Ask Slashdot: An Open Source PC Music Studio? 299
enharmonix writes "I have a big decision to make. I am probably going to buy a laptop that I will primarily use for music. I would prefer an OEM distro so I don't need to install the OS myself (not that I mind), but I have no preference between open- and closed-source software as an end-user; I just care about the quality of the product. There are two applications that I absolutely must have: 1) a standard notation transcription program with quality auditioning (i.e., playback with quality sound fonts or something similar, better than your standard MIDI patches) that can also accept recorded audio in lieu of MIDI playback, and 2) a capable synthesizer (the more options, the better). If there's software out there that does both 1 and 2 in the same app, that's even better. I've played with some of Ubuntu's offerings for music a few years ago and some are very good, though not all of them are self-explanatory and the last time I checked, none of them really met my needs. I am not so worried about number 2 because I think I could pretty easily develop my own in .NET/Mono, which I think would be a fun project (which would be open source, of course). I am a Gnome fan so if I go with Linux, I will almost certainly go with standard Ubuntu over Kubuntu, but Gnome seems to rule out Rosegarden which was the best FOSS transcription software out there the last time I checked. The other solution I've thought of is to just shell out the $600 for Finale, which I'm more than willing to do, but I'm not so sure I want Windows 8 and I'm just not sure I can afford to go with a Mac on top of the $600 for Finale. I don't intend to put more than one OS on my laptop, either. Any slashdotters out there dabble in composing/recording, using MIDI, sound fonts, recorded audio, and/or synthesizers? What setup of hardware/OS/software works for you? Can FOSS music software compete with their pricier closed source competitors?"
The KXStudio apps installed over Debian or Ubuntu tend to be pretty nice (better session handling that gladish provides at least).
Paging Dr. Editorial Standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone's paired the wrong headline and summary.
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Dang - these are the kind of incongrenuities that I like to point out. Well done!
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what do others use? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:what do others use? (Score:5, Informative)
The Reaper is not open source, but comes in a free flavor. I'd recommend an x64 os, as lots of ram is a very good thing for projects as they grow.
http://www.reaper.fm/ [reaper.fm]
Re:what do others use? (Score:4, Informative)
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Ableton Live is by far the most widely used nowadays for production. For recording bands, it's Pro Tools.
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Since music is a collaborative art, and you are going to want to share music, aren't you better off using what people in your "scene" are using, whether that's your school program or online forum or in the performance venues you frequent? I'd expect that would trump whatever software might look "best" if you were working alone.
Perhaps a program that actually facilitates said collaboration would be useful. Was just looking at some software on Steam earlier and this [steampowered.com] piqued my interest. It's Windows/Mac only ATM but the base program can be used for free.
"Free version is limited to compressed audio export and 16 bit audio recording."
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This guy hits the nail on the head.
That being said, the other nail you need to hit is what you'll be doing with the software. From the emphasis on Finale in your post, it sounds as if you're doing composition. If your doing simple stuff and mainly want a nice playback of a score you might be able to cobble together an open source solution. However, you'd have many fewer headaches if you put together a Win7 box and put stuff that's not in perpetual beta on it.
Similarly, if you're wanting to produce the music
Getting a tool or making a religious statement? (Score:5, Informative)
Ya pretty much (Score:5, Informative)
There is just not much in the free software world, particularly for Linux, that is good for music composition. Just the way it is. If you want to do it well, you need commercial tools, generally for Windows or Mac.
For what the original poster is looking for, I'd say have a look at Cakewalk Sonar X3. Sonar is real, real good at MIDI, knows how to deal with SoundFonts, has some built in synths that aren't too bad, and only runs $100 for the basic version. It's notation is not the best, but anything I can think of that is a reasonable step up is also quite a bit more money (like Cubase).
However depending on what the ultimate goal is, the DAW can end up being the cheap part of things. High quality samples cost a lot, and there are few freebies. Reason is to make good samples you need to hire good musicians, a good recording studio/hall, good engineers, and then spend a lot of time on it. Gotta make that money back somehow. So if you want realistic sounds, you can easily spend far more on samples than the DAW/sequencer. I own Sonar X3 Producer, which is $500, but I've spent more than that on a single sample set, and I have multiple sample sets.
Also if he thinks that programming a synthesizer is easy, he's got another thing coming. Making a competent synthesis engine that sounds good, is usable, etc, etc is not an easy task. Particularly since there are all sort of different kinds of synthesis one might wish to use, and each is implemented and controlled differently.
So, like the parent said: religious statement or actual work? If you just wanna play around in Linux with free solutions, then go to it. No need to ask on Slashdot, just try stuff out. Wikipedia has a list of OSS music software, to name just one place. If you are asking because you want something that doesn't suck and can do some real work, then you'll need to stick with Window or Mac and drop some money.
Like I said, I'd go for Sonar. There's a free trial, and the base version isn't that much and has good features and capabilities (it isn't crippled with regards to tracks and so on). You can always upgrade later.
Other reasonably priced options to look at are Reaper and FL Studio Fruity Edition.
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Due to the issues with soft synth's, don't overlook the option if going hardware for this. M-Audio makes several MIDI adaptors that are Linux compatible with AISO and or Jack. Don't skimp on a cheap MIDI keyboard. Get one with sampled sounds. If you find Rosegarden does not work on your fav Linux distro, pick up a recycled older PC to dedicate to your Digital Audio Workstation DAO. Using a distro optomised for audio work is recommended such as Ubuntu Studio.
