Linux Audio Developers Conference 267
paulbd writes "This weekend sees the first Linux audio developers
conference at
ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. Gathering together many members of the
Linux Audio Developers mailing list and others, the conference will feature 2 days of in-depth technical presentations and demonstrations of many
cutting
edge Linux
audio and
MIDI
applications." Desktoplinux.com has a related story about using Linux in a professional recording studio.
Where is the stream ? (Score:3, Interesting)
This all appears to be text, are they streaming the presentations, which would make sense at a conference like this ?
Re:Where is the stream ? (Score:4, Informative)
between ~ 2 P.M. and 9 P.M. on both days) is available at these LiveIce
servers:
x http://plugin.org.uk:2300/liveice (currently set to max. 50 clients)
x http://politik.uni-duisburg.de:2300/liveice (max. 20 clients)
As posted to the linux-audio-developers mailing list.
LADC? (Score:5, Funny)
could be big (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps this Conference can identify and deal with such issues as:
1. High Latency when performing other tasks such as opening windows or moving windows around. This leads to stutters in Audio and MP3 Playback.
2. Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware. Realistically, although most people use SB AWE64 and SB Live! sound cards, most Professionals use newer cards and many new computers have other cards. Linux is not compatible with hardware that is newer, cheaper or more expensive.
3. Poor feature support for Linux, because it is good support for features such as 3D Sound and MIDI Music playback.
4. Best Stability on Linux audio drivers. Other Operating Systems have drivers that crash less for Audio Hardware. Linux is a very much more stable Operating System in most respects, but the lack of stability in audio drivers is Irritating.
If these issues can be addressed then Linux could be a top quality audio platform!
Re:could be big (Score:4, Informative)
This is definitely being fixed in Linux 2.6. Between the new O(1) scheduler and the recent patches for interactivity, this SHOULD go away completely.
Re:could be big (Score:5, Informative)
pop along to kernel.org and get a 2.5 kernel. Oh, and make sure your graphics card is accelerated.
'Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware', wait till Mac becomes #3, also I think it's easier to write drivers for 2.5/6.
'Poor feature support for Linux', go get alsa (or 2.5 since it has alsa in the kernel tree).
'Best Stability on Linux audio drivers', now this is where you can help, since you want 1 2 and 3 why not goto kernel.org, get a 2.5 kernel, do some testing and report the bugs in the kernel bugzilla.
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Redundant)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:2)
Just to reiterate some of your points, I don't even see Apple and Linux as competitors, but as siblings in the larger scheme of things. People that buy Apple's use their computers for different things that most people who run Linux. Sure, there will always be the oddballs who try to shoe-horn Linux (or windows) into every nook and cranny without ever thinking that there may be a BETTER solution around. Maybe it's due to cost-analysis, but chances are it's some "zealot" determined to make headway into the market by forcing his OS of choice onto some hapless corporation.
For example, take the article that all this is spawned from. What happens if Mr. Linux decides to leave the company? Will the company know to email Mandrake if they have problems? Will they be able to find another competent Linux audio-geared admin? What will they do when something goes wrong and he's not there to fix it? Face it, people, there's not a whole lot of competent Linux admins around who would be intimate with the Linux environment. They might be lucky to find someone, maybe. (just a note: this isn't necessarily a bad thing, you have to start somewhere. If one person can do it, well, another can surely learn it, too).
Another issue I have with the article is, just exactly what does the author's studio produce? I thought Broadcast 2000 went away and was a video product? The article was too vague on specifics for me to take too seriously. What applications DOES he run (he listed a few) and how does he manage his workflow with them? I'm not knocking the idea, it's just that when I read about how Linux has replaced "windows" in the workplace, I want to know what it replaced, what shortcomings were overcome by finding a different tool, etc. What kind of audio hardware was being used? SBLive's are a vastly different beast than the "pro" cards.
Re: Wait Until Mac is #3?? (Score:2)
That's quite amusing. Pretty much every audio app I've ever tried invented it's own utterly non standard GUI, sometimes just for the hell of it. If you'd done any real audio work, you'd know that ALL the main sequencers and plugins for them are full of GUIs skinned to look like sequencer racks, knobs (literally), bitmapped keypads and so on.
