Freeware Mulitrack software

[Nilbog]

I did a search for multitrack on sourceforge and came up with quite a few results.
Audacity and Ardour are the ones I'm looking more closely at (It sounds like it might be a good idea to do recording in linux).
Has anyone ever used any of these for much (mp3 links???) or does anyone know of any other good freeware multitrack software out there?

-Nilbog

 

[Havoc]

I'm starting out in ardour for the moment. Just getting the hang of it. While it is impressive and going on strong, it is not yet at the stage of making it the base of a studio if your living depends on it. But it is THE linux solution for multitrack both now and in the longer run. Lots of thought went into it and the way of talking to your soundcard is without parallel. The way to go for it is http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/ALSA_JACK_ARDOUR.html

Audacity is more limited for multitrack, but more suited for editing separate tracks. So it makes sense to check both.

Weak point of linux: plug-ins! While there are a lot of them out, I find them rather hard to use and limited in "effect". Some are very specialised, others just to plain. Most missing are reverbs and multi-band comp.

There are others for linux. take a look at: http://linux-sound.org/
Everything you need is there.

 

[Nilbog]

sweet - cool links!

I'll have top read through that ALSA stuff because I don't understand any of it....I'm pretty new to computer bsed recording....

 

[Doug H]

I do all my effects and "ass"-tering in Audacity. On one of the Audacity home pages you 'll find some links to enough free plugins to keep you busy for a while. It also installs with a fairly decent reverb plugin.

The latest version is very usable IMO and suppots 32 bit floating point formats. You should be able to use it to mix if everything you do is live.

There isn't any sequencing support, so building a drum track from samples would be pretty painfull. There is talk of adding this feature in the future.

There is no real time plugin support (unless I've totally missed something) so you have to print effects like reverb or edit your source track.

 

[Havoc]

You could regard ALSA as the equivalent of the drivers of your card under windows. It provides the interface between the card(s) and the application. It is replacing OSS as driver starting with kernel 2.5 series. Below 2.5 you need to install it yourself.

Very important is the bit about low-latency and pre-empting. The low-latency they talk about has nothing to do with the soundcard, but with the kernel. It is about how fast the kernel can switch between 2 tasks at hand, and how to determine that something more important has to be done.

Next for study is JACK. This is basically a kind of patchbay that sits between applications and ALSA. It makes that the application must know nothing about the card and that different applications can exchange data between themselves.

One frustrating bit about linux is that you have to do lots yourself. So do not think that installing a plug-in is easy. You may first have to install some libraries. For some things you need even to know the version of the compiler installed on your pc.

Don't give up, just do it if you do not depend on it. I decided to go for it and reformatted the whole pc and went linux only. So recording etc is on the backburner for now, but as I have other things to do (like moving) it is not that bad.