Music production on Linux

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roos

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Hi,

I didn't find anything about music production on Linux on this forum.

I works with Linux now a couple of years and I like it very much.

I wrote an article about Linux audio for 'newbies'.

Check it here:
wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php?id=newbies

I hope this information is usefull for you!

Happy recording! :)
 
Wow, I guess not much interest in Linux.

I for one, appreciate the article as I've been considering Ubuntu.

Thanks
 
aman74 said:
Wow, I guess not much interest in Linux.

I for one, appreciate the article as I've been considering Ubuntu.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I guess there's not much interest because Linux isn't very good. Urban myth has it that it's faster than Windows, more CPU efficient, and easier to use. Fact is, it runs slower than Windows using its native apps, far slower than Windows when it's emulating Windows apps, relies mostly on open source (which is to say, home-made) drivers for hardware that generally don't perform as well as the 1st-party drivers made by the hardware manufacturers for Windows, and is a pain in the arse to use. Take this for a neat example of how rubbish Linux is.
 
Actually, I've turned several older PCs that choke on newer versions of Windows into Linux boxes that can run well and be very useful. I've no problem with open-source drivers and contributions. I've ben constantly amazed by how everytime I have to look for a driver or app, that someone has created one already, and done a good job.

I wouldn't expect anything to be faster running Windows apps than Windows. But run a web server, dns server, dhcp server, mail server, file server, backup server, firewall on one box in Win XP on a PIII/1GHz w/512MB? No, but you can on Linux quite effectively on a newer-than-XP distro of Linux. Not so much because it is better - it is different and lighter on system resources.

The other day I had to power down my Linux box to add a USB 2 card. It had been running for 156 days. I have no windows machines that run that long usefully without a reboot.

However, Windows box runs Sonar, Photoshop, Sibelius, Quickbooks, etc.. I don't have a Linux box that can do that. For this reason I still don't do music on Linux as my music machine is used for these other things. I've wondered about trying it though.

I think the Firefox example, as much as I like Firefox, is a Firefox problem, not a Linux problem.
 
Lets be honest. Theres not a pro studio on earth that uses Linux. And theres a reason for that. Stick to what works, performs, and is in use. That way you can spend time making music and not playing with computers. Unless you just want to play with computer setups all the time.
 
I've actually recorded at a studio that used a software package developed for linux. Sounded great.

A lot of people did a lot of work to make it so easy to record on PCs and Macs, so why scoff at people making that same effort to bring Linux into the field?
 
reddavid said:
I guess there's not much interest because Linux isn't very good. Urban myth has it that it's faster than Windows, more CPU efficient, and easier to use. Fact is, it runs slower than Windows using its native apps, far slower than Windows when it's emulating Windows apps, relies mostly on open source (which is to say, home-made) drivers for hardware that generally don't perform as well as the 1st-party drivers made by the hardware manufacturers for Windows, and is a pain in the arse to use. Take this for a neat example of how rubbish Linux is.
Click to expand...

Please explain why being open source makes it bad... surely having as many people as possible scouring over code means its more likely things get fixed? Ever got frustrated when it take Microsoft months to spot a bug, let alone fix it?

And do you realise that most of the internet runs on linux/unix/BSD servers?
This site is running on "Apache/2.0.52 (Unix)"

Anyway, I've only briefly experimented with Ardour running with my interface through Jack and I could definitely see it at the heart of a pro studio. I'm definitely going to try my next live recording with it.

And for the record, you don't 'emulate' Windows apps. Wine is an actual implimentation of the Windows API on linux, meaning apps can run as fast as they would natively. I run Office 2007 on Ubuntu on my aging laptop and it loads Word about twice as fast as on my quad-core Vista workstation!

Drivers? Nvidia have supplied great Linux drivers for ages. ATI are getting better and have just announced that their next driver will support Crossfire and all the other fancy things which no-one uses. I've had no driver problems, in fact there were even the drivers which let me use my laptop's fingerprint reader instead a password (which on Windows would require special bloated software).

