Linux Audio Development 192
JulesVD writes "There is an article from Linux Journal about the latest plans for Linux audio functionality from the first developer's conference in Germany. Developers from more than a dozen countries attended this successful conference, representing organizations such as SuSE, Linux Audio Systems, Stanford University, IRCAM and Centro Tempo Reale. Topic discussions included in-depth presentations of the rapidly evolving Linux sound system, a look at the details of programming for professional audio standards and a survey of recent applications and audio-centric Linux distributions." Mmm...interesting reading (blantant plug for cool program), but I think the most important question is will it make Scrubby happy?
Sound Support (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a major issue but annoying
Rus
EAX? (Score:2)
Re:Sound Support (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, ALSA *is* nice.
ALSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project). They feel that a user should use hardware mixing *or* software mixing provided by a sound server like arts, esd, JACK, etc. This produces less kernelspace code, which is good, but means that Linux cannot handle using hardware mixing until all channels are exhausted, then fall back to software mixing for additional channels.
Esd and arts do not provide solid enough latency and sync to be the sound server in this scenario. JACK may be enough -- haven't used it -- but it's not in common use outside of the audio content creation software area.
OSS/Free has a similar approach. Hardware or software sound mixing, no hybrid approach.
A mixer capable of supplying such mixing would need to intercept all ALSA calls and use realtime scheduling. Kinda nasty. It always seemed that adding mixing and resampling code to ALSA would be easier.
It *is* a bit of a thorny problem, though.
Re:Sound Support (Score:2, Informative)
> ALSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project).
Since 0.9.1 ALSA can do mixing itself, with the so called dmix-plugin [alsa-project.org]. You can throw away soundservers now, except of course JACK which is a lot more than a simple mixing sound server.
-- fbar
Re:Sound Support (Score:2)
Re:Sound Support (Score:2)
Re:Sound Support (Score:5, Informative)
LSA's biggest drawback is the project policy that software mixing should be done in userspace (presumably by a separate project)
This just is not true. ALSA now has the dmix plugin that handles software mixing in user space all by itself. Its very, very efficient and has no impact on latency (though it can't offer JACK-style sample-synchronous execution). dmix makes regular software mixing "servers" irrelevant, and JACK fills the remaining needs.
Re:Sound Support (Score:2)
Re:Sound Support (Score:2)
Does it handle automatic fallback? I.E. use available hardware channels and then fall back to software mixing?
Re:Sound Support (Score:2)
On the mailing lists, most people will tell you this is the last thing anybody developing could care for.
What we need is a seamless API so you can write applications for any sound card. If available mixing channels are there, use them, if not, mix in software. Windows has had this functionality since forever. Linux has never, and probably will not have it in the near future.
When I asked these q
Re: (Score:2)
Re:My head hurt (Score:3, Funny)
Even better, I often talk about running something in "UML", or "User-Mode Linux", at work. Until I explained, many people were thinking I was talking about "UML", (I think it's an abbreviation for) "Unified Markup Language". They thought it was amazing I co
A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:5, Informative)
-Simon
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm affraid its just a bit too immature right now to be considered a serious contender to ProTools because only the geek-elite can really get this thing compiled (which I sometimes consider myself at different times of the day) but I have yet to get this thing compiled.
If they would just release a stable build or just a stable distribution that could be built (ala configure/make/make install) then it it would be a serious contender.
I see fro
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:2)
It already has the bare bones. It's not as useable as Sonar, but then it's free and will soon be a lot better, if the mailing list is anything to go by.
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:3, Informative)
Once Gentoo is installed, installing Ardour is a one-liner:
# ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge ardour-cvs
If your system is slower than 1GHz, check on it every few hours. You needn't do much else while it builds Ardour and all the dependencies to get th
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:1)
Of course the only way Steinberg would make a Linux version is if th
Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:4, Informative)
It uses packages contributed to Mandrake 9.1 to build an audio workstation (including a low-latency "multimedia" kernel) - using URPMI to simplify package dependency issues.
Quote from the HowTo: "You can setup a professional quality audio workstation in an afternoon or less, with Mandrake Linux. No compiling. No text editing. No dependencies. It's this easy.".
I don't know enough about computer audio to comment further, but you might be interested in checking it out.
Aaah Sweep. (Score:2, Funny)
When the forums outnumber the posts, you know you've ound a real classical sourceforge project.
