddin'!
First of all, Linux is not the guilty one for not providing software for musicians. It is the developers of the software, like Apple, Steinberg, Propellerheads and Native Instruments, to name a few big ones.
Second, without all that Software. And I mean specifically that software, it is literally impossible to create the wanted sound on a Linux platform.
My setup is nearly 100% software (with a set of MIDI devices and a powerful sound card), and includes Cubase, Reason, Reaktor, Absynth, DR-008, and pretty much every Software from Native Instruments. And that is only the base. You also have to add a ton of specific plug-ins. E.g. for reverbs using impulse responses, or very specific filters to create the sound of a vintage synth.
You can not ever possibly recreate this under Linux, without it becoming a main platform for music production, so that those companies port their software. Which of course is a vicious circle.
But if Steinberg alone would port their VST platform Cubase onto Linux (Don't tell me about using it in Wine. I tried it. For real songs with dozens of tracks. It's a total joke. And I don't even mean the latency.), the circle could be broken.
So please stop with your dreamy dreams from wannabe professional musicians telling me how they were able to create a simple four-track audio song with some amateur FX plugged in. Because it has nothing to do with even my semi-professional work.
P.S.: I may sound angrier than I am. In fact I really *really* wish I could help with some big thing, like persuade Steinberg.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
...you must be kiddin'!
First of all, Linux is not the guilty one for not providing software for musicians. It is the developers of the software, like Apple, Steinberg, Propellerheads and Native Instruments, to name a few big ones.
Software is only half of the problem. Imagine Cubase ported to Linux -- all well and good, but the support for multi-channel professional-quality interfaces doesn't exist. And without the I/O, you have nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
...which is exactly why Linux users tend to have better-looking studios: They buy nice hardware and stay out of software-only land. Anyway, have fun in Reason; I'm off to buy a Roland synth... -Former Reason user, with a bunch of useless commercial ReFills sitting around
Software is far more flexible than hardware, and you can do things in software that are impossible in hardware. All your hardware is useless if you have no I/O. Not to mention that software is orders of magnitude cheaper than hardware for processing, blowing away any cost benefit you had from switching to Linux. Serious studios have both software and hardware, as they both have their advantages. Please tell me one serious studio that uses Linux, I would be very interested in hearing about it, but I would
Jack, Ardour, jamin and jazz (Score:5, Interesting)
I just finished recording and producing a jazz album using Project CCRMA hosted on Fedora. The recording through to the final mastering were all done using linux. Having read his article I was surprised to find he hadn't mastered his production using Jamin which, when used in combination with Ardour and Jack, gives the type of control over the production process I've not seen duplicated using a Mac (Windows is not capable at all in this regard). I suppose though that is the workflow he is used to.
The innovation is what it means to the production process. There is no mixdown to a 24bit 44.1Khz stereo track prior to mastering and you can render your tracks through the mastering software into the final tracks and tweak automation artifacts instead of compromising by using equalisation. Sure you still equalise but you end up doing less as you can refer back to the master if there is a problem and fix it there. Plus you have better control over (audio gain) compression to reduce transients and maintain dynamic range in the final product.
The bands that listen to my recording are amazed at the results (well my recording techniques *ahem* do play some part :-) and some asked me if it was done on analogue equipment - which is quite a compliment. The thing is sure, it's not perfect and sometimes frustrating because the your hardware is often pushed to it's limit, you find bugs you have to adjust your work flow around but simply put I don't think the capability *exists* anywhere else.
I've been using it since 2003 and have seen the foundation laid down by Alsa and Jack projects continually refined. Often the criticism is made that 'linux copies this or that' but after comparing it to existing processes it seems to me that audio production under Linux is on the leading edge of technology as the framework for innovation in music production.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not familiar with Jamin. I've looked over their site, but I'm still not entirely clear what functionality this gives you that Windows can't accomplish (I've never used a Mac for music, so I can't comment with regard to that platform).