You know what? I never, ever, hear pro audio guys whining about how Cubase VST doesn't always use the standard widget toolkit of the OS, or how their soft synth is skinned to look like a rack mount.
So, you are the one talking "Bull Fucking Shit", not only is GUI consistancy way way overrated, but there's even a great deal of evidence these days that Apple couldn't give a rats ass about GUI consistancy - it's own apps regularly invent their own widgets, even duplicating the standard ones (which of course introduces bizarre ui quirks). Don't even go near the font preview pane, or .. dare I say it ... brushed metal.
So if you're going to try the "Linux will never make it on the desktop because the widgets look different" line, at least try and sound credible about it. Maybe some people seriously care about this. Pro audio people clearly do not.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
-----
Sound whirrrrrrrrrrrsupport is one (crakcle)area where Linux akkkkpwhas consistly trailed more ptoo ptoo ptooimportant Operatin Systemshack hack such as Microsoft Windows pukpupupkkupuand Macintosh OS. Where thosewhirrrrrrrr systems have had Professional quality supportckckckckckckc for Professional quality hardware that whirrrrrrrrrrrrworks well, Linuxkkkkkkk has been stuck (snappoofbang)in the backgroundpokopokop.
I've had much better luck with OSS (although latency sucks) than ALSA. Also, what's the deal with ALSA not being able to handle 4 or 5 channel cards? That's like a 3d graphics card with the prereq of 2.5 d only.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
I wish Linux supported my Yamaha sound cards, Yamaha aren't interested in Linux drivers as I have asked them before. Something about giving away secrets of their chips etc.. bah.
I'm voting with my wallet...
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Re:could be big (Score:2)
The codecs on both my cards are not Yamaha designs, so could have some driver written, it's the control ASICs that they wish to keep secret.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Re:could be big (Score:2)
mumbles somethign about stupid 20 second limit...
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Re:could be big (Score:2)
This reason alone means I need a Windows box for music, or a Mac which I can't afford. I only need a spare motherboard to build up a music computer or a spare mortgage to get a decent Mac
Re:could be big (Score:4, Informative)
I don't have any problem with this on my Athlon XP 1800+ running Gentoo Linux. Although I did have some problems with these on my old Mandrake 8.1-based AMD K6/2 400, the problems were *more* pronounced in Windows 98 and Windows 2000 on the same hardware than they were in Mandrake.
Now I'm not sure whether the lack of these problems is due to Gentoo's high-level of optimization or my faster processor, but I suspect it's some combination of the two.
I paid less than $600 for the components to build the Athlon box last year.
Poor compatibility with Professional and New hardware. Realistically, although most people use SB AWE64 and SB Live! sound cards, most Professionals use newer cards and many new computers have other cards. Linux is not compatible with hardware that is newer, cheaper or more expensive.
I don't know about higher-end hardware than the SB AWE64 and SB Live! cards, but you say that Linux doesn't work with hardware that's cheaper. I say sure it is. The aforementioned Athlon has integrated SiS 7018-based sound hardware that works absolutely fine and has 100% functionality with ALSA.
Best Stability on Linux audio drivers. Other Operating Systems have drivers that crash less for Audio Hardware. Linux is a very much more stable Operating System in most respects, but the lack of stability in audio drivers is Irritating
I've never had any audio driver crash on Linux, but then again I've only used 3 different drivers so what do I know?
Stability still a minor problem (Score:2)
However, one of these was a bad port on an SBLive! card. The kernel would hang when the ALSA driver was insmod'ed for this card. The same card on a Windows 2000 machine would NOT hang the machine -- the bad port just didn't work.
Now, I can see both sides of an argument here regarding whether drivers should accommodate hardware which is actually broken (rather than just poorly designed). If I didn't use that port, I'd have never know w/ Windows that the card was bad.
Re:Stability still a minor problem (Score:2)
Now, a RAID driver should definitely work with a broken a hard drive -- but it should report that error immediately, of course, giving the administrator ample opportunity to replace the bad drive.