Re:Aaah Sweep. (Score:1)
Linux Audio Development.......... (Score:1, Funny)
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the drivers need to work. period. (Score:5, Interesting)
I installed Windows XP after 9 years of running Linux (various distros) because I was tired of only being able to use half the features of my hardware.
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:1)
This is obvious because anyone using linux for 9 years KNOWS how to get things to work and would puke uncontrollably at the abortion that is Windows XP.
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:5, Insightful)
But what's really annoying is when features aren't supported on Linux for non-technical reasons. For example, Matrox has written Linux drivers for their graphics cards, but the Linux drivers don't support TV-out. Why?
It's apparently because Linux doesn't have Macrovision support, and I guess Matrox doesn't want to be sued by the MPAA for releasing drivers that "enable piracy". So Linux users can't have a feature that has many legitimate uses, just because someone might tape a DVD onto a VHS tape with it.
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:3, Informative)
That's a good conspiracy theory. Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
theres couple(many) cards which support tv-out on linux.
certainly any 'modeline nonsense' isn't the culprit, adding custom resolutions is possible in windows too by altering modelines usually(or not) found in the drivers(at least on nvidia) (much convinient is to use a program like powerstrip tho).
and yeah, macrovision is just a chip that's either enabled or not, though the 'scrambling' is a joke and my thoughts are that macrovision hit the gold pile when they got that into the dvd
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
Well, actually it can do that, and you can add and remove kernel drivers dynamically too (kernel modules). OK, so you might need to restart XFree86, but Windows makes you restart the whole OS for hardware configuration changes.
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:3, Informative)
There is a special modeline you need, which puts it into a 704x256 mode (really!) scanning at the required 25Hz. It would be pretty simple to adapt this for 30Hz for USian TVs.
As for switching modes on-the-fly, this has been possible for a very, very long time. Try pressing to switch mod
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
Re:OT: typo (Score:2)
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
How about hardware wave synthesis MIDI(for cards that support it, obviously)? I've actually heard it's possible, but it's certainly not enabled out of the box.
How about any of the 3D audio features on the card?
How about Dolby Digital out?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but to my knowledge, the only feature beyond what an old SB-16 can do that ALSA supports is hardware mixing.
For MIDI, all you need is a decent wave table and timidity. This can get much higher quality t
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
However, I use Gentoo in one spot only and for that specific purpose: my pro audio GNU/Linux workstation. I use Redhat or
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
However, I personally find that plenty of other distributions fill the same needs. In my case, I've started using a lightweight distro called CRUX [crux.nu], which installs as binary packages, but has a ports utility with which you can easily streamline building from source. When you're done building, you have a tar.gz binary package that you can use over and over :)
Any distribution that's not built around a huge binary packaging system like CRUX or Gen
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have worked very hard in the past to get this info from vendors in the past, both legitamately and by using my company and inventing "fake" projects just to get the data. The fact is, if you are not microsoft, they do not want to ta
Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2)
This makes no sense, but nice troll. You could have just as easily said: "My XP ATI graphics drivers don't have the same options as they do on WinMe. Microsoft Windows is STILL not there yet."
Whose fault is it, Linux, or the hardware manufacturers whose job to write quality drivers is being accomplished by outside F/OSS developers? Anyway, I've found this (driver feature exclusion)
Drivers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe what should be looked into is the creation of a vested interest just to deal with sound card companies and try and negotiate accessability to chipset information to create drivers for their cards for other OSes than they're willing to develop for in-house.
Re:Drivers? (Score:3, Informative)
Rus
Re:Drivers? (Score:2, Interesting)
They'd just be the central group who'd be dealing with the companies to get the information.
Re:Drivers? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Drivers? (Score:2)
I would hardly call my M-Audio Delta 1010 a "prosumer" part. I don't think I'd call anything with a 19" rack mountable component a prosumer part...
Their sound quality is indeed very good for the price, and the ALSA support for it is excellent. The box even had a little penguin on it, next to the Windows logo.
Re:Drivers? (Score:1)
Digigram is making headway into Linux. I will be supporting these folks when I can, they make excellent sound cards. They were one of the few companies that didn't give me blank stares when I inquired about Linux support at the recent 114th AES [aes.org] (Audio Engineering Society) convention.
Re:Drivers? (Score:1, Informative)
It's not like they're jerks about it. They dont make money from drivers, after all, so it's really in their best interests to create linux drivers.
But here's the rub.
