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Linux as A Musician's OS?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon May 07, 2007 10:48 AM
from the but-there's-no-protools dept.
from the but-there's-no-protools dept.
lazyeye writes "Keyboard Magazine has an in-depth article about the state of music production on Linux. While it does introduce Linux to the average musician, the article does get into some of the available music applications and music-oriented Linux distributions out there. From the opening paragraph 'You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.'"
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Preference... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Preference... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Preference... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Preference... (Score:4, Funny)
Cause I have already contacted theirs, of course.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
slashdotted (Score:5, Insightful)
RoseGarden [rosegardenmusic.com]
Ardour [ardour.org]
CSound [csounds.com]
Do you really need anything else?
Re:slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have, nor want, real instruments...
Re:slashdotted (Score:4, Insightful)
I get quite irritated when people spend a small fortune on an "audio workstation" then use it like a glorified mixing deck. They'd be better off spending the cash on real gear, because it works in real-time, doesn't crash or become obsoleted by software upgrades, and the interface is a zillion times more natural. Instead there's a perverse market of Virtual Studio which ignores computing paradigms in order to faithfully reproduce a picture of a real mixer on-screen, and then you have to go out and buy a USB Control Surface that's basically a mixer with a USB port, to control the on-screen mixer. Yeah the mouse sucks, maybe they could have considered that if they had designed an actual computer interface.
What's next ? A virtual wah pedal that's operated by a real-looking USB wah-pedal-controller ?
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A good start, but still some holes to fill. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Notation SW option (Score:5, Informative)
If you are both a programmer and a musician, you will probably like Lilypond a lot (most things that it doesn't do by itself can be tweaked by writing Scheme scripts), but it probably will not be popular with the average musician. The system is much like (or better, is built out of) TeX -- you prepare a plaintext file with the appropriate commands, then run lilypond on it and get a finished MIDI and/or PDF (and DVI, if you want it) file. If you're a programmer and don't know music theory, you'll likely be bogged down by the required terminology -- you indicate the key with commands like "\key a \major", so unless you know that 3 sharps is A, you're out of luck. There are some frontends, but I haven't used them extensively. I can generate a score very quickly and with high quality in Lilypond, so haven't really looked any further.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
re: Ardour & MIDI: first, Ardour has support MTC and MMC along with MIDI CC for parameter control, for years, and these are the standards associated with "binding it all together. second, see http://ardour.org/node/855 [ardour.org]
second, re ALSA, MIDI & JACK: if you were following JACK development, you'd know that JACK supports inter-app distribution of MID
Also Jokosher (Score:4, Informative)
(BTW, I have no association with any of these projects).
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Linux Music at the brink of "plausible promise" (Score:5, Informative)
Rosegarden: Pretty good.
Ardour: The 2.0 release (just out last week) is AWESOME! Get it!
CSound: I like to leave my programming mind behind when I'm working on music.
Sooperlooper: very cool
Freewheeling: also cool
Music distros this summer ought to be pretty good - with new releases scheduled for many of the music distributions.
What bothers me the most these days is plugins and soft synths. There are not enough plugins, the ones we have (like swh-plugins, tap-plugins, caps-plugins, and cmt) aren't heavily optimized for modern architectures (I just spent a weekend working on that) and not enough people out there do dsp programming (myself included) to really gain critical mass for the "perfect EQ" or the "perfect reverb". Still, the plugin solutions are adaquate, just not generally something to rave about. If you know a dsp programmer bored in his day job, show him 64 studio [ferventsoftware.com] or Studio to go [ferventsoftware.com] and try to enlist his/her help!
Soft Synths are coming along. Linuxsampler [linuxsampler.org] is very nice. Bristol is coming along. There are quite a few more.
I think Linux music is on the brink of plausible promise. I've got 16 tracks of live audio working almost flawlessly right now.
