Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessination?

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Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessination?

Post by Mr. Dipity » Mon Nov 29, 2004 8:29 pm

Hi all,

Would someone kindly explain the linux/audio obsessination that I keep meeting?

Everyone I've met in the real world who was interested in this was on the lower level of the experience level, with both computers and audio and seemed to be relating things they 'had heard' rather than any genuine understanding. They would suggest benefits like 'stability' and 'open source software' that didn't really fly. These were also people who thought that Protools was the only real way to record (I'm not sure how that works), and assumed that Reason was the only soft synth in existence.

There was an online article posted a while back that did nothing to assuage my initial instincts that the whole idea has more to do with people being interested in Linux than people being interested in better ways of making music - it was written by a relatively experienced Unix user, with a Garageband level of musical sophistication.

So what's the story? What is so enticing about recording in Linux? Inquiring minds need to know.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by Family Hoof » Mon Nov 29, 2004 9:00 pm

It can go places Windows and Mac OS can not, e.g. embedded operating system. That's just one guess. Although I don't think I know what I'm talking about any better than the people you complain of.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by FishB8 » Mon Nov 29, 2004 9:41 pm

I registered just so I could post to this. :D

The linux OS is enticing primarily to people with more of a technical background. (I was a computer science major before deciding to change to Digital Media) The cool thing about linux recording software is that you have the ability to interact directly with the developers and even modifiy the code to the programs on your own should you wish.

I've been using it for several years now and am quite happy with it, but I would currently not recommend it for people who don't want to get their hands dirty with things such as C code and compilers.

You can google for info on projects like Ardour, Jamin, JACK, LADSPA, Audacity, Muse, ReZound, ProTux, RoseGarden, ALSA, and many many other projects if you're really interested in it. There's also the LAU (Linux Audio User) mailing list.

I just finished a recording project, using all Linux software for recording, mixing, mastering, FX etc. It's nothing really spectacular, but it shows it can be done. I mostly used Ardour, Jamin and some LADSPA plugins. Here's one of the tracks. (You'll need a player that can play Ogg Vorbis)

http://students.jbu.edu/martinr/LAU_Demo.ogg

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by Winstontaneous » Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:38 am

Hey! I also registered so I could respond to this thread.

I just started using Linux in September after about 16 years of DOS/Window$. I had always wanted to learn more about the nitty-gritty details of computing, but I found Windows really aggravating--the way it makes all sorts of decisions without asking, its tendency to crash randomly, and the fact that it's a virus magnet. For some reason I've never really used Macs.

Linux is much more stable and totally configurable, but like FishB8 sez to make the most of it you have to be willing to learn some serious nuts & bolts. If you want to try Linux out I'd recommend downloading or buying a live Linux CD-ROM, which will run on your computer without using your hard drive. I've tried many; my favorite is SimplyMEPIS http://www.mepis.com. There's a cool music/multimedia live CD called dyne:bolic http://www.dynebolic.org.

If you like it, try installing Linux on a non-critical computer first so you can play around without losing important data (I'm talking from experience--I spent hours retyping my fiancee's grad school application!) :oops: I've gone from knowing very little about computers to having a working knowledge of partitioning, multiboot configuration, and simple programming in just a few months. To really take advantage of Linux you need high-speed internet to get the programs you want.

In Windows I've got Tracktion and Intakt, plus the free versions of Live and Reason that came with my M-Audio soundcard. On the Linux side I'm using a couple of music/multimedia distributions: Agnula DeMuDi http://www.agnula.org and Planet CCRMA http://ccrma.stanford.edu. They contain the programs that FishB8 mentioned, plus many others. Planet CCRMA is a well-maintained repository of Stanford University's electronic music department, which has been around for more than 40 years. I've just gotten all this stuff setup in the last few weeks and beyond some quick tests haven't done much actual recording.

