Linux Music Workflow - Switching From Mac OS X To Ubuntu

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Aug 4 2009
Linux Music Workflow: Switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu with Kim Cascone
by Kim Cascone
Heres a switcher story of a different color: from the Mac, to Linux. Its one thing to talk about operating
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systems and free software in theory, or to hear from died-in-the-wool advocates of their platform of choice.
In this case, we turn to Kim Cascone, an experienced and gifted musician and composer with an impressive
resume of releases and a rich sens of sound. This isnt someone advocating any platform over another: its
an on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, real-world example of how Kim made this set of tools work in his music,
in the studio and on tour. A particular thanks, as hes given me some new ideas for how to work with
Audacity and Baudline. Kim puts his current setup in the context of decades of computer work. Even if
youre not ready to leave Mac (or Windows) just yet, Kims workflow here could help if youre looking to
make a Linux netbook or laptop more productive in your existing rig.
Stay tuned, as Ill have some other stories on how to make your Linux music workflow effective creatively,
particularly in regards to leaping over some of the setup hurdles Kim describes. -PK
Historical Evolution
Ive been working with computers since the 1970s. Inspired by the work of composer David Behrman, I
taught myself assembly language and programmed a simple digital sequencer on a KIM-1, single-board
microcomputer, controlling an Aries modular synthesizer I had built. I discovered a then-new magazine called
Computer Music Journal at the local computer shop and bought every copy I could get my hands on. (I still
have them, too.) Later, I helped a friends father, an executive at IBM, unpack and set up the first personal
computer IBM made. The manuals alone took up two or three feet of bookshelf space.
Fast-forward through a couple of decades of owning Commodore 64s, Apple computers, and PCs. In 1997, I
purchased my first laptop: a woefully-underpowered Compaq Presario. It wasnt fast enough for real-time
audio, so I had to render sound files to hard disk using the audio programming language Csound. I created
many of the sounds this way for my CD blueCube( ). But the capacity to work anywhere was enough for me
to give up ever owning another desktop computer.
Frustrated with the code-compile-listen process of working with Csound and wanting to work in real-time, I
switched to the graphical multi-media programming language Max/MSP, which necessitated a move back to
Apple hardware, so I bought a PowerBook. Having Max/MSP running on a laptop was the perfect
environment for me. I could build the tools I needed whenever an idea presented itself. The computer
functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully
following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually
upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part.
Apple Seeds of Discontent
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Photo (CC) NiklasNikon.
When Im on the road, I use my laptop as a music studio, performance instrument, and administration office. I
dont like surprises on the road. Having a computer fail means a loss of income, and makes for an
embarrassing moment if the failure happens during a performance. If watching laptop music bores some
people, watching a musician reboot is even worse. So to be safe, I stress-test all new hardware or software in
my studio for at least a month before I take it on the road. Max/MSP patches run for hours, software is used
for weeks, and hardware is left on for days at a time to help induce failure before I leave home. But as fate
would have it, an iBook I was touring with died a few years ago. I brought the laptop into an Apple repair
shop in Berlin, where a technician diagnosed the problem as a faulty logic board. The failure rate on logic
boards was high for that model of iBook, and in response to public pressure, Apple instituted a logic board
replacement program. Luckily, my laptop qualified and the logic board was replaced for free. But the failure
and ongoing buggy behavior impacted my work schedule and added to the stress of touring.
Ive now replaced logic boards on three computers; the other two I paid for out of pocket. The out-of-
warranty cost of replacing a logic board on an Apple laptop is around six hundred dollars cheaper than
buying a brand new laptop, but still significant.
If you make your living with applications that run on OS X, there are no options if a laptop fails. You either
repair expensive Apple hardware or buy new expensive Apple hardware. This is called vendor lock-in.
Then, during my 2009 spring tour, my PowerBook G4 exhibited signs of age, with missing keystrokes,
intermittent backlighting, the failure of a RAM slot, and reduced performance. As an alternative to repairing
the PowerBook, I investigated what a new MacBook Pro and upgrades for all my software would cost. A
quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking
and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadnt come along and spawn a price-wars
on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt. But as a wise uncle once advised, you
invest either your time or your money; never both.
Meeting Ubuntu
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I had tried Linux in 2005 on PowerPC-based Mac laptops, though at the time I couldnt get audio working,
even after extensive tweaking. But I had kept an eye on Ubuntu ever since. After considering MacBook Pro
prices, I checked out the new netbooks coming to market and picked up a refurbished Dell Inspiron Mini 9
with Ubuntu pre-installed.
I loaded up my Dell with all a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an
emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz
audio with effects not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought
a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business
administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer a far
cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After
a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed
flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable.
Getting Past Ubuntu Audio Complexities
There are a few differences between how audio works on Mac OS X and how it works on Ubuntu Linux. OS
X uses the Core Audio and Core MIDI frameworks for audio and MIDI services, respectively. All
applications requiring audio services on OS X talk to Core Audio, which mixes and routes multiple audio
streams to the desired locations. Core Audio is simple, monolithic, and easy to set up, and all the end-user
controls are accessible from one panel. You can even create a single aggregate device from multiple sound
cards if you need more inputs or outputs than one sound card can supply. To Apples credit, Core Audio and
the applications that make use of it are the reason why you see so many laptop musicians seated behind
glowing Apple logos on stage.
On Ubuntu, audio is a rather different story. Apples slogan Think Different would be good advice for
musicians encountering Ubuntus audio setup for the first time. Audio in Ubuntu can appear at first to be a
confusing jumble of servers, layers, services, and terminology. Go to System->Preferences->Sound, click on
the Devices tab, and check out the pulldown menu next to Sound Events at the top of the panel. You will
see various acronyms, possibly including cryptic-looking technologies like OSS, ESD, ALSA, JACK, and
Pulse Audio. These acronyms represent a byzantine tangle of conflicting technologies that over time, and due
to political reasons or backwards compatibility, have ended up cohabiting with one another. Frankenstein
might be an accurate metaphor here.
Thankfully, there is a simpler way, which is the combination of ALSA [a high-performance, kernel-level audio
and MIDI system] and JACK [a system for creating low-latency audio, MIDI, and sync connections between
applications and computers]. The battle-scarred among us have learned to ignore all the other audio cruft
bolted on to Ubuntu and just use ALSA and JACK. One can think of the ALSA/JACK stack, the heart of
most pro Linux studios, as the Core Audio of Linux and in my opinion Jack should be the first thing installed
on any musicians laptop. Id go so far as to suggest placing it in the Startup Applications so its always
running.
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Qjackctl (labeled JACK GUI) in Ubuntu/GNOMEs Startup Applications Preferences panel.
The ALSA/JACK combination is a little more complex to set up and tweak than Apples Core Audio, but
theres a lot of good information online. [Ed.: ALSA, JACK, and the real-time Linux kernel also have some
advantages over Mac OS X that can be worth the effort. While JACK has been ported to Mac, Linux has
more JACK-aware tools, which is necessary for transport sync. Just as importantly, once configured, you
can build rigs with Linux that have greater low-latency performance than may be practical on Mac or
Windows. In other words, while it may require an investment of time, it can be both free and better! -PK]
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This diagram, albeit dated, shows how Jack and ALSA work together. Please note that Jack does currently
support MIDI. Click through for full-sized version. Courtesy Jrn Nettingsmeier; used by permission.
Workflow
Over the past ten years, Ive developed a workflow that has worked well in the studio and on the road. Since I
created most of my tools in Max/MSP, they could shape-shift to fit any musical task I encountered. A sound
mangling tool Id written for studio use, for instance, I could then adapt for a performance with Tony Conrad.
I modified parts of my performance patch for sound installations. This environment served me well over the
years until recently, when my aesthetic focus changed from using randomness in my work to taking a more
deterministic approach. This happened to coincide with my change of operating systems.
I do a lot of location recording while on tour. My rig consists of an Olympus LS-10 digital recorder and an
Audio Technica AT-822 single-point stereo microphone. I record at 96kHz/24-bit to a 16GB SDHC card in the
LS-10. When I want to audition sound files in the field, I use my netbooks SDHC reader, renaming sound
files directly on the card. I can look at some of the files in Baudline if I need to check for low-frequency
rumble or technical anomalies. I have come to use Baudline on a daily basis.
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A typical Baudline session. Click through for full-sized version.
Back in the studio, using the sound editing program Audacity, I remove voice slates, trim heads and tails,
adjust gain and EQ as needed, then save them to a project folder. And because I dont like surprises in the
studio, either, this folder gets backed up onto a remote network drive as well as a local USB drive.
A typical Audacity session. Click through for full-sized version.
Building my sound library takes weeks or months. During this time, I start filling a notebook with ideas,
drawings, plans and marginalia, from which a score emerges. I import all my project sound files into the
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open-source Digital Audio Workstation Ardour, arranging them to loosely resemble the score in my notebook.
Once my Ardour session is set up, I move sounds around, try different effects, create new textures by
layering, then render and re-import sub-mixes until the piece starts to take shape. I use a KORG
nanoKONTROL as a mixing surface. I assign faders, pans and switches assigned to the DAW allowing me to
quickly play around with different mix ideas.
A typical Ardour session. Click through for full-sized version.
Once the piece sounds finished, I mix down to a stereo .WAV file at 24-bit/44.1kHz, without using
compression or EQ on the mix bus. Tip: mastering engineers really appreciate getting a raw 24-bit master that
hasnt been fiddled around with by the musician. For performances, I also use Ardour and the
nanoKONTROL to do an acousmatic presentation. This version of the Ardour session will have compression
and/or EQ on the mix bus, since I want the material to sound more polished. As a side note: I am looking into
using the mastering tool JAMin [JACK Audio Mastering Interface] for this purpose in the future.
