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Music Media

Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Now in Beta 306

Posted by michael from the love-of-music dept.
croddy writes "The first beta of the Ardour digital audio workstation has been released. A tarball is available at the Ardour project page on Sourceforge. Packagers are currently preparing binary releases for several major Linux distributions. Ardour is a professional-grade, low-latency, multi-track digital hard disk recording and mixing application designed to replace dedicated HDR systems, and software systems such as ProTools and Samplitude. It supports audio processing plugins via LADSPA. Although it is still a beta, the years of work and dedication by the Ardour development team are very much visible in this release."
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Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Now in Beta More

Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Now in Beta

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  • OSX (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Computer! ( 412422 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:45AM (#6311716) Homepage Journal
    If it really replaces the commercial tools it says it does, it would be worth dual-booting to Linux just for this one app alone.

    What does it take to get an app like this to run on OSX? A recompile, or something more sinsiter, like Fink or a complete port?

    • Re:OSX (Score:5, Informative)

      by croddy ( 659025 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:52AM (#6311779)
      well it would certainly have to be recompiled for OSX as it's only available as source right now :-)

      ardour depends upon JACK to handle audio I/O. to run it on OSX would require JACK being ported to OSX, or Ardour being ported to use another I/O kit.

      it depends upon a few other things as well, such as libsamplerate, libsndfile, and GTK which would be very easy to port to OSX, if they've not been already.

      • I know for sure that GTK has been ported to Darwin. It would probably be better to port it to use CoreAudio, because then you could use all of your sound devices that you have Mac OS X drivers for, (does JACK even handle FireWire audio devices?), as well as being able to use AudioUnits plugins. Currently, KDE can take advantage of CoreAudio. Perhaps re-writing this for QT/Mac Free would be a good thing :)
      • well it would certainly have to be recompiled for OSX as it's only available as source right now :-)

        Whoops!

      • Re:OSX (Score:2, Informative)

        by g0at ( 135364 )
        libsndfile [zip.com.au] works great on OS X; I use it in my drum machine application Doggiebox [doggiebox.com] for file i/o.

        -ben

    • Re:OSX (Score:3, Informative)

      by pnix ( 682520 )
      Taken from the manual...

      2.3. Does Ardour run on non-Linux systems? Ardour depends on the JACK system to access the sound hardware. Jack has (as of this writing) support for Linux, Solaris, and MacOSX. There have not been any reports of running Ardour on any platforms besides Linux though.

      It looks like noone's done it (and reported it) but you could prolly pull it off, since it uses an abstract layer (JACK) between the software and the hardware and since JACK supports OS X, and OS X could most likely

  • ... if it works out to be well written. Most of the guys I know that fool with this stuff generally do it on Macs, which obviously raises the price of equipment. Having a full set up is already expensive to begin with.

    Not to mention it give those of us who only dabble a way to play without shelling out large amounts of cash.

  • I'm a musician, and the lack of good music recording/processing software on Linux was what had kept me from jumping ship years ago when I first learned how to use it.

    Can Linux switchers get commercials like those annoying Mac ones too?

  • Yes! (Score:2, Funny)

    by farrellj ( 563 )
    Time to dump far too many Windows tools...no more loosing work to the BSOD!

    ttyl
    Farrell

  • Hmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by stanmann ( 602645 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:46AM (#6311728) Journal
    Great now I can record music in my home, and publish it on the internet, and get sued by the RIAA for not paying them for the privilege of making music.

  • Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:46AM (#6311732) Homepage Journal

    How does Ardour [sourceforge.net] compare to Audacity [sourceforge.net], another free digital audio editing program? I want to know my options before switching from proprietary Cool Edit.

    • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ardour : audacity :: photoshop : MS paint
    • Looks like you haven't read the article? Ardour is a multichannel hard disk recorder (HDR) and digital audio workstation (DAW); Audacity appears to be a simple audio editor!

      Rob

    • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:5, Informative)

      by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:56AM (#6311831)
      Ardour is to Audacity as Quark Xpress is to Notepad.

      That's an exaggeration, but only a small one. If you like Cool Edit, and it does what you need, then Ardour is gonna be overkill.

    • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:5, Informative)

      by Forkenhoppen ( 16574 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:04AM (#6311901)
      They're like night and day. Audacity is designed for editing sound clips. Its interface was designed in the style of CoolEdit or the windows Sound Recorder.