Re:could be big (Score:5, Insightful)
Conflicts between sound servers. Under Windows and MacOS, I have no idea what the counterparts to Arts, OSS and ESD are, no idea whether there's a single one or if different servers can easily be run concurrently. And there's no reason why I should have to have any idea.
It's absurd that there should be work involved if I want to play MP3's or streams with xmms AND CD's with the KDE player.
No doubt someone is going to tell me that if I don't know the fine points of sound servers, I don't deserve to have sound on my computer. Let me save you same time and preemptively reject that notion.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Re:could be big (Score:4, Informative)
Last time I checked up on this (a few weeks ago) there was a big discussion going on kde-multimedia about this very issue. KDE is really the key point here, as now GNOME is moving to GStreamer they are basically isolated from what sound server is used.
The main sticking points seemed to be: JACK is cool for pro audio, but doesn't have network transparency and is Linux only. aRts just blows goats, and needs to be phased out. MAS == Unknown?? GStreamer is being blocked by a few developers who aren't happy with GObject. Then there's this thing called CSL which is supposed to wrap the whole mess up into YAAA (yet another audio api).
Basically, the situation is highly confused, and I don't know if we'll get anything good out of it :(
Oh, and just to make things even more fun, it seems that at some point ALSA may get the ability to route its audio via JACK, so apps that are unaware of the sound server in use could end up being mixed by JACK.
Personally I'd favour JACK (or Jack) here, because firstly it's been designed by the linux audio community for low latency etc, so clearly real audio apps will be using it. Having to switch sound servers because you want to fire up a sample editor is stupid. Secondly, it's light and small enough to be accepted by most people, ie it's not a CORBA driven multimedia framework.
The main problem seems to be lack of network transparency, which isn't really of great concern to most users at this time and could be added to Jack anyway.....
Re:could be big (Score:2)
So does FreeBSD. They have virtual devices in /dev called /dev/dsp.{1..n} (for all the channels), and /dev/dsp just takes which ever one's free. In-kernel sound multiplexing. Is that cool or what. No matter what your desktop uses (arts, esd, whatever) it will always work.
Of course your audio card must support it. One card at least that I know off that can do it are the ESS/Maestro type cards.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
In kernel mixing is where the kernel actually does the mixing calculations itself. That functionality doesn't actually need to be in the kernel, so they don't want it there.
Anyway, this is all moot, it seems that the ALSA guys have come up with a way to use direct writes to the soundcards DSP buffer to do software mixing. Maybe sound servers will just fade into obscurity?
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Additionally it will not resample for you, so if applications have sound data at a sample rate other than the rate JACK is running at, the application must be able to resample internally.
I want to see a standard sound server as much as anyone else, but I don't think JACK (in its current form) is ready to fill that role. The question is whether someone will step up to accomplish the difficult task of retaining JACK's high performance while also making it simpler to use for less demanding users.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
It's weird though, I can do all that, but if I load a page that uses flash, and I'm recording at the time, I get a kernel oops and my sound driver dies (until I reboot) damn annoying.
Re:could be big (Score:5, Informative)
You have to invest both in skills (ability to set up the computer and apply patches) and in hardware (RME/Hammerfall or M-audio are well supported) to use Linux for pro audio.
1 High latency.
Use a kernel with Low-latency patches, and a low latency sound server like jackd. Do not use a journalling file system on your audio drives.
2 Poor compatability.
See the ALSA page for supported hardware.
3 Feature support.
3D sound and simple soundcard MIDI music playback are not much use in a studio.
4 Best Stability.
Audio drivers rarely if ever crash, you may be thinking of sound servers such as ARTS, or indeed a program like xmms.
I think that if Linux makes an impression in the pro-audio recording world, it will initially be as a replacement for dedicated systems like the Mackie HDR 24/94, Fostex MX-2424. These are the workhorses of studios, required to do a straightforward job, but with very high reliability.