If you are recording a band, and don't need M
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I would argue that audio production is the one area that Open Source truly excels in. I was very pleasantly surprised to find so many different tools available for audio production on Linux and the quality of the software.
Of particular interest is the JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit) which allows multiple software products to communicate seamlessly with each other. You don't need to hope that your primary production tool supports your plugin or tool, only that it supports JACK. The rest is transparent and y
Re:Ya pretty much (Score:4, Insightful)
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Sure. But when your principles are so restrictive as to prevent you from using the majority of useful modern technology and software, it's worth considering whether such principles are really sensible and whether your priorities are suitable for what you're trying to accomplish.
Some people have completely unrealistic principles. They can't be helped, not unless they realize that the world requires compromise if you want to get things done sometimes. It's just how life is.
Re:Ya pretty much (Score:4, Insightful)
If you drop principles because they're inconvenient, then they're not principles, they're fond notions and little else. Principles are what keep/stop you doing something when it is difficult/expensive or otherwise problematic to not do otherwise.
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Sounds more like you're conflicting being principled with being stubborn/inflexible. Sometimes compromise has to be made in order for anything to happen. Two principled individuals who disagree with each other are not as helpful as those who try to work within the boundaries of what they consider reasonable.
In the end it's just software, there to do a job.
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Yes, but if he doesn't drop his principles, he won't be making any music.
Yes, you are correct. Music was invented in 1941 by Konrad Zuse.
He can make music just fine with Free software. If everyone here is to be believed, the tools are not as good and so it may be a bit harder, but it is certainly not impossible.
If he drops his principles because things are a bit harder, they are not principles.
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Then FOSS offers a solution, code it yourself or pay someone else to code it for you. It'll probably cost you 5- 10 years of full time development or close to a million bucks to accomplish, but you have that option.
For whatever reason there simply aren't enough developers who have a professional music editing itch to scratch or perhaps there aren't enough with the same itch to scratch for anything much to get off the ground. Realistically it's not all that surprising that people who make their money out of
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More to the point, as a professional programmer and musician, as much as I'd love to write music software, I use my free time writing music. The commercial tools are really good and the parent is correct in saying that it will take a lot of effort to catch up.
Fwiw, I use Ableton for recording and production and hardware synths for sounds. Of you love hacking and music, check out the latest generation of affordable analog synths (Korg volca/monotribe, Artutia microbrute, etc). Desiging sounds from scratch
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Sound like some Talibanesque fanatic speaking.
I once had a FOSS idiot try to outgun me on a project where I was using Adobe Photoshop, Indesign, and Illustrator and he was trying to push some Linux crap to produce some print things. I did the work in a 3rd of the time and the quality was better and there were no issues with passing things on to external printers and other pros. In print production I use Linux, MAc and Windows in my workflow all the time. Just because the program is written by a team in a co
CCRMA and Fedora (Score:5, Interesting)
As both a sound guy and a salesperson (Score:5, Informative)
I have tried just about EVERY option I can find in FOSS and they do not quite hold up to the current commercial offerings. Frankly, both as an end user and as a pro audio salesperson, I've only ever had mediocre luck with Make Music/Finale. At the very least, with Avid's Sibelius, I've been able to get decent tech support. I haven't had as much luck with Ardour as I'd like, and Audacity doesn't cut it. Getting into a decent Sequencer without dropping a fortune, I'd get into Studio One personally.
If you want more details and/or want to know more about my opinions on the matter, please feel free to PM me.
Linuxmusicians.com, linuxaudio.org, Traktion, Ardo (Score:5, Informative)
As a DJ, I've come across some tools and some complete distributions that will likely fit your needs, but I don't know quite enough to make specific recommendations. I do know that there are alot of Linux music production tools that are way above my head, pro quality stuff. The folks at Linuxmusician.com and Linuxaudio.org would know exactly what you're talking about and be able to make specific recommendations. I looked at a couple distributions that are complete audio workstations on boot. They included a lot of fancy tools that were way more than I needed.
As you may know, music production on Linux uses JACK to hook together any software components you want. That means any editor tool can work with any midi source, for example, because they are plugged together using jack.
Two popular software packages are Ardour and Traktion, but really the Linux music community at sites focused on music production under Linux will have much better answers for you.
Use Reaper on a Hackintosh (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a gigging musician who's been doing digital audio for 20 years, and followed open source audio very closely for ages. Sadly, a purely FOSS solution will just hamper you. I tried for years, ( I played shows with 100% FOSS software) but honestly, I think a DAW is too feature rich for anything but a dedicated team to do properly. Now I use Reaper, which is as close to open source as you're going to get in a kick ass DAW. (Ardour will do for tracking and mixing, but not scoring or midi editing). It's got an unlimited un-crippled demo, cheap individual license ($40), cool company, and to be honest, it's so good I'd use it over Logic or Protools or Live even if it cost $500. It's incredibly well designed, and extendable in two scripting languages so there are loads of open source extensions and plugins for it. You can find tons of great FOSS environments to use *in addition* to your DAW ( PureData, SuperCollider, CSound, scads of open source plugins), but for your main DAW, the sweet spot IMHO is Reaper on a hackintosh.
If you *need* it to be 100% open source, Linux + Ardour + PureData or SuperCollider is a good option, but I wouldn't recommend it over doing the same thing with Os X and Reaper instead.