#1) Releasing specs on chips like the EMU101k (for example) hurts t
Re:Drivers? (Score:5, Informative)
Erh no! Most, if not all drivers in ALSA were written without any interaction from the kernel folks. ALSA is now integrated in the 2.5.x kernel, but that doesn't mean driver developers will have to deal with Linus et al. They just deal with Jaroslav, the ALSA maintainer. All mainstream cards are already supported by ALSA. If a company doesn't want to provide docs it can always choose to write and distribute their driver on their own.
In short, the monolithic kernel is an albatross around linux' neck when it comes to wanting hardware support from the manufacturers.
Nonsense.
-adnans
Re:Drivers? (Score:1, Interesting)
The windows sblive driver hasn't fundamentally changed since the card was released, mostly just bugfixes and i's dotted and t's crossed. The linux kernel has a habit of reinventing itself between major versions.
Vendors like standards and specifications. They dont like researchers and academics and expiriments.
Re:Drivers? (Score:5, Informative)
The ALSA API in kernel 2.5.x will be the same one in kernel 2.6.
Vendors like standards and specifications. They dont like researchers and academics and expiriments.
Vendors look at the bottom line. If there's enough incentive they will write against any API (*cough* Windows *cough*
-adnans
Re:Drivers? (Score:2)
I agree. They wrote drivers against the Windows 95, 95, 2000, XP, NT, APIs. Moving from NT to 2000 to XP isn't as big a difference as moving from Windows 9x. I doubt (but don't really know) that the move from linux 2.4 to 2.6 will be as big as the difference between the 9x series and the NT series, probably about the same difference as 2000 to XP.
Re:Drivers? (Score:2)
Re:Drivers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a little curious just because I've not had to do any driver hacking except fixing/tweaking, but is it really possible to duplicate someone's chipsets with the driver info released? I mean, as far as I knew, y
Re:Drivers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Creative Open Sources their drivers (Score:5, Informative)
Not only do they create drivers for their chips (SBLive! and Audigy series, OpenAL), they release the code as Open Source. The driver sin the Linux kernel came from Creative, not some 3rd party. Another reason to support Creative (as if having the best stuff wasn't enough of a reason)
http://opensource.creative.com [creative.com]
Re:Creative Open Sources their drivers (Score:2)
After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years..... (Score:5, Funny)
"Topic discussions included in-depth presentations of the rapidly evolving Linux sound system..."
I hope so. After working with Linux for three years I have come to expect little in terms of audio. Hell, I was taken completely by suprise when the Redhat 8.0 install actually had a "play sample sound" button. It was like first time I witnessed scaling effects on the SNES. Inspiring.
Re:After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years..... (Score:1)
Re:After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years..... (Score:1)
Of course, it was a really low-quality
Re:After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years..... (Score:1)
Yet a long way to reach DirectX.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX.... (Score:2)
Well, there's OpenAL [openal.org], which is sort of equivalent, like OpenGL vs. Direct3D.
Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX.... (Score:2)
Well, the original poster referred to it specifically, so I went with it that way. But if you prefer...
<pedant mode>EAX is a hardware interface and an API for that interface, like Aureal's A3D. OpenAL, like OpenGL and DirectSound, try to abstract away the essence of 3D sound hardware, so that it could be implemented on top of EAX or A3D, like OpenGL works on video hardware from ATI, NVidia, SiS, SGI, and lord knows
Re:Yet a long way to reach DirectX.... (Score:2, Funny)
(PS: I apologize.)
Mixing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate not being able to play more than 2 sounds at once (and that's only because that's supported in hardware by my card, my old card could only play 1). Neither esd (does anyone use this anymore) or artsd cut it. They're too laggy to be usable for games, and in order to increase their response time, you have to increase their priority, thus slowing everything else down.
Say what you want about Windows, but at least it gets this right.
So, anyone know a soundcard that will let me play mutiple streams WITHOUT having to use esd/artsd, and is decently well supported under Linux? Anyone? BTW, can we keep it under $100 (USD) if possible?
Re:Mixing... (Score:2)
Trident 4DWave NX/DX based cards are excellent! Not sure if they're still available though. For about $20 you get a card with S/PDIF out and at least 16 stereo pcm devices with ALSA. I bought a couple of them at Hoontech Taiwan (just checked. no longer available from their site).
But check out the ALSA Sou [alsa-project.org]
Re:Mixing... (Score:2, Informative)
No, they are no longer available, and haven't been for a while either.