Many hardware companies haven't written Linux drivers yet so soundcard/camera support is somewhat limited. General hardware detection in Linux is excellent, and its server/network capabilities completely smoke Windows.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by dlphillips » Tue Nov 30, 2004 4:29 am

I'm the maintainer of the Linux soundapps site at http://linux-sound.org, so perhaps I qualify as a dedicated Linux user. Like another poster, I "came up" on DOS/Windows and Atari music software in the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s. In 1995 I started fooling around with Linux in order to get a little more juice out of my aging machine. I was impressed enough to dedicate myself to the evolution and promotion of Linux audio software.

Linux sound and music software is quite various in kind and quality. For much of it you *don't* need to be a rocket scientist, but as with any other system, when things get tough they can get tough indeed. Fortunately there are some very active user & development communities to help during your hours of need.

Linux music software is quite strong in some domains. Programs like Csound and Common Music are powerful systems, but if you've been using Acid you'll probably wonder what's going on. Other excellent language-based systems include SuperCollider3 and RTCmix.

More "typical" music software for Linux includes the Ardour HDR/DAW, the Audacity and ReZound soundfile editors, and the Rosegarden and MusE audio/MIDI sequencers. These are all very good applications, but only Audacity is actually beyond its 1.0 release. Linux audio software is still a youngster, with many of the characteristics of a youngster. It's strong, but sometimes a bit awkward, and it can sometimes be just plain difficult to deal with. Surely you need to know a little more about your computer and its OS than you do on a Mac or Windows system.

Hardware support remains problematic, but Linux audio driver developers have done great things in the face of almost total ignorance from interface manufacturers. Btw, this fact tends to exacerbate the political stance of some Linux users. Forgive us, we're just frustrated by the intransigence of the manufacturers who steadfastly refuse to support Linux. You would be too.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding. Take a listen to some of the music linked on http://linux-sound.org/music.html or check out my own recent work with Ardour at http://linux-sound.org/ardour-music.html. Like Linux music software itself, some of it's good, some is not so hot, but it does prove that you can make music with Linux sound software.

Dave Phillips

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by tateeskew » Tue Nov 30, 2004 6:54 am

dave definitely knows his linux audio. he's been a part of the community for years and his help and work don't go unnoticed. thanks dave. i think this would be a good thread for either paul davis, the main author of ardour, to reply to. maybe even taybin or jesse could come by and post. i'll see if i can hit them up on the dev channel. they could explain everything really well to give everyone a great idea of the power and ethos behind linux audio and audio apps being used on linux.

i would just echo what has been said up to this point. i use ardour daily and try to help as much as i can with debugging to help get it to a 1.0 release. it's already extremely powerful and efficient, but it is definitely still a pre 1.0 release..

that brings up what i think is a very important point in the linux audio world or the opensource world altogether. the developers are approachable and listen to the users. the users can contribute as much as they like to the project. the community is the project.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by idragosani » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:25 am

Hi there.

I moved my recording setup from Windows (using Cakewalk software, Finale, etc) to Linux about 6 months ago and have never looked back. I've been a Linux user for many many years but when I first started putting together my recording studio, I went with Windows because the Linux audio seemed rather undeveloped and unstable.

A year after I made that decision, much had changed. Ardour and Rosegarden had both achieved a level of stability to make them quite useful. More and more applications were using JACK and could be coupled with other applications in many interesting ways. There were tons of audio plugins using the LADSPA interface. There were also lots of great softs synth tools that allowed for even more flexibility in instrumentation for the small studio. In short, I moved to Linux audio because I wanted do more than what I could afford in the Windows world.

So now my goal is to produce an entire CD using all open source software... this even includes mastering and artwork.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by eviltwin » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:56 am

I am one of the authors of JAMin (audio mastering software - http://jamin.sourceforge.net). I've been a musician for 40+ years and a programmer and system admin for 27 years so my two favorite things sort of came rogether. Why do I like Linux? It's very stable. It's a real multiuser, multitasking operating system as opposed to Windoze (Mac OS/X is also a serious OS). I can modify the kernel with (other people's) patches to get *very* good real time response. My system has been up and running 24/7 for over a year with no unscheduled downtime (no crashes). No viruses. Also, as someone else said to me, I can ask for a feature in an audio package one day and possibly see it implemented the next.