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I use Logic Pro on a Hackintosh, and it is greaaat! i7 quad with 32 Gb RAM and a SSD boot disk.
I do this for a living (Score:5, Informative)
2. figure out WHAT you want to do in music and select the software that fits your needs from there.
3. Buy the hardware that supports your software the best.
Frankly, in terms of just "getting shit done" Windows (7) is basically as good as Mac. Linux isn't so friendly, but if the software you need to get shit done is only on Linux, then, you're on Linux.
Now, there is a caveat with the software first thing, which is, your interface. If the audio in/out device you're using is Mac only, then you're using a Mac. Etc for the rest. So, for example for my home studio, I have a MOTU Ultralite MkIII hybrid running on windows 7 HP laptop. It's a bit quirky, but the sound quality is excellent and the preamps are smooth - for the price, it's hard to beat. There is better, but it costs more. Luckily, the MOTU is Mac/Win, and I happened to have this HP laptop not doing anything, so bingo: instant home music set up.
For software I run Ableton Live Suite - the fullblown monster. Why? Because what I do is more performance /composition based. If I was in a band and I was recording through some big multichannel interface, I would go with ProTools, because that's what I learnt in school, and it's pretty much the "MS Office" of the audio world (in more ways than one...) I also use Audacity, which is the swiss army knife of audio editing (i.e., small, crude, but effective)
For monitors at home I have a pair of EVENT PS8 monitors. They're a little bass heavy, but over all, very good sounding at a very reasonable price.
I don't use a mixing desk, I have an AKAI control surface and a Yamaha (XS6) synthesizer. Between them, I have plenty of ways of making things happen.
At work, things are very different - I have a ProTools C24 console and an SSL mixing desk with Bryston amps and Dynaudio 5.1 monitors and a Mac Tower running Protools, AVID, Audacity, Melodyne, Autotune, and a pile of other gear (compressors, processors, etc.) But that's almost half million bucks right there. So, "let's not go there" and let's focus on what you're trying to do.
So, get yourself an audio interface and some kick ass speakers, FIRST. Then figure out what software you need, and that will guide you to the hardware. When all is said and done, what computer you use is trivial, both in terms of effectiveness and expense. I bought my HP laptop (an old i5 running win 7) for $300 used. It works FINE. Ableton Live Suite literally costs THREE times as much. My laptop is one of the cheapest pieces of gear I own (my speakers were $650). So, don't sweat the hardware. Figure out the kind of music you want to make and proceed from there.
Here are some general suggestions
1. Rock Music: ProTools / Logic / Whatever - Focus on microphones and a good compressor.
2. Electronica: Ableton Live. Get a good control surface (I don't recommend Akai - mine sucks...) and a good keyboard
3. Dance Music: I would suggest a combo of FL Studio and Ableton Live
4. Composition: Finale and (whatever: Logic / Ableton / ProTools / Reaper / whatever) Your main point is to generate good composition - the software is just there to make it do something, so it will be more a question of what softsynths you use...)
5. Experimental: Cycling 74 Max/MSP or Processing. You'll need to get a Mac for that.
6. Jazz: See Rock.
That should get you started. DON'T TALK TO SALESMEN. They will try to sell you things. Things you probably don't need. Focus on what your interests and skills are, and then build your studio around that.
Re:I do this for a living (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently using musescore and audacity. Musescore makes me want to punch it, Finale was more usable 15 years ago. Audacity just has oddities, like track being milliseconds apart and had to resync.
If I used them frequently, I'd pay money to not use them.
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Try ocenaudio [ocenaudio.com.br] - I prefer it to audacity and it's free.
Re:I do this for a living (Score:4, Informative)
>Things you probably don't need. Focus on what your interests and skills are, and then build your studio around that.
Very helpful advice. Check out gearslutz.com for some other (hopefully) useful answers. The forum is very good.
Wait, what? Is this question from 2004? (Score:5, Insightful)
But of course, since Ubuntu doesn't even use GNOME anymore as the default environment, I suppose it's possible you're simply asking a question from 2004, and I do remember back then apps looked kindof bad in the wrong DEs, and computers often didn't have enough disk space and RAM to want to bring in so many additional dependencies. Yeah, your question starts to make a bit more sense if we assume you're lost in time, although it still doesn't make a ton of sense. But anyways, considering it's 2014, who the fuck cares if you end up using an extra 100MB of RAM because you need to open the Qt libraries as well?
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Is that you John Titor?
Second KXStudio (Score:2)
Ubuntu Studio (Score:2)
GNU/Linux can handle it (Score:2)
Topic is fanboi trollbait... (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried for years using various software packages on Windows and Linux, you name it, I've tried it... Bottom line is, I finally broke down and bought a MBP in 2011 ( cheap ass $1199 entry level one, maxed out the memory and shitcanned the HD and installed a 512 Gb SSD) I'll never look back and wish I'd done it a lot sooner.
Everyone can spew whatever fanboi shit they want to, but Apple owns the music market. Even software that works in multiple OS environments like ProTools work better on a Mac and you don't run into hardware/latency/drivers/other issues common on other HW/OS platforms. Just go ahead and buy an Apple iMac or MBP as suits your environment; if you don't you can spend a lot of time/money/aggravation over a period of years, trust me, been there, done that, have the T-shirt and barbed wire ankle tattoo...
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I went through the same process myself. I used Ardour on Linux for years, and didn't even realize how painful it was until I got my MBP.
