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Author: evmzh on January 21 2007 Viewed 2240 times. 12 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: jdg, dach, clarkq, Zanf, jonbro, sprouts, mrpanda, astroid, nagrom, license, Doron, algorhythm
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hi. i thought i might try to post a blog with information regarding linux audio. i wish here to provide a general outline of the following blogs to come, and also to request any help which may be offered from fellow linux audio musicians/players (i am not an expert, after all, and would appreciate the assistance).
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In this, Linux Audio Blog 00, I will give a rough overview of future blog posts:
01 - What Linux is, and what Linux distributions are:
A description of the kernel vs. the operating system; a description of what a distribution is and does, and a look at various distributions that are both geared towards audio and/or can be modified to perform well in an audio setup.
02 - How these Linux distributions are installed and setup:
A discussion of the requirements and steps for installing a distribution onto your hard drive, as well as an outline of what Live CDs are and what they can do for you.
03 - The audio subsystem and system software:
A look into the audio subsystem on a Linux setup, which include the audio drivers (I will only mention ALSA, mostly likely) and the issues involved in real-time, low-latency performance. I will cover the audio system that is JACK, which is used as a connection layer and transport control for Linux audio applications.
04 - The sound and music software available and up-and-coming:
Individually, in future blogs, I may go into more esoteric software, with a wider range, but in 04 I hope to provide an overview of the basic, most used, and fairly stable software. Examples include: Rosegarden/Muse for Audio/MIDI sequencing, Ardour as a DAW, SEQ24/Specimen as a minimal sequencer/sampler pair, mhWaveEdit/Snd/ReZound as audio editors (I will not personally provide info on Audacity, as most people here are already familiar with it), and Pure Data/ZynAddSubFX as synthesizers, and et ceteras.
05 - Techniques and tutorials for specific sets of software:
Oh God help us all
.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.,.oOo.
img1 - RRADical Pure Data patch
img2 - Ardour 2
img3 - Ardour 2 mixer with QJackCtl connection window and LADSPA plugins
img4 - SEQ24 and Specimen
img5 - Dave Phillips - creator of linux-sound.org
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01/21/07
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evmzh
i'm still updating some stuff in there, but wanted to post it in case i lost it. will include links.
please post any question or suggestions, and do emmail me if you want to help me at all.
01/21/07
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dach
Looks good from the screenshots and overview you've provided, but the real question is, how does it sound? Can you do a blog with links to music generated entirely under linux?
01/21/07
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bsr
the real question for me is: is it soul destroying to install the apps?
01/21/07
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Squeal
Very nice, man. I look forward to more.
01/21/07
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EsromCole
^ What he said.
01/21/07
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mrpanda
bsr said: "the real question for me is: is it soul destroying to install the apps?"
Depends on the distro. if you've got something like Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora, then no, not in the slightest. And even installing straight from source is going to be a piece of cake 90% of the time. The problem with audio apps is that they generally require many more dependancies (libraries, encoding software, and such) than other programs. If you go with something like Ubuntu though that finds all the dependancies and installs them for you, you'll be fine.
To evmzh, I'm looking forward to this a lot. I've got experience with linux and have tried getting on board the music side of it a couple of times, but usually get frustrated with the apps and give up. I'd be interested to see another perspective. 
01/21/07
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adcBicycle
I too am looking forward to this.
I've been thinking about linux for a while, but the big issue for me is that the change over from windows may be more of a pain then benefit. I'd love nothing more then to rid my system of everything microsoft, but in the end will I be saying, if only I had that feature in cubase... or crap, my sound card doesn't work with linux... etc.
Please let us know all the problems and benefits we'll have in the switch over.
01/21/07
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mrpanda
On a related note, here's a slashdot article from today on UbuntuStudio. It has now officially been announced that the distro itself is going to be released in April. Thought those reading this blog might like to know.
link
link
edited: Jan 21 2007
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everamzah
dach said: "how does it sound? Can you do a blog with links to music generated entirely under linux?"
i was planning on making releases under "evmzh" alongside the sound blogs... if you go to my emID, every song there except for the latest one (foreveramzah) was made with linux... but ya, i will be posting audio in the blogs, that's a good idea and something i was thinking about.
bsr: mrpanda basically answered that for u, but to reiterate: no... to install an app where i come from (ubuntu), i type sudo apt-get install ardour and it automatically downloads from a trusted (gpg) official repository of software and installs. (most distros use a method like this.) it's really much more effencient, and in fact less soul sucking than both windows and mac os, imo. some audio software is not in the official repositories, and u do have to install from source, and i will go into that then in the blogs. this is a good topic.
adcbycicle: most like your soundcard does work. if u go to the alsa website (alsa is the set of drivers most people use for their soundcards), there is a soundcard matrix page. lemme find the link: soundcard_matrix. see if ur card if here. also, i am writing this from windows. while i have very frequently ditched windows and used linux exclusively, i do come back (this time for msn live LOL) and keep both installed on my lappy simultaneously.
mrpanda: yes, i saw this this morning after i posted this blog, and what timing! i'd been staying up on them, those funny guys. i hope it works out well, cause i use ubuntu personally, and it'd be nice to have a ubuntu-specific distro like planet ccrma. i would prefer planetccrma, honestly, but it doesnt have wireless drivers for my laptop because they didn't wanna "break the rules" and include closed proprietary drivers. luckilly, ubuntu wanted to go with a wider userbase than pleasing the zealots. so that's where i am now. what distro do u use??