As far as I can see, it's a mastering suite, and you particularly like the fact that you don't have to mix down to a stereo file before mastering. This is the same workflow that I follow by adding Waves plugins to the master bus in a Sonar project in Windows.
I'm not dissing
Mac or iPod is still a better choice (Score:3, Interesting)
I know Linux has its appeal, but this is frankly ridiculous. At best it is a stunt. At worst it is a complete waste of time.
It's like recommending Windows for a Web server. Yes, you can get a Web server up and running on Windows. But why? You can get a free modern Linux or BSD for the same hardware and it is not only 98% set up for you already, but when you deploy it to the Web it will do the job much better. Thousands or perhaps millions of people were there in Linux or BSD land before you, optimizing those systems in innumerable ways to be a better Web server. When you set up a Web server on Linux, you stand on the shoulders of giants from the first moment. It's that way also when you set up a music and audio workstation using a Mac. It's not just that the hardware and software is optimized for the task over years and decades, it's that the relevant community is there now and has been there for many years. There are a million benefits to that. Enough music and audio -related technical problems have been solved already on the Mac that you can work on your musical problems and audio problems without having to stop to do technical or I-T work.
If you buy any stock Mac and add no 3rd party hardware and software, you already have a better music and audio system than anything you can build with Linux. You will get all these for free with the Mac, already setup and working: GarageBand (music and audio workstation based on Logic), CoreAudio (multichannel pro audio subsystem that supports simultaneous use of multiple 32-bit/192kHz audio hardware as well as multiple pro audio software apps), CoreMIDI (ultra low-latency MIDI subsystem with compatibility with all MIDI devices), QuickTime (backbone of digital media production for 20 years now and the basis of the MPEG-4 standard that replaced the CD and DVD), and iTunes (which is scriptable on the Mac, so you can, for example, create a script that stamps arbitrary tracks with all of your own artist info). The software you get with the Mac is worth the price of the Mac; the hardware is free. If you try and replicate this functionality on another system, you will spend the price of the Mac just attempting to do it. Further, every Mac except MacBook Air has built-in 24-bit optical digital audio in and out, as well as analog audio in and out. So you don't even have to buy audio hardware to make a decent 24-bit recording. A Mac mini is $599 and it has all of this already setup and working to very high specifications and can share the Linux system's display if you already have a Linux system. It's small enough to travel. It has a FireWire 800 port to hook onto an audio interface or fast hard disk. It backs up all your work automatically, including versioning, if you just give it access to a second disk. It can play 24-bit audio in any context, even within 3rd party apps such as MS Word that are not audio-related.
If you do want to add hardware or software to the Mac, there are about 10 digital audio workstations for the Mac, some of which go back to the 1980's (e.g. Logic Pro used to be called Notator back then) and you can run 2 or more simultaneously and share hardware also. You can not only plug in pretty much any pro audio interface, you can plug in 10 of them at once if you want and they will all work simultaneously. You can plug in any MIDI instrument. There are dozens of highly creative Mac-only music and audio apps like MetaSynth which simply don't exist on other platforms. And if you are doing any soundtrack work, the fact that the Mac is the best video editing platform will benefit you in many small and large ways.
Even the iPod can do better than this Linux system when it comes to music. You can buy an iPod touch for $229, and an app called "FourTrack" for $9.99 more and you have a 4-track recorder and player with multitouch transport controls, pan pots, and faders. A key thing is that with multitouch, you are essentially working with a little hardware mixer. You can drag 2 sliders down at once, for example, so you can do an awful lot on stage with
Re:I know this guy... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I know this guy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I actually find it interesting, considering that a few years ago you often had to go through hell just to get anything to come out of the sound card using linux.
On the other hand, many still do have trouble getting anything to get out of their sound card on Linux. I agree that the story is "interesting," but those of us serious Linux users will have to admit that the audio situation here is far from ideal, to put it positively. Alsa.... pulse.... awful. Compound this with the noticeable lack of good software and drivers for audio production equipment, and I will have to admit that the vast majority of professional audio people are much better of staying with Apple at the moment.