      Ardour, on the other hand, is designed as a suite. It's layout is designed so you can easily edit multiple tracks at the same time. You can have the volume or panning change as your progress, timewise, through each track. You can apply certain effects to just one track on the fly, rather than having to pre-process it and mix it, and then listen to the result.

      The difference between Audacity and Ardour is kind of like the difference between MS Paint and The Gimp. Think layers. It's just a more robust program.

      • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:5, Informative)

        by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:33AM (#6312156) Homepage
        Give us a little credit. Audacity has multitrack working quite nicely in our unstable branch, which will be 1.2 before long. We have a built-in envelope editor which gives the same effect as volume automation. We have time tracks that let you continuously vary the speed/pitch of the entire project (I'm pretty sure no other audio editor has this; chalk one up for innovation in the open source community). We have mute/solo/volume/pan controls for each track.

        Yes, it's a completely different program than Ardour with different goals, but I don't think it's a simple matter of toy vs. tool. Audacity has a lot of features that Ardour doesn't because of Ardour's more narrow intended use.
        • If 31 band graphic EQ could be added to Audacity, it would have everything I need and I could switch to Linux full-time.

          Get crackin'! ;)

          Chris
          • If 31 band graphic EQ could be added to Audacity, it would have everything I need and I could switch to Linux full-time.

            Note that Audacity does have a FFT filter - not the same thing, but might be able to tide you over.

            Programmers: does anyone have the relevant DSP code for a graphic EQ (any number of bands) that they'd be willing to donate to Audacity? I'd be happy to take care of integrating it into our codebase...
        • Damn straight. Audacity has saved my butt a number of times -- great work guys!

    • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:5, Funny)

      by naelurec ( 552384 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:08AM (#6311938) Homepage
      Think Shrek.

      Ardour is like Shrek .. it has layers.
      Audacity is like Doneky .. it doesn't have layers.
      • Ardour is like Shrek .. it has layers.
        Audacity is like Doneky .. it doesn't have layers.

        If you're referring to tracks, Audacity has had basic multitrack capabilities since 1.0. The unstable branch, which will be 1.2 before long, has even better multitrack support with mute/solo/pan/volume controls on every track.
    • to me, the most important difference is that Audacity can be run on windows and Ardour can't. for me, that makes Ardour's greatness a moot point.

    • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:5, Informative)

      by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:49AM (#6312308) Homepage
      Speaking as an author of Audacity, my opinion is that Ardour is a more powerful program, but with a much narrower appeal. Ardour is designed for use with pro-level, multichannel cards in a studio setting. If you're in a room surrounded by expensive audio gear, Ardour is probably for you. Otherwise, Audacity is probably a better choice, and the Ardour community would probably approve of me saying that because fewer people will approach them with questions like "how do I open an mp3?" :)

      More specifically: Audacity supports more formats including lossy formats like mp3 and Vorbis. Audacity runs on more platforms. Audacity is much easier to use. Audacity has a more diverse set of features in general, such as the ability to extend it with the lisp-like language Nyquist and "time tracks" that allow you to continuously vary the speed/pitch of the project.

      Ardour has much more evolved multichannel capabilities (that is, sending or capturing more than stereo from the soundcard itself, Audacity can mix multiple tracks to stereo output just fine). Ardour has support for MMC and real-time effects.

    • Re:Ardour vs. Audacity (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) * on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:56AM (#6312389) Homepage
      How does Ardour compare to Audacity, another free digital audio editing program? I want to know my options before switching from proprietary Cool Edit.

      I agree with many of the responses, that Ardour and Audacity are as different as night and day. But I don't think some of the comparisons were quite fair, though, comparing Ardour to Quark Express and Audacity to NotePad! Maybe I'm just biased, though, as the lead developer of Audacity.

      First of all, I don't think that Ardour and Audacity are directly competing. There's some feature overlap, but the user interfaces are so different (on purpose) that we're both capturing different markets, and addressing different needs.

      Anyway, here are some of the major differences I can think of off the top of my head:

      1. Ardour only runs on Linux. Audacity runs (completely natively) on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Ardour requires Jack. Audacity only requires OSS on Linux (supported everywhere) with support for ALSA and Jack in alpha testing now (email the devel list if you want info on how to enable one of these).

      2. Ardour supports true multi-track recording and playback. Audacity only records more than 2 tracks on some systems, and always mixes down to 2 output channels (stereo).

