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Music Media

Turn-Key Linux Audio 276

Posted by michael from the so-simple-even-drummers-can-understand-it dept.
gmaestro writes "The Turn-Key Linux Audio project at the Eastman Computer Music Center has released it's first instant linux audio workstation package. Simply download onto your Mandrake workstation, untar and type # ./install.sh."
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Turn-Key Linux Audio More

Turn-Key Linux Audio

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  • Turn-Key... (Score:5, Funny)

    by StillAnonymous ( 595680 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:37PM (#4857100)
    I'll be waiting for Turn-Key Linux DRM next :)
    • If you type the command as shown, complete with pound sign, it won't do anything (under the usual bourne shell). That's pretty much what DRM does for you, right?

  • Now we can go for REAL multi-media (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:39PM (#4857121)
    That's great that we have something like that for music and audio.

    Now if we could only get a system like that for video, with firewire included.

    (I know Demudi claims to be multimedia, but it's only mono-media -- audio/music only.)

    I understand Cinelerra is great, but I'm not a programmer and I can't get it to work on Mandrake or Redhat. If Linux could create an easy to setup video workstation, I know a lot of video people (like me) would jump on it.

  • *Sigh* (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Shutaro ( 626571 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:40PM (#4857129) Homepage
    If only they would add decent wavetable synth support to Linux I would ditch Windows without thinking about it twice.

    • Re:*Sigh* (Score:2, Interesting)

      by saskboy ( 600063 )
      I hate getting audio to work in Linux Mandrake and Red Hat. I had a run of the mill opti 931 audio card, and neither distribution had support for it.
      I popped in a new card in my custom machine, and had better luck in both my Dell 166MHz, after trying Mandrake 9.0
      Linux is not yet for desktop entertainment computers. I can't wait till it is ready, and I can kiss MS goodbye.

    • Re:*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by runderwo ( 609077 ) <runderwo@mail.win.OPENBSDorg minus bsd> on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @04:44PM (#4857703)
      If only they would add decent wavetable synth support to Linux I would ditch Windows without thinking about it twice.
      What were you having problems with? For sound cards without hardware MIDI, timidity seems to work great. If you have a MIDI card or daughtercard that you want to use, those work fine too; I use a Yamaha DB50XG on a Roland MPU-401AT ISA card that I control through a MIDI keyboard.

      Perhaps if you were a bit more specific on the shortcomings, we could have a more engaging discussion.

  • Good work. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jericho4.0 ( 565125 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:42PM (#4857137)
    From looking at the list of what's included in this package, these people have done a lot of work. The complete package is made up of common linux audio utilities plus a bunch of stuff they've made.

    It'd be cool to have packages like this for different things. A complete graphics package with Gimp, blender, driver install, and a collection of scripts would be cool. It'd be cooler if it was a deb package.

    • A complete graphics package with Gimp, blender, driver install, and a collection of scripts would be cool. It'd be cooler if it was a deb package.
      You could always make a deb package that depends on all the packages you want to install. No sense lumping them all together into one package when there are more efficient ways of doing it.

      (Debian already does this to some extent with "tasksel", btw.)

  • Just in case.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by AlbanySux ( 248858 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:43PM (#4857148)
    Here's thje info off their main page and a list of everything it contains for when it gets slashdotted.. Its basically an easy install of everything they use in the labs at the school..

    Turn-Key Linux Audio is a scripted installation package for the core set of linux audio applications used at the Eastman Computer Music Center (ECMC). It contains among its many tools over a decade's-worth of powerful shell scripts, smart aliases, tutorials, documentation, shell level environment variables for multi-media linux/unix workstations, and a library of powerful templates and macros (Csound, Score11, SMS, PVC, Rt, Vspace, etc) created by composer, teacher, and ECMC director Allan Schindler.

    It is therefore a kind of ECMC 'mirroring' package, inclusive of open source applications from nearly all categories of music production such as editing, mixing, recording, dsp fuctionality, Csound helpers/front-ends, real-time applications, sound utilities, and many others(1). See the explore page for a complete listing. Each individual application is the result of the dedicated hard work and imagination of developers and users whose ongoing efforts continue to expand and improve linux as an audio platform.