Re:I know this guy... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
There's your problem right there. I'm not going to pretend that I don't have problems upgrading Gentoo, but at least I don't have unsolvable mystery bugs caused by release incompatibility.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux Sound Support (Score:5, Informative)
Many people have problems with sound in Linux. The situation is certainly less than ideal. However, on most computers, sound in Linux works flawlessly. If you have problem with sound in Linux, you are part of the exception, rather than the rule.
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Half the time it's the chipset manufacturer's fault, too. For example, Realtek pretends to support Linux and even has public datasheets (to some extent), but some of their chips only half-work or don't work at all if you stick to the published specifications. Turns out you need to perform some magical undocumented actions to get them to behave correctly. Don't bother asking their "linux guy" (he's even listed at the top of the driver in the Linux kernel), he'll just waste your time.
I had an issue with their ALC889 chipset, which I described to him in technical detail (such and such portions of the chip don't work, even when there's no way this could happen going by the spec, which I can prove because I've tested this and this). He wasted two weeks of my time throwing random revisions of the driver .c file at me that just added pin-configuration support for other motherboards and laptops (none of which were my laptop, and which is totally irrelevant to the issue as I described it, as I know how to test and determine the platform-specific pinouts and had already nailed mine). Eventually I gave up and manually brute-forced every single bit of their proprietary registers until I came up with the magic ones to make the chip behave.
Problems getting *any* sound to come out are quite often the result of proprietary platforms and chipsets with poor support. Software issues with mixing and incompatibilities with applications are an entirely different issue - those can indeed be attributed to the rather crazy state of linux audio.
Re:Did you document this? (Score:5, Informative)
I blogged [marcansoft.com] about it and submitted the patches to the ALSA tree. It should hit mainline eventually (I'm not sure how often they sync up with ALSA).
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people have problems with sound in Linux. The situation is certainly less than ideal. However, on most computers, sound in Linux works flawlessly. If you have problem with sound in Linux, you are part of the exception, rather than the rule.
That depends on how you define "works." I agree that most people who install something like Ubuntu will get sound working without fuss. My main beefs with audio on Linux are with some terrible design decisions along the entire sound stack. For example, ALSA (ditching OSS completely) was a bad idea. PulseAudio is a good idea for some (very few) specific situations, but it doesn't belong as the fixture it has been made by several of the common distributions. It solves problems nobody knew they had only to introduce other important problems (i.e. latency).
I'm not discouraged at all by the audio situation on Linux. Like you said, it mostly works (setting aside audio production concerns). There are a lot of problems, though, and the best solutions may require some hurt egos. That's always a tough thing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
PulseAudio is good unless, as I do, you need low-latency audio for digital audio work.
JACK, while an admirable idea, is currently a shit popsicle in terms of usefulness in this area. I have a Dell Studio 15 much like the article author's and ran Ubuntu 9.04 in an attempt to try out Linux for digital audio. Ardour and Rosegarden were okay (though nowhere near as useful as Ableton Live or Propellerhead Reason), but the problems with JACK were just way too much for me to fuck with. ASIO under Windows is optima
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:5, Informative)
I have gotten practically inaudible latencies from jack. The critical detail is to make it output directly to the ALSA hardware device (hw:0, usually). Having it go through dmix (which tends to be the default ALSA output device) kills your latency because it has to go through the mixing buffer.
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:4, Interesting)
OSS has been dead for over a decade. It can't cope with multi-channel sound cards properly because it tries to treat *everything* as a stereo pair. It's got a fairly awful API, too - how did they manage to make it overcomplicated *and* too simple to be useful at the same time?
I think you might be referring to the deprecated OSS version that had been included in the Linux kernel. There is a much newer version which is argued by some to be better than ALSA in both its API and performance.
Re:Linux Sound Support (Score:4, Insightful)
OSS4 (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12200#12200 [4front-tech.com]
It fixed all my problems with sound, anyway.