No, sorry, but it is the opposite (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the cross platform stuff works better in Windows. You can sniff around online for various tests, DAWBench has some good ones: http://www.dawbench.com/win7-v... [dawbench.com]. You also don't get away from driver issues if you are talking pro audio, since all the pro cards have their own drivers and many of them are... suboptimal to put it nicely.
If you like using a Mac, that's fine, but don't try and sell it as "better" because objectively, you can get more polyphony, lower latency, etc on a Windows system using the same software. Not really a big deal these days as an i7 + SSD generally means your system has more power than you need for anything, but the data is what it is.
Stick with the standards (Score:2)
If you want to record audio, use synths, etc, I'd recommend sticking with one of the big boys: Ableton, Cubase, Sonar, Logic, FL Studio, Pro Tools. Compatibility is a big deal and unless you have a compelling reason to pick something more niche it'll likely cause you more pain than it's worth. Synths are all either VST for PC or AU for Mac, and they work in all the DAWs. You won't want just one, most of us end up with 10's or even hundreds. If you're looking to do anything realistic in terms of orchestral o
The move to Linux (Score:5, Informative)
I've been writing and recording since the early 80s. I own several computers and tonnes midi/audio recording software, (e.g. Protools, Cubase, Garage Band, Sonar, Sibelius...). I've also been using Linux on my desktop since Mandrake 7. Recently, I set up a computer with Ubuntu Studio, and I love it. I've barely touched any of the other systems since....mostly just to export tracks. There was a bit of a learning curve, but I'm finding that once I got the hang of using Jack, there was no turning back.
Primarily, I'm using Ardour (http://ardour.org/features.html) for multi-track audio recordings (LV2, VST and LADSPA plugins are all supported), MuseScore (http://musescore.org/) for scoring, Timidity/Qsyth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiMidity%2B%2B) for MIDI tone generation.
Also, I've never had any issues sharing tracks with users of other programs, nor have I had any issues exporting from other programs/platforms into those in Ubuntu Studio.
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Absolutely, Jack a great audio platform, very tunable. I've been using it as the basis for recording...
for a few years and found it to be an effective platform for producing music. We mostly record live so it pushes the hardware a bit.
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I have used MuseScore for a few simple things and I liked it a lot for making decent written scores. Plus, the community often has great stuff available to help get projects started.
so (Score:2)
you want to run a recording studio on an OS that cant even mix a line input without dropping down to a command line and running a text based tool... have fun, but if I were you I would get something that requires less time dicking around and more time recording
for open source, add, don't create. Mac != iOS (Score:3)
You mentioned programming your own synth, which would be open source. I'd bet there is an open source synth that is 98% what you want. Since it's open source, you can just do the 2% that it's missing - no need to write your own 100%.
Several people mentioned Mac. I'm a hardcore FOSS guy. I used FOSS exclusively for 15 years. Mac devices like the iPhone reminded me why proprietary stuff can be so annoying. Then I was presented with a Mac Pro. Actually using the Mac changed my view. It's good, and it's what professional creatives use - for a reason. Don't let any negative experiences with iOS portable devices put you off of Mac computers. It's as if OSX and iOS are made by two different companies. Additionally, Mac OSX is Unix, so it'll run most any Linux programs.
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Don't let any negative experiences with iOS portable devices put you off of Mac computers. It's as if OSX and iOS are made by two different companies.
I think the person asking the question wasn't looking at Macs due to a cost issue, not necessarily because of iOS
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So there are open source synths that rival Kontakt, Diva, Zebra, Lush, etc.? I'm interested. Can you give a few pointers?
not what I said. One for submitters needs, yes (Score:2)
That's not what I said. What I said is that there is probably one (not "a lot") that the submitter would be happy with, based on their needs. For any given use case, there is probably one that is approximately as good as any you mentioned.
Especially given that the submitter said would be happy with something they made themselves!
> can you give a few pointers?
See the subject line of my post, which you replied to.
If you posted about your use case and what is important to you, the Linux music community co
Choose your platform based upon the tools (Score:2)
If you're just working in your basement or making basic recordings/mixings, go with Garageband. Need more features and aren't afraid of paying a bit more look at Logic Pro-X. I like LogicPro for composing music while ProTools is better for editing and mixing.
All of the above have a rich support for plugins.
Conversely you could select Audacity [sourceforge.net]. Runs on windows/linux/mac and is pretty much free. It's a step up from Garageband, depending on exactly what you need to do. Definitely take a look at it.
One co
Never gonna happen, because of how OSS works. (Score:5, Insightful)
1) While the Linux kernel is perfectly capable of low latency, even on the shittiest of hardware, it does not provide the concept of primary and secondary buffers. If you want to use pro audio, you want to be able to mix the low latency, high sampling rate stream together with the regular OS/Desktop audio. Windows and OSX do this by setting the hardware for the realtime client, then also mixing the secondary audio over it, which comes from userland (or already mixed in userland). As a result, when using realtime audio in Linux, desktop audio dies or is hacked to route pulseaudio to jack and other stuff that does not really work well.
2) It's impossible to write plugins similar to VST, because of the different way tookits connect to X11 (they won't share the connection). You can't mix and match toolkits so a host DAW will use different plugns. The only way is to use separate processes, but that makes programming complexity much higher and very few people bothered. Wayland seemed like it could fix this in the future, but other distros such as Ubuntu refuse to use it, so it doesn't seem good.