    The entire package installs from within a fully installed linux distribution (currently Mandrake 9.0) with the execution of a single script, saving users hours of dependencies footwork and versioning troubles, ensuring a virtually transparent initiation into linux as a mutimedia platform.

    Nearly all applications, including their respective dependencies, build from source code on the local system, creating maximum compatibilty and performance, and providing users with access to the packages' lowest levels, either for custom configuration, or for development. Source-code level access is one critical benefit of using linux, and providing users with code-level exposure broadens the base of informed user-contributers, leading ideally to better feature suggestions and better apps.

    The Turn-Key package shares its model with other all-in-one installs for audio, such as Demudi/Agnula, and PlanetCCRMA. It is similarily directed at a broad audience of home users, but has a particular place in its heart for students and the many under-staffed/under-funded computer music studios in institutions around the world.

    In fact, the Turn-Key package began as a way to provide students at ECMC with the same tools used in the studio for use on their home systems (something only linux and open-source software can make possible), but the full installation is now being made available to the larger community.
    - Kevin Ernste

    Alternatively, each application (with dependencies and a TKLA install script) may be download individually (see the explore page for details.
    Editors *
    * Audacity - a fast multi-platform editor, includes multi-track capabilities.
    * DAP - Richard Kent's port of the classic SGI version.
    * MiXViews - a powerful editor from Doug Scott, includes editing tools for analysis data.
    * Snd - Bill Schottstaedt's wonderful everything editor.
    * Sweep - a very nice, newly updated editor from Conrad Park.
    * Wavesufer - one of the best editors for Linux, from Kåre Sjölander and Jonas Beskow.

    Analysis/Resynthesis and DSP *
    * Ceres3 - the latest, greatest incarnation of the ceres spectral editor.
    * Cecilia - more than just a graphical front end to the csound engine...a rich sound manipulation environment.
    * LADSPA - a plugins package, including the CMT set, and a number of others.
    * Mammut - a fun and useful analysis/resythesis tool with limited features but often suprising results.
    * PVC - Paul Koonce's phase vocoding tools with ECMC templates/scripts/docs.
    * SMS - Xavier Serra's Linux incarnation of his Spectral Modeling Sythesis application.
    * Vspace - an excellent tool for ambisonic encoding/decoding and soundscape creation.

    Sythnesis/Composition *
    * Csound(1) - the composition app, richly expanded with dozens of scripts and templates.
    * ngen - Michael Kuehn's powerful new event preprocessor for Csound.
    * PD - The venerable MAX-like tool from Max''s own author Miller Pucket.
    * RTCmix - The Columbia/Princeton extension of its Cmix music composition "language".
    * RTMix - Ivica Ico Bukvik's exciting performance/real-time tool.
    * Score11 - Alec Binkman's very flexible Csound score preprocessor, powerful and easy to use.
    o TKLA includes a library of Score11 macros, templates, and examples

    Players/Recorders *
    * Alsaplayer - a very nice player with some added functionality for visualization and playlisting.
    * Real Player (downloaded at install time) - a widely used streaming audio app, now for Linux.
    * xplay - very handy, very simple, no frills player.

    Mixing *
    * Ardour (2) - Paul Barton Davis' impressive hard disk recorder/mixer.
    * Mix - the venerable NoTAM 9 channel mixer, with some welcome additions.
    * Ecasound - a rather deep hard-disk recording and playing/routing tool from Kai Vehmanen.
    * MixMagic - a GNOME mixing application with some useful features.
    * Rt - Paul Lansky's scripted mixer, ported and updated for Linux by Doug Scott.

    Utilities/Other *
    * ALSA - An advanced audio API for Linux with support for the venerable OSS in emulation.
    * JACK - the Jack audio connection kit for professional audio under Linux.
    * xsox (old version)- a graphical front end for the ubiquitous audio conversion utility "sox".
    * Shorten - a program for lossless compression of audio files.
    * Normalize - a command line utility for batch production of normalized levels.
    * RipperX - a nice GUI front end to cdparanoia for ripping CD tracks to audiofiles.