On to the other good thing about Linux - most of the software is free as in beer as well as free as in speech. Paul Davis is planning on charging for the Ardour manual when it is finished (to help pay him back for three or so years of outstanding work - and I plan on buying one) but most everything else (including JAMin) has no price tag. If you're running a pro studio as a business then that may not mean much to you since you can write off the (exorbitant) price of most of the software packages but if you're running a home studio it means you can spend your money on hardware instead of software. The trade off is your time versus your money. As Dave Phillips said there are any number of people willing to help on the Linux audio forums though so it's not too hard to get started.

Jan Depner

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by krash » Tue Nov 30, 2004 7:57 am

Like many here, I migrated to Linux & audio for multiple reasons.

For the past 12 years I have been working in the tech field as an engineer, and formerly writing apps for windows & mac. I have owned two Macs, three Amigas, dozens of Windows machines and currently a combo if Windows and Linux machines.

So... started in computer music using a Windows 98 machine (Pentium 450MHz) with M-Audio Delta 1010 and Vegas Pro that came with it. Soon I discovered limitations of Vegas Pro that only became evident after getting knee-deep in a project with a large track count. I was a bit put off that I had to BUY this software, and then spend months using it (exhausting the trial/return period) before discovering that it was not completely functional. So next I switched to a beta hand-me-down copy of Nuendo (before it released), which was much better and I even intended to buy an official, release copy of it. But $1200 is a lot of money to spend on software, and the thought of having to continually upgrade at cost, move a dongle around, all that was very frustrating. The whole idea of public-license software (aka "free") was extremely appealing and the community nature of it is a major bonus. Knowing we were going to begin building a studio where multiple machines were a must and commonality of tools is important, I wanted a solution that wasn't $1200/seat.

So now I am running Linux on my main home studio machine with Ardour and it's not been without growing pains. However, in general, the machine (now an AMD 1.4GHz box) that was fast & slick on Win98SE is even faster and more stable on Linux. In projects where my CPU utilization at the same track/plugin count was maybe 75% in Windows with Nuendo, it's maybe 30% in in Linux with Ardour. While you can't make an apples-to-apples comparo because there's no way to use identical plugins, etc., it is a big enough gap to show that Linux has a major performance advantage.

Beyond all of the niceties of free software, access to the developer community (which is a major big deal), efficient use of hardware, extreme configurability, etc., though, there are some major usability benefits to my Linux system. I am running a mixerless rig that's truly possible on Linux mostly because of Jack and the more full-featured driver for my Delta 1010 card. With Jack, it is possible to copy outputs to multiple places like a patch bay and do much more advanced signal routing than you can in Windows, so I can have separate monitor (room monitor) and headphone mixes, etc., effectively and run without any mixer at all. For those of us in small studios this is a major deal. The Envy24 driver and control panel are much more fully-featured in Linux compared with Windows, and frankly that's the deal-maker with me. It makes the whole thing just a lot more usable.

Now, I also have a 2.8GHz Windows XP machine running GigaStudio 3 right next to my recording computer. That machine is a piece of junk. 2x the RAM, 2x the processor speed, SATA hard disks, and it is slow, crashes continually, etc. The #1 MAIN reason to switch to Linux is that modern Windows apps are moving in the direction of REQUIRING that bloated, klunky, slow and unstable OS known as Windows XP just to run.

So now I have apps that I can install on as many machines as I want, a highly efficient OS and application environment, ultimate configurability (I don't have to have a movie editor if I don't want one!), low cost, high function, low stress environment. It's all good. Ardour is getting more and more feature-stable every day. At the 0.9beta it's already more stable than GigaStudio 3 (WAY more stable) and I've recorded the bulk of a pop album on it with only the rare hitch. I think Linux audio is getting the critical mass it needs to really attract "power users" and keep a loyal following. I know our label is sticking with it for our tracking machines in the studio currently under construction, and I'll evaluate it for use in mixdown (ITB). I have high hopes.