      3. Both Audacity and Ardour are quite powerful, but in different ways. Ardour supports MIDI control, powerful muting/soloing, and realtime effects. Audacity has only non-realtime effects, but some of these are quite powerful in a different way, like our Noise Removal. Audacity supports plug-in effects in Ladspa (Linux), VST (Win/Mac), and Nyquist (a high-level interpreted language for audio processing).

      Lots of features in common, too: both Audacity and Ardour support floating-point samples, high sample rates, resampling, LADSPA plug-ins, unlimited undo, internationalization, etc.

      One last thing to dispel the myth that Audacity is "simple" compared to Ardour: I just did a quick wc, and Audacity is 70k+, Ardour is 100k+ lines of code (someone else can feel free to do a sloccount if you want). In both cases, not counting other libraries that aren't directly part of the project. No matter how you look at it, they're within a factor of 2 in terms of size and complexity, just in different areas.

      We're nearing a feature freeze for Audacity 1.2.0. If you're comfortable compiling software, please check out our latest code from CVS and help us get the last few bugs out. I'd strongly encourage you to try out both Ardour and Audacity - hopefully you'll find that you use them to complement each other.

      - Dominic
      • First of all, I don't think that Ardour and Audacity are directly competing. There's some feature overlap, but the user interfaces are so different (on purpose) that we're both capturing different markets, and addressing different needs.

        definitely. I would be at a serious loss without it. they're very different. audacity is the sort of program that should be included with a general distribution; ardour isn't. it's certainly no MS paint!

  • Mmmmm...Free DAW = FREEDOM. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:50AM (#6311761) Homepage Journal
    It's getting to the point where I absolutely cannot wait for this to finally arrive.

    My musician husband has been lusting after the ability to record music for years, and the big trouble has been that the right software has been proprietary, often requiring expensive hardware to make it work, and EXPENSIVE on its own.

    To wit: Vegas from Sonic Foundry costs $700. Samplitude is about that much. ProTools? If you have to ask, you can't afford it. Sonar by Cakewalk only costs $500. (ONLY)

    Unfortunately it's not production quality yet. But from the looks of the site, it looks like they are getting close to it now.

    Give it a year or so and I will be able to finally wipe Windows off of the family audio computer and do it the right way...with Free as in FREEDOM software.
    • ProTools? If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

      ProTools has a free version (it's limited in certain ways) that is perfectly usable for hobbyists. You could also buy a MBox (really nice USB audio I/O) for $500 and it comes packaged with ProTools. Vegas is a video editing package, not audio, so I'm not sure why you are considering that. Sonar is only $299 on musiciansfriend.com. Yes that's a lot, but it's cheaper (to me at least) than spending days getting a homebrew Linux/Ardour studio thrown toget

      • Not a troll...here's the details.

        In 2000, I built a machine specifically for my husband as a digital audio workstation. We bought the most recent Magix semi-pro multitrack software to try to get things going on it. Unmitigated disaster.

        Moved from W98SE to W2K in 2001. Tried other software in various stages of legality. Some worked, some didn't. Right no we use machine to do very limited stuff with ACID, Sound Forge XP and Vegas Audio SE. (the last two came free with the full version of ACID 3.)

        Yes, Richi
        • Hm, interesting. I didn't realize people used Vegas for audio.

          If your husband can't handle the "arcane' interface of Windows software there's no way he's going to be using Ardour anytime soon. You should download ProTools Free for him to try out, as the only complaint I had with it was it reminded me too much of a tape based studio :) Barring that working for him, I say he should stick to the hardware based multitrackers. I'm actually considering switching to those right now, to get away from computers
      • Sonar is only $299 on musiciansfriend.com.

        I shop at musiciansfriend a lot, often drooling over their Martin acoustics.

        They very regular have prices approaching 1/2 the MSRP on many products. Often labelled "too low to display".

        I'm not plugging muscian's friend, its just that the original poster may not have been lying when they gave the $500 price on the software, that may be the MSRP.

    • The biggest barrier between musicians and digital recording isn't the cost. It's ease of use. When you're trying to capture a creative idea, the last thing you need is a confusing/non-standard interface holding you back. Pretty soon the idea is gone and you're wishing you spent the money on a commercial product with a UI that's been under development for a few years.
    • Still not free, but if you're paying $700 for Vegas then you're paying too much.