As for the Firefox thing, I switched on and the update was installed and ready for me to use :p With a good package manager things are actually easier to install...

You want the latest version of Cubase? You go out and buy the CD, mess around with installing it, CD keys, activations, USB dongles, etc (all costing you money).
I wanted to have a go with Ardour, a highly advanced DAW. What do I do in Ubuntu? Open the terminal and type...
sudo apt-get install ardour
Click to expand...
5 minutes later it was there waiting for me to use.

In the true words of Lipton's Iced Tea... "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it".
 
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reddavid said:
I guess there's not much interest because Linux isn't very good. Urban myth has it that it's faster than Windows, more CPU efficient, and easier to use. Fact is, it runs slower than Windows using its native apps, far slower than Windows when it's emulating Windows apps, relies mostly on open source (which is to say, home-made) drivers for hardware that generally don't perform as well as the 1st-party drivers made by the hardware manufacturers for Windows, and is a pain in the arse to use. Take this for a neat example of how rubbish Linux is.
Click to expand...

That is the second strangest thing I have ever heard... It makes me question, either how much you've actually used Linux, or how much you actually know about various OS's (and how they work)... It's one thing to knock or not like something it's another to fill other peoples heads with crap.

This reminds me of all the times I hear about the "Blue Screen of Death" in XP... I think people just say stuff because they hear other people say it. just makes a person look unexperienced with the matter- dumb...
 
Epicureous said:
This reminds me of all the times I hear about the "Blue Screen of Death" in XP... I think people just say stuff because they hear other people say it. just makes a person look unexperienced with the matter- dumb...
Click to expand...

I've Blue Screened XP plenty of times. It took a hardware hiccup/malfunction to do, but it's possible. I've also gotten the Black Screen of Death, but that required a fried motherboard.

So as long as we're talking about making music with Linux, perhaps someone can help me figure out why my sound doesn't work for non root users on my Linux (Fedroa 8 using XFCE). Anytime my non-root user tries to access the soundcard, it errors out saying something like "ALSA lib... cannot find card '0' "

Any ideas?
 
Anytime my non-root user tries to access the soundcard, it errors out saying something like "ALSA lib... cannot find card '0' "
Click to expand...

Hi Steve! I am running Fedora Core 9 and Ubuntu Studio without any problems, but maybe I can help. Have you tried to google the (more) exact error message? A distribution like Fedora has bugtrackers, you are probably not the first one to run into this. ;-)

If this does not help you, could you provide me the exact message, as well as the output of the following commands (run as root):

# lsof /dev/snd/*
# lsmod | grep snd
# cat /proc/asound/cards

Thanks!
 
hppnq said:
Ubuntu Studio
Click to expand...

:D I have googled my exact error messages (which has helped a little), but I mostly get people with different problems but the same error messages. (i.e. "I'm running Skype on Ubuntu but can't get any sound")

I'll get you the information, next time I'm at that computer. Thank you.
 
VomitHatSteve said:
So as long as we're talking about making music with Linux, perhaps someone can help me figure out why my sound doesn't work for non root users on my Linux (Fedroa 8 using XFCE). Anytime my non-root user tries to access the soundcard, it errors out saying something like "ALSA lib... cannot find card '0' "

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

And there you have it folks, a perfect one paragraph reason why nobody uses linux for audio.

Every time there is a new "audio" distro, I give it a spin. Every time I do, I am always greeted with a lack of drivers, lack of plugins, overly cryptic set up procedures, sub par performance. If it gets to a point where I can actually use the software with my hardware without endless google and support forum searches then I may even consider running some performance benchmarks. But as of yet, I have never actually gotten half way to that point and this is from someone who spent his college years on Solaris, Nextstep, and AIX/6000
 
altitude909 said:
And there you have it folks, a perfect one paragraph reason why nobody uses linux for audio.