Later-
-krash

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by Scodiddly » Tue Nov 30, 2004 8:23 am

I've been using (and sometimes struggling... it really has gotten a lot better in the last year) Ardour on Linux. I've been using Linux as my main OS for maybe 3-5 years now, so it seemed natural to do my audio that way too.

It hasn't been easy, although lately the Planet CCRMA stuff is fairly painless. But then when I think back to all the aggravation I had with Windows I realize I've probably broken even. Getting things to work on Linux can be a real PITA, but usually once you've gotten to work once it'll work forever.

Recently I've used Ardour to participate in the Prosoundweb "CaPE" project, downloading ProTools wav files, dragging them into Ardour, recording my own parts on new tracks, and then exporting my tracks to upload. Works great, much easier than I'd thought.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by dawhead » Tue Nov 30, 2004 8:56 am

Hi, I'm Paul Davis, the primary author of the most sophisticated DAW for Linux at this time, Ardour.

I think that the original poster missed a rather important issue when using the description that us Linux Audio geeks seem more interested in Linux than in better ways of making music. Better ways of making music is precisely what I am trying to create, but I don't consider using Windows as a platform for developing new tools to be a sensible use of my time and skills. I also don't think that playing with the user-controlled options on existing DAWs constitutes "better ways of making music" either. Linux is appealing to me because it offers a much better place from where we can begin making really great tools. It is true that really great tools exist on other platforms, some of them new and novel (Melodyne springs to mind, for example). However, most of the innovative audio and composition related software of the last 20 years was first developed in academic/research-ish environments on somewhat unix-related operating systems, and later moved to a consumer platform for two reasons: the lack of a consumer-oriented unix system and the related business consequences thereof. Think of Max/MSP if you want a specific example of this.

Linux has changed that (as has OS X): we now have at least 2 excellent unix related operating systems perfectly capable of being used by consumers. As a developer, Linux offers me a platform where I can have *complete* control over everything, and as a business it offers me the chance to offer that to you. Instead of being faced with whatever Microsoft wants their operating system to do, Linux offers us the chance to have a platform that does exactly what we want it to do. Furthermore, when the OS vendor changes direction (such as Be Inc.) or goes bankrupt, Linux again shows it appeal through its open source nature. These are not trivial issues. Steinberg put a lot of resources into porting their software to BeOS, something they will likely not do again for some time (if ever). When Apple bought Emagic, they also bought complete control of Logic, as its Windows users found out to their cost. Linux offers us a world free of this kind of business driven bullshit, where we can focus on doing what users actually want rather than what the intersection of several different business plans require.

There are lots of practical, immediate reasons to love Linux audio too - the tools we have, the great crowd of friendly, open, non-profit hungry developers, the informed and skilled user base - but in the long run, its the Freedom Thing that is really compelling.

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by MBittencourt » Tue Nov 30, 2004 10:00 am

Hello,

I am a Brazilian computer musician, pianist and composer, and I teach Composition at the College of William and Mary in VA. I have been using Linux alone for all my projects since 2000. I learned the trade at Columbia University on Next and Silicon Graphics machines and migrating to Linux seemed the natural course of work for me. It has been great so far and I can say that my own studio is pretty comprehensive from the point of view of all studio tasks, from recording to mixing, mastering, DSP, algorithmical composition, realtime interactive live electronics concerts, you name it. What has been said in this list so far summarizes in a way my opinions, but I just wanted to point out a link to a radiophonic opera I produced in 2002 ENTIRELY under my Linux powered studio:

http://www.music.columbia.edu/~alessi/KA_mp3s.html

All was done with open-source software, plus tons of home-made software, hacked/altered/customized third-party software, etc. I also have just set up my Linux studio to work with Dolby 5.1 and burning the resulting ac3s to DVDs. The limits of Linux are only your imagination (and the community's).


also, all the mp3s on my
http://www.music.columbia.edu/~alessi/mp3_samples.html
page were produced, spliced, mastered, etc, in Linux.

cheers!