Sayonara, Apple
After ten years of working on Apple laptops, Ive left the fold. Not only was the expense of owning and
maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to
me. Details like not having a tree-view in the right hand panel of the Finder window slowed me down.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, feels more like an operating system made for grown-ups. And whats especially
nice is that Ubuntu scales nicely to the expertise of the user. Your cousin the computer geek or your Grandma
can install and use Ubuntu and get as deep as they like. Combine this with the recent rash of cheap, powerful
laptops, and Ubuntus market share is bound to grow.
A Request
Its important that kernel and audio application developers (1) ensure all audio creation software has support
for JACK, (2) improve and update tools for JACK to make it easy for musicians to install, configure, and use,
(3) ship distros with the realtime kernel already tested and configured for use, (4) to integrate the real-time
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kernel patches into the mainline kernel. [Ed.: On each of these points, distributions and kernel builds are
steadily improving, partly thanks to feedback from communities like the music production community. The
realtime kernel likely won't be the default, mainline kernel, but it's important to have well-maintained
optional packages at the very least. That doesn't mean you have to wait for improvements to happen,
though, and in future articles I'll talk a bit about how you can configure your system now to take advantage
of this functionality. -PK]
Most importantly, consider paying a subscription to support developers of JACK and your favorite Linux
audio software, or, if you can write code, proofread text, write a manual, do a translation, contribute graphic
design, or create content; please help by contributing something to the development of the software you use.
I would like to thank Ken Restivo, Mike Rooke, Paul Davis, Philip DeTullio, Jrn Nettingsmeier and Matt
Griffen at Canonical Ltd. for advice and inspiration in the writing of this article.
Kim Cascone is a composer, sound artist, touring musician, lecturer and writer. He lives in the San
Francisco Bay Area with his wife Kathleen and son Cage.
Links:
http://www.osnews.com/story/6720/Introduction_to_Linux_Audio
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page
http://ardour.org/node
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.kokkinizita.net/linuxaudio/
http://www.baudline.com/
http://jackaudio.org/
http://drobilla.net/software/patchage/
http://www.ladspa.org/
http://lv2plug.in/
http://dssi.sourceforge.net/
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/about.html
http://linuxaudio.org/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/
http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html
http://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.pulseaudio.org/
http://developer.apple.com/audio/overview.html
Corrections / clarifications:
Ed.: I originally claimed that JACK Transport sync is not possible on the Mac OS X port of JACK. As kindly
pointed out by a reader, this is not correct. JACK Transport-aware applications on the Mac will work.
Subtler issues:
Kim noted two annoyances with the Finder. One is wanting to type paths directly. On the Mac Finder, you
need to invoke a keyboard shortcut prior to doing so. On Ubuntus default file manager (GNOMEs
Nautilus), you can simply begin typing. There was some disagreement about to whether that really
constitutes a notable difference, but suffice to say, you do have a greater range of choice and customization
on an open source operating system.
Secondly, Kim argued that you could pull out a drive without having to go to a lot of trouble unmounting it
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Tweet
first. At least one commenter argues that risks data loss, and given that users may be using something like
FUSE to access foreign file systems like NTFS or the Macs own HFS+, I dont yet know what the exact
details will be. As I said in comments, however, Nautilus and the command line eject function for me are
quicker and more effective than similar unmounting on Windows and Mac, so I still notch this one for Linux.
-PK
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177
http://nickstutorials.com Nick Maxwell
This is an excellent article, and it comes at a time when I'm heavily researching an alternative and
incredibly portable music setup using Ubuntu on a netbook. Thanks for the info!
http://www.leviathan-avc.com Thomas Vecchione
Decent Article, a little short on the meat of it. However I did want to point something out in one of the
editor notes
"While JACK has been ported to Mac, some more advanced features like synchronizing multiple
applications are only available on Linux,"
This is incorrect. You certainly CAN synchronize Jack Transport aware applications on OS X. I do this
quite often with Ardour and Jadeo to do sound effect design for animations. The Jack on OS X is pretty
well identical to the Jack on Linux.
Seablade
http://fractaldimensionproductions.com Fractal Dimension
That's a move I'm also contemplating (Mac OS X -> Ubuntu)
However, I wouldn't want to leave Live behind, as it's my favored music production tool. I've read
about some guy's experiment to make it work under Ubuntu via Wine, but that sounds a bit too shaky
for me. Of course Ableton is highly unlikely to ever release a Linux version of Live, so I'm stuck on
either Mac OS X or the current flavor of Windows.
Peter Kirn
@Thomas: Thanks very much for the correction, and my apologies. I believe there remain some other
subtler differences because of what is possible via Apple's APIs versus what the "native" Linux client
and server can do, but I will now proceed to go do my actual homework on this so that I get my facts
right.
That said, Thomas, any suggestions on "meat" you'd *like* to see covered? (Mmmmm meat.)
This brings up another point, which is that there are two ways to approach the problem. If you really
are happy with Mac OS, the alternative is to limit how tied to vendors your work is in terms of
applications. So, for instance, I'm much happier in my Windows and Mac work as I am on Linux
with greater use of tools like SuperCollider, Processing, Blender, and so on all of which run on all
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three platforms. There are advantages to the Linux operating system, too, but it's worth considering,
especially if you're in a "hybrid" environment or even just have a reason to dual-boot your machine.
@Fractal Dimension: Some applications actually run perfectly well under WINE in a way you wouldn't
even notice that you're not on Windows. Reaper is a good example, under WINEASIO. You can
maintain Windows plug-in compatibility, too. The MUSE Receptor uses a setup derived from WINE to
make it possible to run, for instance, the entire Native Instruments Komplete suite. Unfortunately, so far
it seems Ableton Live is *not* running as well under WINE, so to that exent, you're absolutely correct.
I need to look into the exact issue to try to determine what might be necessary to fix this problem. The
popularity of Live is really clear, so I agree this would be a major obstacle to a lot of people and
conversely, could see Linux audio grow in popularity by leaps and bounds if corrected.
Vehical Driver
What does he use as an alternative to Max/MSP on Linux?
http://twitter.com/binary42 Brian Mitchell
Most of those complaints listed about the Mac are not very true at all
You can navigate to a path in Finder by typing using the "Go to Folder" shortcut (cmd-shift-G).
Ubuntu has the same issues with drive unmounting. If you rip it out, it might not complain but it has the
same effect as OS X. You can lose data. Period. OS X just tries to prevent bad habits. Linux just
assumes you know your risk. Either way, if you care about your data, don't do it which to me is more
grown up.
As far as hardware prices, you can easily find quality refurbished macs that are quite cheap and
comparable to low end PCs. High end Macs are very well priced in most cases as well if you compare
fairly.
I'm not sure tree view is something I miss from my linux days at all. In fact, I really prefer the columns
view when I need to jump around like that in Finder since it requires much less mouse scrolling and
clicking.
Of course, my recommendation to people is to try this software out before making the move. Most of it
will run just fine on Mac OS X so you'll get a taste of the trade you are making.
(I should say I really like Linux and FreeBSD for many things, though music production is not yet one
of those)
http://nonplus.us nonplus
Vehical Driver: one would use Pure Data http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data
http://www.createdigitalmusic.com Peter Kirn
@Brian: I agree with those corrections; I should have caught them and I've updated the story.
That said, it's worth mentioning that by the time a file manager complains, it's too late. And Nautilus
now has an eject button. So there's no complaint *after* ejecting a drive without unmounting it, but
otherwise the two do behave more or less identically. I do think that Linux tends to unmount drives
with less fuss than Windows or Mac, however. The Mac can be slow about it, Windows can refuse to
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unmount a drive even when it's theoretically inactive, etc.
Of course, if you really miss the Mac file manager on Linux:
http://www.gnustep.it/enrico/gworkspace/
Although I'm actually surprised there haven't been other attempts to do this. None outside GNUStep
that I can think of, and I wouldn't *really* recommend GNUStep.
@Vehical: I haven't yet tried running Max or Plogue in WINE, but Pd (http://puredata.info) would be
an obvious choice, and Reaktor runs really well for me in WINE.
Adam Griffin
Linux: no Ableton Live, no Cubase, no Pro Tools, no way dude! I've always had hopes for Linux and I
keep checking back over the years to find that the software still isn't there.
http://nonplus.us nonplus
Why do OS X acolytes grasp at straws to 'educate' people who've used Macs since System 6? as if
there is no valid reason to leave a platform? as if it's not alright to enjoy something other than OS X?
It must be murder going through a break up with you. Would you like to take a free personality test?
El Conorio
I would've liked to see more discussion on hardware (audio, midi, control interfaces) compatibility or
lack thereof.
Also, did he convert his Max/MSP patches to PD, and if so, how difficult was that?
I too hate Mac's Finder; I use Path Finder instead.
I believe there remain some other subtler differences because of what is possible via
Apples APIs versus what the native Linux client and server can do, but I will now
proceed to go do my actual homework on this so that I get my facts right.
Well yes and no. In as far as what an application can ask of Jack, they are identical. However personal
anecdotal evidence says I can get lower latencies stably on Linux if I spend the time to customize my
installation. However obviously the plural of anecdote != facts.
Obviously there are difference in a programming level, like the use of MACH threads instead of POSIX
threads, but in general no user needs to know about that.
What will happen though that is noticable to many users is that JackOSX provides a CoreAudio driver
that allows any coreaudio software to have its audio routed to and from Jack and show up like you
would expect Jack programs.