    ECMC scripts, utilities, macros, templates and examples * (downloads as a complete set)
    * Environment variables and program aliases for audio
    o soundfiles are stored, accessed, and manipulated in a separate but simultaneous directory tree (the users "working soundfile directory"-- pwdsf). Most common unix commands have a soundfile analog (i.e., cd has cdsf, ls has lsf, cp has cpsf, pwd has pwdsf, and so on). Applications which open, output, process, or create soundfiles do so to and from this directory (default is /snd/'whoami'). All audio applications are aliased to open ready to access the current working soundfile directory. Ideally, a separate partition is used, optimizing this disk/space for large contiguous blocks such as sound or analysis files.

    * Soundfile utilities
    o bounce - convert stereo files to mono
    o cpsf.aif - convert/copy any format to .aif
    o cpsf.wav - convert/copy any format to .wav
    o fixaiff - repair broken aiff headers
    o mkcaltones - outputs -15 dB calibration tone soundfile
    o pitchshift - shift in semi-tones, or multiplier
    o sfcheck - check and report soundfile header information
    o sfinfo - display soundfile information: format, duration, etc
    o sfnorm/stripnorm - normalize soundfiles (renamed .norm) and strip .norm extensions
    o sfpeak - find maximum amplitude value

    * Playing, listing, and searching soundfiles
    o findsnd - find soundfile by character string (-p will play them as they are found)
    o playsnd (p) - a command-line player (batch tool)
    o lsf - list soundfiles in current working soundfile directory
    o players - opens soundfiles in separate graphical players for quick mix auditioning
    o playlist - plays from a text file list

    * Playing, listing, searching personal soundfile library (/sflib)
    o findsflib - find soundfile in library by character string (-p will play them as they are found)
    o playsflib (psfl) - play file in soundfile library
    o lsfl - list soundfile in sflib
    o sflibinfo - find file info for file in sflib
    o sflibloops - finds loop points in files with extension ".loop"

    * Csound tools, extentions
    o chorus - for creating chorsused Score11 files
    o lsexamples (lsex)/getexample(getex) - list and get tutorial examples
    o lsscore(lssc)/getscore(getsc) - list and get ECMC score examples
    o lsmidifunc/getmidifunc - list and get ECMC MIDI functions
    o mkkeymap - creates keymaps for Csound functions
    o mkmidikeymap - generates a MIDI keymap
    o mkmidisffuncs - creates function definitions for use with MIDI and Csound
    o mko - m4o expand macros into an orchestra from ECMC library...see below
    o mksffuncs - make function tables for soundfiles

    * Csound orchestra library--m4o expandable instrument macros (type lsins and mko)
    o "sampler" instruments (transposing and non): samp, sampST, tsamp, tsampST, bigsamp, bigsampST, bigtsamp, bigtsampST, samplerpxsyn, samplertxsyn
    o modeled instruments: bsn, carillon, cbsn, celesta,chorbsn, chorcarillon, chorcbsn, chorcelesta, chordrums, chorfmod, chormarimba, chorplunk, chortrpt, drums, marimba, plunk
    o synthesis (granular, cross, etc): gran, xsyn, gxsyn, fmod
    o anaylsis/resynthesis: phavoc, resyn
    o global instruments and utilities: sf1to2, sf2to1, sfpan, sf, sfs, sfvpan, rev, rev2, delay
    o Allan Schindler's Eastman Csound Tutorial examples (includes orchestra and Score11 files for each tutorial example)

    * Score11/Csound score examples and templates (type lsex or lssc respectively)
    o templates which write corresponding score files for all above orchestra library instruments, as well as multiple examples for each

    * PVC (Paul Koonce) front-ends/templates (type pvcex)
    o useful templates for each Phase VoCoder program (chordmapper, plainpv, harmonizer, etc), as well as musical examples (type .tp...Ex. "chordmapper.tp" to access templates)