Marcus Bittencourt
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http://mabitt.people.wm.edu

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by tapas » Tue Nov 30, 2004 12:55 pm

Hi,

i'm a linux only user since 2 years and i have several reasons why i don't use windows anymore. Some of them are political others are of rather technical nature. And i think one of these technical reasons has not been mentioned in great enough depth yet although paul davis scratched it, when he talked about making the kernel do exactly what the people want it to do.

The thing is that with Ingo Molnar's latest strike, the so called "realtime preemption patches" for the 2.6.x series of linux kernels, there's a way to achieve rock solid 1.2 ms latency even with some consumer grade hardware (think about using buffer sizes of 32 frames w/o a single dropout). The patches have come a long way since this initial announcement:

http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3995

Ingo wouldn't have started the development of these patches if the linux audio community hadn't spoken up. I just mention this to illustrate one of the advantages of the open source model.

I won't reiterate the other pros and cons of open source software though as i can imagine everyone is well informed :) But i cannot resist to providing some easy to click links to get yourself informed:

http://jackit.sourceforge.net/ the jack audio connection kit.
http://jackit.sourceforge.net/apps/ a list of jack applications
http://www.ardour.org/ cool DAW for linux
http://supercollider.sourceforge.net/ SC3 for linux and jack
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/ another cool DAW/Sequencer
http://muse.serverkommune.de/ yet another one
http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/ nice synth
http://alsamodular.sourceforge.net/ a cool modular synth
http://www.iiwu.org/fluidsynth/ a softsynth for soundfonts
http://linux-sound.org/ the great linux audio and midi software pages
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/ community page
http://www.ladspa.org/ plugin standard
http://essej.net/sooperlooper/ a looper in software
http://www.ladspa.org/cmt/ the cmt LADSPA plugin collection
http://plugin.org.uk/ Steve Harris' great plugin collection
http://www-crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/software.html we all love pd, don't we?

Well, enough for now. Happy browsing :)

Florian Schmidt

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by syrupcore » Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:32 pm

just wanted to welcome all of you to the board. I've never seen a question pull so many folks out of lurker mode.

I tried to install a version of linux 7 or 8 years ago and it was miserable. I'll try again in another few years.

Will

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Re: Could someone please explain the Linux-audio obsessinati

Post by Winstontaneous » Tue Nov 30, 2004 5:37 pm

Hey dlphillips--I have found your tutorials on the Agnula site very helpful--thanks.

Since there are several serious Linux audio folx on this thread, I'm gonna ask some questions I haven't gotten answered on Google. I hate to say it but I don't find individual programs' man and info pages very useful beyond learning simple commands. There's really not much info on getting different programs to play well together. I'm still a Linux nooB (have a lot to learn about shell commands) so pardon me if these ?s are really basic. Right now all my Linux stuff is on a 4 year-old 600mhz Dell Celeron. Runs really stable, pretty quick. The same computer crashed with kernel or spool errors on pretty much every other boot when it was running (limping--hobbling) Window$ ME (RDE).

1)Within Agnula DeMuDi, how do I go about making JACK-able and non-JACK-able programs work at the same time? Can this be done through the GUI or just in a shell using piped commands? Let's say I want to record the Hydrogen drum machine through some LADSPA FX into Audacity? When I try to open Audacity with JACK running Audacity's audio doesn't work.

2)I'm also having a hard time getting audio from non-JACK MIDI'able programs like TK-707, even after setting MIDI paths. I will be replacing the Ensoniq 1371 stock soundcard soon with a Delta 24/96--dunno if that will help.

3)Maybe a really dumb ?--I've checked the ALSA soundcard matrix already. I'm looking for a full-featured soundcard for when I put Linux onto my good computer (3 ghz P4). I was thinking about something like a Delta 66 or 1010, but I'm wondering...will USB interfaces like the Mackie Spike or DigiDesign M-Box work in Linux? If so, what's the latency like? How about Firewire? I could see a Mackie Onyx mixer with Firewire card coming in handy for live stuff and recording.

Thanks. That's it (for now).

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