I should also note that the 'standard' control GUI for Jack on Linux QJackCTL is a seperate
download for OS X. By default JackOSX ships with JackPilot which is pretty simplified, and may be
what confused you on the transport control/sync side of things.
In as far as meat, it isn't so much for myself, but I would imagine that people would like more
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information on what each program is or is not capable of doing compared to the equivalent that would
have been used on OS X. For instance Ardour is great for Stereo Audio, but isn't necessarily the easiest
for multichannel output, though with the use of Fon's Ambisonics LADSPA plugins can do this rather
nicely, but not 'standard' outputs easily like 5.1 7.1, etc.
Also many people would find plugins a limiting factor on Linux since while there are many good
LADSPA and LV2 plugins, and even Jack Client processing, the lack of popular commercial plugin
development is troublesome for some people, and running VSTs via WINE sometimes just doesn't cut it,
especially with anything iLock authorized. And the final thing is that hardware support is not
guaranteed and research should be done to ensure compatibility before purchasing the audio interface.
Right now RME has the crown for good high end interfaces, and as much as I love my Apogee, it
doesn't currently run on Linux.
Of course all that being said, I do love Ardour as a DAW don't get me wrong, and use it on OS X
exclusively these days, having dropped ProTools(On Mac) and CoolEdit and Cubase/Nuendo on
Windows in favor of it. So don't get me wrong there.
I do completely agree with all the suggestions made at the end of the article and really wish that they
would be taken to heart by people higher in the food chain in popular distributions.
One thing in particular 'meatwise' I can think of that would be nice, is a description of diabling
PulseAudio in favor of Jack. Right now this is the majority of troubleshooting I help others with is
dealing with getting rid of Pulse on ANY distribution and running Jack. It tries to play nice, but doesn't
always and I agree, it is just easier not to deal with it.
Also a better explanation of what a realtime kernel is, and that it isn't run by default on most
distributions, including Ubuntu Studio, and that it isn't just the kernel, but also some text files(/etc
/security/limits.conf on most distribtuions) still required to be edited by hand that gives permissions for
realtime preemption for low latency. At the very least some links to this information elsewhere
referenced near that section so it is easy for people to find.
This is really off the top of my head. I don't want to sound like this was a bad article, it wasn't. I just
personally thought it might have been a bit more in depth than it was. I still enjoyed it none the less
though.
Seablade
http://twitter.com/binary42 Brian Mitchell
@Vehical I believe the Max runtime works on WINE but the patch editor does not. Others pointed out
pd though and that would definitely count.
I would consider working on some of these open source efforts if Linux could get its audio layer
organized and under control. AFAICT, none of the current audio layers/drivers really support very good
mediation between programs (let alone some problems I've had in the past with audio delay).
Zach
I had a run in with Ubuntu Studio last year. I was heartened that my interface (m-audio at the time)
worked and my midi keyboard was detected, but after several weeks, I could not make heads or tails of
it enough to even play a soft synth, let alone do any serious recording or composing. The worst part was
that I could find precious little help in tutorials or forums, which I lean on for other Ubuntu support.
Maybe I'm too much of an idiot to use Ubuntu (I can manage to admin web and file servers on it).
13 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
Regardless, I lost weeks of music making and never did figure it out. I'm happily back on on a Mac and
Logic. Has Ubuntu Studio really progressed from a bloody mess to professional ready in a year's time?
If so, that is mighty impressive.
Re: absence of applications. I find it curious that we constantly hear there are "too many choices" for
music making on computers, but also that Linux doesn't have enough apps. Maybe these are different
people. Anyway I think the question is a personal one, and it's whether there's enough for your own
use.
Ardour, energyXT, Pd, SuperCollider, Csound, Renoise all run natively on Linux. Reaper, Reason,
Reaktor, FL, Kore (minus the hardware), and Komplete, and many others run within WINE. (A fair
number of Reaper users on Linux now, I take it.)
To me, you could probably survive on a desert island with SuperCollider or Pd alone, Reaper is the only
DAW I know of with both a built-in scripting AND dsp development engine, and to tracker lovers, you
don't need anything other than Renoise.
Now, maybe that's not you, of course, in which case Linux probably isn't for you. But it will be enough
for at least some people, so for them, it's more about clearing these other hurdles getting the thing
running. On that point -
@Thomas: yep, your wish list is my wish list. Just have to sit down and write it. I think the realtime
kernel article is best made a separate story; I was having a chat this morning with one of the kernel
developers at Red Hat.
Hardware compatibility is fairly easy. I get great results out of anything USB class-compliant for MIDI
and audio. RME has some terrific audio drivers for higher-end applications. And the FireWire support
has been growing. There is even a lot of work into getting this running on Apple hardware, which is
what Hans-Christoph Steiner, maintainer of Pd-extended, does on his MacBook Pro. But yes, going
into specifics is a *very* good idea.
@Thomas / @Brian: ALSA vs. PulseAudio this is an easy one. I disabled PulseAudio here on Ubuntu
9.04 fully expecting to have some problem. Nope. Nothing. Haven't missed it once. So I can talk about
that. And Brian, basically, the answer to your question is ALSA + JACK. Routing audio between apps
is never an entirely simple matter, but JACK works better than anything out there.
@Brian: That sounds correct, I think you don't get anything beyond the Max runtime. This may also be
related to the copy protection on Max, which I know is a stumbling block for some apps in WINE.
I would consider working on some of these open source efforts if Linux could get its audio
layer organized and under control. AFAICT, none of the current audio layers/drivers really
support very good mediation between programs (let alone some problems Ive had in the
past with audio delay).
Depends on what programs you are referring to. If you are referring to pro audio programs, I would say
Jack does a very good job, as mentioned in this article. You can route audio between any jack enabled
program, and if the program is transport aware can keep them in perfect sync at the same time. Add on
to that that Jack is specifically set up for low latency (I have in the past run <1.5mS buffers for Jack
stably) I am not sure delay is an issue.
14 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
IF however you are referring to mediation between pro audio programs and regular consumer quality
programs, then I agree, that is a mess. Some programs like mplayer address this by simply having a jack
output, which addresses the issue, but others like Flash can still be a pain to say the least.
@Zach
My opinion of Ubuntu Studio is that it has not. However you could try some other laternatives out
there, most notably would probably be 64Studio 3(The version that is currently in beta testing), but also
some others I ahve heard rumblings about recently include AVLinux as well.
Seablade
@Zach: I feel you, but I'm not sure I understand exactly what went wrong. What was the point at
which you couldn't play a soft synth? Was it that you didn't know where to begin (i.e., which app)? Or
did you try something and didn't work?
As a writer, my goal is generally to write better documentation. And I want CDM to continue
covering what you need to know for Mac, Windows, and Linux. On Linux, it won't just sort of write
itself, as Kim notes. But at the same time, it'd be helpful to know what you want to see or struggled
with or need to know, so keep feedback coming.
@Thomas: FWIW, I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 here and ultimately found it to be the best compromise for
everything I wanted to run, even relative to the specific distros. I'll go into specifics, though, because it
didn't work right out of the box, and that's not a good thing
I was having a chat this morning with one of the kernel developers at Red Hat.
Heh Just a warning in case you haven't read it, there was an interesting discussion (Read:Flamewar)
on LAD not to long ago about a certain decision made in as far as default realtime support and how to
implement it for distributions on Linux when a solution was proposed and implemented without even
mentioning it to the LAD community first for feedback:)
Hardware compatibility is fairly easy. I get great results out of anything USB class-
compliant for MIDI and audio. RME has some terrific audio drivers for higher-end
applications. And the FireWire support has been growing.
Yes, but when writing an article for other newcomers to Linux, they don't necessarily know that USB2
is not going to be class compliant, or what class compliant even means half the time. Or that RME
works fine, but Apogee doesn't, or what Firewire devices work, why MOTU is a bad choice in general,
or why the FW410 doesn't work, etc.
ALSA vs. PulseAudio this is an easy one. I disabled PulseAudio here on Ubuntu 9.04
fully expecting to have some problem. Nope. Nothing. Havent missed it once. So I can
talk about that.
Yep, but mentioning having to do this on most distributions these days is a good thing. And yea I can
tell you that most of the time disabling Pulse in a modern distribution is not quite that simple, had more
15 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
than a few people asking for help in that regards recently;)
Seablade
@Thomas: Yeah, I'm not surprised. I think the issue is that the realtime kernel's primary use is in
finance and the military, and music as usual winds up off people's radar screen.
Anyway, I don't know whether we can solve Linux's internal political battles any more than I'd want to
try to solve Apple's or Microsoft's (and believe me, they exist). I think it's a question of whether you
can get things working for your personal use, and hopefully, in the spirit of community, share those
solutions.
But indeed, yes, it'd be useful to go over hardware support, where you can go to get information, etc.
I'm not an expert on that by any means but I can do the whole Research thing I'm supposed to do.
And I wasn't personally thrilled having to disable PulseAudio, either. PA has some cool features, too, so
nothing against it, but it seems like what we need is a metapackage that, when deinstalled, restores
ALSA defaults, rather than having to do everything manually.
http://www.yellowwoodmusic.com AMRAyw
Ableton could do two things to rock my (computer) world: OSC support, and Unbuntu support. I'd
switch from OS X for cost savings alone at that point.
Here's hoping snow leopard is as light weight as they say it will be.
And I wasnt personally thrilled having to disable PulseAudio, either. PA has some cool
features, too, so nothing against it, but it seems like what we need is a metapackage that,
when deinstalled, restores ALSA defaults, rather than having to do everything manually.
All comes down to the distributions at that point.
Seablade
Are any major distributions now NOT using PulseAudio? I thought if they're in sync with new releases
of GNOME, they were. I like some of the music-specific distros, but I also wanted package support for
some newer software and fixes in the newer Ubuntu releases, which meant going a bit more "bleeding-
edge."