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Re:slashdotted (Score:4, Informative)
None of this software comes anywhere close to stuff like Cubase, Logic, MOTU Digital Performer and the like. Even Garageband is superior IMO. I have a Linux machine for everyday work, but a Mac for music related stuff.
Bob
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Re:slashdotted (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I know you're going to say I can use something like Hydrogen to do the drums and export it as an audio track into Ardour, but I tend to cut stuff up and re-arrange a song after it has been recorded, and it becomes a real PITA if the drums are not in MIDI format (cymbal crashes crossing bar borders for example).
Bob
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My bro tried this (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Out of curiosity, does that imply that there is expensive hardware that does work with linux?
Good, expensive, audio hardware for Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
RME-Audio Multiface - up to 14 channels of sweet sounding 96khz/24 bit converters - 8 line inputs + ADAT + SPDIF
Prosonus Digimax FS - 8 nice pre's with an ADAT out.
Dual processor opteron (3 years old) - with 3GB of ram. Given the huge samples I use (bardstown bosendorfer being one), I have linuxsampler compiled for 128 voices, and configured to use up 1.6GB of ram all by itself.
4 drives in a striped terabyte.
System works way better than my motu ever did under the evil os - works like a champ at latency levels down to 1.5ms. I generally run at 5.2ms however, as I tend to run linuxsampler+rosegarden+ardour+hydrogen a lot. One day soon I hope to get a dual core with 8GB of ram.
The RME-audio design might be 5+ years old, but it's still superior to "normal" firewire, IMHO. The fact that I have both PCI and PCMCIA cards for it means I can take the gear on the road easily...
Rest of the machine: a bunch of edirol midi converters (they just work), a roland XV88, and PodXT (fully supported by rosegarden) - the M-audio keyboard.... Dual heads provided by a 19 dollar matrox M450 card. I tried the latest nvidia card in this machine, could never get it to work...
Last important note:
[m@mingus ~]$ uptime 09:23:22 up 12 days, 6 min, 11 users, load average: 1.39, 1.31, 1.33
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Well ... (Score:3, Funny)
The problems comes (Score:4, Interesting)
I would love for free and cheap solutions to present themselves, i think musical programs as well as most programs are overly expensive for what they are, but given the choice between a 600 dollar mac mini with garageband, or fiddling around in linux to get something to work, a lot of the type of people I know musicians to be are going to go with the former.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't the point, or rather than the point, the by-product of free software like Linux to turn software deployment into a service? I understand how for a musician, it's preferable to just get a Mac because it just works rather than to fiddle around with Linux for a week. But shouldn't that create a market for cheaper-than-macs, semi-pro systems custom-made by Linux geeks? I can see a service where a programmer or developer could specialize in audio hardware and software for Linux, and m
Two Notes (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Two Notes (Score:5, Funny)
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My Linux Audio Setup (Score:5, Informative)
http://ardour.org/ [ardour.org]
http://jackaudio.org/ [jackaudio.org]
http://www.ffado.org/ [ffado.org] (aka Freebob) with a Mackie Onyx desk & firewire interface
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Very very good indeed, I vastly prefer it to my previous Windows based Cubase setup.
Site ultra-slow. Here's the article text. (Score:3, Informative)
wget is patient... :)
Linux: It's Not Just For Computer Geeks Anymore
By Carl Lumma [keyboardmag.com] | May 2007
You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.
For years, Linux has enjoyed market leadership as a server operating system -- Google's servers run it, for starters -- while struggling with the stigma that it isn't polished enough for desktop use. Those days are over, and word is getting out. Linux is quickly becoming the OS you'd set up for your grandmother, with no fuss over activation, software updates, or viruses. Unlike any version of Windows or Mac OS, Linux is open-source. What does this mean to musicians? For starters, there are no company secrets to keep or non-disclosure agreements to sign, so software developers and users alike can get on the same page very quickly, speeding the flow of bug fixes and feature additions.