3) Good programmers are not necesarily good composers. This is something that is much more important than it seems. Commercial companies are forced to listen to their users, but OSS developers mostly care about doing something good enough for themselves. Given the chance that a good programmer is a good producer/composer is super slim for the practical world, most audio software kind of sucks and feels incomplete. Ardour took more than a decade to implement MIDI and it still is horrible, because the main developers care more about live session recording. If they really had to use it everyday to make professional music, it wouldn't be as bare bones as it is now. At the same time, stuff that looks like a good idea (jack daemon) are terrible in practice because making music with a bunch of applications open is akin or worse to a live set of devices with cables connected.
4) Finally, the biggest problem of Linux is that, unlike other software such as 3D or imaging, there is plenty of cheap and good Windows/OSX audio alternatives, so even if OSS software were to run properly on Windows/Mac, the incentive is still slow. It's not like Blender or Gimp, that it's commercial counterparts are in the thousands $.
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Its not "impossible" - difficult maybe - but
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That's a very strange claim. It's not just possible to write plugins similar to VST (e.g. there is DSSI, which can also host VSTi plugins with the dssi-vst wrapper) but you can also build native Linux VSTs.
Granted, your reasoning is hard to follow, so I may have missed something and perhaps you mean something else entirely.
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Why on earth would you want to mix your professionally sounding audio with every freaking app that goes "ding" or "boing" or "you've got mail"? To me, that sounds like the perfect way to ruin everything.
I WANT my music production app to grab the sound card for itself, so no "ding" or "boing" can touch it.
This. Maybe GP is talking way above my head but that just sounded like a very bizarre requirement.
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Why on earth would you want to mix your professionally sounding audio with every freaking app that goes "ding" or "boing" or "you've got mail"?
Because you might want to take a break and watch a youtube video your friend sent you, or listen to reference material while you work, etc? You can do that in Windows and OSX, and DAWs take a long time to start up due to the huge amount of memory they use so it's not convenient to close it and start it again for that simple task.
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> Why on earth would you want to mix your professionally sounding audio with every freaking app that goes "ding" or "boing" or "you've got mail"?
Because at it currently stands any application that attempts to output through pulseaudio will get blocked and possibly hang until you stop jackd.
Having to "stop" jackd and my audio mixing session just because I want to take a skype call is not acceptable in 2014.
Why not LMMS? (Score:3)
Renoise & Bitwig Studio (Score:2)
Secret Level EP [soundcloud.com] .
Im very much looking forward to the release of "Bitwig Studio" - this will be the piece of software that may convince a lot of musicians to switch to Linux. Its written by the same guys who built Ableton Live and I
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Rosegarden (Score:2)
Here's the stuff I know/use (Score:3)
I wrote a longer post but I lost it, so here's the links:
LMMS ("Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and MIDI")
http://lmms.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Ardour (A DAW, but maybe useful)
http://ardour.org/ [ardour.org]
Rosegarden (Best sequencer, with Lilypad notation support, has actual printed literature you can buy)
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com... [rosegardenmusic.com]
Audacity (PCM swiss army knife ;)
http://audacity.sourceforge.ne... [sourceforge.net]
The Cloudsto MK802IV LE, £80 ARM PC-onna-stick for doing music production on (Toys!!! *8D)
http://www.sonicstate.com/news... [sonicstate.com]
Who needs a Mac or a PC when you can run it all on the CPU your phone uses?
Not tried it myself but for £80, I need to get one and have a go.
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An oddball solution (Score:3)
I do a lot of MIDI composition. Cakewalk was the first piece of MIDI software which I was really able to get to grips with, originally in Windows 3.1. I run an old version of SONAR now, under WINE. I use that for composing, but then export it into Rosegarden for recording. I did most of this in Windows until 7 came along and broke the 4x4 USB MIDI interface I was using - it was easier just to stay in Linux from that point on.
For sound generation, I use hardware, mostly rackmount syntheszers. You can find these second hand on ebay quite a lot - the Roland JV series are pretty good general-purpose sound sources for starting out. They have the advantage that they are completely OS-agnostic, and apart from some weirdos like the Creamware ASB or the Receptor, they don't require online activation and they also won't die the year after the maker goes bust because OSX or Windows broke some API it uses. If you must use VSTs, Rosegarden and a couple of other packages will act as a VST host, probably using bits of WINE to do so. The MUSE Receptor does this as a hardware device (again, using a modified version of WINE) but although a Linux device, it is up to the hilt in DRM and remarkably expensive for what it is.
Where it gets unusual is recording and tracking. I record quick demos of the piece using Audacity, but for the real thing I track it onto tape, using a timecode track to control the sequencer. This isn't a legacy system, it was a deliberate decision because I wanted to get some idea of how things were done before Protools became widespread.
If I didn't do it that way, I'd either be looking at using a standalone DAW such as an Alesis HD24, or Ardour. I few years ago I scored a TASCAM 1" 24-track machine, and before that I was using a pair of synchronized 8-track machines, but to be honest that was a royal pain. I mix the 24-track tape down to a 1/4" stereo machine, and digitize the stereo master from that. I also have a 24-channel JoeCo recorder which I use to take digital safety masters of the multitracks.
I am well aware that this is a weird thing to do in this day and age, but I figured I may as well throw it into the pot. In any case, there are people like Slugbug and Freelove Fenner who do the whole thing completely in the analogue domain, but that's not really what the question was.