Re:I know this guy... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish the article's server hadn't been slashdotted, because I would love to know which professional digital audio adapter he's using, where he got the drivers, and whether he uses jack or not.
Every time a new Ubuntu studio comes out, I install it on a PC workstation in my studio to see if finally I can use Linux for digital music production, and every time I am disappointed by the way Linux talks to my audio gear. In Windows, I can use ASIO or WDM drivers and get professional-quality results, low latency, etc in Reaper. Apple uses SoundDriver for Logic. But Linux? All I've been able to find is jack, and for a professional, it doesn't do jack. There always seems to be problems with my MIDI gear, too, but that's gotten better in the past year.
Still, Reaper, using its ReMote technology allows me to offload certain things on to a Linux box via ethernet, such as rendering and effects processing, and that's a huge help, allowing me to use more real-time effects on more tracks. And, of course, my Linux box is absolutely key for streaming samples and other stored data to my digital audio workstation.
But using Linux as a main machine for music production? Not yet as of February. I plan on reading this article, though, as soon as you slashdotters give the server a breather, to find out what this guy's doing. Maybe it's finally time. I may not yet be ready to give up my Mac Pro and custom-built windows workstation for music production yet, but I look forward to being able to use Linux on a music project, start-to-finish.
Re:I know this guy... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm the editor of CDM and also run our servers. (apparently not terribly well, though I am in the middle of a migration to a new server config -- should've, uh, waited on this story!)
I'd like to get more data on hardware, too, and I'm curious what's been giving you trouble. I regularly see various problems on all three platforms, though I agree Linux is probably the least familiar and needs information dissemination most urgently (at least for music production).
While I'm waiting and restarting Apache (cough), some of the things folks are claiming here seem to be misinformed. That's not necessarily their fault; it illustrates that better documentation is needed, and simply pointing people to audio-centric distros I think is not enough.
For driver support -- RME fills the pro audio gap nicely if you're looking at the high end; they're the ones that are really doing it right. You'll also have good luck with any class-compliant USB audio interface. I'm getting good results out of a Cakewalk SPS-25 (basically equivalent to an Edirol UA-25). FireWire support is greatly improved, and you can check there at ffado.org. Most internal chipsets are also well-supported by ALSA - not a high-end option, true, but it means you can mix something on the road listening to the headphone jack without having to muck about with something like ASIO4ALL on PC.
Software: it's true there isn't much in the way of Linux-*only* software, but not that you don't have choices. Renoise and energyXT now both run natively, Renoise being a huge deal to fans of trackers. And many Windows apps can run better under WINE, with ALSA, WINEASIO, and JACK, than they do on Windows. That's the reason Native Instruments software can run on the MUSE Receptor, specialized hardware that runs Linux and WINE under the hood. It's solid enough that it winds up being preferable for people to buy that hardware over a laptop - yes, even over a Mac laptop. You probably won't get that kind of reliability out of a Linux setup out of the box, really, regardless of distro. But if you can set it up in a way that will be rock-solid, that could be worth the time for people.
I think that's the bottom line: a lot of people would be happy to invest a little extra time and effort to get an open system running. The problem is, they don't know how. The responses here demonstrate that people aren't aware of what some of their choices are, or have had (understandable) frustration because the distros ship out-of-box in a way that doesn't quite work, and there's not much clear documentation to tell you how to fix it.
ALSA isn't perfect, but neither is Core Audio, let alone ASIO. ALSA combined with JACK can be an exceptionally-terrific audio system for these applications.
So, I can make you a deal - I will put more of that information online, *and* fix our servers, too, so you can actually read it. ;)
Re:I know this guy... (Score:4, Interesting)
ReNoise is clever, and fun, but not a pro tracker. If I'm going to have to use Wine, why wouldn't I just use the operating system that those apps work in natively?
I'm not sure how you can compare ALSA with ASIO. I don't know all the under the hood stuff, but I have never had a problem with ASIO. I've never had to fiddle to get it working, and the performance is terrific. I go back to the days when I'd have to shift entire tracks to the left after recording just to line up the beats. I don't have to do that any more, thanks to technologies like ASIO, WDM, etc.