    * SMS (Spectral Modeling Synthesis) examples and scripts (type lssmsex)

    * Vspace ambisonic templates/scripts (type vspacetp or lsvspaceex to list examples) -- available for sampling rates to 96k
    o for generating ambisonic B-format, as well as 9 channel .fmh (Furse-Malham Higher Order Format) ambisonic spacialization files.
    o Can be decoded to stereo, quad, etc with ambidec

    * Help and musical information
    o ecmchelp (a variety of help pages and charts for music and audio...Ex. ecmchelp pitchratios displays a table of interval ratios for the diatonic system)
    o man pages for most tools
    o utilities display usage statements when typed without arguments

    * CD burning, copying
    o mkaudiocd/burnaudiocd, mkdatacd/burndatacd, blankcdrw, cpaudiocd, cpdatacd

    • Re:Just in case.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by scotch ( 102596 )
      No midi software? I'm surprised.
  • Well, their server is getting hammered pretty good. I've watched my download speed from their site drop by more than half between the time I started (0 comments posted) and now (10 comments posted). YMMV
    • The install script will try to download stuff off the net as required, so make sure your connection is up. And monitor your connection - it knocked mine down several times, & had to restart it manually (sigh)

      • Re:and a warning (Score:3, Informative)

        by extra88 ( 1003 )
        Does it try to download stuff from that server? This is important because I'm sort of the netadmin (more like network liaison) for the subnet the server is on and the Slashdot Effect has wiped out the whole subnet. We're going to have to talk to them if the package pulls stuff from their server.

        BTW, I'm not sure what their server's hardware is but from loooking at it, I'd guess no better than a Pentium MMX.
        • It tries to download RealPlayer 8 from realaudio's site, which, if everyone is trying to install this at the same time, will take a bit of a while.

          Oh, BTW, the server went from 330 K/sec to 60K/sec while I was doing my d/l, but it did complete even though a bunch of other /.ers were connecting, so I guess it's decent.

          • Yeah, I'm downloading it now from one hop away and getting 30KB/sec. I shouldn't try to judge a computer, its case but the case is a Gateway P5 mid-tower. I'm sure it's not still the Pentium 133 or 166 that was originally in it but I think it has to have an AT motherboard.

            The package is 116MB?! we'll see what tomorrow is like but I'm thinking it's not staying there for long. We *do* have to pay for the bandwidth.
    • I'm sort of the netadmin (not really but there ain't no one closer) and the Slashdot Effect has basically wiped out that subnet and swamped its uplink [rochester.edu].

      I just went down to the lab and I can't tell exactly from looking at it but I'm pretty sure that server is no better than a Pentium MMX.

  • Type (Score:4, Funny)

    by Publicus ( 415536 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:46PM (#4857173) Homepage

    Simply download onto your Mandrake workstation, untar and type # ./install.sh."

    Type? Doesn't sound too "turn key" to me buddy!

  • surreal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by io333 ( 574963 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:46PM (#4857179)
    I've been waiting for a package like this for 4 years. I can't believe someone actually did it. Just one more application needs to arrive and I'll leave Windows behind forever. What is that application?

    Does it really matter what my particular missing app is? Everyone that can't migrate yet has one. I suppose my point is this just goes to show that eventually all the missing apps will be there and then:

    IT'S A FREE SOFTWARE WORLD BABY!

    • Re:surreal (Score:2, Interesting)

      by mugnyte ( 203225 )
      Tangent:
      I think we're seeing Free Software catch up because of a few reasons. One of the biggest is that the innovation around the internet is drying up. Everything that could be done (easily) has been done. Nobody wants a Big Investment for websites anymore without a cash model.

      So, MS is a "value-added" portion of the industry. They take ideas and *sell* them as more convenient and supportable, but the ideas are free to begin with.

      With the death of new (useful) ideas, MS has to race against the free world for adding value and making their own ideas: .NET, DRM, portable nonsense, Xbox

      You'll see MS with their hand in everything just to see what sticks (remember MSWallet?). Now we simply have beat this race to prove them a plent of programmers is way smarter than the MS payroll. Not hard.

      mug
    • Just out of curiosity, what is the app?