Just get a cheap netbook with a browser ... (Score:3)
Just get a cheap netbook with a browser and use audiotool [audiotool.com]. ... No matter the OS, as long as it has Flash (Chrome has Flash built in).
Honestly, I'm only joking a little here. The stuff these people did with audiotool is amazing right up to flat out insane. You really should check it out. I wouldn't be suprised if it fits *all* your needs.
That aside, you get tons of tools in the closed and FOSS space. I'd go with what fits best. It may be that the available midi/audio to usb interfaces are most sophisticated for the mac vs. windows or x86 Linux.
You also want to consider the hardware. The new Mac Pro (the round pipe-thing) has gotten raving reviews from audio professionals for its silent operation (1 fan only) in relation to its power and speed. Some even use it directly in the studio. If your on a budget, a linux laptop with supported audio hardware (supported seperate USB audio interface strongly recommended!!) will do just fine. Supercollider is one of the many FOSS audiotools (it's a synth) that are really great. There are ready-made Linux music+audio distros out there, even a specialized ubuntu variante, IIRC.
Then again, do check out audiotool. Some musicians use it exclusively. A webapp. No shit. A friggin webapp. ... As I said: Quite amazing.
My 2 cents.
Here is an example of what opensource can do (Score:3, Interesting)
https://soundcloud.com/shadowo... [soundcloud.com]
Most of the money I have spent is on the equipment I use to record (my guitars/ tube condenser mic/X-Station/headphones etc). But I have also spent a lot of time and energy accumulating free samples from different sources and kitting them together(the drum kit is an example - it is a hydrogen based Drumkit using the Colombo Acoustic Drumkit with other samples (e.g. the snare) from different sources - all free). I also use the excellent composite sampler to directly plugin the hydrogen drumkits as a lv2 plugin into Ardour's midi tracks, so I don't use anything over ardour really. I use a cheap BCF2000 in Mackie emulation mode with Ardour.
I have also bought the linuxdsp plugins - I can honestly say that they are on par and sometimes better than commercial offerings (listen to the Linuxdsp Pultech EQ in action and compare that to the real thing - very close!) - the best part is that they are not restricted to linux - so you can use them where-ever. Also use the excellent calf plugins especially the saturator.
It works for the kind of music I do - (a mix of classical/classical rock/blues/jazz) and the fact that I compose/record/produce/sing my music myself, but I have felt the pain in the past and it has often taken me a lot of time to produce the things the way i wanted it to sound (You can see some of my older pieces as well on soundcloud - you can see that the sound does gets progressively better - it was part of a learning process of learning to use the tools and learning music production! I am currently working on a new track which uses the sonatina orchestra which is a free orchestral sample released under creative commons and i think that definitely sounds a lot better than my previous ones. Also Ardour allows for midi editing on screen - i.e.. i can see all my tracks side by side with midi at the same track resolution- its very useful when i need to line up notes across tracks. Other DAWs tend to have a separate window come up when you need to have midi editing (or they used to..not sure if that's the case anymore!)
If you go with a mac - chances are you will be doing what other people have already done and use the tools that they do - it does wind up costing more though- but if you are going to be producing music for other folks, time will be critical. Also there are probably more tools/options out there for the mac - e.g. I still can't find an auto tune equivalent for linux - however it is possible to run windows VSTs under emulation in wine as well - you can find videos in youtube.
The key thing with the mac is that if you run into problems..chances are someone would be able to help you solve them - I know a friend who absolutely swears by his macbook for music production and he says that the support is amazing. Linux based DAWs have also grown in that sense - the Ardour community is large but I just get the feeling that the mac might be a bit more mature - although this could be a case of the grass being greener on the other side. It will now be a bit of a learning curve, I am way too used to the way Ardour/jack and how my tools work now that I have invested the time and energy in getting to know them.
Also these tools have matured (i have been using them for over 5 years now). So a lot of the problems I faced in 2008 have been minimized. Suggest that if you do have the time, try giving them a spin with a simple project or something- spend a few weeks playing with it - if you like it use it. If you don't then you can always switch to commercial. The only thing you would have lost is time. That's what I did originally and didn't really look back after that.
An actual answer to the question! (Score:3, Informative)
Long standing member of the Linux audio community here, with almost 20 years experience of recording under all 3 major platforms.
Please end the Mac fanboism and answer this poor guys question!
He's asking about LINUX BASED notation software and synths! I'm sure he's well aware of Macs, REAPER and ProTools etc - not that they do what he's after anyway!
Musescore and Rosegarden have already been mentioned for Linux notation software but there is also http://laborejo.org/ , http://denemo.org/ and http://www.frescobaldi.org/ . Laborejo seems to be the most popular in the Linux world these days. I'm not sure which is the best as I don't do notation very often and I've not tried them all. The last few are basically lilypond GUIs.
As for synths, the best (and most powerful) commercial synths for Linux is Loomer's Aspect. Its unbelievably CPU efficient too. As for open source, there is TAL Noizemaker (my fave), zynaddsubfx/Yoshimi, Amsynth and Triceratops are all worth checking out.
Another good free synth (but not open source yet) for Linux is Tunefish - thats my 3rd fave after Noizemaker and Aspect.
The best Linux Audio distros are KXStudio and AVLinux. As for DAWs (which he wasn't asking about, but just for my 2p) Ardour has lots of fans and many people use REAPER under Linux as its officially supported running under wine but my fave Linux DAW is qtractor. Its the fastest and most lightweight modern DAW. It lacks some whizz bang features of the popular commercial DAWs but you may find it does everything you need it to.
