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Is anyone using Linux to make music

tomkerswill	Date: February 19, 2004 @ 5:06 PM Hello! Just wondering if anyone out there on dmusic has had any success using Linux to make music. At the moment, the two songs I've got here have been made on Logic Audio, but I've been playing about with some new great software on Linux - ardour (www.ardour.org) in particular. There's a distribution that is looking pretty promising and is designed purely for musicians - Called Agnula (www.agnula.org). One version is based on debian. I've installed it and it's pretty mind-blowing. Within a few months I reckon it's going to be the perfect environment to make music in. At the moment I'm playing about with recording some new songs on it... not perfect yet (a few bugs) but still quite exciting. Anyone else had any experience doing music on Linux? Tom
pog	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 1:58 AM someone had a thread about that recently... where is that I'll put up the bat signal.... no ... thats not it.... I'll race ya to the thread....
TameasDust	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 2:10 AM maybe this one ??? http://www.dmusic.com/forum/linux/5661#14
johnnygnote	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 5:46 AM I'm running Mandrake 9.1 on one of my systems and wouldn't mind finding audio rescording ware that works for it. I'm kinda spoiled with my Windows based system as far as recording goes.I have found some stuff but it seems kinda of lpw level in comparison to the multi track studio I have in my other system
mawcs	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 10:40 AM http://linuxsound.org
mawcs	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 10:41 AM http://sound.condorow.net/
mawcs	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 10:42 AM http://www.dmusic.com/forum/linux/6225#20
johnnygnote	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 3:06 PM Thanks Mawcs, I posted the Linuxsound.org link in the last thread you posted , what I'm saying is that linux audio ware has a ways to go to catch up with some of the win based stuff like pro-tools and cakewalk. I don't want to use wine i want gui that works in linux as well as some of the win based stuff available. Show it to me baby
mawcs	Date: February 20, 2004 @ 5:59 PM Have you tried rosegarden? Very Cakewalkish.
johnnygnote	Date: February 21, 2004 @ 3:33 AM I'll check it out thanks
tomkerswill	Date: February 21, 2004 @ 1:30 PM I don't think anyone really uses wine to do music on Linux? There's a lot of software that's kindof maturing quite quickly which is aiming to provide a professional solution. From what I can see Ardour is one of those. At the moment I wouldn't want to trust Linux with recording that one-take masterpiece, but I'm looking with intrest, because I think in a few months software like Ardour is going to be useable. It's just going to be nice to have professional software which you don't have to shell out 100s of quid for - a much needed boost for the impoverished musician!
mawcs	Date: February 24, 2004 @ 10:36 AM I would trust Linux and the open-source software for recording the one-take masterpiece over trying to complete an elaborate synth and recording combination. I have found the Linux recording phenomenal (sp?) and if recording was the only thing I did, then I would use it exclusively. It's getting a good grasp on soft-synth and effects processing combined with good tracking and mixing. That's where the software needs to mature more. As far as reliability goes, Linux crashes far less than Windows.
mawcs	Date: February 24, 2004 @ 10:36 AM (I declare this thread greyscale)
tomkerswill	Date: February 24, 2004 @ 2:27 PM Mawcs - yes of course Linux crashes less than windows... ie. the os hardly ever crashes. But the software itself can crash - or even if it stops recording half way through a take that can be a downer. But then at the moment I'm using beta software, so it's not too surprising! What kind of software / setup are you using? I've not really checked out many of the soft-synths though they look pretty powerful. I've not found many good effects - the reverbs I've found don't sound too hot. Any ideas? Tom
tomkerswill	Date: February 24, 2004 @ 2:28 PM PS. Mmmm Rosegarden is pretty cool. But once again I've found the current versions not quite reliable enough for audio recording.... what kind of stuff have you managed to do with it?
mawcs	Date: February 24, 2004 @ 3:01 PM I used Mandrake 9.1 and Audacity to record a 26 minute chamber strings performance. It worked out well. It was not my equipment, so I was not able to keep the recording. I wish I could have. It sounded great, mastered at 24 bits 192khz. They are eventually going to use this master on a DVD production.