@Peter Kirn: Well, I haven't done much research on WINE beyond running Live on Linux, so I'm
happy to hear that it's actually getting more and more usable. Unfortunately that's not the case with
WineX, the Mac OS X port, which is lagging behind the Linux version. But that's a different story
I agree that getting Live to run on Linux would boost the popularity of Linux tremendously, especially
among touring musicians/DJs on a tight budget. If the netbooks covered some months ago here on
16 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
CDM would be able to run a stripped-down Linux distro plus Live
Kyran
Nice article.
I'm really looking forward to when ardour gets midi support.
Here are some hosts that are currently running on this linux machine in the latest wine version (you
need to enable the extra wine repositories in ubuntu, the stock version 1.0.1 is really inferior)
FL Studio 8.5 beta 5 (latest beta), fully authorised
Zynewave podium
Reaper
I have live running too, I can use all the instruments, but anything that requires live to read or write
from it's folder in application data doesn't, so it's very limited, but it allows you to bring in sampler or
operator or your favorite vst with live's fx on linux, and use ardour or podium for audio
http://www.zenarchery.com Joshua
There are four apps I need any operating system I use to support: Photoshop, Illustrator, Live and
Reason. If I had those four working natively, I'd move to Linux in a heartbeat. I'd love the ability to, for
example, strip down my OS to precisely what I need it to do.
(I've never tried it, but I assume it's possible, at least in theory, to customize your Linux prefs to have a
'general' usage login and a 'music' login that's stripped down and lean.)
But nothing I've found replicates these apps' functionality and ease-of-use for me, which is why I'm on
a Mac.
Zach
My particular issue wasn't what software to use (I installed Ubuntu Studio fine and the software
worked), it was getting said software to respond to midi input. I really could not make heads or tails of
the documentation on how to get all the audio sub-systems, daemons, or what have you to connect midi
the apps. Jack in particular, left me utterly baffled. I had a low tolerance for frustration when I was
doing this, but it was still pretty ridiculous.
@Peter A Ubuntu for audio primer (or for Dummies, as it were) would certainly be useful. Focusing on
getting essential things like recording audio and midi would be particularly useful. It's easy to get
overwhelmed with all on offer from Ubuntu Studio that one doesn't know where to start.
@Kyran: Interesting So the issue with Live is accessing resources and not running the GUI and audio
DSP code itself. Since this is a more generic problem, it might get fixed in the near future anyways. But
then again, I slightly quiver at the thought of reimplementing the Windows API, so the WINE guys
might have lots of other issues to deal with.
http://www.earslap.com Batuhan
17 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
[Ed.: ALSA, JACK, and the real-time Linux kernel also have some advantages over Mac OS X that can
be worth the effort. While JACK has been ported to Mac, Linux has more JACK-aware tools, which is
necessary for transport sync.]
There is a downside to this, and it can be misleading.
I've never used Jack Transport, I usually write my own environments and music softwares with
SuperCollider and use OSC to message around.
So I have no comments on the "Jack Transport" thingy here, but in the audio domain, judging from the
last time I tried to make music with Linux (things may have changed, but I don't really think so), Mac
OS X is far more "Jack aware" than linux which is a shame. Because in Mac OS X, every sound
producing software is essentially jack aware thanks to the clean audio framework by Apple and hard
work of JackOSX programmers. You can set "JackRouter" as your default audio device once Jack is
booted, and ALL software works with Jack.
This is not the case in Linux. Most software use the OSS to stream sound (which is not compatible with
Jack!), and you really have to do some hacking to get them work with ALSA and most of the time, it
just doesn't work. For example, I remember trying to get audio from firefox into Jack for 2 days (I
essentially like to tamper with any sound realtime), and for media players, you need to deal with alsa
plugins (the popular ones were using oss by default) and they were wonky. I've spent a week to get
skype working with Jack (had to do some compiling for the translating layer!) only to jam with my
friend online.
In Mac OS X, issues like this are not problem, Anything can stream sound into anywhere consistently,
all software is supported, the jack driver is software agnostic, because it works as a sound driver, sits
between your sound interface and softwares.
And to my knowledge, Jack OSX uses jackdmp which is the new multi processor aware version of jack,
whereas most linux audio distros were using jackd, I never had problems with both, and I don't know if
that is still the case.
The realtime kernel thing was not a problem back then, but now I'm hearing that the realtime kernel for
the latest ubuntu is seriously broken for music making, not sure how people deal with that (maybe there
are patches to make them work, but you'll need to compile your own kernel. I can do it, no problem,
but it takes my time. I really don't want to deal with that stuff on my computer while I'm making music.
I am a programmer, I can get things up and working, but I chose to invest money instead of time in
another sense, congruent with the advice of the wise uncle.
(A little background info to show where I'm coming from; I've migrated from Linux to Mac OS X for
music making 2 years ago, after working with Linux for more than 2 years at the studio and on stage.
And from "my" productivity perspective, I think going back from mac to linux is a step back, in terms
of productivity. Sure it is cheaper, no vendor lock-ins, open source, cool, and you can do A LOT if you
know your way around, but you also have to deal with countless number of little issues; they become a
part of your daily routine decreasing your productivity SNR when you try to do serious stuff. But be
aware that all stuff written here is from my "own" workflow habits and productivity perspective. I am
sure that these don't apply to everyone! And it is always cool to have Linux for installations, art serving
web servers etc.)
Adam
I couldn't get past the part about the 5 year old PowerBook G4 finally having hardware problems after
18 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
a life ON THE ROAD, and you balk at replacing it. Can't wait to hear how many Dell or whatever
laptops you need to purchase over the next 5 years on the road
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Pingback: Pedro ngelo (jstone) 's status on Tuesday, 04-Aug-09 20:50:23 UTC - Identi.ca
JanC
@Thomas, Peter e.a.:
You can route PulseAudio through Jack, so you can use them together.
And even better, the current development versions of PulseAudio & Jack should make it possible to
switch between ALSA & Jack automaticly when Jack starts or stops.
Silly decisions
Apple REFUSES to let me do what I want to do. Thank god for ubuntu.
Pingback: Create Digital Music Linux Music Workflow: Switching from Mac OS | Wildtonemusic
JanC: That may well be, but I was having so much trouble with PulseAudio on Ubuntu 9.04 (as I did on
8.10 and 8.04) that I wound up looking to disable it. I also couldn't find a reason that I personally
needed it. It actually seems to degrade audio performance even for the so-called 'consumer' apps
running through it. Now, this may simply be some unpatched bugs, but even if that's the Ubuntu
packagers failing to keep pace with PulseAudio itself, why keep packaging this as the *default* audio
system when ALSA works fine for most people? Am I missing something?
Peter Kirn
@Batuhan: Right, correct you can wrap OSS into ALSA but not necessarily OSS into ALSA into a
JACK server. And this article is comparing to Mac OS, so even though Windows fares worse than both
JACK+ALSA and Core Audio, that doesn't really count. On the other hand, there are still apps (like
SuperCollider and Renoise and Ardour) that are JACK aware. I think that speaks to the last point Kim
made, that if we could just have better support for this technology that's there
It does need some additional third-party documentation, however. I'll see what I can arrange.
And honestly, if at the end of the day you stick with Mac OS but the Mac platform benefits from Linux
technology which you can then share with people using Linux nothing wrong with that.
http://charlesmartin.com.au Charles
I'm a huge Ubuntu fan, but I've had a lot of recent trouble getting Ubuntu Studio to run properly on a
new desktop. First of all, the realtime kernel included in 9.04 doesn't boot for me at all (a common
problem), so I built my own real time kernel from the 2.6.29 sources which works except the ATI
graphics drivers don't work at all in 2.6.29 *sigh* etc etc etc
So, it's not an easy ride, but like Kim said "time or money". Personally, I find spending the time is
19 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
rewarding in a masochistic kind of way.
JanC
@Peter:
According to the PulseAudio developer(s) (and at least some ALSA developers) most of these issues
are in the ALSA hardware drivers and/or the actual hardware and/or (in case of PA's ALSA
"emulation") the applications not using ALSA correctly (e.g. some applications assume all ALSA audio
devices support DMA, which can't be supported by PA, but apparently also not by Bluetooth audio and
some other audio hardware).
I am not really able to judge if they are right, but I have never seen anybody knowledgeable dispute
this
And PA has been quite stable for me; even back when it was still called PolypAudio (4 years ago?) it
was more stable than ESD for example. But that might depend on what hardware & softwa
Some of the advantages of PA:
* once PA is running, no application can lock the audio card through OSS or for ALSA by grabbing &
holding the single hardware channel that most current audio devices have (= HDA).
* you can reroute playing audio to whatever output device you want (e.g. to an USB headset, or to a
network stream if you prefer)
* it can be used in combination with e.g. VNC or remote X to provide a remote desktop with sound
* currently it remembers the relative sound volume you set per application, but it could also be used to
mute/dim certain audio streams when certain other streams (that are perceived more important) appear
JanC
That truncated paragraph was supposed to read: "But that might depend on what hardware & software
combination you use/need."
JanC
PS: I don't do any "pro audio" really, and I'm pretty sure PA is not the right tool for that, just trying to
point out there are reasons to use it for consumer audio, and that's the majority of users (distros like
"Ubuntu Studio" should cater for the specialist users).
germ
Some crass statements that cannot go unanswered here:
- comparing refurbished Dell Studio 15 ($600) with a new MacBook Pro ($3000) is just ridiculous.