Linux demands more nuts-and-bolts computer knowledge for pro audio than for web browsing, but if you've ever tried to troubleshoot a latency or driver issue on a store-bought laptop, you're probably still listening. If you upgrade your hard drive, you won't have to reactivate all your apps due to the hardware change, and when you discover a cool tool or workflow, you can share it with friends without them shelling out hundreds of dollars or resorting to piracy. With the exception of Linux versions that include commercial tech support, most everything in the Linux world is free for the asking, Many developers accept voluntary donations, which we encourage you to make.
HOW IS IT DONE?
Let's look over the shoulder of Aaron Krister-Johnson, the keyboardist and choir director at Temple Sholom in Chicago. He also composes incidental music for local theater, and is half of the electronica duo Divide by Pi, Keyboard's June '04 unsigned artist of the month. The core of his home studio is a PC running Linux (see Figure 1).
To obtain Linux, you download a particular distribution or "distro," which is a particular version of Linux someone put together, for free or a donation. Some distros are available boxed at very low cost. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com [ubuntu.com]) is popular for home-computer tasks, but Aaron uses Zenwalk (www.zenwalk.org [zenwalk.org]). Software compiled for a particular distro will only run on that distro, so most come with several free applications that you can install along with the basic OS. We recommend Fedora (www.fedoraproject.org [fedoraproject.org]), because you can then install the Planet CCRMA package (ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software [stanford.edu]), which includes just about every Linux audio application in existence.
Speaking of music applications, the most popular DAW for Linux is Ardour, and Aaron also uses JACK (see "You Don't Know JACK?" below), a soft synth called ZynSubAddFx, and an arpeggiator he wrote called Pymidichaos. Some distros come with binaries -- apps that have been compiled, i.e. converted from the programming language the developers used to the ones and zeroes computers understand at their innermost level. Three such distros are meant to provide install-and-go solutions for Linux-curious musicians: Studio to Go (www.ferventsoftware.com [ferventsoftware.com]), Musix (www.musix.org.ar/en [musix.org.ar]) and 64Studio (www.64studio.com [64studio.com]).
But sooner or later (most likely sooner), you're going to have to take some groovy, free program you've downloaded and compile it yourself. This is where musicians used to commercial software might get scared off. Fear not, and remember that all the actual pr
MIDI (Score:4, Insightful)
Free as in beer (Score:4, Interesting)
Ugh. Not again. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been an independant recording musician/songwriter for a number of years now, and have worked under Linux and Windows.
Linux is certainly a usable platform, but it can't do everything. Ardour is great (from the screenshots and reviews I've seen, at least - never been able to actually INSTALL the sucker, because of the dep. hell), but as far as synthesizing goes, the choices are less than ideal (in my opinion).
I use Windows for my needs, primarily, and it has served me well. There are a variety of great resources available - sure, for a cost - but the quality is superb. I use Reason 3.0 to sequence simple orchestral work for my new albums, and can do strings, piano, synthesizers, anything, with a rich, controllable sound quality. Not to mention the fact that there are a number of EXCELLENT refills/samples available for it. I also use Reason to sequence my percussion - ranging from funk jazz to industrial.
I use Cooledit Pro 1.2 - an old multitrack recording program - to record and mix. It's cheap, and it works very well without being resource intensive.
I'm not a fan of Csound, nor do I really like much of the other alternatives in the Linux market. I did use Audacity to record and master some monologues for a play a while back, and Rosegarden to do some sequencing/songwriting. Rosegarden is actually a superb piece of software - for sequencing. IIRC, that's all it can do. If you've got your external instruments hooked up properly, I'm sure it'd be perfect. I can't afford to buy all the outboard gear I'd need to match what I have with Windows based softsynths.
a link to the google cache 'cause it's /.ed (Score:3, Informative)
State of UbuntuStudio.org? (Score:3, Informative)
I was looking forward to Ubuntu Studio [ubuntu.com] for Ubuntu 7.04 to pull together a useful collection of packages related to music production. But despite a website that shows a lot of polish, it's at least a month out of date (the homepage still says, "Coming in April").
