step into linux audio (recurring, but a good topic)

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 9:45 am

I was fortunate enough to get an intel mac at work, running parallels. Which meant the first thing I would do was to run Demudi on it, since there's nothing I can mess up on a virtual PC. I got debian to install fine, and all is fine, except audio.. which renders this setup unusable, but I did get a peek at what was in the demudi package, and boy was I impressed. Super fast, super slim. Turns anything into a non-fat, pure good stuff audio crunching machine.

I know some of you here are into the linux audio thing.. I was wondering, what sort of audio devices (professional grade) are supported? I looked around for drivers, and constantly found stone age sound cards like soundblaster and gravis ultrasound. I had Gravis ultrasound back in 9th grade! And since there's a limit as to which audio interface / MIDI interface are supported, I thought there might be a proven "best" combination that's known to work well.

Now I'm looking for a beat up PC with a sound blaster just so I can hear some of these synths. And now they've got a graphical interface for csound! I've always wanted a better way to interact with it.. last time I tried fooling with csound's hetero resynthesis, I almost killed myself.

bassdude · Post by **bassdude** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 2:11 am

I thought RME were into linux?

emzee · Post by **emzee** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 7:23 am

Just saw that Microsoft has softened it's stance on Linux since a third of the server market has gone Linux. They're gonna make it easier for programmers to get the two to talk ....... apparently..... although they still believe Windows is superior .........

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Sat Nov 04, 2006 8:13 am

bassdude> yeah, just saw that. Sounds like a good setup, although not cheap

petal · Post by **petal** » Sun Nov 05, 2006 9:58 am

Yes RME are into Linux, or rather Linux are into RME...

Nevertheless there are drivers for some RME soundcards. I found this at RME's webpage:

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/linux/index.htm

Let me know how your venture into pro sound on a Linux-setup works out. I'd love not to be enslaved by microsoft especially now that Vista is comming.
If only the Linux-drivers for Creamware and Scopewere a reality... bliss. Now that would truly bring Linux into the pro sound, and me into Linux.

Cheers!
Thomas

Post by **garyb** » Sun Nov 05, 2006 1:52 pm

you guys know that linux is the NSA right?

Post by **garyb** » Sun Nov 05, 2006 5:55 pm

ok, them too.

petal · Post by **petal** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 4:49 am

what are you guys talking about?

And what kind of conspiricy are you saying that Linux is involved in here?

Post by **garyb** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:54 am

no, it's not a legend, exactly.
maybe the part about exploits is...
linux is the os of choice for intelligence agencies and they are the ones funding developement for their own purposes. kinda like the way the space program gave us energy bars...

you don't really think open source funds itself do you?

petal · Post by **petal** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 10:53 am

It's really interesting, tell me more please.

coc999 · Post by **coc999** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 1:29 pm

http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

but take care cia infiltrated kgb that infiltrated nsa that infiltrated dgse (the famous french secret service) ,so secret that you have probably never heard about it

Post by **garyb** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 9:28 pm

i couldn't make up all the fanciful stuff i post......

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Mon Nov 06, 2006 11:21 pm

I toyed with csound 5 last night. I don't think I could learn this but I rendered some of the scores it comes with and I must say it sounds amazing. Have a look at this:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/Me ... sBreakdown

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:43 am

I have 8 lines of code that do a database search function
I have 80 lines that make it accessible via some GUI...

but I always was tempted to buy one of those Silicon Graphics boxes with adat on board for a 100 bucks (on eBay) for CSound and PureData
not enough time - and they are probably too loud for my taste anyway

btw these Linux packagers s*ck completely imo, those who 'make' the packages - not the OS...

cheers, Tom

Counterparts · Post by **Counterparts** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:48 am

emzee wrote:Just saw that Microsoft has softened it's stance on Linux since a third of the server market has gone Linux.

...and the other 2/3rds are Unix-boxes

Microsoft put up a website a little while ago now, extoling the advantages and virtues of Windows servers, until it was pointed out to them that their website was in fact being served by Apache, running on a Unix-based server...

...the website was taken down shorty afterwards...

They're gonna make it easier for programmers to get the two to talk ....... apparently..... although they still believe Windows is superior .........

They can talk pretty well already, really. Protocols like CORBA allow for powerful inter-application communications across different platforms, then you've got SAMBA shares allowing for high-level networking comms, then you've got common high-level protocols like SMTP, HTTP...

It's a shame that Microsoft can't 'tow the line' a bit more with respect to industry standards (such as HTML, JAVA etc...) Their continual insistence on 're-inventing the wheel' (coming up with their own versions of accepted standards) causes lots of problems.

They need to learn that ROUND is a perfectly good shape for a wheel...

at0m · Post by **at0m** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:26 am

Kensuguro wrote:

I was wondering, what sort of audio devices (professional grade) are supported?

Check out the "ALSA Matrix":
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

Here's a snapshot of what kind of audio apps I've got on the laptop, running DeMuDi. Google the names for more info on them.
That snapshot of my menu merely shows the soundapps with GUI, plenty more that can run as daemon, in the background. This usually means that you can run the front-end (GUI) on another machine, and connect to the daemons over the LAN.

And out of the more recent news: Suse will work together with MS Windows: http://www.informationweek.com/windows/ ... =193501481

Have fun :)

Zer · Post by **Zer** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:16 am

http://filter24.org/seq24/download.html

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:16 am

I remembered csound had a gui.. and I remember messing with it. I also remember there were several guys each doing their own version of gui front ends for csound, so it's well worth a search. Still too much time needed for dev though.. I remember I got it to run in windows.

FrancisHarmany · Post by **FrancisHarmany** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 9:25 am

astroman wrote:I have 8 lines of code that do a database search function
I have 80 lines that make it accessible via some GUI...

but I always was tempted to buy one of those Silicon Graphics boxes with adat on board for a 100 bucks (on eBay) for CSound and PureData
not enough time - and they are probably too loud for my taste anyway

btw these Linux packagers s*ck completely imo, those who 'make' the packages - not the OS...

cheers, Tom

s/OS/kernel/g

ScopeBSD is still the best option

braincell · Post by **braincell** » Tue Nov 07, 2006 8:47 pm

Has anyone tried csound with midi?