  • obligatory mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by vorovsky ( 413068 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:49PM (#4857207)
    Mostly mirrored page at:

    http://209.152.2.3/lulu.esm.rochester.edu/kevine/t urnkey/ [209.152.2.3]

    now play nice with my server :)

  • Notice the absence of music notation programs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sadclown ( 303554 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:49PM (#4857214)
    Linux has nothing to compare to Finale, Sibelius, or Score. This is the gaping hole in Linux audio software, and the reason most musicians cannot switch completely to Linux.
    Lilypad, etc. are not professional quality notation tools.
    WINE has trouble with non-text fonts like Maestro which Finale uses.

    • Re:Notice the absence of music notation programs (Score:5, Informative)

      by damiam ( 409504 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:53PM (#4857246)
      Rosegarden [all-day-breakfast.com] might get there someday, if you can stand the QT interface.
      • Except that it looks to me from the screenshots that rosegarden is a sequencer. Finale is a music typesetting tool

      • As has been pointed out, Rosegarden is a sequencer, not notation software - there's an overlap but sequencers tend not to be very good at being notation software - the focus of the software is different. Having toyed with Rosegarden-4... let's just say its notation is basic, although it's shaping up to be a good sequencer.

        I like noteedit [tu-chemnitz.de] myself, it's proper notation software and seems to be the nearest thing Linux has to Finale or Sibelius. It does a nice job, exports to Lilypond, MusiXTeX and a couple of other formats for printed output, and even supports guitar tabs (very useful, and something that you have to pay even more for in Finale). Mind, I don't have very complicated requirements for notation software, all I do is typeset my band's songs for posterity.

        BTW let's keep the toolkit jibes out of it, shall we? It's appropriate in a story about X toolkits, but this isn't one, here it looks like partisan flamebait. Besides, if you use Bluecurve or Keramik/Geramik, they look very nearly the same anyway, so no problem, right?

    • It's on the way; not sure how long it will take. The GNU Lilypond program does music typesetting. Unfortunately, it's not a GUI program. There is, however, a GUI front end (uses GTK+ I think) called Denemo. Lilypond will also produce MIDIs for you if you're into that (it's not in my list of needed features, so I tend to forget to mention it).

      Many Lilypond users claim to love it much more than Finale. I have trouble believing I can sell my friends on it until it's click and drag, though.

    • heh (Score:2, Insightful)

      by _KhlER3L ( 601441 )
      the gaping holes as I see them:
      • MIDI workstation: logic audio | cubase | or even (puke) cakewalk
      • Powerful trackers: buzz | FT2 | IT
      • Easy to use authoring tools: fruityloops | rebirth | reason
      • Advanced outboard softsynths: reaktor | absynth | Q1 | grainlab
      • Mastering tools: tracktor
      • Powerful sample editing tools: cool edit/96/pro | soundforge
      Basically, Linux has nothing to offer someone who does audio, as far as I know, besides playing CDs.

      I know there are some authoring tools in the works, but, also afaik, they're not moving fast, octal for example. My guess is, Linux is at least 5 years away from general purpose authoring, if it ever gets there.

      Btw, I'd be glad to be wrong, if someone would only point out the links to *stable* and *feature-filled* tools.

      _khl

      • ReBorn from http://www.deadvirgins.org.uk/reborn/index.html was shaping up to be a primising authoring program. PropellerHead threatened to sue the guy that made it, so he took it down. Try it if you can find it. It is a fun tool.

        I suspect that he will be releasing (he has mentioned this to me) a much more functional program. Odds are that it will be open source too. But easily, the old program had most (or all) of the functionality of Rebirth. I believe that it supported the file formats too.

      • Re:heh (Score:3, Informative)

        by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 )
        * MIDI workstation: logic audio | cubase | or even (puke) cakewalk

        I've heard that MusE [muse.seh.de] and Rosegarden [all-day-breakfast.com] are pretty decent, though I haven't really used either.