OEM Install? (Score:2)
Buddy, if you can keep track of MIDI channels, wires and software, you arent going to have any trouble installing a distro like , Ubuntu Studio.
Plenty of the programs you want and much more.
No software is perfect (Score:4, Interesting)
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A Mac is a viable option, why don't you re-read the original post.. try line 1.
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And guaranteed to blow your entire budget on something completely ill-suited to music composition/recording before you can buy any other decent equipment.
Re:GarageBand (Score:5, Insightful)
If you aren't familiar with the capabilities of GarageBand, or any other music software, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU COMMENTING ON THIS PARTICULAR STORY?
Re:It's like telling a Photoshop user: Try Paint! (Score:5, Informative)
Garageband is (at least up to 2010ish - not sure if recent? versions have robbed anything) a surprisingly powerful music program. Logic (& other daws) add a lot of editing specific features that really enable you to get extremely anal with your work, but all of the underlying 'record/punch/trim/level/etcetc' concepts are there and do what you expect them to do. Garageband does notation along with midi / wave substitution and add in the JamPacks (all included free with MainStage on app store iirc) to replace stock GM sounds and everything the topic poster wants is there.
A better analogy would be telling a Photoshop user to try GetPaint.net / Paint.NET. Not the same as Photoshop, but all of the essentials and editing concepts are nearly identical. You can easily accomplish whatever it is your trying to do.
$.02 As much as I love and try to solely OSS, there are no options for this specific case. Ardour and Rosegarden are nice enough, but in much the same way Gimp isn't Photoshop, neither are those suitable alternatives. (primarily, asio-ish low latency audio/hardware isn't reliable ime, and there are no real options for upgraded GM soundbanks short of creating them yourself (which will end up consuming easily 88x more time and energy than the music being written in the first place))
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+1 correct use of nested parenthetical statements.
Re:It's like telling a Photoshop user: Try Paint! (Score:5, Funny)
Who nests parenthetical statements?
Programmers, mathematicians, engineers, physicists and the guy you're replying to obviously.
Re:It's like telling a Photoshop user: Try Paint! (Score:5, Funny)
Honorary mention to Sir Terry Pratchett, who nests his footnotes.
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Sure it isn't Logic, but I found Ardour to be a pretty awesome DAW. I'm an amateur, mind you, and lucky enough to have had a hands-on workshop with the author to get me started (during the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, couple of years back). Anyway, I'm using it with an RME audio interface and a MIDI control surface, and am pretty happy with that setup. Latency has never been an issue for me, but YMMV obviously.
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Getting Ardour and other music/video software installed and configured to work properly and with low latency isn't easy though, and you are best off with a distribution tha
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My, my, my! We don't mind showing off our mindless biases much, do we? I suppose Picasso's statue in Chicago must be a lesser work, since it was given to the city at no cost, huh?
I don't know a thing about music or the software used in making it, but I have been running Studio Ubuntu for a year or so on both my desktop and my laptop. I think its low latency Linux kernel speeds the CG rendering I do somewhat, but the low latency design is intended to meet the needs of music and video makers. The distro com
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For serious music production use MacOS, its the right tool for the job. Get Logic Pro or Pro Tools for audio/midi recording, and Sibelius or Finale for score editing. If you want pain & suffering welcome to use open source alternatives.
You say that like pain and suffering in the creation of music is a bad thing.
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For serious music production use MacOS, its the right tool for the job. Get Logic Pro or Pro Tools for audio/midi recording, and Sibelius or Finale for score editing. If you want pain & suffering welcome to use open source alternatives.
You say that like pain and suffering in the creation of music is a bad thing.
That's all well and good for writing it. But not so much for recording it.
Re:Must use MacOS (Score:4, Informative)
That's all well and good for writing it. But not so much for recording it.
Huh?! You serious? Logic/ProTools is like the default setup for recording, mixing, composing, and editing. We're not talking about avant-gardists, mind you, so no PD, Max, Audiosculpt (and other IRCAM stuff), etc.
Yes, there's Live, Reason, Sonar, DP, and a couple of other packages, but standard is Logic and/or ProTools. Period.
Re:Must use MacOS (Score:4, Informative)
but standard is Logic and/or ProTools. Period. On a Mac.
FTFY
In order to fix something you have to do it with correct information. You have not. I have been doing analog and digital audio production and engineering since 1988. I have seen apps come and go. Pro Tools is the number one digital audio production app out there, and has been for more than two decades. It runs on Mac and PC. Logic is the only real competitor in the commercial/professional space, it only runs on Mac. Having said that the split is something like 70:30 Pro Tools. Now, there are some hobbyists, some garage studios and some outliers using other tools, but most are not what anyone would call first tier professional outfits and they are not the ones setting the standards.
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THIS.
I resisted getting a mac for about 15 years. Just do yourself a favour, buy a macbook pro, or even an air, and you will be amazed at how easy everything is and how well everything works. Open source is a waste of time.
Windows will work ok, but for various reasons the music industry has chosen Macs as the standard. In theory you could run everything on Windows ok, but I wouldn't bother. Don't fight it, just get a Mac, y
Re: Must use MacOS (Score:2, Informative)
no, it's for idiots who can't take the time to learn engineering, because they are professional musicians, not engineers. and that's why mac is the standard in audio production and if you ever want to work in audio other than being a one man band marching to your own beat, you need to work with protools, logic and the likes.
besides, if mac is for idiots, i don't want to know your word for windows users.
