Music & audio guide
From Schoolforge-UK
Contents |
Introduction
Audio support in Linux has come a long way in recent years. There are now several applications that are attempting to rival professional audio editing and mixing tools such as ProTools and Logic. The creation of the Jack audio hardware abstraction layer has made available to linux users many low and high-end audio devices.
For a comprihensive, slightly technical review of open source audio applications and the capabilities of linux, refer to this Audio in Linux guide.
Choosing a Linux Distro
Although (almost) any linux distribution will run audio apps quite happily, there is some merit in choosing a specialist audio distribution. If you are using RedHat or Fedora Core, the Planet CCRMA (pronounced "Karma") packages will be of interest. They are produced by Stanford University to install the audio apps that they use for audio production and research. Furthermore, it patches the kernel to include real-time scheduling and other latency-reducing features.
DeMuDI (DEbian MUltimedia DIstro) is another specialist distro; It is a product of the EU funded Agnula Project which aims to improve access to multimedia applications. It is currently in beta development.
Dyne:bolic is a live-cd distribution that offers audio editing applications and is designed to run on low-end hardware (300-400Mhz), without having to install anything.
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is something of a de-facto standard in the audio World. It occuppies the 'middle-ground' between open source and proprietary operating systems; it is not free, but parts of it are open source.
There are many audio editing, mixing, synth apps available.
Continue.... Audio Units, Core Audio. Free software, opensource software.
Audio Synthesis
Beast (BEdeviled Audio SysTem) is a music composition and modular synthesis application capable of using many different audio formats (MP3/WAV/AIFF/Ogg etc) and almost all LADSPA modules to create audio.
Useful Links
- Linux Sound HOWTO Looks out of date, but contains loads of troubleshooting advice. Might still be useful
- Linux Sound A collection of links, apps and advice
- Linux Audio Dev Mailing List
- Linux Audio.org An organisation representing open source audio developers and users
- The Ubuntu Studio site A site dedicated to setting up Ubuntu for music