      You can get Vegas 4 from SafeHarbor [sharbor.com] for $399 - or $499 if you want it bundled with their new DVD authoring app.
    • But will drivers be written for Linux that will allow for a very low latency for sound cards that windows and mac drivers provide? The lowest possible latency is necessary when recording and playing back multiple tracks of audio at one time.

      For those who's survival depend upon making money through music recording, support both through industry hardware and the software itself is imperitive. For those who want to mess around with a free alternative to industry tools, Adour will be great.

      In the end, what
      • Ardour is reliant on ALSA which is the next-gen audio architecture for Linux if my memory serves me right. Combined with the low-latency kernel patch, supposedly it is comparable with those Windows and Mac drivers you speak of.

        Also, for those who talk of the tools being expensive, understand that musicians in America (unless they are part of a very small elite) do not make a Professional's wages. Usually they have to work a "day job" to survive. If they have a recording contract they are under a contract

    • My musician husband has been lusting after the ability to record music for years, and the big trouble has been that the right software has been proprietary, often requiring expensive hardware to make it work, and EXPENSIVE on its own.

      Aww, poo baby, having to spend a couple grand on equipment to make money. What IS the world coming to? Oh wait, let's leave Musician Reality and enter Real World Reality.

      Tools for automotive mechanics can cost thousands of dollars, and that's not including the computerize

    • Please stop exxagurating the truth. From the Sonic Foundry website, Vegas costs $489.97 [sonicfoundry.com]

      Sonar Costs $479.

      If your job/profession absolutely depends upon these applications (which is the case for about 90% of their users), $500 is a VERY small price to pay.
      • On the other hand, $500 is a lot if your job doesn't depend on the application. That's probably why only 10% of the users don't really need the software.

        Musical hobbyists currently can't really get good recordings of their music to give to their friends. Artists of various other sorts have been able to share their work with others pretty trivially for a while now. People make photos of their trips available online, put up stuff they drew, etc. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say, "Learning the cello is g

  • Woohoo! (Score:2, Troll)

    by cybermace5 ( 446439 )
    The perfect tool for even MORE lame Korean knockoffs of American pop music.

    Actually, though...the cheaper the tools, the less lure there is for artists to sign their souls over to RIAA.

    Sorry for bringing up RIAA again, just because the topic happens to involve sound.

  • *snorf* (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:52AM (#6311787)
    I almost spewed apple juice out my nose when I saw Ardour referred to as "professional-grade" and compared to Pro-Tools. Sorry, it's a nice free package and useful for light hobbyist work, but that's about it. I've been trying to migrate my studio off Windows for awhile now and nothing on Linux comes close, so I just bought Macs instead. Just getting Ardour to install was a daunting task, let alone getting it to see the soundcards I had. Yes it's still beta, but it doesn't even fair well against simple cheap tools that were available in 1997.

  • As much as (Score:5, Informative)

    by blinder ( 153117 ) <blinder.daveNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:54AM (#6311808) Homepage Journal
    I like Ardour (when I actually managed to get it compiled) I have found that it will never replace my Mackie MDR 24, or my Mackie 8-bus console. I'm a knob/fader/pot turner and I like the feel of "real" equipment (I also like the way it looks, all shiney, with the lights and LED's sparkling).

    I use Ardour mostly for low-level editing of tracks I record on the MDR. I can ftp into the MDR and pull the tracks out of project (they are just WAV files) and import them into Ardour. The best part about Ardour for editing is its non-destructive-ness... especially for the Mackie were if you had destructive editing... well your synch wouldn't be... um, in synch.

    Now, maybe, with binary distributions coming online, we can see VST plugin capability?

    • Re:As much as (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Goner ( 5704 )
      Ardour does MMC (MIDI Machine Control), though, so some mixers can control the virtual sliders on the screen with their real sliders, etc. I don't have one of those, but I do have a peavey PC1600, which maybe I can get to work with ardour... maybe. :)

      -Rich
    • when I actually managed to get it compiled

      I had no problem. I just compiled the version released today on Gentoo. All I had to type was 'emerge sync' and then 'emerge ardour' Bam! Downloaded all the libraries, including jack-0.7 from cvs, and then ardour-0.9beta1 was compiling and installing! :-D

      Have I mentioned before that Gentoo's portage rocks? ;)
      • I had no problem

        Heh, when I get home tonight I'll make sure to download the latest tarball. The last time I downloaded Ardour was about 3 months ago (from cvs) and had a dandy of a time trying to satisfy all of the dependencies. Ugh, that was a lot of fun.

