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Music Media Software Linux

Linux Audio Development 192

Posted by Hemos from the building-it-all-out dept.
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?
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Linux Audio Development More

Linux Audio Development

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  • Sound Support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Friday April 04, 2003 @11:39AM (#5661070) Homepage
    ALSA is actually quite nice. It works on more cards than OSS, allows duplex on some cards and is still backwards compatible with the OSS API. However I still feel that audio support on Linux could be improved. For example in my latop Intel soundcard which seems to only play at 44 Khz if using xmms. Now I know this is a software problem but it would be nice if it worked out the box.

    Not a major issue but annoying

    Rus

    • EAX? (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )
      Does ALSA have EAX support for the newer Sound Blaster cards? OSS and emu10k1 driver from http://opensource.creative.com/ don't.

    • Re:Sound Support (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:24PM (#5661462) Journal
      ALSA is actually quite nice. It works on more cards than OSS, allows duplex on some cards and is still backwards compatible with the OSS API.

      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)

        by Anonymous Coward
        0x0d0a (568518) wrote:
        > 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
      • OSS/Commercial is an exception. The problem is that the only cards that they seem to support with hardware mixing are the EMU10k1 and perhaps some Yamaha chips. I wrote 4-Front and asked them if they'd implement hardware mixing into the CS4630 drivers, such as those used in the Santa Cruz and Sonic Fury. The DSP does support it, for a limited amount of channels. But they don't seem to understand why it is a better choice. Their answer is that "Our software mixer (Virtual Mixer) supports playback of X a

      • Re:Sound Support (Score:5, Informative)

        by paulbd ( 118132 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:09PM (#5661805) Homepage

        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.

        • If what you say is in fact true, maybe one day we can hope to get support for this on the application level. As it stands, most apps are written for artsd, ess, or OSS and nothing else.
        • Facinating. The Open Source world changes so quickly. :-)

          Does it handle automatic fallback? I.E. use available hardware channels and then fall back to software mixing?
          • doubtful. Though I could be wrong, this has never even crossed the minds of most people that work on hardware...

            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
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by japhar81 ( 640163 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @11:40AM (#5661081)
    Something like Logic or Cubase on Linux would absolutely kick ass. My powerbook beats the hell out of windows for music apps, but an open-sourced suite would be worth it to switch. You have no idea how often I wind up thinking, geez, if only logic had an extra slider here to control this or that or the other...

    • Re:A pro audio platform would be cool... (Score:5, Informative)

      by fruey ( 563914 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:19PM (#5661409) Homepage Journal
      It's called Ardour, look for it at Sourceforge.

      -Simon

      • Ardour is nice... on paper. Compiling it is a whole other story.

        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
        • Well it's on the way, and it's linked with Jack and a general effort to make Linux a pro audio platform, so it won't take long before stuff works

          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.

        • I ran into this same problem often with Ardour and others. I gave up, and installed Gentoo. Although it takes a bit of "geek eliteness" to get Gentoo installed (knowing how to compile a kernel, mount filesystems, work with Grub, etc.), it's worth the effort.

          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
    • I can't agree more. I'd be happy with a Linux version of Cubase SX. I have been using Cubase on windows for quite some time now. Cubase SX has many improvements from a stability and functionality point of view. However, my biggest gripe with my current audio system is that Win2K seems to require a purging after about 4 months. On the contrary my Linux install has been through 3 motherboards, several hard drives and still works perfectly.

      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)

      by mickwd ( 196449 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:42PM (#5662132)
      A guy called Austin Acton has put together the Mandrake Audio Workstation HowTo [desktoplinux.com] for Mandrake 9.1.

      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)

    by gowen ( 141411 )
    Sweep development:


    When the forums outnumber the posts, you know you've ound a real classical sourceforge project.
  • ..... is like music to my ears.

    ______________

    Cheap web site hosting from $3 a Month [cheap-web-...ing.com.au]

  • the drivers need to work. period. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 04, 2003 @11:44AM (#5661115)
    Anything less than complete parity with Windows drivers FEATURE FOR FEATURE is unacceptable. Linux is STILL not there.

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hi microsoft employee How ya doing? How is it in the marketing department there?

      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:5, Insightful)

      by QuackQuack ( 550293 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:01PM (#5661267) Journal
      I get around this problem by buying only well supported hardware.

      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.

      • 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.

        That's a good conspiracy theory. Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices

        • that's just a theory.

          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
        • Another theory is that linux cant dynamically add/remove display devices in userland at run time the way windows can

          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.
        • I can do TV out on a plain vanilla Geforce 2MX 400 - no TV out at all. The RGB cable is simple - just connect the VGA RGB to the SCART RGB then mix the HSync and VSync signals and feed them into the SCART composite in.