Re:could be big (Score:2)
Not to mention that it has a fair share of limitations even with the Live! board you mentioned above. I recently tried to load a 145MB soundfont and found the driver dropping notes like mad. I couldn't find anything that would help solve this in the docs for alsa (which are VERY sparse - it took me a LOT of searching until I stubled on a Wiki page which mentioned that you need to download a 3rd party driver designed for the AWE series of boards to get soundfonts to load at all).
Finally I started grepping through the source to find if there was a hard-coded limit to the soundfont buffer size. I found some tantalizing contstants in there, but no smoking guns.
Granted, the Creative windows drivers have their own limitations (such as only letting you allocate 50% of RAM towards a soundfont), but this has been overcome with 3rd party software (such as Megafont - which loads and unloads individual patches as needed). I don't expect bells and whistles, but a kernel module parameter to set the soundfont buffer size would be nice. I'd even settle for an obvious #define in an include file in the source...
Alsa 0.9.1 released (Score:2, Informative)
The linux sound community has been waiting for this for a long time. Congrats guys!
You forgot one (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You forgot one (Score:2)
Re:You forgot one (Score:3, Interesting)
Version 1.0 is based on a codebase nearly 18 months out of date. Try the latest code from CVS, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Full duplex on virtually all platforms, floating-point samples, real-time resampling, and lots more. We're hoping to release version 1.2 in a few short months.
- Dominic [Audacity developer]
Re:You forgot one (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, Jack support is definitely coming, as soon as PortAudio v19 is finished.
- Dominic [Audacity developer]
Hardware support (Score:2, Interesting)
(On the plus side, Linux does have CSound and PD, which are excellent progs for electronic musicians.)
Re:Hardware support (Score:2, Informative)
RME and M-AUDIO are sufficient for me.
good quality + good performance == bliss
Re:Hardware support (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a pdf with latency tests [jhu.edu]
I think the sound managment in linux has improved quite dramatically in the past few years, and there are right now _a lot_ of projects which will make linux a reasonable choice for professional audio authouring, such as ardour, jack, alsa, etc. (look at links in the story)
I don't know what the current status on VST plugins in linux is, but there's still ladspa, which seems to be a very competent architecture. Steinberg's hesitation in this area might very well prove to be a mistake, costing them influence in a growing market.
I'm right now in the process of trying linux out for a synthpop project I'm working on, using ardour, and various softsynths and sequencers. If some interesting experience comes out of it, I'll make it known.
Andromeda (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry if that was too much of a self-serving plug.
If you want to mix Mp3's in realtime (Score:5, Informative)
GDAM is a digital dj mixing software package. It aims to be a powerful, professional-quality music mixing and remixing system, suitable for live performance. It was conceived on some beautiful summer morning (in 1998), and developed with drive and enthusiasm that seemed completely unnatural. Over four years later, we have achieved many of our goals; yet, development continues. Here is a list of features:
client-server architecture based around glib
streaming and mixing of any number of mp3 files
dynamic filter insertion and removal
multiple sound device support (see the faq)
plugin support
cacheing / playing loops
contiguous queueing - plays albums without gaps between songs, regardless of output buffer size
dj turntable-style interface
assisted beat matching
waveform viewer / beat calculator
sequencer
record from any point in the stream, to disk or another process
gtk gui's, with simple skin support
flexible command-line interface
gdam123 - an mpg123 clone that talks to a gdam server
Users Guide
hardware input support (midi and other)
support to use LADSPA plugins
support to create LADSPA plugins graphically
online help
Re:Andromeda (Score:2, Interesting)
Sonic Foundary niche (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sonic Foundary niche (Score:2)
Re:Sonic Foundary niche (Score:2)
They need to? Why?
Isn't it foolish to expect Linux to be the best tool for the job, for ALL jobs?
Linux audio is still shakey to me (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been quite disappointed. Maybe I layered in too much.
Noatun plays MP3s with only modest smoothness. mpg123 suffers similar problems. Skips are common when switching or redrawing windows. Real users stick to command lines, I guess.
I haven't tried recording from a live source, but I'd be wary -- is that weird pause in the music because of the recording skipping, or the playback skipping? Which system do I trust?
Anyway. Perhaps I tried stuffing in too much compatability, and instead should have picked one system over the other. But then who knows which apps would work and which wouldn't?