There's a night and day difference in quality and performance. Two completely different classes of
machines
- you have had some problems with Apple logic boards. I have never had any. Good luck with your PC
logic boards. I am sorry, but Apple still has some of the best quality hardware in the business
- and talking of prices, you find the me PC laptop that has the same features as the MacBook pro 13"
20 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
for the same price or lower. I dare you. Also, a 15" MacBook pro ranges in price from $1700 to $2600.
Not $3000.
Tony
Shameless plug for Reaper 3 on Ubuntu
http://www.reaper.fm/download.php
Rob Willett
Very good article. I had exactly the same experience but going from Linux to a Mac.
I have a external Firewire sound system and was trying to get it work reliably with Ubuntu Studio. I
spent weeks playing around with real time kernels trying to get the latency down, the firewire would
sometimes work, sometimes not, the real time kernel would mess around with my graphics card.
In the end I brought a Mac book and it just worked.
I think Linux is great, I have a VM Server running multiple Linux installs and can claim to a modest
knowledge of Unix having written compilers and large chunks of an OS, but getting it all to work at the
same time for music was hard, it just works on my Mac so I use that.
http://wonderewereldvanbenny.blogspot.com/ Benny
Is JACK a replacement for Rewire? Can I run Reason on Ubuntu (with wine) and use JACK to rewire
Reason to an other sequencer?
http://letsneverdie.net/blog cactus
<blockquote cite="As I said in comments, however, Nautilus and the command line eject function for
me are quicker and more effective than similar unmounting on Windows and Mac, so I still notch this
one for Linux">
You're aware that OS X has the same command line shell that linux does, right?
http://letsneverdie.net/blog cactus
Whoops, meant to quote this:
"As I said in comments, however, Nautilus and the command line eject function for me are quicker and
more effective than similar unmounting on Windows and Mac, so I still notch this one for Linux"
poopoo
Thanks Kim, great article. I loved bluecube and the CSound book. I'll be interested to see the fruits of
field recordings and linux.
@benny.. You can run Jack on Windows XP. It will allow you to route audio out of Reason into other
applications. I use it to route Pd audio in and out of Ableton live. For midi routing I use a virtual midi
cable. Unlike Rewire or Jack in Linux, there is no transport sync in the windows Jack version.
vossile
21 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
I'm looking forward to your hardware report in approx. 5 years time. In my books, the G4 Powerbook
may well fail in 2009.
Brian Stone
I've heard this anti-apple stuff from Kim before, and I'm happy he's finally found a home where he can
be free from the oppression he felt with apple many years ago.
I will say this much. There is no manufacturer which is immune to problems. I think its ironic that right
now, Apple not only has been on a great run with their build quality, but also with price.
If choice is important to musicians, the Mac seems to provide the most choices with the ability to run
linux, mac os x, and windows.
All that said its nice to see how the other people live. Sounds like a fun sandbox for people that have a
lot of time, money and patience.
http://charlesmartin.com.au Charles
Sometimes, tragically, Apples turn out to be lemons but my father spent an MBP amount of money
on a Lenovo Thinkpad which turned out to be the worst computer I've ever met. I would hate to rely on
it for anything. It is truly horrible at many levels.
don johnson
the switch won't make your music sound good. as an artist you have failed.
Kyran
@Benny: I don't own reason, but it is reported to work perfectly within wine.
Jack is like rewire on steroids, but in order for the transport sync to work, you audio application needs
to be "aware" of it, something reason is not. So, yes, you can use it to plug reason into an audio
sequencer, but getting both to play in sync might be trickier (some creative patching in jack and mmc
messages might get you there).
If you're using reason just as a sound rack, ignoring it's build in sequencer, then jack will fit your needs
perfectly: just route the midi from your sequencer in reason, and the audio from reason into your audio
sequencer (which may or may not be your midi sequencer)
Regarding live: it looks like what's happening is some sort of permission problem. If wine keeps
improving like it does, I have high hopes that live will run between now and a year.
If there's going to be some tutorials on how to set linux up for music, I'd really like to help out.
http://homeandfamilyreleases.blogspot.com/ TheFamilyMan
I remember using the Performer suite for Apple years ago. Cool stuff
Though I have not really fooled with Linux in a while for daily use, more experience with Qnix which is
a beast, I bet configuring this unix flavor (Ubuntu) isn't much faster or easier to get right. Maybe I'm
wrong?
mfw
22 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
If you want the thrill of being the hippest bleeding edge postcyberpunk neuromantic roadwarrior mofo
in town, sure why not buy a $600 computer that is able to run free versions of SuperCollider,
Ardour, PD & Jack.
I mean it would cost almost a whopping $400 more to get one of those super-expensive bourgeois
corporate MacBooks instead and for what ?
Well you could run free versions of SuperCollider, Ardour, PD & Jack on them for example or
Max/MSP, Live, Pro Tools, Logic etc but if you are professional musician whyever would you want to
have access to that junk ?
Sorry Mr Cascone, I have great respect for your music and your contribution to the electronic music
community in general but, while I can totally see the attraction of supporting an open source OS for
moral & political reasons, I can't for the life of me see any musical or even financial advantages for
swapping OS X for Ubuntu at this point in time.
I mean you had already payed for your licences for Max/MSP and all the other software you were
using, and invested years in developing your patches for it, and to save $400 (over maybe 3 years !)
you throw that all away ?
For a starving student this would seem a very, very bad decision, for a touring professional musician,
well lets just say that the motivation seems to be something other than rational
David Baron
Great article. I run mostly Debian Sid but have been a Cakewalk (older Home Studio on Win98a lot of
bang for the buck but NO upgrades) person using Dx effects. I have loads of linux software installed,
loads of effects and stuff I compiled to use VST with WINE. Simply have not tried a record, digitize
and mixdown yet.
BTW, OLDER Cakewalk up through express works in WINE, and so does Jammer, Onyx, and some
other MIDI tools (with a few qwerks here and there).
Codeweavers' WINE can run even more applications.
David Baron
Hardware compatibility? My Dman2044 with the chunky breakout box I love has NO alsa support.
My rusty trusty Yamaha sw60xg soundcard has no support either but runs perfectly as an mpu401 by
supplying the DIP selected port-address (trick suggested by Yamaha before they had drivers for w2k!)
This is XG sound generator, no DMA, no IRQ, nadabut is an ISA card so again, few upgrade options
keeping it. XGedit can control it using WINE.
I found an old Ensonic 1371 in the trash and use that for listening. Old but adequate, has support on
most anything.
KimH
<blockquote cite="mfw">Sorry Mr Cascone, I have great respect for your music and your contribution
to the electronic music community in general but, while I can totally see the attraction of supporting an
open source OS for moral & political reasons, I cant for the life of me see any musical or even
financial advantages for swapping OS X for Ubuntu at this point in time.
23 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
I mean you had already payed for your licences for Max/MSP and all the other software you were
using, and invested years in developing your patches for it, and to save $400 (over maybe 3 years !)
you throw that all away ?
For a starving student this would seem a very, very bad decision, for a touring professional musician,
well lets just say that the motivation seems to be something other than rational
I was going to write a post, but given mfw's, I don't need to. Cascone's motivation has to be something
other than rational
mfw
to clarify : like most people on here i strongly believe wonderful music can be made on most any
platform and the more people working with different tools on different platforms, hopefully the greater
the diversity of the music being made will be. I'm very hapy that Mr Cascone is happy with his choices
and i'm honestly looking fiorward to hearing what he is getting out of his new setup.
Its just the reasons presented for the choice that seems a little silly
Pingback: Manuel Pinot (talishte) 's status on Wednesday, 05-Aug-09 05:50:27 UTC - Identi.ca
http://audiotools.lowtech.org Jake Harries
Good article.At http://www.access-space.org we have been using only open source software and o/s
since 2000.
Josh
Jamin is a VERY cool mastering tool. I've been using it for about a year now and it makes my output
sound so much smoother than just using Audacity's tools. Look at it!
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Gogmagog
I was wondering when the Mac fanatics would crawl out from under their rocks.
What the hell, the guy takes the time to write an article about his unbiased experiences moving to
Linux and people think there's an ulterior motive? His reasons make perfect sense to me: he had issues
with both the hardware cost and software cost and wanted a cheaper, reliable alternative. Macs ARE
more expensive than PCs, Protools and their ilk ARE more expensive than Linux. End of story. You
can argue all you want about which is better etc. but you can't deny the cost savings.
On a different note, two things: Sonic Visualizer is a way cool app for audio analysis and has tons of
plugins that go beyond the basic FFT analysis, etc. And I was wondering where one might find some of
Mr. Kim's music?
http://www.indamixx.com ronald stewart
"Id go so far as to suggest placing it in the Startup Applications so its always running". We do this
24 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
"ship distros with the realtime kernel already tested and configured for use"
We do this
"The battle-scarred among us have learned to ignore all the other audio cruft bolted on to Ubuntu and
just use ALSA and JACK. One can think of the ALSA/JACK stack, the heart of most pro Linux
studios", We do this too!
billy
I'm a Mac user (and a fan) but I've been interested and fooled around (very lightly) with Linux for 10
years or so, and would love to make a Linux music setup just for the geek factor. Kim's reasons for
switching were very strange though and didn't make a lot of sense to me. He sounded like someone that
has played with a Mac for a week, not someone who used one for 10 years. He seemed like he didn't
really know the nuts and bolts of it, but willing to put endless time into setting up Linux.
I salute him for making music in Linux, but as a case for for switching it was less than compelling.
http://www.burntchicken.com/utm/ UTM
Great article, but at the risk of sounding argumentative, I'd like to point out what I find missing.