I use RME hardware since the Hammerfall v1.0, and whenever I've tried Ubuntu, it's always been with RME hardware. Mostly because there just aren't any drivers for most of my other audio hardware. I've got an old MOTU box around here somewhere, adn I've heard that they've released Linux drivers, too. I know there's no drivers for my Apogee gear.
Finally, as you know, when you're using a digital audio workstation, the main app is key. Programs like Logic, Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Sonar, and the others are much more than just "trackers". They're multi-track digital recorders, mixing matrices, virtual instrument platforms, digital audio editors, mastering suites and more, besides being "trackers". I am encouraged by Cockos' Reaper and their very decent port to Linux, but beyond that, there simply isn't a professional-quality application available that runs natively in Linux. Did I mention effects? I've got a palette of effects, virtual instruments and more that use Steinberg's VST or DirectX or Apple's AudioUnits. Without those, I'm hamstrung. I bet there's a way to use wine for VST or maybe even DirectX, and someday when I have lots of free time, I might decide that taking the time to learn to use those effects and VIs in Wine instead of the OS for which they were written is time well spent. I have to balance the desire to see Linux become a useful platform for soup to nuts music production with the desire to be productive right now. Life is short, unfortunately, and inspiration is fleeting, by its nature.
I am constantly writing letters of encouragement to both audio hardware and software manufacturers trying to get them to port their products to Linux. I guess enough time has passed since my last attempt with Ubuntu Studio that I ought to give it another go. I want it to work. I'll make sure to read the article on your server before I get started. Thanks for working hard to get it back up after what must have been a deluge of Slashdot readers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, Peter Kirn, I now have Ubuntu Studio running on this 3 year old Dell Workstation, and ALSA and Jack and ReNoise. It wasn't tricky at all to set up, although I did have some trouble getting the mappings straight from my MIDI controller (although that happens on Windows a lot, too). I'm having some serious fun at the moment getting to know the ReNoise interface, and I just wanted you to know that I credit you with an assist. I'm planning a music project that's going to be written, recorded, mixed, rend
sort of (Score:3, Insightful)
Configuring audio on Linux can be tricky, but that mostly affects casual users. If you're a professional audio user, you need to fiddle around a lot to set things up on any platform, and Linux is no harder than other platforms.
I think the point is that this kind of work has gone from "hard" to "feasible" on Linux. And in some areas, Linux actually has significant advantages of OS X, so that Linux now is a platform worth considering.
(Personally, I wouldn't dream of doing any kind of audio work on OS X anym
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Audio support is fine. Music making support OTOH is abysmal. The article correctly points out that sound recording, editing and mixing is fine on Linux. The heavyweight music creation tools just don't exist and many of the top-end hardware interfaces simply don't have Linux drivers.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The heavyweight music creation tools don't exist because a) there's not much of a market for them on Linux because; b) Audio support is most definitely not fine.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
they don't want to shepherd some high-maintenance bird around that has to be hacked ...
Shepherding birds?
Flocking hell. Forget beowulf clusters, imagine a bevy of quails! ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, what the hell does Kim Cascone know about producing music?
Look up Kim Cascone.. oh, quite a lot actually. Hmm a seasoned veteran with serious chops? That's actually worth looking into, to bad the article is shit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Well, what about LMMS? (Score:4, Informative)
There's lots of software that is pretty much exactly like GarageBand.
Cakewalk [cakewalk.com] - Sonar
Propellerhead [propellerheads.se] - Reason
Steinberg [steinberg.net] - Cubase
Magix [magix.com] - Samplitude
Image-Line [image-line.com] - FL Studio ... can even do most, if not all of what GarageBand does.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Thank you. yes, the site is slashdotted so I can't get to it right now :/
On that first link on jackaudio.org there were resources for tons of things!
I am still curious how one might produce with it if there isn't much for pro-audio hardware that directly connects with linux... by that I mean multiple input channels analog/digital, etc.