The SoundBlaster Live is an example of a cheap soundcard that does hardware mixing.
Re:Mixing... (Score:2)
Well the ALSA guys are working on that in the form of the dmix plugin for libasound, that mixes in the DMA buffer.
So, anyone know a soundcard that will let me play mutiple streams WITHOUT having to use esd/artsd, and is decently well supported under Linux? Anyone? BTW, can we keep it under $100 (USD) if possible?
All you need is one that supports hardware mixing. They aren't necessarily expensive but are g
Re:Mixing... (Score:1)
Public CVS is more up-to-date than our 0.6.0 release , so if you're going to check it out, get it from CVS.
It mixes multiple streams, can convert sampling rates, and doesn't need a half-second long buffer. We haven't got it to slice and dice yet, though.
The API that is in there is VERY low level. We've been working hard on a high-level "soundserver-style" API that'll allow esd and OSS apps to be ported easily. It'll be out when-it's-done, which will be soon.
-Mike
Re:Mixing... (Score:1)
Re:Mixing... (Score:2)
For another example, I'm a DJ and one time when editing a set recorded live with SoundForge I heard what sounded a lot like the windows "Ping" sound halfway through one of the tracks. Turned out I had Outlook running in the background and got a new mail during the recording
If you want more evidence, try launching a bunch of instances of media player or w
Re:Mixing... (Score:2)
Alsa now has a client named dmix that you can use to do software mixing. I don't know how to use it, but it is included in Alsa 0.9.0 (not the RC8+) and I believe that all you have to do is tell Alsa to use it and then it mixes any streams above what your hardware supports in software.
Re:Mixing... (Score:2)
Re:Mixing... (Score:2)
How about a Soundblaster Live 5.1 OEM? I picked one up for ~59$ CDN about 5 months ago. I am sure they are even cheaper now. No ESD, ARTS, whatever is needed. Just install the OSS drivers and it works. You can playback ogg's and still have the dsp ready for more (flash, cd, whatever)
Well... (Score:1, Interesting)
Cool! (Score:1)
Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too bad that the desktop audio scene is such a shambles by comparison - in 2003 there is still no standard way of mixing and resampling (sound servers). What I expect will happen at this point is simply that once 2.6 is rolled out, distros will simply start shipping with the ALSA dmix plugin which mixes at the hardware level by writing into a sound cards DMA buffer (iirc), making most desktop uses of sound servers obsolete (though they can still be useful for network transparent audio and jack style synchro).
Oh, and GStreamer kicks ass :) It's messy right now, but I think Linux multimedia could become really great.
VST and ASIO (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:VST and ASIO (Score:3, Informative)
Re:VST and ASIO (Score:2)
wrong, its a hardware and driver standard, hence why it is also present in a Macintosh
Both platforms running Logic Audio or Cubase use ASIO if the hardware supports it.
All You Need To Know About ASIO
As computers become more commonplace in recording and home project studios, so does the demand for faster, more responsive sound cards to work in these systems. A sound card is expected to enhance the recording process by handling many jobs at once. At any given time it's expected to be recording audio from
Re:VST (Score:2)
The good news is that it is possible to run (some) Windows VST plugins under Linux; someone has wr
What I want. (Score:1, Redundant)
I have to say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point: I recently was bequeathed a SB Audigy card (Platinum...Oooooooo.) with no driver disk.
So whay you say! I can download the driver no problem, you say!
NAY! I say, they have restricted the downloads to driver "upgrades" only. If you don't have the original, then you get NOTHING! I had to go rip off a damn copy of the original driver CD to use a physical piece of hardware. Severely annoying.
This is in windows. In LINUX, I found the driver and it worked perfectly. Took like 3 minutes. It was GREAT! No pops or crackles, just pure wonderful SOUND!
My Name is SatanicPuppy, and I'm a switcher.
=P
Re:I have to say... (Score:2)
Your Name is SatanicPuppy, and you're an idiot.
Jon.
Re:I have to say... (Score:2)
Have you actually TRIED installing them? The only reason they want you to use the installation CD is so you get all the other junk that's on it. Now, I suspect like me the parent poster could give a shit less about having Creative Keytar & some talking parrot installed, thankyouverymuch. Every machine I build has a Creative sound card installed, and that's how I do my driver installs; I never use the fucking installation CD, precisely because it's usually only the dri
Re:I have to say... (Score:2)
I think it's pretty reasonable to believe the stated installation requirements given with software. That the vendor provides misinformation about the requirements does not earn any brownie points in the simplicity and clarity arena. At least, it doesn't in my book.
