The Fix Is In: Ardour Set For Summer Release

uprightcitizen writes "Good news for the open source audio recording world! Ardour creator Paul Davis has announced a feature-freeze and has set a binary release date for the now-famous GPL multitrack audio recording application. Ardour has recently been featured in Sound on Sound and has been mentioned on Slashdot many times (here(1), here(2), etc..). The feature freeze is effective as of May 4 and the binary release date is set for sometime in July or August. Good Job Paul!"

Solid audio software is the breaking point

[mao che minh]

Solid audio software is the breaking point for many Windows and Macintosh users that mix music. I have a few friends that happen to actually be successful in the music biz (on a very small scale, of course), and they all use Macintosh (one has worked with Puff Daddy before, no shit). A few DJ friends use Windows for simple mixing and burning. All of them show an interest in Linux, but are put off by it's lack of a really good audio application. If this proggie is as good as it's makers are claiming it is, then Linux will have about (let me count....) 11 new users real fast.

This same scenario has to apply to many others out there. My small group of musically talented friends can't be the only ones.

Re:Won't replace Pro Tools anytime soon

[questamor]

One thing often mentioned with the 'big' apps compared to free software is the monetary cost. The software is minimal when it comes to the costs of an entire studio. For larger projects with big profit margins it's next to nothing. The embedded knowledge of thousands of Pro Tools users isn't going to go away just because a few thousand dollars can be saved on projects that are worth millions.

Where inroads will be made for now, is in small productions that have no choice. Where once their project was impossible due to monetary constraints it will now be one step closer to reality.

F/OSS: Conquering new markets!

[exhilaration]

Woaw. This is pretty cool. Ardour might do for Linux and professional audio users what CinePaint (Film Gimp) did for Linux and movie studios.

You know - I don't mean this as a troll - but I really have to wonder what the hell is going to happen to all the software developers working for closed source companies when mainstream users start adopting free products in droves.

After all, if Microsoft's Palladium is successful, that could mean the end of software piracy - which probably accounts for a good chunk of the market. What will all those users do? Will they go out and spend $200 on Windows, $500 on Office, and $600 on Photoshop? No, they'll come running to Free and Open Source Software! And pretty soon, they'll be able to find replacements for EVERYTHING they need.

(Sorry for jumping from topic to topic, it's late.)

Re:Church audio recording setup with ardour

[Yeroc]

Whoah...the fact that you had to jump through all those hoops including reading source code tells me that Linux has a ways to go before your average musician is going to find it the easy route to go for audio recording...

Re:Won't replace Pro Tools anytime soon

[tshak]

I don't dissagree, but I contend that this is practically impossible. You'd be amazed at what albums used Pro Tools. For example, many classical recordings use Pro Tools - but what they don't do is over-compress, over-EQ, or over-process the sound. What you're used to hearing has nothing to do with Pro Tools, and everything to do with the Pop Music Industry's production style.

Sync? Timecode?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it might be good for standalone audio-only projects with only a few tracks. One feature I do not see listed is timecode, and support for hardware sync clocks. Without that, you are out of the running for A/V production. In pro audio, media-independent sync is absolutely necessary.

Ah but the people who won't understand this, are the same people who don't understand why the lack of CMYK support is such a limiting factor for Gimp.

MIDI sequencer?

[FiloEleven]

I've been thinking about doing desktop recording with Linux, but I haven't been able to find what I'm really looking for - an application that integrates hard disk recording and MIDI sequencing. Does anyone have experience with such an app, or even know of one's existence?

Re:Sync? Timecode?

[Anonymous Coward]

CMYK is only useful for legacy printing gear

RGB works just fine for monitors, be they LCD or plasma or CRT or even projection, and it works well for RGB printers such as Durst Lambda or Fuji Pictrograph. Not only be RGB printing but continuous tone and hence without the bother of screening.

The longer CMYK is supported as a legacy technology, the longer we'll be using outdated processes to provide inferior output.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be happy once my creamwear card is supported with asio 2.
That's the problem .. drivers.
Another is of course .. plugins and vst instruments.

Re:more pro use of linux

[Cplus]

I agree, and I mean no offense to the users and developers in saying this, it's a wonderful product, can be great for non-professional use, but it's not even close to what a professional needs. Note that by professional I don't mean a web-designer, GIMP is ideal for web-designers.

Re:Won't replace Pro Tools anytime soon

[oscarcar]

I think you have to look beyond the imitation of what is already out there. With Open Source you get possbilities of a lot more creative people doing original things.

Some Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) do a pretty good job of being able to have effects and such act as controllers, filters, what have you. But with the source code, a lot of really, really interesting things could develop that haven't been thought of.

Now you have a few companies that all try to copy each other in getting certain tools in the hand of their users. And that's great, but we're better off opening the ability to creating tools to a lot more creative people.

Would we have the electric guitar or a saxaphone, if it wasn't for the common man taking a hack at building an instrument?

Re:more pro use of linux

[AusG4]

This is just ridiculous.

The ProTools software is FREE.
$0. No money spent.

The $14,000 you spend on ProTools hardware is for the very powerful (and very much worth the money) DSP cards that make ProTools -the- premier audio recording application among serious studios. I know that some people are going to respond with some justification as to why the MOTU 828 or the HammerFall is better then DigiDesign, and that's fine... we all have our preferences... but the DSP's offerred in addition to the audio interface in the ProTools TDM systems make them so much more powerful then CPU bound rigs for large projects.

To compare what you get for $14,000 from DigiDesign to what you get for nothing in the OSS world is a very invalid, and very misinformed. There is simply no comparison between what you get.

And don't even get me started on the rest of your examples. GIMP is cool, but Photoshop it ain't... Film Gimp is -really- cool, but it's not even close to Shake.

Being part of the open source world, I'm so happy about the efforts and advances we're making in various places... but let's not get our heads stuck in the famous "reality distortion field"... there is a VERY LONG way to go before the projects discussed in this comment rival their commercially available conterparts.

Re:more pro use of linux

[matvei]

Where there were proprietary rendering, now movies like XMen2 use Linux. Where there was Pro Tools, now we have our own solution too.

Earth to AC, the software packages that the big boys are completely proprietary and often developed in-house. Not all software that runs on Linux is open source. For example, you can get Alias|Wavefront Maya for Linux but it certainly is not GPL'd.

There are no open source tools that could come even close to Maya (or other high-end packages for that matter). With the insane budgets that Hollywood movies have I doubt that they will choose inadequate tools just because they are free, beer or speech.

Re:Sync? Timecode?

[IamTheRealMike]

Ah but the people who won't understand this, are the same people who don't understand why the lack of CMYK support is such a limiting factor for Gimp.

Ah, but it's not. How many people do you know that have done image manipulation at some point in their lives with a computer? Lots, I'd expect. I know I do. How many of them need support for professional printing equipment? None.

You'd be totally amazed at the number of people out there who write music using their PC, keyboard, sample editor and guitar. I know several. For people like that, who actually care about not warezing VST or SoundForge, this sort of stuff is a dream come true.

Of course, I am sceptical that anybody but those who do music professionally actually pay for that stuff, but hey. Here at work we all use the Gimp.