Does anyone know what's up with that project?
It's getting there. Maybe ubuntustudio? (Score:3, Informative)
musician vs recording (Score:4, Interesting)
i bought a 12" powerbook with the motu traveler, and it was a rock solid set up. i recorded and mixed a few albums [pitchforkmedia.com] on it last summer, and it stood up, and this is with 20+ tracks and effects (including altiverb) -- although there were a few times i thought the laptop was gonna melt. these ppc chips run hot.
this is why i won't be going open source for a while -- when you're with clients, it's a problem if you say, "oh hold on, i have to recompile the kernel". macs, for production, are solid -- which is not surprise since it's one of their major demographics.
but as a musician, i get the sense that linux is there. it would be nice if there was something like reason for linux, but that is asking quite a lot. otherwise, the freedom and programming-friendly environment of linux is very conducive to music-making (assuming electronic-based music, of course).
on windows, soundforge is the greatest 2 track editor evar. (problem is, you can't let anyone touch the machine, just looking at a windows box will get you a few viruses) i havce yet to use a 2 track editor as responsive as souindforge. i use audacity now, and it sucks for editing. also, it wants to save project files, which is ridiculous for 2 track files. it would be nice to know of a stripped down 2 track editor that let you zoom in to a sample level and out immediately, allowed for fades, crossfades, and basic stuff like normalization -- support for audio units, and that's it. i spent so much time just editing mixes -- it's nice to have a program that just let's you do that quickly.
i will say this, i had a PII 266 about 8 years ago, runnin linux 2.2 kernel with a low-latency patch. i could get audio in and out of that box in 8ms -- it still amazes me (i was using csound). i think this is where linux could shine, as real-time effects boxes -- you can strip all the other stuff away.
anyway, more and more i'm thinking of putting together a linux workstation, especially after reading about blender yesterday. i wonder how video is on linux?
mr c
Re:musician vs recording (Score:4, Interesting)
i knew someone was going to (rightfully) call me out on that. after some reflection, linux is probably more solid that os x *once* you get everything setup. i guess os x (and windows for that matter) is probably more flexible in that i can download some app and use it right away (which i have done during a session) -- my experience with linux is that you can quickly get into dependency hell with that sort of thing.
to put it another way, my experience with linux is that when i've tried to do something different, i quickly run into brickwalls. i can't think of the last time i hit a brick wall with os x.
to be fair, this is a preconceived notion based on indirect experience. that is, i haven't put together a linux DAW and run a session on it to know just how it would be. i am serious about putting one together in the near future. it seems like linux has come a long way since i last gave it serious consideration.
oh, and thanks for the 2 track suggestion. i'll try it.
mr c
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Great VST Host Support Is A Must (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardware? (Score:4, Insightful)
pymidichaos... (Score:3, Interesting)
drums++ (Score:3, Informative)
I recomend Musix (Score:3, Informative)
Hardly (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying however that Linux is remotely close to being suitable for people to *produce* multimedia with is almost exactly like saying, "You too can live in the vastness of space! All you need is an oxygen tank and space suit!"
In other words, although it might be entirely inhabitable by the terminally autistic, this is one environment which still requires terraforming on a rather massive scale before it's ready for life as most of the rest of us know it to be able to move in.
5 Albums Down and More to Come (Score:5, Insightful)
for i in *.wav; do out=${i/.wav/_mono.wav}; sox $i -r 44100 -b -c 1 $out; normalize $i; done
which will convert all samples in the current directory to mono and normalize them in no time at all.
The amount of audio software for linux is astounding, from programmer synths/sequencers like ChucK, Common Lisp Music, and CSound, to modular synths like Alsa Modular, PD and the super powerful keykit (the Emacs of MIDI sequencers). There are command line sound mushers and generators, mixers and so many effects it's hard to know where to start. But there really are no limits, if you're willing to put in the time and learn the system and how to tie everything together...