Every time there is a new "audio" distro, I give it a spin. Every time I do, I am always greeted with a lack of drivers, lack of plugins, overly cryptic set up procedures, sub par performance. If it gets to a point where I can actually use the software with my hardware without endless google and support forum searches then I may even consider running some performance benchmarks. But as of yet, I have never actually gotten half way to that point and this is from someone who spent his college years on Solaris, Nextstep, and AIX/6000
Click to expand...

My advice for you? RTFM ;)
 
Though I happen to agree, that Linux is still a lot of steps to do what would take me 5 minutes in windows, Dave from the above link posted a funny picture that I think is worth sharing:

what-a-dumbass.png
 
reddavid said:
I guess there's not much interest because Linux isn't very good. Urban myth has it that it's faster than Windows, more CPU efficient, and easier to use. Fact is, it runs slower than Windows using its native apps, far slower than Windows when it's emulating Windows apps, relies mostly on open source (which is to say, home-made) drivers for hardware that generally don't perform as well as the 1st-party drivers made by the hardware manufacturers for Windows, and is a pain in the arse to use. Take this for a neat example of how rubbish Linux is.
Click to expand...

You obviously have not used Linux. The fact that the code is open-source (yes, home-made) is the primary asset of Linux and other open-source operating systems. When a bug is found in Windows or Mac (This happens very often) it can take months or even years to fix, because the company must decide if it's worth their time. Then one or two developers must go through the code, hunting for the solution, and it's all just very inefficient. When a bug is found in Linux, however, it is often fixed within days because there are millions of developers constantly improving the software.

Linux is simply better than Windows and Mac. Here is a professional studio operating on Linux. Software like JACK and Ardour are pure genius. Proof that open-source developers can produce free software rivaling commercial software. Also, the Advanced Linux Sound Archietcture, a project providing open-source audio drivers for Linux, supports pretty much every PCI chipset. Many Firewire audio interfaces are supported aswell, but MOTU refuses to make available certain technical data, so developers are having a hard time writing a driver.
 
I'd probably stick to Windows audio, but I desire to combine my love of hacking with my love of music. I figure it's probably easier to learn audio on Linux than to learn to hack (and interface that with audio) on Windows.

Anyway, hppnq:
My error messages when I run "aplay -vv [some wav file]" as a non-root user
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
aplay: main:564: audio open error: No such file or directory

when I ran lsof as root, I got no output. When I ran it as non-root, I got a lot of permission denied errors (even after I changed the permissions... strange)

lsmod gave me
snd_intel8x0 30557 1
snd_ac97_codec 92257 1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus 5825 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_dummy 6853 0
snd_seq_oss 29633 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9921 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 44913 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 9933 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 37441 0
snd_mixer_oss 16577 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 61637 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 21065 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 44517 9 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 9633 2 snd
snd_page_alloc 11337 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

Most of my kernel settings should be pretty close to Fedora 8 defaults.

cat /proc... etc. gave me
0 [I82801CAICH3 ]: ICH - Intel 82801CA-ICH3
Intel 82801CA-ICH3 with CS4299 at irq 11
Again thanks for your help.
 
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pipelineaudio said:
Though I happen to agree, that Linux is still a lot of steps to do what would take me 5 minutes in windows, Dave from the above link posted a funny picture that I think is worth sharing:
Click to expand...

Hey, I RTFM before I even start but there is only so much time I'm willing to commit to something and I would much prefer to read a manual by someone motivated by greed than someone motivated by some duty to an open source anything. I have no interest in writing my own drivers, install scripts, whatever, nor am I interested in waiting around for the "community" to solve my problems either. If I pay for a product, I expect it to work out of the box with a reasonable amount of work. Every linux distro that was supposed to be a snap to setup has completely failed in some aspect or another for me at one point or another and honestly, it is not worth my time. I would happily pay for something that pays for itself in half the time it takes to debug something that is free. Simple as that.

You all need to get some girlfriends or something
 
If they had girlfriends they wouldnt be using linux

<ducks>
 
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