Please please please -- can we have a standard layer that's easy to install?
GMFTatsujin
IMPORTANT:Little known Latency / Scheduler info !! (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some things to consider:
1) Did you compile low latency support with sysctl support? In that case you have to turn on lowlatency mode on your own , a little known and not widely documented feature!
2) I actually had worse performance, w/ the 2.4 tree, when both low latency, and the O(1) scheduler were enabled, and am now using just low latency. In 2.5, AFAIK, they play much better, and it's sensible to enable both.
4) Are you using OSS, or alsa?
3) Gentoo now includes a safe hdparm script (I think it's installed by default, at least on ~x86), which works great. Check for it in /etc/init.d
4) Be wary of the difference between march and mcpu optimizations! The choice makes a big difference!
Re:IMPORTANT:Little known Latency / Scheduler info (Score:2)
I don't want to spend hours tweaking my OS to get MP3s to play smoothly. I just want them to play smoothly.
Re:Linux audio is still shakey to me (Score:2)
Um, you probably note that running that command is EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. If the kernel did not automatically enable DMA, it probably did so for a reason. Forcefully enabling DMA could corrupt your hard drive.
Finally (Score:3, Troll)
Even a PentiumII 300Mhz running Windows has better audio capabilities than my P4 2.4Ghz running Linux.
Maybe the new patches [slashdot.org] the kernel developers are comming up with will help?
Re:Finally (Score:2)
The new patches should solve that and improve reaction times
Re:Finally (Score:2)
running Gnome, X, and tons of other apps running AND a XMMS vis running I get ZERO skips on a linux box on a simple P-II-350
if you cant play mp3's perfectly in linux on anything bigger than a Pentium 200 thne you did something horribly wrong.
and yes, I play mp3's all day long on a websurfer pro which is a Pentium 200 set top box with a jukebox program, mysql, and apache running on it.
Linux in a Pro Studio (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the synop:
We used Windows. It crashed and got viruses. We didn't want to upgrade to XP.
We played around with Linux. We decided on Mandrake. We went Ogg Vorbis. Life is grand.
Nothing on the implentation, nothing on what programs/hardware they used in Windows or Linux, nothing in regards to performace of said hardware and/or ported software.
Linux is great for them, but being too vague doesn't help small time studios understand how to use it in their shop, or how best to go about it.
Why not get a little more in-depth, such as what utilities they used, what hardware settings needed to be tweaked (if any), and how difficult it was to train for.
For example:
What was the hardest part to train/learn?
What features are you hoping Linux audio programs will add in the future?
What advice would you give to a small, struggling studio in regards to using Linux in a studio?
Do you know of any other studios who have utilized Linux?
The list goes on.
Re:Linux in a Pro Studio (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortunately, multi-track recording and mixing, pro-level audio I/O hardware support
Re:Linux in a Pro Studio (Score:2)
Re:Linux in a Pro Studio (Score:2)
Getting away from the other vague technical points, I'd be happy just know what capabilities the studio actually had.
oggenc is great (Score:2, Interesting)
b) Speaking of Linux sound, a nice thing: the other day, I compressed some music (passengermusic.com is the band's site, though no music is on the site) for a musician I know, because I'd like to convince him to post some music in ogg vorbis format on the band's website.
Usually, I have used grip to do such compression (nice interface, easy), but this time I wanted to try a wider range of qualities without going in an changing grip's preferences several times, so I started up oggenc instead.
Compressed at q6, the sound was predictably good, and my tin ears on my low-end equipment could not tell from the original. Sadly, same is true at 3. Probably most of the other available integers, too.
For kicks (and since this is for web use, and since most people are still on dialup, and since long downloads are a pain in the tuchus
timothy
Re:oggenc is great (Score:2)
Standardize it damnit. (Score:2, Insightful)
It reminds me of the DOS days when you had to pick your soundcard from a list of 6 for each and every app/game you'd install.
I dont want to configure each seperate app for my hardware. This is the 21st century for crying out loud! So make some rules about how linux makes noise. Just writing to
I know such libraries/sound servers exist. Just pick one that works and run with it.