        * Powerful trackers: buzz | FT2 | IT

        Have you tried SoundTracker [soundtracker.org]? I don't know much about tracking so I wasn't able to evaluate how good it is.

        * Advanced outboard softsynths: reaktor | absynth | Q1 | grainlab

        What about Spiral Synth Modular [pawfal.org]?

        * Powerful sample editing tools: cool edit/96/pro | soundforge

        I think Audacity [sf.net] is pretty capable. There's also WaveSurfer [speech.kth.se], and Sweep [sourceforge.net].

        Btw, I'd be glad to be wrong, if someone would only point out the links to *stable* and *feature-filled* tools.

        I see I've been conned into doing your homework for you. :)
      • What the hell is 'tracktor'? *blink*

        If you want mastering (really) you'd probably be talking Sonic Solutions, or Sadie. There is good reason to consider doing work towards a turnkey Linux mastering system- PC-based mastering systems are often ALREADY turn-key, for instance Sadie (I forget the odd capitalisation they like). Other systems like Pro Tools (known as Alsihad in real pro circles, because it has major sonic problems due to poor internal resolution handling and expensive, proprietary, inferior converters) or Ensoniq Paris (no longer being made) are also effectively turnkey systems.

        Get stuff working with serious hardware, like RME Hammerfall cards, and there is every reason to expect good results. You may not get the 'Guitar Center' crowd, but many pro audio people are pretty clueful about what they actually need. Downside: they'll know what they need better than you. In fact, if you're not also a pro audio nerd, sound engineer, mastering geek etc. you haven't a hope of writing relevant software.

        ...which is why I wonder what the heck 'tracktor' is. Is that relevant to mastering? Or is it 'Toast'? (note I didn't say 'Jam', which burns disc-at-once and has provisions for burning in ISRC codes and extensive PQ code editing)

  • Aaack! (Score:3, Funny)

    by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <kevin DOT gadd AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:51PM (#4857234) Homepage Journal
    I don't have a # key on my keyboard, you insensitive clod! I can't find the key for my computer, either! I'm so insulted!

  • I went with planet CCRMA instead (Score:5, Informative)

    by pyramid termite ( 458232 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:52PM (#4857243)
    Mostly because it was ready a couple of weeks ago when I was looking at Dave Phillips' page [bright.net]. This [stanford.edu] is where to find it. It runs on Red Hat 8 and everything seems to install well - I'm still casually working out some things here and there but Snd, Rosegarden and a few other things are working - haven't had a chance to try everything. One thing I've noticed is that other software packages I've downloaded elsewhere don't always get along with the libraries, probably because they were written with older distributions in mind.

    One of the advantages is a special low latency kernel with ALSA built in. I've installed this and it's working.

    I'll probably download the Turn-Key Linux Audio disc and see what I can get to work on my current installation - I downloaded and installed Red Hat 8 so I could check out Planet CCRMA, and don't really feel like switching to Mandrake.

  • If a... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dlc915 ( 229191 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:55PM (#4857265)
    website for a Linux Audio project gets slashdotted in the middle of the day, does it make a sound?
    ---

  • Why Mandrake? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has Mandrake signed a top secret monopolistic agreement with turkey breeders? Will turkey breeders only breed turkeys for Mandrake? How will slashdotters react to this flamebait? Find out NOW! Only on Slashdot! Every day, every flame - LIVE!

  • ...slightly related: text to speech, pitch adjust (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jki ( 624756 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:58PM (#4857284) Homepage
    As I do not know anything about audio or audio tools available for Linux (or any other operating system), I thought this would be a good chance to ask:

    1) What would you use to convert (english) sentences to speech samples (in real time, if possible perfomance-wise).
    2) What to use to alter the pitch of the samples in "real-time".
    3) merget these samples together with a base beat/rythm (basic jazz, techno, whatever)
    4) ..and to stream combinations of these samples with a modified pitch per sample to the client.

    Talking about a set of command-line tools or a easy to use API.

