Free Software applications

Scooter B

Scooter B

New member
Disclaimer...I posted this at Studio Forums as well but have not gotten much response so I am going to try here as well.

I am not so much a PC recorder at the moment and went with a Yamaha AW16G for my needs, budget and intermittent PC imcompatiblity issues.

I do have FL Studio (hoping to improve drum sounds from DR-5) and an Oxygen 8 but I am still way under the FL learning curve so far.
Also at my disposal is an Echo Darla 24/96 to send stuff to the AW16G or via CD....but alas its all on the family PC and I don't have a dedicated PC for just audiostuff.

Along the way I have received some freebie demo software that came with some hardware purchases (none of wich I have used yet) and thought it would be fun to learn a little about their potential (or lack there of) before I spent a lot of time trying to learn them as well.

My goal is to use FL via MIDI from either the DR-5 (input/ controller for drums) and the Oxygen 8 for drum/percussion input and some keyboards, string samples etc.

The rest of my stuff is guitar, bass, vocals etc DI'd and miced into the AW16G.

So as far as additional software I have;

Acid 2.0 Demo
Cakewalk Express 8
Cool Edit Pro SE
Reason 1.0 Demo
Reason Adapted (for M-Audio)
Sonic Foundry
Sonar 2.0 Test Drive

Besides rating them in a poll - any brief reviews of the good uses, benefits and drawbacks of each would be cool.

Feel free to discuss any other freebie/demo's out there you are using as well and what for....could be interesting and educational I hope.
 
heres whats free that i like.....
1. audacity multitracker. but no midi.
2. hotstepper - a unique wav sample sequencer
3. simulanalog.org (guitar amp emulator always being developed by some research project somewhere)
4. lame mp3 encoder.
heres whats under 100 bucks that i use regularly.
powertracks, and magix music studio multitrack software.
i suggest you try the demoes of both. i tried everything else and ended up getting those two.
i also suggest you check out band in a box sometime. although i dont use it.
a very usefull songwriters tool.
i also make my own mic pre's.
cost me 20 bucks to make.
if you want a full list of free software check out hitsquad.com.
(loads of titles).
out of the titles you listed i feel cool edit pro is a very good product.
never tried reason. not into those sorts of features.
tried FL , but never got off on it. just personal preference. i prefer to record all live tracks. sonic foundry editors are excellent imho.
just my comments.
 
LInux?

One month ago I went down the Linux track and have never returned :)
Sold cubase, plus some vsti and brought a new computer with the money.

Audio/ Midi apps I use are:

Ardour Mutitrack audio recorder
Rosegarden audio/MIDI recorder
Ladspa sort of like VST effects (system wide)
AMS (Alsa Modular Synth) sort of like reactor
ZynAddSubfx great software synth
Fluid synth (sound font soft synth)
TerminatorX virtual turntable scratcher
Audacity
Jack rack (effects manager for ladspa)
JackEQ Equalisation

all controlled by jack, which means you can plug in any one of these applications audio/MIDI inputs outputs to each other.


these are all free, and work really well
 
alsa - i'm possibly looking to go your route in the future.
you obviously know your stuff. but frankly i think newbies already struggling with windows might find it tough getting linux going. much as i love linux.
and hope it wipes away windows in the future.
can you tell me two things....
1. what sound card are you using. your using the low latency kernel right ?
2. what i'm interested in is (and ive asked a few linux distro teks for this)
is a small linux distro eg; feather to run ardour etc. any ideas if small distros around 50 mb will do it ?
thnx.
 
the reason stuff is really cool. i have only reason adapted for digidesign, but i have tried the full reason 2.5 and it is amazing, once you get the feel for it it gets really easy and fun. i have worked with the dr-5 for years, i love boss drum machines. there is a lot of options and capabilities you have even with that little unit. the drawbacks of reason is that you really got to work hard to do 12/8 shuffle patterns and 6/8 , anything that deviates from dance oriented modern music, the other stuff you mentioned, i have no idea about, i use pro tools, but i thought i would give you feed back on one of the free software things you got
 
can you tell me two things....
1. what sound card are you using. your using the low latency kernel right ?
2. what i'm interested in is (and ive asked a few linux distro teks for this)
is a small linux distro eg; feather to run ardour etc. any ideas if small distros around 50 mb will do it ?
Click to expand...

1: an rme hammerfall and an rme 96/8, not using the low latency patch (but it shows), gentoo 2.4.25.
2: since feather seems to run from cd I would not recommend it. You will run into trouble installing apps. My whole system is about 6.5GB. Got ardour, rezound, audacity, sweep, ladspa, alsa, jack, jamin, sox, snd, ecasound... for audio (no midi) and openoffice, opera and kmail for day to day use.

Before you take the plunge and format your drive, check if the hardware you are going to use is supported in your distro. Look if you do not have linux user(s) around you, and ask what distro they use, it will give you someone to ask for help when you start.
 
thnx havoc. yup - gentoo i checked already, very nice, BUT BIG still.
if you hear of any smaller distros - and i,m sure they will come. please tell me.
you checked out agnula.org ? at all ?
 
manning1 said:
1. what sound card are you using. your using the low latency kernel right ?
2. what i'm interested in is (and ive asked a few linux distro teks for this)
is a small linux distro eg; feather to run ardour etc. any ideas if small distros around 50 mb will do it ?
thnx.
Click to expand...

I am using M-Audio 1010lt, and yes using low latency kernel, 2.6.7 with the real time security module. Using Mandrake 10, because I am new to Linux and seems to be bulletproof. I started using pre built kernels (http://rpm.nyvalls.se/sound10.0.html), but have started building my own, which is not as hard as you would think. A small distro is Peanut Linux, I have not used it but it is supposed to be bare bones type stuff. I am using about 2 GB with all by apps installed, which is a quarter of what XP was with my audio apps installed.
I brought this computer just for Linux and got the hardware that Lunix supported, so all was good and painless
:p
 
For making a start into linux I would not go with any of those "very small" distros. They are often for a specific targeted use like recovery, network debug etc. Once you start with applications and compile them yourself, you will find that you need the kde development set, the gnome development set, X, a windowmanager etc etc.

Start with a known distro that is used by someone around you and has a large user base. Do not forget that there are not that many people using linux for audio yet. So the smaller the user base, the less chance you have to find a sympatic soul to help you out.

I did not checked agnula, but I did try CCRMA. Started with RH (but lots of scsi problems), then to Suse (but problems with libs and compiling audio apps), then to CCRMA (again problems adding other apps), then to gentoo. Not ideal but at least it works stable enough to use and I can run the apps I want.

Go here for the widest overview of audio soft for linux: http://sound.condorow.net/
 
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