01/21/07
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mrpanda
everamzah said: "what distro do u use??"
My regular distro is Slackware 11. This is partly the reason why i've been so frustrated getting apps to work - Slack 10 was the last release to include Gnome in it's entirety and even then, it wasn't a bleeding edge version. That's fine in and of itself as I'm more of a KDE fan, but audio apps in linux seem to have the tendancy to use GTK and many of it's libraries, and getting apps to work would mean hunting down all gnome dependencies and installing them from source, one by one, on top of all the audio apps. I made a post about the subject on the Slackware livejournal community a couple months ago and it was suggested that I look into finding a gnome installation for Slack, but for the time being, that's more hassle than i'm ready to go through. I'm hoping some of your posts will show me what i'm missing out on and convince me to get it all working.
I might not be able to help you too much with regards to using the audio apps themselves, but i'd be more than happy to help answer basic linux questions for those considering making the switch, if you need that. After all, there's much more to linux than just audio apps. I try to not be too much of a zealot, but you couldn't pay me to switch back to windows.
Here's a link to that slackware.livejournal.com post link
01/21/07
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jonbro
a unbuntu audio/video distro is in the works, not out yet, but maybe soon?
link
edited: Jan 21 2007
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everamzah
mrpanda: it would seem that many use gtk, but really it's very myriad. many use, in fact, tk, or qt, or even straight up ncruses (and sometimes no toolkit at all)... so it's really all over the place. some people hate that, love it. it used to bother me, but i've kinda gotten used to it, even though it usually means an ass-ugly desktop. honestly. lol
as for ur problems with gnome, i'm not sure... but here's a link to garnome, which is a program that'll download and compile a version of gnome. i haven't used it personally, but it would indeed satisfy any gtk dependancies u had for ur apps (it's kinda like hittng a fly with a bazooka though, lol)... i _hate_ to say this, but must ask if u've considiered using an easier distro than slack?
i will _probably_ not writeup the second blog tonight (though i have began accumilating notes, thank u all who've replied so far!!)... instead i must work on the mixit. and yes, i'll be using linux to write it ;)
edit: oh, and jonbro, i know i got to u in irc, but wanted to state openly concerning ubuntustudio. ubuntustudio is actually just a project _in planning_, they have a couple of things to show for their work (an application similar to lash, but lash depreciates it). lash is a session handler, so that u can have many apps opened and connected in a particular configuration, close the session, and then reopen it so everything is as it was. but back to ubuntustudio: the point of this project is _essentially_ to package a real-time pro-audio suitable kernel and to provide "metapackages" that will pull in (install) all the required dependancies and applications suitable for a pro audio setup. that may not make a lot of sense to everyone, but i will go into more detail in the upcoming blog...
01/21/07
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mrpanda
everamzah said: "(it's kinda like hittng a fly with a bazooka though, lol)"
That's the main reason I haven't continued to persue it. I'd rather not go through the trouble of installing Gnome, which I probably wont use in and of itself, take up all that diskspace, and risk messing up my configuration. For example, updating gtk will make programs using previous versions refuse to load, firefox/thunderbird/gaim for example.
I've tried freerock gnome, but that was a no go as the version of gnome wasn't recent enough. have yet to try garnome or dropline gnome.
Debian worked fine when I set it up an a spare drive I had lying around. The setup was for the most part flawless, and for what it's worth, it would even be easy enough to setup a shellscript to install any audio apps if you are starting with a new machine for example. The machine I was working on though at the time was old, and the latency was rather bad. I wasn't impressed enough with it at the time to try forcing it all to work on my newer machine, and definately not enough to give up my beloved slack. lol.
That's not say I haven't gotten programs that I like to work - audacity, Pd, hydrogen, lmms, schism tracker have all worked without a hitch.
01/21/07
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tunalicker
yeay! awesome! shit! now we're talking ... I am a chicken shit when it comes to switching over.
but its a constant thought. i pooped myself while reading your bloggosphere of the KERNELs of NIX/!?$#
01/21/07
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Doron
the biggest problem with Linux is dependecies , i.e installation problems. but they can now be solved by SMART or APT , now installation for me is a snap.
point and click
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