The big advantage of Linux installation over Windows installation, in my experience, is that I don't have to dork around with all these brain-dead installers and web pages all of which are full of misinformation and poorly-crafted installers.
Re:I have to say... (Score:2)
I agree that the quality of OEM drivers from many manufacturers (sound cards and video cards are the worst) is pretty pathetic. You have to remember
Re:I have to say... (Score:2)
The worst ever driver experience wasn't sound at all...I bought a fancy 3com nic, which came bundled with some lame windows "home networking" software. I don't know why I bought it...some stupid part of my brain saw the high price tag and said, "Wow! This thing must be bad ass! Look
no VST on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
If anyone knows about any open source Sequencer with planned VST support, let me know, I would love to help. I searched Sourceforge for Linux VST.. and found nothing.
Re:no VST on Linux (Score:3, Informative)
http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/jackit-devel/th
Google around for details...
Re:no VST on Linux (Score:2)
Anyway, I expect the next problems once VST compatability is conquered will revolve around making sequencers comparable in power - for various reasons I think VST itself won't run under Wine (needs the windows equivalent of kernel modules?). Oh yes,
I have a single question (Score:2)
1. Is powerful, but yet *simple* (cmp Phoenix vs Mozilla)
2. Doesn't use some awful customized interface
3. Doesn't only exist in an unbuildable alpha source version from 1997
I'm currently using an age-old version of Cakewalk Home Studio in Windows under NTVDM emulation, and it amazingly satisfies those points.
I guess it might be possible to run it in emulation under Linux, but it sounds uncomfortable.
I've tried searching for a Linux program with similar q
Re:I have a single question (Score:1)
Re:I have a single question (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't used it much, but I was able to get it to run stably, and talk to my soundcard just fine. Many people on the Linux Audio Users mailing list like it a lot.
beep beep beep (Score:1)
Please! A Turtle Beach Montego II Driver! (Score:2)
JACK the big news,+ALSA does support sw mixing now (Score:5, Insightful)
It is amazing to see the level of support for this API in new and older projects, and it really looks like JACK will become a solid, sane standard for audio on Linux.
Paul Davis (the man behind JACK and Ardour) (and of course the rest of the JACK team) really need to be congratulated for his efforts in this area. Over the 2 years or so I have been following the ALSA lists and using Linux to do digital audio work, no project was more badly needed than JACK.
At first it seemed like a pointless effort - a non-backwards-compatible API that had no application support outside of ardour and ecasound, and with a totally different approach to feeding an audio card to the current one.
However, in a few months, it is now commonplace to see JACK support on all major Linux audio apps, and this is the foundation of a low-latency audio recording, playback and routing system that is as good or better than anything available on any platform, anywhere.
I would also like to point out that ALSA now includes software mixing with the dmix plugin, but there is no usable documentation, and it is unclear if dmix can be enabled as part of the 'default' audio path that ALSA apps use, or if the plugin has to be specifified on the command line for each app.
If anyone does have this info, please write a tutorial and post it to the ALSA WIKI, because I'd like to know how to get this working.
linux audio specific web forum (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.recording.org/cgi-local/ubb/ultimatebb
Recording sound with Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
In addition, I have made full duplex recording possible. (where the instrument track is done first, then vocals laid on top of it) However, be warned that you'll need to make a small program to
PortAudio (Score:3, Interesting)
The current stable release (v18) only supports OSS so far (but it also supports Windows WMME, DirectSound, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X CoreAudio, and more), but the under-development v19 version supports ALSA, with Jack support on the way. Adding support for artsd and esd would be pretty trivial (in comparison to ALSA).
If you're developing an application that needs to do a little bit of audio I/O, consider PortAudio. That way you can support all audio APIs, old and new, rather than limiting yourself to just one and fracturing the community even more. Heck, it will make your program easier to port to Windows and Mac OS X, if you ever decide to.
Obviously some high-end applications might need lower-level access to the API. But I've found that PortAudio abstracts what 90% of applications need to do with audio.
Re:It's BLANTANTLY obvious... (Score:2)
Creative can't be bothered to write Win2K or XP drivers for this nice USB camera. Pisses me off.
It works fine under Linux though.
Re:No one will see this, but (Score:2)