Although I prefer using OS X for most applications, I have a couple PCs with Win XP. I have VMWare
installed on a MB Pro that runs Ubuntu and Win XP. As much as I support the concept of free and open
source software, what keeps me with Apple is that I find the user experience better than any other OS.
Better as in easier to configure, administer and troubleshoot. Better in terms of performance, quality
and compatibility with other HW/SW. And yes, better in terms of UI attractiveness and ease-of-use.
After all, if you spend most of your day accessing, navigating and manipulating files and folders, you
might as well like the way the UI looks, right?
I'm intrigued to try out the Linux tools and techniques mentioned here, and I'm happy to support the
developers, but what prevents me from abandoning OS X isn't my investment in Apple or a lot of FUD
about Microsoft or Linux. It's the frustration of having to relearn how to work with another computer
system: opening the Terminal and carefully typing commands to configure things and dealing with
enigmatic driver conflicts. I don't even like doing that in OS X. When I'm ready to compose or play
music, I want the minimum of futzing around trying to get sound to come out of the monitors. I'd like to
say that Linux isn't ready for me but it's more like I'm just not ready for it. The older I get, the more I
want to explore the familiar instruments and tools I haven't yet exhausted. I doubt I've explored half of
what's possible with the HW/SW I own. Heck, I still keep on old Mac 8500 with OS 9 and OMS so I
can run ReBirth.
I enjoy Kim's work and own several of his CDs so bear with me when I suggest that perhaps the Linux
move seems more sensible for Kim and like-minded artists with a strong tech background. I mean if
you're the kind of composer who can categorize your approach to music in terms of randomness and
determinism, then perhaps you probably aren't going to be fazed by doing "sudo apt-get install qjackctl"
but for others, that's intimidating. Some can barely categorize their music by their aesthetic focus on
cars, girls or rock'n'roll.
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I look forward to hearing some of Kim's new music.
Pingback: A. Prem Kumar (scorpfromhell) 's status on Wednesday, 05-Aug-09 11:29:36 UTC - Identi.ca
doug theriault
25 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
I've used macintosh computers since the late 80's for music. I have never had a motherboard die on me,
not once. My current powerbook G4 I've had for 7 years and it's fine. I use max/msp, LiSa and other
software just fine. While I support the move to linux, it would be difficult for me to find the appropriate
tools using Linux at this point. I still use Tiger on my machine as Power PC's do not work well under
leopard (at least for me).
Mac tips from me would be to leave at least 10gb free of space on your harddrive. Use diskwarrior on
your computer, at least once a month. Elevate your laptop if your fan comes on to much
Always a good read from Cascone, check out his music!
mfw
"His reasons make perfect sense to me: he had issues with both the hardware cost and software cost
and wanted a cheaper, reliable alternative. Macs ARE more expensive than PCs, Protools and their ilk
ARE more expensive than Linux. End of story. You can argue all you want about which is better etc.
but you cant deny the cost savings." well in this cas I think you CAN deny them ! As far as software is
concerned pretty much all of the free software mentioned also runs on Mac, 0=0, no-one is forcing
anyone to use ProTools TDM. Plus KC already owned Max/MSP etc etc if your motherboard dies
and you get a new Mac you don't have to buy Max/MSP again but if you move to a platform on
which it doesn't run you lose that value that you paid for. Where is teh cost saving there ? As far as
hardware is concerned, sure in some cases a Mac is a lttle more expensive than an equivalent PC, in
some cases it isn't but as I have already pointed out the difference between a $600 computer and a
MacBook is under $400 ok $400 is $400 but over a number of years, in the context of even a
minimal music making setup soundcard, speakers or at least headphones ! i mean this is a guy
who has been a professional touring performing musician for decades if he really so desperately
needs to econmise the price of half a cup of coffee per week maybe things are worse than I thought
i somehow doubt it
Jackie
Thanks so much for a really great article! I came across it just when I was looking to do a major PC
hardware upgrade in my studio and expand into PC recording rather then upgrade my Apple equipment
at a significantly higher cost. I think this article has solidified my desire to utilize Linux for my upgrade.
Andrew Bingham
Then, during my 2009 spring tour, my PowerBook G4 exhibited signs of age, with missing
keystrokes, intermittent backlighting, the failure of a RAM slot, and reduced performance.
As an alternative to repairing the PowerBook, I investigated what a new MacBook Pro and
upgrades for all my software would cost. A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to
approximately $3,000
The author had a PowerBook, so moving to an Intel-based MacBook probably required upgrades to all
of his software.
http://www.marcoraaphorst.nl Marco Raaphorst
I have created hundreds of patches for Reason and still love that program a lot. Same for Ableton Live.
But hey, I am typing this comment on my new Ubuntu machine with 2 real time kernels and me fully
exploring Ardour (love addition growing fast, great and clean program!!!).
I will use Reason and Live for music & sound design demos and lectures, but I will also do that for
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Ubuntu soon I guess. And personally I believe in open source as the way to go. Or simply said: now's
the time (yes, Charlie!)!
ArtInvent
The hardware itself is now actually a distinct minority in the expense equation. Even if Apple hardware
and OS were cheaper than anything else (which it certainly is not) there is still an overwhelming benefit
to going with open source software.
The reason that Ubuntu exists is the furtherance of Free Open Source Software. Getting off the
proprietary software upgrade merry-go-round is pretty much the whole point.
It was pretty much Audacity about 5 years ago that turned me on to the entire ethos of Free software.
Here you have an incredibly precise and elegant application that does exactly what it does with
absolute directness and economy. Over the years it has gotten more flexible and sophisticated but has
always retained that simplicity and elegance. There is no feature bloat or artificial upgrade-prodding
from someone wanting your dollars, which in turn will make you want even more powerful hardware to
run all this code that you may not really even want or need.
I simply find that Ubuntu and all of the Free applications of the Linux ecosystem has finally released
me from this endlessly distracting software-hardware-OS-software-hardware-OS rigmarole and justs
lets me do what I want to do, which is to make music with as little else as possible getting in the way.
M-RES
This is a really interesting and inspiring article. I've been considering the sidegrade to Linux on cheaper
hardware myself rather than buying a new MacBook to replace my PowerBook.
Nice to see users such as Marco Raaphorst also supporting the platform. I've used many of Marco's
patches in Reason and really appreciate his input into the software, so having supporters of his calibre
is high praise indeed.
It's worth noting that Ardour is also available for OS X (as is Audacity of course), so for Mac users
looking at the Linux alternatives you can try before you make the leap just to make sure you'll be
comfortable with the FOSS alternatives.
I'm not completely sold on Audacity on the Mac. It's a little clunky, but I can't really complain given
that it's free!!
But overall I'm seriously thinking about having a look into this for my DAW use. The hardware
required would be a lot cheaper this way, although ultimately I'm a Reason man through and through,
so I'll probably always have a Mac around to use it.
Recently I got back into drumming and have invested heavily into my custom e-kit, so software kits are
something that interests me a great deal. There are a few options for Windows/OS X Reason Dumkits,
Superior, BFD to name a few but are there any Linux alternatives that can match the ease of use and
functionality? Low latency is a massive factor in this, making Linux look even more favourable if the
software is there any suggestions?
http://none Me too
I dumped XP for Ubuntu 2 years ago. I've often looked at Macs, how sleek and beautiful they are and
tried to talk myself in to reasons why I need one. I don't. Ubuntu does everything I need. Still Ubuntu
27 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
for me.
@janc
Peter is correct, while Pulse Audio at least TRIES to play nice, it doesn't in reality for pro audio uses.
For this reason for pro audio people Jack by itself and disabling pulse is a much better solution.
That being said, I agree that Pulse for consumer audio is not a bad solution at all in most cases.
Seablade
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Tony Philpot
Very interesting article, Kim. Many of the applications you mention are completely foreign to me living,
as I do, in the UK. Have you any experience of Magix's Sequoia? I use it as my standard for
recording/editing, and would love to know whether it can be easily persuaded to run under Linux. The
major drawback to using Windows on a laptop is the fact that it is so resource hungry.
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Kyran
@Tony: If sequoia requires a dongle for authorisation it's a no go on running it in wine I'm afraid.
@m-res: Hydrogen is a beatmachine for Linux. I don't know how good it'll work with an e-kit (I don't
have one), but it's worth a try
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http://gedmin.as Marius Gedminas
The full-size version of a typical Baudline session screenshot is missing.
Dan Nigrin
It's worth pointing out that Stephane Letz, the man behind the programming of Jack OS X and Jack
Windows, as well as the new Jack multiprocessor version (jackdmp), has gradually been working on
making a Jack transport to CoreMIDI bridge to allow for basic Jack transport functionality to work in
OS X even *without* an application being Jack transport-aware. Very cool!
Dan Nigrin Defective Records
MC-202 Hack / Jack OS X / Major Malfunction / PC-1600 User / VSTi Host
http://defectiverecords.com http://jackosx.com
http://w1xer.at/ Jay Vaughan
I use Ubuntu Studio on my home system and it simply is awesome for music-making ..
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If I want to have a quick noodle, I simply fire up JackCtl, ZynAddSubFx, and plug in my Korg
NanoKey controller .. connect the NanoKey to ZynAddSubFx using aconnectgui, and oila .. instant jam
session. Lots of great sounds, a very powerful synthesizer, and off we go. It just plain works.
Then, if I want to start recording things, I fire up Ardour, connect ZynAddSubFX to an Ardour track,
fire up SEQ24 (MIDI sequencer), connect it to ZynAddSubFX, and away we go .. another excellent
jam session, being recorded with multi-tracks per instrument. Add ASynth, alsamodular, and so on, all
being driven by SEQ24 and recording multi-track'ed into Ardour.