As a side note, I volunteered to help setup a new Pro-Tools setup at the local Film Pool, and after a week of trying to get all the licences in order, I wondered why anybody would pay for it at all. That was my first time using Pro-Tools for real, and it was just astounding that *every* (extra) plugin had to be registered, you still had version compatibility hell (could only use this driver with this version of PT, etc) and even after a week the system still didn't work right. After using Pro-Tools I'd take Ardour any day, if only for the lack of registration hell (which an audio engineer friend of mine teaches a day long course in; not how to use Pro-Tools, just how to register it!) and the massive amounts of high quality, free LADSPA plugins that are available.
Right now, Gentoo is my distro of choice and it has a huge amount of audio apps in portage as well as a Pro Audio overlay that's available through layman. Needless to say, I would concur that Linux is ready for the audio desktop workstation market, and has been for some time.
The only thing that linux is lacking is "instant gratification" music apps (although the playfield is getting better with LMMS and such programs). The tools available take some time to learn, but that's also half the fun of it, since once you learn the basics a whole new world opens up as you learn more and more about what's available. Jumping in takes a while to learn how to swim, but the only limits on how far you go depends on the amount of time you put in...
Musician's OS my ass (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, music is an art, you can do music with a garbage can and chicken bone if you want. Thus Linux could be used for that, but no serious musician would inconvenience himself and forget about the plathora of processing plugins, instruments, effects, sequencers, remixers, audio editors on Windows/OSX to go for Linux.
For the most part, musicians use computers to make music, not follow misguided attempts to prove Linux best in everything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Zo5bcBIDaccJ:
http://tinyurl.com/2n65uq
To hell with MOTU & Sonar (Score:4, Interesting)
I had this happen in the middle of a critical, paid gig, and I lost not only a lot of money, but a lot of respect from the customer. I was incredibly angry, as you might imagine, and resolved to never again be dependent on code I couldn't fix.
100 bucks a year for sonar upgrades wasn't worth it as my bugs weren't getting fixed.
So... After begging the motu guys *for years* for specs for their board so I could write a driver for linux, and/or begging them for a driver, and getting the same "hell, no" response over and over again...
1) I researched companies that had a good history of linux support, and chose the RME-audio multiface.
2) Publically denounced motu's squareheadedness as loudly and bitterly as possible. I sold my motu 24i's to a dedicated mac-head.
3) Threw out my windows PC and Sonar and upgraded to a dual opteron 64 bit linux box...
I sold the used Motu 24is for something like 400 dollars each. I haven't upgraded my sonar in a few years - so I've saved at least 300-400 bucks in upgrade fees, just on sonar. Gigastudio has come out with a few new versions (but is worth buying just for the sample libraries). There's a new windows version out - doesn't work terribly well for 64 bit, and costs some serious money.
So, all in all, throwing windows out of the studio entirely has resulted in:
1) Vastly improved reliability, with an os (linux-rt)truly targeted at multimedia
2) A huge cost savings in software, letting me buy much better hardware
3) I can run all my applications on a single dual-core machine with very low latency
4) A sense of satisfaction of "sticking it to the man"
5) The ability to participate in the process at any level you might choose. In my case, I've been speeding up plugins lately...
A windows based platform costs a lot more than linux platform. Windows + Sonar + Gigastudio is nearly a thousand dollar investment just in software. Linux + ardour + rosegarden + linuxsampler are subscriber supported.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You actually don't need JACK running to use Rosegarden at all (at least in the Ubuntu build it's never required). But from the way your post reads, it seems as though you don't quite understand the benefits of running JACK. The JACK server provides low-latency audio routing between different JACK-enabled applications and sound hardware. This means that every JACK-enable
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I guess I don't know JACK.
In my systems - all running SUSE 10.1 or 10.2 - the JACK server is required. I'll try one of the pre-setup systems.