Re: [linux-audio-user] buzz tracker

On Wed October 12 2005 17:26, Mark Knecht wrote:
> > Are there any buzz-like applications available for linux which
> > are as flexible as buzz is?
> Cheesetracker?

Cheesetracker is just a traditional sample tracker. Buzz was like a
tracker plus Pd (with a slightly less crappy interface) plus
SpiralSynth Modular plus a pile of native effects (both MIDI-oriented
and DSP) and instruments (virtual analog, sample playback, FM, etc.)
plus the ability to use VST/VSTi and DX/DXi instruments and effects
and render in realtime to the speaker or with higher quality to disk.
It even accepted MIDI input, albeit only for step entry.

Simply using all the programs I mentioned above might let you
reproduce your Buzz work, but will not let you go "File/Save" and
save all your instruments with all your parameters and all your
routing as you could with Buzz so that you can subsequently
"File/Open" mysong.buz and have everything be exactly as it was when
you left off. (Neither will running Buzz under Wine, or at least
when I've tried that, File/Opening one of my songs would always crash
it due to some misbehaving VST effect or instrument.)

Buzz is easily the most powerful free (as in beer) compositional tool
I've ever used, but it was designed for like Windows 98 or something
and since the source has been lost (and was never released in the
first place) there's been no new code written for it and probably
never will be.

Fuzztracker, GNU Octal, and others have tried to pick up where Buzz
left off, and somehow no one's been able to do it. I look forward to
the day when someone does, because my attempts to use Rosegarden with
Timidity and AMS have accomplished nothing but pissing me off.
(Rosegarden is an incredibly nice and professional-feeling program,
but for example, even the crap Voyetra sequencer that came with my
sound card back in 1995 let me select a group of notes and drag a
certain way to change their duration.)

It could be that LMMS and other new software like it, combined with
decent interfaces to LADSPA plugins and DSSI instruments, will
eventually gain critical mass and succeed where Octal, FT, et al.
have failed. In the meantime I'm just frustrated.

Rob
Received on Thu Oct 13 04:15:06 2005