Its just a beautiful setup okay, its not as 'easy to connect' within the applications themselves, but when
you realize that you manage the connections between software like you would any other modular
(hardware/physical) system, it really makes a LOT more sense than the older paradigm of having it all
'integrated' in OSX/Windows. I really like the fact that I can treat all of the different Linux Audio apps
as independent modules and connect them through Jack its a very functional means of managing the
software being used in the session, and I think the fact that it separates the applications from the
connections is a very important factor for usability you either get it, or you don't, however. I can
understand the confusion of people having to work with a newer, different paradigm, but the
advantages (latency) are definitely worth the effort.
One great thing about Ubuntu Studio is that its all pretty much ready to go out of the box .. okay, you
have to deal with some system-administrator type decisions (RT priority added for your user id) before
you can get excellent results, but the realtime kernel is already running if you're booting Ubuntu Studio,
and you can just get on with it.
Whats needed though, clearly, is more education on the subject, and I think that there are definitely
opportunities for savvy user-training type people to do nice videos on how to set up an Ubuntu-Studio
based system for production. This will come, for sure.
In the meantime, I've got to say goodbye to my MacBook Pro as a 'main music making DAW' and hello
to my Linux workstation. Its just more powerful, simple as that, and frankly .. to be honest .. a lot more
interesting. I don't want to run all the 'standard stuff', thats not the sort of musician I am (I don't even
use presets on my hardware synths, *ever*), so for me the unique nature of the Linux Audio universe,
and the diversity of interface and capabilities, is *very* appealing.
safetyfirst
Interesting article but not so unbiased as you read through the comments. It's always the same if
somebody switches a system it becomes like a new religion. You don't need to convince me that you did
the right thing. I think it's very one sided to say that apple hardware is crap. Mine works fine and has
always, for over 10 years now.
Anyway, thanks for the insight on setting up audio on a linux system.
mfw
This thread really is a laugh a minute.
If I want to record some music with any number of softsynths, samplers, with or without realtime audio
recording, and mix with scores of native plugs, or do pretty much whatever comes into my head, very
often my first choice is to fire up Ableton Live on my Mac. Others might choose Logic or PT or
whatever
Jay V on the other hand has what is, when compared to the Mac that he has "had to say goodbye to",
29 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
apparently a "more powerful, simple as that" system and "one of the great things about it is that its
pretty much ready to go out of the box"
in fact it so incredibly simple all he has to do is :
"simply fire up JackCtl, ZynAddSubFx, and plug in my Korg NanoKey controller .. connect the
NanoKey to ZynAddSubFx using aconnectgui, and oila Then, if I want to start recording things, I
fire up Ardour, connect ZynAddSubFX to an Ardour track, fire up SEQ24 (MIDI sequencer), connect it
to ZynAddSubFX ..Add ASynth, alsamodular, and so on, all being driven by SEQ24 and recording
multi-tracked into Ardour."
wow, and to think that while you're doing that i have to work up a whole head of steam to double click
on Live
please give me a break there are probably lots of reasons why someone might want to chose
Linux as a platform to make music with, and I think its great that people are doing that but if you
want to sell it to us as being SIMPLER than working on a Mac, or even Windows then you're going to
have to come up with something a little better than that mate
Derek Holzer/Tonewhe
Just to chime inmy recent sound work focuses on field recordings and self-built analog synthesizers.
My main audio workstation runs Linux. I use Ardour for multitrack recording and composition, Pure
Data for just about anything to do with manipulating my field recordings and Jamin for mastering
(premastering the field recs and final mastering of the finsihed tracks).
I still find Audacity very clunky, it's not my favorite as far as editors go. However, the FLOSS app that I
love on Linux is ReZounda very full featured and intuitive sound editor. Unfortunately it doesn't seem
like the author is developing or maintaining it anymore
That said, my DAW is a dedicated machine that pretty much runs only those programs. I struggled with
desktop Linux for some years before picking up a G4 Powerbook (which I still have). The Apple
day-to-day workflow did feel rather refreshing after so much bashing around in terminals. And not
having to live in fear that updating one piece of software pulls in a million dependencies which may or
may not make your system less stable
However, if (knock-on-wood) this Mac died tomorrow, I'm not sure I would buy another one. Most of
the apps I use on it are FLOSS apps (Gimp, Inkscape, Pd, Ardour, JACK, NeoOffice, Firefox,
Thunderbird) so it's not like I have any licenses to worry about. And in general, having to own one
particular kind of machine to run a particular kind of software, or having software which only runs on
one machine in the whole universe (i.e. the one it is licensed to) is not merely inconvenient, it's just
plain stupid. So I never got "hooked" on ProTools, Photoshop, Illustrator, Live, Reason etc although I
see what might make those apps attractive.
I guess I'd have to say that own personal work flow has flowed around the kind of apps which I found
most usable: the ones which didn't cost an arm and a leg, and which didn't limit me to one particular
architecture, operating system or specific machine.
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http://bbrace.net/undisclosed.html brad brace
> (I recently bought-into Ubuntu, primarily to make
30 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
> postage-stamp sized mp4s with mixed audio [no fancy-funded
> venues for me] this is all possible but as yet I can't
> get the movies to play on anything other than my (System76)
> PC.)
>
> an aside: is a SD reader really any different from a SDHC
> reader when using SDHC cards?
> (I recently bought a slew of 32GB SDHC cards from
> eBay/HongKong that really only hold 4-5GB, if they don't
> lockup your computer beware!)
>
> { brad brace } <<<<< bbrace@eskimo.com
> >>>> ~finger for pgp
>
> bbs: brad brace sound
> http://69.64.229.114:8000
>
> I am not a victim Coercion is natural
> I am a messenger Freedom is artifical
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a1g0rhythm
No one has mentioned CCRMA yet so I will.
CCRMA is the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. They
provide Real Time Kernel packages for Fedora and lots of packages for music programs including PD
extended and Supercollider. Since the packages are used in the Stanford CCRMA Labs they are well
tested and include setup scripts so your computer is ready to rock after installation down to the
CCRMA menu that divides the ~100 apps into convenient groups.
The CCRMA mail list is active for answers to questions, often by Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, the
Stanford professor who manages the software packages. Fernando is actively involved with the Real
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Time kernel programmers and will provide release candidates for testing. And he works with to get
more of the music packages into Fedora. The CCRMA software link is:
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
If you want the latest Linux music and audio tools CCRMA is the way to go. As an example of
CCRMA Labs state of the art, check out their silent fanless computers:
http://lad.linuxaudio.org/events/2009_cdm/Friday/
Peter Kirn
Yes, the CCRMA packages are great. Of course, I would argue at the same time that people shouldn't
feel obligated to choose one of those sorts of distros. You should be able to build from source on a
variety of platforms. Now, I know that the reality is often a little short and at some point, such is the
cost of freedom of choice (on any computer platform).
I would say that right now I think Fedora with CCRMA and Ubuntu represent the easiest path to some
of the bleeding-edge software. Unlike CCRMA, the Ubuntu Studio work is contributing to the Ubuntu
repositories, so there isn't a separate distro.
For getting up and running with a variety of audiovisual apps, things like pure:dyne (for some of the
more experimental apps) and Studio64 (for an arguably more mainstream view of music production,
either 64-bit or 32-bit) are probably easier. But these four are heads and shoulders above the rest, at
least in my experience especially with the work on OpenSUSE falling behind.
On the other hand, I still personally find almost all the pre-packaged distros to be a bit overwhelming in
terms of sheer number of tools; my own personal style is more to start with basically nothing and build
from there. But you definitely have the choice.
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Derek Holzer
The problem with Fedora, and Ubuntu as well, is that (like Windows and Mac OS) there is a good deal
of "bloat" in the operating system. You end up running all kinds of extra desktop-related things which
don't have anything to do with your DAWlike several sound servers which sometimes clash with each
other, and at least two different window managers (KDE and Gnome, for example), each also having
their own widgets, applications, plugins, sound servers and processes which periodically use up
resources.
I found using a leaner, hand-built distro like Gentoo and a lightweight window manager like Fluxbox
made tons of difference in the amount of processing power and memory I had available for audio, and I
think this ability to "cut out the crap" could also be pointed out as a strong advantage of Linux over
other OSes. It enables me to set up dedicated "server" machines for installations, or "headless"
performance computers, each controlled without screen, keyboard or mouse (via MIDI controllers or
sensors for example) which would be more difficult on Windows/Mac, and would certainly not be as
efficient CPU wise.
On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to use that same machine for more general
purposes then the workflow does get a bit more complex, especially for those uncomfortable with
terminal commands. Some people need these millions of behind-the-scenes desktop helpers, eating up
memory but making life a bit easier. For those people, a "Windows-like" or "Mac-like" environment is
possible in Linux, but still a bit clumsy in my opinion.
32 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
medved
sdf
Moshe
Nice article. Linux is good bang for the buck but for me I need Ivory, Drums on Demand and several
other programs that really have no decent Linux substitute. I use Reaper, Sonar and Nuendo mostly
with ProTools available for clients who demand it.
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Diz
This is joke ???
Pro Tools, Logic Studio or Melodyne are now available for Linux ???
If application is good then there is no matter if it OSS or commercial.
Guy
@diz
This is not a joke. You wrote "If application is good then there is no matter if it OSS or commercial."
Great, if you have the money to get what you want when you want. I am happy for you.
For me wanting to keep making music whilst raising a family, Linux has been great. When my main PC
died I found I could keep making music with the dynebolic distribution on an old PIII with my
transplanted soundblaster card. A real life/sanity saver.
@Derek: Gentoo is a great distro, and I love having the option to have choices with windowing
environments. But some of the things you say here are potentially misleading.