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Re: Must use MacOS (Score:2)
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Or you can buy a modern PC that is 4 times more powerful and have cash left over for beer.
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And in hind sight I bet the "Open source" part of the topic was added for you.
Heh, seems like it could be so. Now I realize why the title mismatched with the part where he in the beginning specifically says that "I have no preference between open- and closed-source software as an end-user".
no, real time since about 2008 (Score:3)
No, the real time kernel was available by 2008 and soon after the drivers and other important elements for real time were adapted.
You DO want to use a kernel compiled for real time, last I checked. You certainly CAN introduce latency if you're also using it as a typical desktop, but if you either start with a studio distribution or build it as a studio machine you should be fine.
Re:Linux Audio (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux, Windows, and OSX all have problems with low-latency audio. The sad irony is that 15 years ago, you actually COULD connect a MIDI keyboard to a SB Pro AWE/32's MIDI port, run your sequencer app, and have it do a halfway decent job of both capture and playback. Then, host-based audio happened, and everything went to shit... accelerated by architectural changes to all three platforms that made matters even worse.
Forget about trying to do realtime CPU-based audio on any computer that needs to still be usable as a normal computer. It's impossible. You CAN hand-tweak Linux, Windows, and OS X in various ways to get the latency down (as others have noted, Linux has had realtime kernel audio available as an option for a while), but the tweaks you have to make will render it dysfunctional as a general-purpose computer.
It doesn't matter how fast your i7 or Xeon is, it doesn't matter how much RAM you have, and it doesn't matter if you have a terabyte RAID 0 SSD array... nothing you do will ever make it fast enough to do low-latency host-based audio without ever glitching. You might reduce the glitches to something that happens every 5-10 minutes, instead of every 5-10 seconds, but you'll never eliminate them completely. It's just the nature of how Windows, Linux, and OS X now handle multitasking.
The solution? Re-discover dedicated synth modules. Or set up a second PC whose only reason for existence is to be a VST/soft synth host -- aggressively tweaked for low-latency audio in ways the main DAW PC can't be.
The problem isn't MIDI (that was solved YEARS ago by just using USB to give every physical MIDI port its own dedicated full-bandwidth MIDI cable), and the problem isn't raw data being shoveled around. The problem is that even with a multi-core CPU and abundant RAM, Windows/Linux/OS X will all starve the soft synth for CPU cycles for 3-7ms at a time (usually, more like 12-20ms) while the audio buffer drains. If it empties before the CPU calculates the next 5-10ms chunk of waveform data, you get a loud audio glitch. Audio-generation is a "realtime" activity, and Windows/Linux/OS X in their roles as desktop operating systems all fall flat on their faces when realtime becomes a necessity.
So... the moral of the story: forget about trying to use a single computer as both DAW and VST/softsynth host. If you can avoid live performances involving a softsynth (or pre-record the softsynth and fake the keyboard playing during the performance, you'll save a LOT of money. Audio glitches while jamming or capturing keyboard input suck, but at least they won't affect your real recordings. Use your DAW as a DAW, and give the soft synth host its own hardware that can be properly tweaked for realtime audio.
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That is asolutely NOT true. I'm running OSX since 10.4 and I've never had problems with latency. A 7ms starvation period would mean that a buffer below 308 samples would cause pops (at 44.1kHz). Well, I run it at 128 or 256, and no clicks or pops (with the exception of East-West Play). People with more powerful machines run at 32 or 64 samples without problems. I've never heard about such problems from people with Windows machines either, although they require ASIO drivers.
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Question: did you literally upgrade to every version of OSX since 10.4? I could *swear* I remember seeing a lot of posts at GearSlutz about one Apple's past few releases (Lion or Mountain Lion, I think).
In my friend's case, he threw in the towel and bought a Muse Receptor2. It was the best $2k or so he ever spent. Instantly, all of his problems and misery went away. For those who are wondering, the Receptor2 is basically a PC in a rack case that's hand-tweaked to be a flawless dedicated VST host. Once you a
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OSX 10.4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Haven't touch .9 yet, since the driver for my audio interface won't work. I have projects with hundreds of voices (one note usually requires between 2 and 4 voices) and effects. And I've got just one Macbook Pro.
But indeed, if you want to run a DAW on Windows, you'll have to disable all the background processing. There are even computer builders that will deliver a machine with all tweaks applied. A virus scanner is a nasty piece of software, and when it start running on the audio f
Horse Shit (Score:2)
I run kxstudio over a heavily modified system that functions as a media centre, file server, desktop, dev machine and low latency DAW. It works fine for me.
Geez, I started reading these comments hoping to find a better notation solution than rosegarden for Linux and it's full of superstitious crap
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Parent is correct. Clearly, a lot of slashdotters don't know the difference between notation and DAW software. No, Reaper, Ardour, and Audacity are not notation programs. If notation is what you want the best F/OSS solution I've seen is MuseScore [musescore.org]. I have completely replace Finale/Sibelius with this for my notation needs. Note that my needs are strictly for notation for printing though. I am not doing any MIDI creation from it so I can't speak to that. I don't believe it supports playing back with soundfonts
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MuseScore does support SoundFonts. It comes with a really low quality set of instruments, but that's just to keep the download size down. Download the FluidR3 SoundFont and it sounds a lot better.
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+1 for Lilypond and I believe it's plugged into Rosegarden.