Re:Standardize it damnit. (Score:2)
On a more serious note - yes, a standard library for sound handling would be superb. Such a simple thing as a global sound mixer is impossible right now, since you have to figure out a way to support *all* sound generation ways. I also agree that using
Radio Studio != Professional Recording Studio (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Radio Studio != Professional Recording Studio (Score:2)
Yeah, I noticed that too about the article. They only mention doing real studio tasks on linux by saying "we could have done them if we wanted to." Well, why didn't they?
A major reason why people I've tried to convert in the audio field won't is because of the lack of professional grade HD recording, sequencing, audio effects apps for linux.
Professional sound? What about desktop sound? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well fuck that. I just want to be able to listen to my MP3s and still be able to know when I get an e-mail or IM like I did when I was in Win2k.
OK, I CAN do that right now, using ESD, but it's a kludge that I'd like to see going away.
I'm looking forward to see the kind of sound quality we'll have at kernel level on 2.6.
Yes, I'm a happy user of a desktop Linux, after years using it on servers. But boy did I have lots of trouble trying to get the same desktop experience I had with Win2k...
Re:Professional sound? What about desktop sound? (Score:2)
Or you can buy a soundcard that does hardware mixing and free up some CPU cycles at the same time. Both OSS and ALSA have dealt with cards that can do hardware mixing/resampling for some time now, for instance I can run many sound apps at once on my machine at work, all using OSS, because my card isn't a dirt cheap one.
Unfortunately, because Windows has provided "backup" software mix/resample functionality for so long, many manufacturers are simply doing without to get cheaper than their competitors. It's like the winmodem situation :(
Re:Professional sound? What about desktop sound? (Score:2)
Bad Acronym (Score:2)
Re:Bad Acronym (Score:2)
"Linux Audio Realtime Developers And Sound Symposium"
It has a nice ring to it, I think.
"Hey, you - I'm here for LARDASS, where's the pizza?"
Professional linux audio workstation (Score:3, Insightful)
Spiralsynthmodular (Score:5, Informative)
It is a softsynth (a program that generates sound mostly based on algorithms).
It basically provides a framework to connect modules (that are called plugins for confusion's sake
SSM can connect to other applications via JACK [sourceforge.net], a low-latency audio server.
Advanced sound applications? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Advanced sound applications? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can honestly say that (with execption to an anceint AWE-64 ISA card about 4 years ago) I've never had to dick around with anything like that. And the AWE was still fairly easy; sndconfig setup the AWE card working 100% fine in about 20 seconds. These days I just make sure the module for my card is in my kernel, and that's it. Reboot (to init the kernel). I use Gentoo, so I compile my own kernels, but with a more mainstream distro, all that stuff is already there in the binary package they hand out.
Granted I've used fairly generic cards (meaning I don't have an Audigy or something), but I've been using linux (and several flavors of it) since RH 5.2 (or something like that, I forget... it was 5 something) and I've never had to really dick with the system for sound to work.
Re:Advanced sound applications? (Score:2)
Sorry Boys (Score:2, Informative)
The Start of Something (Score:2, Insightful)
This is wonderful but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I love to hear linux success stories -- especially ones about Mandrake, don't get me wrong. The article, however, mentions that this person paid $69 for a Mandrake powerpack and installed it on three machines. He claims that this made the cost $23 per machine. Don't the commecial pay-for-media distributions usually have a caveat that the license is for one machine only and that additional machines require separate licenses?
His claim is kind of like me going to BestBuy and buying one copy of XP, installing it on 165 machines and claiming I reduced our licensing fees to $1 per machine.
Trust me, I'm not a licensing nazi or anything like that but, being a software developer myself, I strongly believe that if you like a certain piece of software, you should pay for it. Even more so in this case because this is in a corporate environment and because Mandrake is having financial difficulties.
If everyone in the corporate world adopts this attitude that "just because it's linux, we don't need to pay our licensing fees", theres not going to be much commercial linux left after awhile.
If I were this guy, I'd run over to MandrakeStore.com and buy another two powerpack licenses just to help out the company that cut his costs so much.