  • 4 speaker drivers? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Foresto ( 127767 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @03:58PM (#4857289) Homepage
    This is great and all, but does it come with drivers that will let me play my Dolby Digital (AC3) DVDs and AVI files, in full surround, using my 4 channel soundblaster live? So far, I haven't found any linux drivers that support all four separate channels on this very popular sound card.

    • Re:4 speaker drivers? (Score:5, Informative)

      by athakur999 ( 44340 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @04:33PM (#4857588) Journal
      Have you tried the official drivers at http://opensource.creative.com [creative.com]?
      The FAQ has "Rear speaker support" listed as one of the features.

      I have one of the older Live! cards that only supports 2 speakers, so I couldn't tell you how well the rear speaker stuff works.
    • The OSS/Commercial drivers from www.opensound.com support 4/6 channel output using the standard Dolby output FL/FR/LFE/RL/RR format. It is detailed in their driver specs, but not many programs take advantage of it.

      It also upsamples stereo audio to output into a 5.1 speaker set. Some cards that support this are the Live! series/C-Media/CS4630, etc., but the SPDIF output doesn't work on all CS4630 cards (like the Santa Cruz)... 5.1 out does, however. I believe that all outputs of the EMU10k1 work though.
    • I have my SBLive 5.1 card working with the emu10k1 drivers. I'm happily watching AC3-encoded DVDs with ogle.

  • More programs should be this way (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GamezCore.com ( 631162 ) on Tuesday December 10, 2002 @04:06PM (#4857340) Homepage
    I know that the large frothing masses LIKE to worry about libraries and dependancy, but there are also a lot of us who like ease of use. With bandwidth and high capacity media so cheap these days, I believe most if not all programs should be self contained non-dependant entities. Just like Office for Mac's, one folder drag it over and run. Or even better, the Phoenix browser... fully self contained AND small. I think this is the future of software, and Linux should really jump on this if it wants to be a player in the desktop market. (not trolling, just looking for some discussion)
    • the reason they are not is that the developersthat are writing them are not interested in doing so.

      the Loki installer is available for everyone. it works in any X or text setup, will auto install icons even in Gnome and KDE and is pretty dang nice..

      does nayone use it? nope... they don't want to be bothered with installers and making binaries that work across distros.

      funny how windows developers make sure they have a working installer but in linux you are flamed for even asking for one.

      it's apathy that is holding us back in seeing linux apps that install nice like OO.o, mozilla andall the loki games..
      • In Windows you _have_ to write an installer because the package management is not as advanced. Debian provides more advanced package management so each application does not have to write its own.

        The challenges of distributing software for Windows and Linux are not even close to being the same. Microsoft releases a new version of Windows every 2 years. Debian changes every 6 seconds. And yet, in my experience installing Debian software is easier and faster.

        For games and other non-free software of course installers are still necessary.

    • See here [autopackage.org] and here [osnews.com] for a discussion of why appfolders and static linking are bad ideas.

      Linux has got the right idea - see how easy and powerful apt/ports/emerge is? One day, everything will be able to be installed in that way, and dependancy hell will be a thing of the past. At least, I hope so :)

  • This is a really Good Thing (tm). I have at least two friends who state different aspects of audio and music as being reasons for staying with Windows, so perhaps this will help a little.

    BUT, don't many of these applications overlap in functionality? Personally I use Audacity and Sweep, and these do the same thing to some extent. Both have their tweaks, but anyway. While this is good for me, it seems like a potential source of grievance for some people.

    It would appear that what would really be useful is putting alot of energy into one program to do most of the things users want, instead of many that each do one of these things.

  • It seems like they are trying to avoid RPM dependency hell by having a custom install script. I'm sorry, but that makes little sense. RPM has solutions for automatic downloading and upgrading of packages. They should just use them, rather than writing weird shell scripts for which nobody knows what they do or what they do to the system.

    Perhaps even better would be if they just switched to Debian and made sure that all the stuff they wanted to install was in Debian. While Debian and RedHat packages are technically a toss-up, in practice, automatic installation and dependency maintenance works much, much better with Debian because of the large number of maintainers. Using Debian, all their students would need to type is "apt-get install turnkeyaudio".

