Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Introduction
From: Paul Winkler (pw_lists_AT_slinkp.com)
Date: Sun Jan 13 2002 - 23:30:25 EET
On Sun, Jan 13, 2002 at 09:59:32AM -0500, Speaker to Vegetables wrote:
> What about specific sound card / other hardware / driver (version, ALSA
> or other) / kernel (version, patches) that people on this list have
> used to record & edit music? At the momement I'm most interested in a
> reliable, cheap set-up for recording, over-dubbing, and mixing a modest
> number of audio and MIDI tracks.
I'm really just getting geared up for real work here. Linux audio has
been a toy for me for years, and I think I'm finally very close to
having a working computer-based studio at home! We'll see how it goes.
If I get some actual music done, I'll write a description of tools /
methods and post it here. It might take me several more weeks or
months.
You want to run audio and MIDI at the same time? Not too many options
there. Jazz++ (very limited audio support), and I think MuSE (haven't
tried it yet myself, been meaning to).
For multitrack recording, I think the most stable, reliable app right
now is ecasound, though you might find it confusing if you're not used
to complex command-line tools. I've done very little actual recording
on my box; I've used ecasound for what I have done.
Ardour seems very cool, with a nice GUI and a lot of nice features
aimed at commercial studio users, but also it's still in rapid
development and has in the past been very difficult to install. This
has improved a lot recently by including a bunch of 3rd-party c++ libs
in the ardour source tree, but by the same token, ardour is now a
pretty large download. It's worth getting it from CVS so that you only
have to download the diffs when you want to update. There are many
features that are still on the TODO list. I personally have not yet
had time to really work with
I tried Broadcast but was never able to do much with it before getting
segfaults. That was a long time ago.
I tried SLab a long time ago and didn't like the design - very
cluttered UI IMHO, and I could never get it to run reliably on the
hardware I had at the time (Pentium 133, Turtle Beach Malibu
soundcard). But it's probably improved since then. I haven't looked
again because, as I said, I didn't like the interface design and
didn't think it was going to evolve into something I would like.
Multitrack was useable when I ran it, but had some annoying bugs that
had to be learned and worked around. It's now so old that I don't
think the binary-only release will run on a modern kernel / glibc
installation!
Drivers: I'm running ALSA from CVS. It's good. Soundcard: I got an
M-audio (Midiman) Delta 66 "like new" on ebay for $240 US, pretty good
for the features (4 channels very high quality analog I/O, plus S/PDIF
I/O). You can get a used Delta 44 (same without the S/PDIF) even
cheaper. IMHO, it's worth spending a little extra to get something
better than a "game" soundcard.
> Recording one or 2 tracks at a time is
> sufficient, but I really need reliable, well-synchronized full duplex
> operation. Am I asking too much? I've tried a creative SB live with
> ALSA 0.5.10+SuSE patches and maybe that will be OK for a while if I can
> find an application that works (Broadcast 2000, doesn't, quite, and
> beside its author seems to have gone insane or something). I tried a
> Turtle Beach Santa Cruz but full duplex doesn't seem to work, never
> mind all the whizbang features hyped on the box! Maybe I should spend
> some semi-real money and get some MidiMan / M-Audio gear? Maybe I
> should head back to windoze land for another year or 2 and hope that
> somebody decides to REALLY support Linux with a sound card?
>
> Meanwhile, I think I'll have a look at PD.
I've been looking at it too. It's a new paradigm for me, very unlike
anything I've done before, but it seems quite powerful. I've just been
going through the example patches and seeing what they do. Great
examples.
--paul winkler home: http://www.slinkp.com music: http://www.reacharms.com calendars: http://www.calendargalaxy.com
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