Re:Mandrake, GPL :) (Score:2)
Ok, I'll bite. I made a lot of ASSumptions in my last post. I just did my homework at Mandrake's website and it looks like you've pretty much got it. The first bunch of CDs are pretty much the normal binary and source CDs and you can do whatever you want with them.
The only thing I saw that would be in question would be the fact that it comes with some third party commercial applications (such as StarOffice 6.0). I'm positive Sun has a 1 computer limit in the license. From the looks of it, Mandrake pretty much takes a hands off approach with third party applications in their license files (an example here [ibiblio.org]) saying that users are held accountable by the author, not Mandrake.
Thanks for keeping me honest. :-)
Radio Station != Recording Studio (Score:2, Interesting)
However, supporting pro hardware, and syncing MIDI with real audio, at 24 bit resolution, including a reasonable GUI to do it all with, is the domain of Mac/Windows only as far as I can tell. Cakewalk Sonar leads by a long way on this. You can add digital effects in real time, chuck in a canned drumbeat while you lay down the first couple tracks, export to a single compressed file (lossless) and all sorts of wonderful stuff. That's what a pro studio needs.
Editing single stereo files is NOT what professional recording studios do. Radio stations have very low requirements in this regard, they just pre-record shows and interviews, compress them in a lossy format, and send them out. Since FM and digital radios have analog or digital compression anyway, then OGG at high bitrates is fine. However, artefacts from SEVERAL mp3/ogg streams all in a multitrack environment is not acceptable.
Re:Radio Station != Recording Studio (Score:3, Interesting)
No I just have to find out if it has some standard effects or not. I need at least compression and reverb to save having to buy an expensive outside effects box.
Mandrake audio workstation (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all explained in this howto. [groundstate.ca]
Grr (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Grr (Score:2)
Average users do apt-get upgrade kernel or something to that effect, at which point ALSA is upgraded automatically. That is, if their distribution is worth its storage space.
The initial bits of configuration are tougher, but the ALSA website [alsa-project.org] provides sample configurations for all supported cards.
Gimme a break.. (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, this may in fact be a "professional recording studio", but in the author's own words, he uses the machines for archiving audio, burning discs and making CD's for distribution.
When I can slap a pair of DigiDesign TDM cards into a linux box, run ProTools, and then use them to mix a 32 or 48 track mix for a band I'm recording... well, THEN it'll be ready for profesional audio use.
Frankly, the only UNIX doing that kind of audio right now is MacOS X. Native multi-channel 32 bit audio is pretty sweet, yes... but it's not something linux sports in a usable fashion right now.
Re:Gimme a break.. (Score:2)
why the hell would you want to use overpriced proprietary hardware that isn't even particularly good at what it does?
RME and others make decent multichannel hardware without the ridiculous price gouging Digidesign is involved in.
Others of us are working on the software side.
and i'd like to point out that Mac OS X still does not support the configuration you describe (though Digidesign have announced PT for OS X, its not shipping yet).
Re:Gimme a break.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Complex ethernet router link to the internet? (Score:2)
That's the easiest possible way to connect a Linux box to the net. Or am I missing something?
Mostly usable (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried Be, which was supposed to be low-latency this and multimedia that, but nothing I recorded with it ever turned out very well. At the time, one couldn't even purchase a decent sequencing or multitrack recording app, even if you had the money.
Lots of work has been done in the Linux kernel to address latency. It still is jerky sometimes, but a multi-processor system might help address that.
What a puff piece (Score:3, Insightful)
I would GLADLY build a home studio around Linux if I could figure out which distro, which sound card, and which EASY TO USE APPs to use to do the same kind of Cubase VST stuff I've previously done.
Some package from some obscure German FTP site with a command line interface that doesn't even compile doesn't rate as "easy to use".
If you're going to say how great your system is, please let some of us in on what it was you eventually used?
Maybe the reason for the complete absence of detail is he didn't want to go into the endless kernel recompiles, header file and package searches (no no no you need ALSA_dev_package_weirdo_tool_support.h, that's available from ftp.godknowswhere.com) the frustrating incompatibilities with the top-end hardware, the latencies, etc.