        Now, with things becoming more stable, it really should be a no brainer :)

        • That's just it. Portage satisfies all the dependencies for you. There were a whole slew of dependencies I didn't have resolved, but all I had to do was type the two commands.

          The biggest surprise was to see ardour-0.9beta1 was actually sitting in the portage tree after hitting 'emerge sync'. Portage used to be a few days to a week behind, now it looks like we're getting package updates *same day*. Hats off the Daniel Robbins and the entire Gentoo team!

  • Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iomud ( 241310 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:55AM (#6311822) Homepage Journal
    I have to cringe when I see Ardours interface. I feel the same way about Logic.

  • Better than Sonar or CoolEdit? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HealYourChurchWebSit ( 615198 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:56AM (#6311825) Homepage
    Now the killer question, is this cool tool a good replacement for Windows based products such as CoolEdit or Cakewalk's Sonar? I've been a long time user of the later since the DOS days, but have become increasingly annoyed by latency issues as a result of the operating system.

    I'm not only encouraged to make the switch by tools such as Ardour, but the increasing support for MIDI & Sound cards [midi-howto.com] AND if need be, tweak my Linux Kernel [oreillynet.com] for real-time music, MIDI & sound performance.

    Now I just need to find an equivalent to Dave Phillips' "Sound & Midi Software for Linux [linux-sound.org]" page for Video editing & DVD production.

  • Never going to happen (Score:3, Informative)

    by ldspartan ( 14035 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @10:58AM (#6311848) Homepage
    The de facto standard for this kind of work is ProTools. Despite any grass-roots campaigns against it, it is the most commonly used DAW application out there.

    OSS packages, while great and useful, are not going to be able to compete with ProTools in the near future. ProTools (not LE, not FE, the real version) comes with custom external DSP hardware. The external DSPs and related hardware are used for to process software plugins as well as simple tasks like ADC/DAC of signals. Until the OSS community can provide both equivalent hardware and software support for it, there will be no competition between packages like this one and ProTools, as they are in entirely different classes.

    All that being said, I'm really happy someone is working on it, and that I'll probably use this or similiar package, but not for the same things I'd use ProTools for.

    --
    lds

    • You have reproduced in your comment the exact spirit in which the Linux kernel was written about before the OSS community showed the world that they DO have the power to crush proprietary software.

      Just switch all the instances of ProTools with UNIX and reread your post.

      • Umm...

        The linux kernel requires general purpose computers to work. These were and are plentiful.

        In my humble opinion (and the Ardour folk have some good arguments [sourceforge.net] about this, as sibling posts to the parent have pointed out) a pro-quality DAW requires external general purpose DSP hardware to succeed. To the best of my knowledge, no such product exists right now. Pro quality audio interfaces can be had for PCs now, which solves the largest problem with this breed of software. The last, and largest stumbling
    • Not disagreeing with your conclusion, but external DSP does not magically mean high quality audio in itself.

      The Ardour people have a long page [sourceforge.net] discussing exactly this issue.

    • In fact, the Ardour team deal with this issue here [sourceforge.net].

      Basically it boils down to the fact that (like a lot of things) while the use of external hardware sounds intuitively more sensible, it doesn't work out like that in practice.

    • Yeah, maybe in the professional studios. But there are a shitload of hobbyists working on commodity hardware with stuff like Logic and Cubase and Nuendo and Sonar. Ardour doesn't compare to any of these, either (IMO), but that doesn't mean it can't some day.
    • > The external DSPs and related hardware are used for to process
      > software plugins as well as simple tasks like ADC/DAC of signals

      If all you're using external DSP hardware for is as co-processors to run software on, you're fighting a losing battle--CPUs performance is increasing so quickly that you're barely done with the DSP hardware design before the next generation CPU comes out and obviates the need for it. Basically the only long-term justification for external hardware is for high-quality inter

    • You speak as if ProTools is the only vendor that you can get high-end multitrack audio DSP hardware from. I can go to my local Sam Ash, or crack open a Musician's Friend catalog, and find a half dozen companies that will sell me monster PCI cards, with or without bundled software.

      The OSS community doesn't need to provide the hardware, it's already out there.

  • Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Luveno ( 575425 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:03AM (#6311899)
    Now I just need to get my sound card working under Linux!
    • Exactly.

      About 2 years ago I started gettting interested in recording audio on my PC ... and rather than spend lots of cash on hardware recording equipment I felt that PC recording had more advantages (cost, scalability etc.)

      At the time my PC was 100% Linux. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any software what so ever (well.. there was bcast2000 but it had lots of problems with synchronizing tracks). So I made a small Windows partition and found loads of goodies (CoolEdit, Cubase, FruityLoops .. ).

      Realizing w

  • it's an hdr/daw and jackd client (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rtp405 ( 671252 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:11AM (#6311966)

    After about three years of testing Ardour it's great to see the beta release. I own a small commercial recording studio and am really looking forward to running Ardour and other linux applications fulltime. There's still work to be done but it's getting very close.

    Ardour is a jackd client. Jackd enables hardware and software port routing. So, application_a:output_N can be routed to application_b:input_N and on and on to the extent of your computing capabilities.

    In addition to routing, jackd also has transport syncronization functionality. The transport api is in beta but it's being actively developed. Earlier this morning I tested DM-24(digital mixer) MMC play instructions to Ardour(jack transport master) to Alsaplayer(jack transport slave) and Ardour-mtc:out to DM-24 for sync between Ardour and the mixing consol.

    In the middle of that chain I've got JAMin which is a jack client audio mastering application

    So, I hit play(dm-24) Ardour engages transport, Alsaplayer engages transport and sends its output to JAMin which in turn sends its output to Ardour where the mastered product is recorded. This is incredible stuff.

    My hat is off to the linux audio developer and user community.

    Next on the agenda, call my protools pals and invite them over for beer. :)

  • lack of mature hardware drivers (Score:3, Insightful)

    by petsounds ( 593538 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:20AM (#6312045)
    It would seem the biggest problem here is lack of driver support for a wide range of pro-audio sound cards and interfaces. Looking at the ALSA supported hardware [alsa-project.org] page (which this workstation utilizes), most of the pro hardware hasn't been verified to work well.

    I think the other major downside is the lack of VST plug-in support. Most every major digital audio software workstation like ProTools and Nuendo take advantage of the large array of VST plug-ins available for things like effects processing. I don't think you'll see a lot of pro audio guys contemplate switching over until VST support is added (in Ardour's defense, VST support is tricky because a lot of them are platform-specific due to bad design).

    However, I salute them for their work and hope that Ardour matures into a great package.
    • VST plugins do in fact run in Ardour, via Wine. However, it generally needs to be easier to set up and have higher performance. It's covered in the FAQ, with the caveat that as a Wine developer, I'm not aware of any of the supposed work due to be completed by the end of 2003 - Wine has problems with being linked into a non-Wine process image, and it's been discussed many many times with no resolutions near in sight.

  • Another blow to the middle-man (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheTick ( 27208 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:20AM (#6312048) Homepage Journal

    Imagine when high-quality digital recording facilities are available at low cost to those that want to use them. The RIAA will have lost its hammerlock on both side of the music supply chain. Suddenly the arguments that say the RIAA are screwing the artists start to have a lot more validity: the artists will be able to create works and distribute them easily in return for a fair price.

    Even if some other proprietary system is the standard, I hope artists sieze this opportunity. (If only so I can see the RIAA swallow their collective tongue.)

    • Imagine when high-quality digital recording facilities are available at low cost to those that want to use them.

      Um, that's available now. Has been for a couple years. I could build an amazing recording PC (with all the needed software) for about $2000. If I wanted to do some hardcore effects procession make it $2500. That's damn cheap for high-quality recording. Even if I went the Mac route it's still under $4000 for a really nice studio setup. It sounds like a lot, but if you're serious about maki

  • To Be Fair (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @11:21AM (#6312050) Homepage
    Mod down and Flame away, but I'll be brave...

    I've been doing audio production work for a couple years using Windows 2000, Nuendo [nuendo.com], Amplitube [amplitube.com], This incredible $139 gadget [v-amp.com], using only this [midiman.net] inexpensive audio card. I don't get blue screens of death, my hardware is fully supported, etc. I run a second HD with Red Hat 9 (and incidentally, the awesome Ximian Desktop), and I can't even get my sound card to work. I love Linux, but no serious musician will be using the penguin for audio production for at least a few more years.