  • This is exactly the sort of thing that will enable Linux to become a viable alternative for audio production. This statement may be anathema to many Linux masochists, but as a producer and musician I want a product that installs with a mouse click (or single, simple command line statement)and works. No hours of reseach and piling through newsgroups trying to find what little dependecies are unresolved. No having some uberuser tell me that all I need to do is write a device driver real quick and I'll be ready to go. Dealing with pro audio on Mac and Windows boxen is still troublesome now, even for those of use that know what the hell we're doing. On Linux, it simply is not an option unless you are highly skilled with the OS to begin with, and 99% of the musicians, producers, and audio engineers out there are not. Whatever failures it might have, whatever it might lack right now, however much you might want to bitch about it, Eastman's work here is exactly what Linux Pro Audio needs if it is EVER going to be a viable alternative to M$ or Apple. I'm looking forward to being able to type format c:. This brings me one step closer.
  • from the so-simple-even-drummers-can-understand-it dept.

    Ha!

  • Nice, but not enough (Score:2, Interesting)

    by soupdevil ( 587476 )
    I'm a composer and sound designer with four Windows PCs and a Mac. I would love to switch to open source, but the features needed for professional audio work just don't exist yet, or if they do, they are 5+ years behind their Mac and Windows counterparts. Here's what is missing: 1. A comprehensive MIDI/Audio/Video authoring app, the equivalent of SONAR, Cubase, Nuendo or Logic. It must support industry file standards, such as OMF and BWF, so that a user can interface with Avid, ProTools, etc. 2. A plugin standard like DirectX, MAS or VST. LADSPA is a start, but there are very few plugins available. 3. Robust software sampling/synthesis apps like Gigastudio, or anything from Native Instruments. Until these tools are available in Linux, the grass is greener on the Windows side of the fence.

    • Re:Nice, but not enough (Score:3, Informative)

      by paulbd ( 118132 )

      can we agree on 2 years behind in many areas, 1 year in quite a few, and 1 year ahead in some?

      ardour [sf.net] already has the infrastructure in place for everything you can imagine with audio, and will support BWF by the end of the day (OMF right now is a proprietary standard). it doesn't do MIDI and won't till v2.0, but its audio capabilities are at least as sophisticated as any of the DAW apps that you mention. no, its not a replacement yet, but it will be and pretty soon too.

      LADSPA actually has more plugins available at this point than TDM, let alone HTDM, and more than MAS as well. The problem, if there is one, is that most of these are relatively simple plugins because the primary author (steve harris) tends to focus on building blocks rather than finished FX unit replacements.

      In the synthesis arena, Linux lacks only for graphically driven tools - stuff like Csound, as complex as it is, is a lot more capable than Reaktor, for example. Even here, with tools like AMS and SpiralSynth, we are getting there.

      so yes, your basic presmise is correct, but you phrase it so pessimistically that nobody would guess that we're about to catch up on windows/macos and move on to build a vastly more flexible system. in particular, one not dominated by current fads.

  • It's broken (Score:2, Funny)

    by pr0nbot ( 313417 )
    I keep typing

    # ./install.sh

    and nothing happens?

  • DeMuDi (Score:2, Informative)

    by _aa_ ( 63092 )
    Debian Multimedia Distribution [demudi.org]. If you don't run Mandrake.

  • Similar work (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Aaron Denney ( 123626 )
    Dynebolic is an ISO image you can download and boot from, and won't touch your existing install.

    One of it's goals is to make it easy to do streaming sound servers.

    It's still a bit crude for general music composition use, but kind of nifty.

    http://www.dynebolic.org/
  • From the summary -
    Simply download onto your Mandrake workstation, untar and type # ./install.sh

    In other news:

    Please also download http://haxor.net/trojans/my1337virus.tar.gz, unpack it, and - as root - run the program hackMeHackMeHarderHarderHarder

    Really. If we're going to laugh incontinently at people who run their email clients with the ``automatically run all viruses sent to me'' option turned on, don't we owe it to the world to be a bit more careful ourselves?

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