Much more rah-rah to say he installed Mandrake and suddenly he had no support costs.
EAX, etc. (Score:2)
Annoying adjacent links (Score:3, Insightful)
(The domains are only shown in-line when they're part of the comments, not stories).
Oh, well. (Score:4, Funny)
With several more years of improvement, Linux and other free operating systems are starting to gain on the technical advantages present in that several year old operating system. I feel confident that given a few more years and the efforts of individuals and companies worldwide, Linux will soon be the operating system of choice for everything from coffee makers to the next generation space shuttle. So I'm happy to hear about this conference and all this exciting stuff.
Re:Maybe these tools.... (Score:2)
Re:Ardour at al (Score:2)
think Ardour doesn't do that Pro Audio 9 does?
Re:Ardour at al (Score:2)
Re:Ardour at al (Score:2)
JACK doesn't address internal mixdowns etc. My point was with JACK, its not necessary for synthesis engines to be a part of the HDR/sequencer. They don't have to even know that the other one exists. Ardour can record audio data from any JACK output port. v2.0 of Ardour will function as the MIDI sequencer that drives (for example) a JACK-enabled soft-synth.
I read "ACID Looping" as meaning "can use REX files". AFAIK, this has not been reverse engineered. I know how to implement the kind of sample decomposition that ACID does, but thats not useful if people can't use the many REX files that exist.
until less than one year ago, OMF was useless as a medium of session exchange, and even to this day, going from ProTools to anything else generally doesn't work very well unless you buy extra software from Digidesign. thats why i'm not interested in OMF when the AES standard is so close to release (and is based on OMF too).
in some ways we are behind the windows/macos world. in other ways, we're ahead. we have vastly more experimental music tools than those platforms do. we have license-free inter-application audio routing available for developers to use. you may also not be aware of the groundswell of interest from vendors in linux. there are already versions of nuendo and cubase sx that run on linux, for example, and all future yamaha keyboards and music workstations will be based on embedded linux. i would not suggest that anyone could abandon tools they have grown used to on windows/macos, but we are moving much, much faster than the windows/macos worlds are and momentum is on our side. i think.
Re:Ardour at al (Score:2)
i was at NAMM, meeting with most of the companies there. i was totally unimpressed by just about every piece of "new release" software i saw. its all just band-aids and rewrappings of the same old stuff, slowly evolving toward more efficient user interface details. no revolutions there.
there is no momentum in the windows/macos worlds. they have evolved a certain design for audio/MIDI software and are mining it as deep as they can. but the new stuff is rare (melodyne), and the infrastructure is only passable.
if your observations about experimental s/w were correct, it would be hard to explain why most composition labs and experimental music labs run unix/linux systems as the core of their working environment, and reserve windows/macos for the "standard stuff". i've visited most of the big computer music research facilities, and the programs you describe (except max/msp, maybe) are not high on their list of tools.
Re:Ardour at al (Score:2)
if you write audio software, its just so incredibly obvious that Project 5 is just a repackaging of the same technology that powers CW's other s/w. its also nothing more than a copycat of reason. no momemtum there. kantos is interesting, but i've got csound patches (admittedly, frightening for a new user to even look at) that can do the same thing. i didn't see MindFX (though i did talk to angus). the gigastudio stuff - its also just a repackaging of their existing stuff as a plugin, and moreover, those guys have attempted to seriously fuck up s/w development by patenting read-ahead buffering for samples.
the point is that once you get the programming infrastructure in place and have access to Csound or some kind of max/pd tool for prototyping, you can crank out new apps like this once a month or even faster. we're nearly at that point. have you seen freqtweak or tapiir?
Re:Ardour at al (Score:2)
JACK isn't a technology for creating new apps out of old ones. As you note, its a replacement for things like ReWire. But its a misconception that VSTi and DXi offer more integration than JACK. They don't. VSTi and DXi include MIDI right now, which JACK doesn't distribute, but will. JACK is about being able to write VSTi's and DXi's without having to have them run in the process context of the host (though they can if you want to).