          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
    • Ok Troll, I'll bite. Please do tell exactly which feature is missing on your specific sound card in ALSA (OSS is dead). I don't really expect you to reply to this because I don't believe you. Besides, all the Win users that use Win specifically for making music that I know of use Win2K and NOT WinXP so I immediately find your post suspicious. The only thing I heard that's lacking in Linux from these folk is on the music APPLICATION side, not the driver side. Now get back to work before Ballmer catches you g

    • Re:the drivers need to work. period. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I understand where it's coming from, but that's a dangerous attitude to take. The only reason Linux has problems with hardware support (along with any other would be OS), is that hardware vendors will not release development info. They want to keep it under NDA with Microsoft.

      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
    • Anything less than complete parity with Windows drivers FEATURE FOR FEATURE is unacceptable. Linux is STILL not there.

      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)

    by Drathus ( 152223 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @11:44AM (#5661122)
    Isn't the largest issue with any support on Linux still the fact that very few companies are willing to put in the time to create Linux drivers let alone have have the decency to release the information on the chipsets to the public to allow 3rd party drivers to be created?

    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)

      by rf0 ( 159958 )
      The only company that I know is producing commerical drivers for linux is 4Front Technologies [opensound.com]. No idea on the quality though
      Rus

      • Re:Drivers? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Drathus ( 152223 )
        Well, they don't need to be commercial drivers per-se (where the drivers are sold as-is) but rather a commercial body (who knows, maybe sponsored and funded by the for-sale Linux distros) which would negotiate and create the drivers to distribute back to the community which funded them.

        They'd just be the central group who'd be dealing with the companies to get the information.

      • Re:Drivers? (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Real, serious companies are actually providing information (sometimes even with dedicated support) to linux developers. For example RME (superior hardware architecture + sound quality), M-Audio (very nice quality/price ratio prosumer hardware) have excellent support on Linux already.

        • M-Audio (very nice quality/price ratio prosumer hardware) have excellent support on Linux already.

          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.
      • http://www.digigram.com/digigram_news/latest_news. htm?o=full&news_key=280 [digigram.com]

        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)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      Isn't the largest issue with any support on Linux still the fact that very few companies are willing to put in the time to create Linux drivers let alone have have the decency to release the information on the chipsets to the public to allow 3rd party drivers to be created?

      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)

        by Adnans ( 2862 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:08PM (#5661332) Homepage Journal
        Contrast with the monolithic kernel that linux has. Creative would need to participate and coordinate with linus et al from start to finish.

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward
          And ALSA is the way every card will work from now on? Or will it change to something else with kernel 2.6?

          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)

            by Adnans ( 2862 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:32PM (#5661527) Homepage Journal
            And ALSA is the way every card will work from now on? Or will it change to something else with kernel 2.6?

            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
            • If there's enough incentive they will write against any API

              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:3, Interesting)

        by Dysan2k ( 126022 )

        #1) Releasing specs on chips like the EMU101k (for example) hurts their market position. That stuff is trade secrets, and patents and whatnot. nVidia doesnt just give out schematics for their new FX chips, after all. Nor does creative (or whomever) want to hand out their fancy-dancy sound chips.

        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)

      by Nosher ( 574322 )
      Creative are actually pretty good about supporting their soundcards under Linux ( http://opensource.creative.com/ [creative.com]) with their EMU10K1 project. I have an Audigy running in Mandrake 9.0 and it sounds pretty good (not much difference to an Audigy Platinum EX I've got running in a Windoze PC - both run through a decent amp and good speakers). All it takes is a bit of compilation (of the driver) and a change to /etc/modules.conf. I even use an Audigy in a custom "suitcase PC" running Mandrake to do the occasional

    • Creative Open Sources their drivers (Score:5, Informative)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 ) <`gro.daetsriek' `ta' `todhsals'> on Friday April 04, 2003 @01:10PM (#5661811)

      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]

  • After dealing with Linux sound for 3 years..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @11:54AM (#5661195) Journal

    "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.

  • Yet a long way to reach DirectX.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WARM3CH ( 662028 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:04PM (#5661303)
    Yet there is a long way to have an API with DirectSound/DirectSound3D/DirectMusic/DLS features in Linux. (I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?) Sound is one of the major obstacles for the games to come to Linux....
    • I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?

      Well, there's OpenAL [openal.org], which is sort of equivalent, like OpenGL vs. Direct3D.

    • I don't know about EAX support in Linux, anyone can help?
      You get EAX if you run Linux on a 386sx or better. The PPC, Alpha, and SPARC ports don't have it yet, though.