    • First, when creating a DAW, you adapt your hardware for the platform. Linux does have semi-pro and professional audio solutions. The hardware isn't the issue.

      Now, you still might be right that real audio production in Linux is a few years off. The kernel patches are a bit of a pain still, from what I understand, not to mention that the plugin support isn't there. However, Linux has a viable future in the audio/video editing arena if some commercial (not necessarily proprietary) vendors come in.

      (Why do we
    • While I agree with your points about audio work, you are a little offbase regarding Linux installations in professional studios. I can't seem to remember the title of the article, but I ran across a writeup a few months ago where a couple studios had tossed Windows aside, due to rising licensing costs, in favor of Linux running (iirc) Rosegarden, Audacity, SoX, and a couple other apps. I got the impression that they were smaller studios, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless.

      That said, I don't think th

    • Re:To Be Fair (Score:3, Insightful)

      by theLOUDroom ( 556455 )
      Mod down and Flame away, but I'll be brave... I've been doing audio production work for a couple years using Windows 2000, Nuendo, Amplitube, This incredible $139 gadget, using only this inexpensive audio card. I don't get blue screens of death, my hardware is fully supported, etc. I run a second HD with Red Hat 9 (and incidentally, the awesome Ximian Desktop), and I can't even get my sound card to work. I love Linux, but no serious musician will be using the penguin for audio production for at least a fe
  • Seriously, I hope this works as well as described. Although their is an uphill battle agains mind share (ProTools is truly the DeFacto standard in real studies) there is ALSO the fact that Musicians are also a contraty bunch indeed. They are more likely to use "something different", a.k.a. Linux, than almost any other group, just out of a desire to truly "think outside of the box" and "*f the man!. Suggestion to the Authors: for this to work the designers of Ardour should focus, focus, focus on the user
    • Depends on what you define as a "musician". Over the past couple years, studio-in-a-box crap like Reason has come into pretty widespread use, despite incredible programs like Reaktor being around for quite awhile.

      It's probably more accurate to say that they're more likely to use "what works". Someone writing bad trance is probably going to have different needs and wants than someone interested in DSP processing and sound design, just as someone interested in surround mixing and soundtrack work will have
  • protools (and others) run at 96 khz with big iron (Solid State Logic etc) running at 192khz.

    Sigh - nice effort though. I guess the custom DSP's make a lot of difference. But i guess if you can mate this thing to a decent sound card then 96khz should be do-able..
  • I found it interesting how much these guys seem to like Dual AMD machines.

    Not that is really suprises me, they are an "cheap" way to get really good performance. Whoever, they referred to them quite a few times in their promo material.

    -Pete

  • Please support VST or Audio Unit plugins; there's no use to a DAW without a modern plugin format...

    All of our Destroy FX [destroyfx.org] plugins are available with source, contrary to what the FAQ says.
    • Slipping into fanboy mode for a moment, can I just say that Destroy FX are some of the best goddamned plugins ever created? I use them so often, I haven't even really seen the point in buying most of the commercial offerings out there.

      Any plans for a few new plugs? :-)
  • One of the nice things about Sonar is the (with the addon) ability to take a midi track made up of soundfonts and render it to a wav for a final mix.

    That seems to be about the only major thing I would consider missing (the VST plugin "almost-support" was a surprise. Wonder if they could get DirectX plugin support via wine or something as well.)

  • Replace ProTools? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheAwfulTruth ( 325623 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @12:47PM (#6312878) Homepage
    Are you insane? That's like saying GIMP will replace Photoshop. Neither of them are even close to being in the same leage.

    It's hyperbole like that that HURTS Open Source.

    Try telling a real professional that this thing is near to replacing ProTools and you will be laughed off the planet.

    Get a grip. It (like gimp) might make a nice cheap alternative for the garage band or bedroom recording artist, but it's got about a decade more work to go to approach what ProTools does TODAY.

    Advertise it for what it is, don't make completely uninformed comments like this will be a free replacement for ProTools. My ghod.

  • Samplitude Link Is Incorrect (Score:3, Informative)

    by cenobita ( 615440 ) on Friday June 27, 2003 @01:02PM (#6313001)
    Just a quick correction for those who've hit the Samplitude link listed. Sek'd doesn't own it anymore. It's now produced by Magix.

    They have a site dedicated to Samplitude and Sequoia at samplitude.com [samplitude.com]

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