mawcs	Date: February 24, 2004 @ 3:08 PM Many of the soft synths require too much rigormorol to get working correctly and don't have very usable interfaces. I find myself spending so much time on the software that I don't accomplish any music. But it is worth staying open (no pun intended) because I think these packages will mature in the next 9-18 months. With my Cakewalk I can usually get some soft-synth tracks down quickly, add xf and mix it with my vocals or other recordings quickly. I personally believe that there isn't a really good music creation software package out there (commercial or otherwise). I am considering starting an open source project to create the ultimate cross-platform-swiss-army-knife-music creation software that is easy to use.... of course, I need to keep my day job, so this could take forever.
tomkerswill	Date: February 25, 2004 @ 4:31 AM Heheh! Yeah I definitely agree - there's a lot of projects that are going to reach maturity soon. I haven't tried audacity but I will do - it sounds good. I think the jack project (jackit.sf.net) is particularly interesting - it lets software like ardour and rosegarden share audio streams - kind of like a huge patch panel. It's great for, say, adding effects via an external program. Apparently there's now an amazing mastering program that can be connected in this way (called jamin) - haven't got that working yet, but it sounds pretty cool and offers multiband compression and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it would be nice to have an all-in-one-package for music. I'm quite interested in the agnula distribution.... of course it's not a package, more of a complete distribution, but the idea is that you'll be able to pop the disc in and have a complete os and arsenal of music software which will just work and be optomised to music. As I say, it's not quite reached that stage but it looks very very encouraging! Especially given it's 100% free and open source. Tom
mawcs	Date: February 25, 2004 @ 10:31 AM The problem with Jack, ALSA, and Agnula is the lack of appropriate hardware support. I have spoken with many musician/geeks that have had trouble getting these packages working properly with their sound card; including myself. The general sound works great, but the support for true 24bit HD recording is limited and latency is high for many of the high-end cards. They manage to hit the masses just right, now they need to focus on spit n polish. This would also be the difficulty with this project I'm thinking about. It would be really great if hardware vendors would spend a little time to get their devices working well with most of the major Linux distros. There wouldn't be much work with the huge amount of existing code, just a little engineering and testing. We should start a Hardware Vendors Supporting Linux campaign. Would you like to donate to the HVSL?
tomkerswill	Date: February 26, 2004 @ 7:46 PM Mmmmm I've got a Delta audio soundcard, and I have to say it works absolutely brilliantly with Jack. I got the latency to 1ms I think... or at least that's what Jack told me , and it sounded beautiful... Mind you, when I bought the card I did kindof have my ear to the ground with what would work... and I sort of figured that somethign that worked really well with Linux would probably be a decent bit of kit anyway.
jeddak	Date: April 20, 2004 @ 12:44 PM In "At the Sounding Edge: Sounding Better All The Time," (Linux Journal) Dave Phillips writes about recent developments in audio on Linux: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7514&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
gothian	Date: July 25, 2004 @ 11:31 PM Hi... I use audacity to edit my music, it is pretty good if you have good hardware. Although you are ussing one of the best Ardour. You should look at dyne:bolic, a complete multimedia live CD distro.
DD215	Date: July 19, 2005 @ 5:54 PM Whats up? I can say I've used Reason, Logic, Fruity Loops and Ardour. And Logic is nice and have used it on computers that have had 6000 or so but in to it but I like Ardour almost as much on my low budget comp. I am disappointed when Ardour crashes & I lose something every once in a while but I have to say I really do like the software because the Bugs with Logic seem to be more of a pain. Maybe Pro Tools might be a little better but, I don't know?
leflaw	Date: July 31, 2005 @ 10:25 PM Cool thread. Anybody want to start developing windux.com around linux audio? I will give our shares - and remember - lindows trademark was purchased by microsoft for 25 million!!! Contact me if interested.
egac	Date: August 1, 2005 @ 2:54 PM id id my song report card with linux or something.
dooglio	Date: August 22, 2005 @ 9:46 PM I use Rosegarden (http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/) for all of my music composition. I like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) for mastering the recorded audio. If you use the [K]Ubuntu distribution (or Debian), you can just install via APT. Here's my stuff to get an idea: http://dooglio.dmusic.com. Disclaimer: I like to use sound fonts.

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