      (PS: I apologize.)

  • Mixing... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ElGuapoGolf ( 600734 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:05PM (#5661311) Homepage
    I may be wrong, but whatever. It seems to me that Linux *really* needs a decent stream mixer.

    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?

    • 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?

      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)

        by Lface ( 23903 )

        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).

        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.

    • I may be wrong, but whatever. It seems to me that Linux *really* needs a decent stream mixer.

      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

    • We're working on MAS. [mediaappli...server.net]

      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
    • Actually, for the system as a whole, Windows just gives exclusive sound device access to whichever application owns the window with the foreground focus.
      • So how do I have multiple apps all playing sounds at once?

        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 :) I guess that shows that minimised, background apps still have access to the sound hardware.

        If you want more evidence, try launching a bunch of instances of media player or w

    • 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.

    • My Live! does 32 channels, and I guess you can find one for less than that... And I find the Linux drivers far less messy than the Windows ones, acutally. ^^
    • 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?

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...gimme something that can deal with Cubase VST plugins and I'll be happy...
  • I'm down with Linux audio stuff as long as we don't have a ton of different apps and stuff [freshmeat.net].

  • Cool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:14PM (#5661378)
    The most amazing thing about the Linux audio scene is how well organised it's been since day one. All the key players work together, and are putting together a seriously sweet pro audio architecture. The same people who write ALSA collaborate on Jack, LADSPA (which looks like an open alternative to VST plugins), write sample editors - the works.

    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)

    by blueworm ( 425290 )
    Linux needs VST, and most importantly, ASIO support before it can even begin to be remotely considered for professional use.

    • Re:VST and ASIO (Score:3, Informative)

      by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 )
      ASIO is a Windows specific hack around the lack of low latency audio on that OS I think, so it doesn't apply to Linux/ALSA which has some of the lowest latencies around with the right kernel patches.

      • 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

  • What I want. (Score:1, Redundant)

    by /dev/trash ( 182850 )
    I'd like my Aureal based sound card to work, out of the box.

  • I have to say... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy.gmail@com> on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:27PM (#5661483) Journal
    I've had a better audio experience with Linux than I ever did with windows.

    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

    • Er, what exactly was wrong with these [creative.com], posted on 31 Dec 2002?

      Your Name is SatanicPuppy, and you're an idiot.

      Jon.

  • no VST on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by onash ( 599976 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @12:31PM (#5661518)
    I can't switch to Linux on my desktop machine because I would have to stop making music. I haven't found any sequencers that support VST instruments or even a VST host for Linux yet, so this talk that musicians can easily switch to Linux doesn't really make sense to me.. unless all those who make music on Linux have tons of hardware synths and don't need soft synths like poor me :P

    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)

      by Adnans ( 2862 )
      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.

      http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/jackit-devel/thi s-month/0020.html [tux.org]
      Google around for details...
    • As pointed out in an above post, there are experiments with using Wine to let Linux apps use Windows VST plugins, in a similar fashion to how mplayer allows you to use Win32 codecs. That's one of the cool things about Wine. It lets you do seamless integration.

      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,

  • Where can I find a MIDI sequencer for Linux, that:

    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
  • It seems Ellen Feiss should have a quote here ...
  • I'd love for them to come up with a quick hack for the Turtle Beach Montego II card that this Dell came with. (But why should the purchasing department listen to the employees!) The Aureal Vortex Linux driver kinda worked under RH 6.2 but it won't build for me with RH 7.3. You can bet I'm avoiding Turtle Beach from now on.

  • JACK the big news,+ALSA does support sw mixing now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @02:51PM (#5662789) Homepage
    JACK is by far the most important development in Linux audio in recent months.

    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.

  • There's a new linux audio specific web forum, that needs some participation!
    http://www.recording.org/cgi-local/ubb/ultimatebb. cgi?ubb=forum;f=10 [recording.org] C'mon join the fun!
  • I recently set up an audio recording computer for a church. (433mhz, oss/free sound drivers, CMI8738 sound card) They were going to use windows, but I convinced them that Linux would be the better choice. I set it up so that recording is done from the command line, encoding ogg [vorbis.com] (ok, vorbis) or flac [sf.net] in realtime.

    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)

    by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @07:28PM (#5665519) Homepage
    I haven't seen discussion of PortAudio [portaudio.com] yet. Now that there are so many different audio APIs (ALSA, Jack, esd, artsd, and OSS to support older systems) there needs to be a way for an application to support audio I/O without writing separate code for all of these APIs. PortAudio solves this problem.

    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.

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