* You don't need to install both KDE and GNOME. You can if you like. You can uninstall both if you
like. By default, Fedora and Ubuntu install with GNOME and not KDE.
* Millions of helpers? More than a bit of an understatement. I might skip GNOME on older or lighter
hardware, and there are great reasons to choose Fluxbox on any system. But I think it's very possible to
have a GNOME system that's usable and performs well on most machines, too.
* You can certainly use lightweight window managers easily on Fedora or Ubuntu, and build from
source when appropriate.
Again, if you're happy with Gentoo, no problem there! But I think it's not quite as black and white as
you're suggesting.
Derek Holzer
@Diz (and some others here):
33 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
If ProTools, Live or whatever other software you use to do what you do are the only things you can
work with, then of course nothing will "replace" them. But I'd like to think that a talented and creative
person wouldn't become completely dependent on a single tool to make their artwork.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that in electronic music the goal of many commercial
softwares is to make things as easy as possiblebut what goes with that is a certain amount of
technological determinism. Ableton Live makes it very easy to make German techno. So anything
squeezed through that software will sound the way that the programmers of Live imagined music to
sound like. That's just fine if you like German techno. Personally, I prefer something a bit more
challenging to the ear.
Exploring non-mainstream software, not relying on the same handful of plugins that every other
producer does, and best of all building your own tools to produce the sounds you hear inside your head,
instead of letting the software lead you down the well-tread paths of genre & cliche is the ticket out of
the clone-war situation that pretty much bores me to death with e-music these days.
@Peter:
When I got started in Linux (2003), I went through so many distros it would make your head spin.
Partly I was trying to find the one that made the most sense to use, partly I had some hardware (RME
Hamerfall DSP soundcard) which was supposedly well-supported, but in fact needed some very
complex ALSA/kernel/cardbus manager configuration on my laptop to get working, and partly to see
which one was the heaviest in terms of resources.
Perhaps I exaggerate my case a bit, but I still found so much background stuff in Fedora/CCRMA and
Ubuntu going on by default that I simply didn't need, that building from the ground up became very
appealing. I wouldn't suggest this approach to everyone, however. As you might have guessed already, I
have a special interest in instrument-making as an artistic process. It's time-consuming, but it takes me
places that pre-packaged solutions might never go.
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Switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu with Kim Cascone
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George
Mfw, you are really are starting to get on my nerves with your Mac fanboi posts. Take it for what it is..
people are allowed to be different and explore new ground. You can stay rooted in the Mac realm. No
problem there, but just because people want to be different to you and your circumstances you feel this
compelling need to shoot them down. Sheez!
http://kibergrad.com/ mp3
Cool
http://parisson.com YomGuy
Hi all, and thank you Kim for this great article which, I hope so, will convince some mac users to
discover the great Linux sound environment.
I wanted to say to the community that Live DOES work on Linux thanks to Wine, JACK and wineasio
drivers. I managed to get the 7.0.3 version running on Debian Lenny with all audio AND midi
34 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
functionalities. But I must admit that the process is not as fast and optimized on my laptop as on Win or
Mac because of some slow graphic ressources (the vumeters are so hungry !). But on a recent netbook,
I think Live could work flowlessly
Give me some feedback if you want some advices to get it work !
http://parisson.com YomGuy
A screenshot :
<a&gt <a href="http://;http://files.parisson.com/img/shots/live-7.0.3_wine-
1.1.8_pinball120_yomguy.png target=_blank>;http://files.parisson.com/img/shots/live-7.0.3_wine-
1.1.8_pinball120_yomguy.png
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Information for Using Linux
@Derek:
Just to reiterate what's already been said countless times before in this conversation: horses for courses.
I checked out some of your work available online, and that explained your approach to audio software
and music composition in general. However, not everyone wants to revolutionize electronic music, they
simply want to make music for a wider target audience.
Regarding your thoughts on Live and German techno I'm really surprised, that all the pop/rock
/hip-hop/IDM/trance/house/breakbeat/drum & bass/etc. music made by various artist with Live all
sounds like German techno to you.
I agree that the tools you use influence the end result, but isn't this also true in your case? You have
chosen to go for a DIY/FOSS approach, which is a perfectly valid choice, but by doing that you
determined that your work will never sound like a mainstream pop record. You could argue that this
was exactly what you wanted Well, some people consciously choose certain proprietary tools, which
are best for what they want to achieve.
Derek Holzer
@ Fractal Dimension:
Of course, I almost completely agree with you here. One of the most frustrating experiences I've ever
had with software, however, is trying to get Live to *not* quantize things to a 4/4 grid
@Derek:
Well, yeah, Live comes with a set of default settings which are aimed towards beginners.
I've had a similarly annoying experience with Apple's iMovie HD software, it was just too "user-
friendly" for me to use.
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35 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
http://none Nonya
You must be kidding. Folks, no matter your frustrations with Logic, Pro Tools or the like they're
nothing compared to what you face with Linux. Even considering Linux along side these tools is a joke.
Using the excuse of a g4 to switch to Linux is laughable at best. If you've every heard Kim's music, you
can probably see why it's possible for him to use Linux along with its many limitations. While it may
work for him, don't be suckered into think you're going to be pulling up Ardour and coming even close
to what you get with the "pro" level stuff on Mac & Windows. If you want to be fudging with your
system to try and get functionality out if it that doesn't exist, by all means, go ahead. If you wan to just
hit record and play, buy a tool that is worthy of your talents. Linux audio is a joke folks.
Sure, blips and bleeps are great and Linux can certainly accomplish them, it's not that difficult to
achieve. If you think your going to come within even ten years of something like Komplete + Logic,
you're on crack.
http://none Nonya
Somebody should tell Radiohead to use Linux bahahahaha
http://www.native-instruments.com/en/community/te
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Software
TJ
For experimental stuff no doubt Linux can work out well (listen to some Lopez first to understand how
he can avoid so many of the pitfalls in standard music production).
But for the typical musician striving to be creative and realize a more conventional sound (with all the
expectations that go with it), I couldn't recommend moving away from a more standard OS and all of
the finely-honed tools and updates that go with it.
My experience with years of production is that nothing kills your creativity faster than constant
technical problems. The desktop musician has too many hats to wear already, without adding a system
administrator hat. If you dilute your energies too far, the results will either drive you crazy or chase you
completely away.
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http://vinylproject.com/dp Chris Everest
A welcome article and breath of fresh air for the Linux community. And specifically for me,
well-timed. Being a 100% Linux user myself I have been planning the addition of Mac OSX to my tools
so that I can take advantage of more audio software. Despite my disdain for expensive software I was
still planning a new Mac purchase and install. I am now reconsidering my decision (or at least delaying
it) until I build a new Linux test rig to try out some new things.
My audio interests have been primarily in the DJ realm and thus completely analog (read vinyl). My
computing environment is more 'developer' than 'power user'. As I contemplate moving to more digital
36 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
mixing, effects and possibly audio production, I want to make sure I can build something useful. I can
tackle all the Linux setup/administration, but it's important for me to have audio 'user' peers to ping for
support.
Thanks Kim.
Kyran
Yomguy, can you use the freeze function in live?
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http://gonetil.wordpress.com gonetil
I think there's a phrase that sumarizes it all:
In other words, while it may require an investment of time, it can be both free and better!
That's a good way of living, I belive.
Great article, congratulations.
http://www.jonathanleonard.com jonathan adams leona
I use OSX, Windows and Linux. I think they are all great and merit some exploration. There is
switching fear, or moving fear involved in these discussions. Some people are afraid of having to
change their system and some people downright concerned when they even hear of someone else
changing their system and experience sympathetic panic.
You don't have to switch. You don't have to leave anything behind. It is enough to understand that
Linux is equivalent, not better.
But if you are reading this post you are determined to find something.what is it?
Some kind of assurance? Some kind of guarantee?
Unfortunately there really is no sure thing in any system no matter how self assured and confident the
vendor is.
There is a paradox in convenience once something becomes essential. A car is convenient but how else
does one get to the middle of nowhere without help and become truly stranded?
There is also a hidden danger in accepting powerful tools from a remote authority that will not fully
explain how the tools work. Beware the convenience and experience these tools provide.
There are some things in the world that transcend culture and the need for people to experience
bondage. People don't want to be free. They want to be happier with what little they have. People
become uncomfortable when you open the gate and say, you can leave if you want to. They could
37 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
leave, but so much of what they are is the bondage that they won't know the person on the other side.
As an enlightened engineer and creative spirit I cannot see the difference ultimately between any of
these platforms. From a universal perspective I find I am the only limitation.
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Nonya is a retard
Nonya,
How about you actually listen to his backcatalogue before blasting shit out of your mouth while making
yourself look like a fucking idiot.
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lverona
The amount of free (as in freedom) software available on Linux is actually not that big. All the serious
integrated DAWs, like EnergyXT and Reaper and all the apps you can run with WINE are proprietary.
lverona
Can you describe your workflow within linux? How do you edit midi, what midi sequencer you use,
what do you use to record audio and how does it all work together?
http://hubpages.com/hub/All-Candle-Supplies Bamboo Sheets
Are you using a custom wordpress theme? It looks awesome!
wentzr
lverona i can't speak for anyone but these kinds of questions are always best answered by what your
needs/creativity carve out FOR you form follows function as configuration follows desire
I'd highly suggest simply downloading an ubuntu live cd either "ubuntu studio" or "artist x" and just
see what works with what you have/what you want and what doesn't. I use lots of things, and i still use
windows and mac.. but am using ubuntu as my *primary* operating system in my gfx and audio
production studio as well as a large growing number of people. The shear beauty of it is realizing there
is nothing short of a few hours of configuring and trial by error between you and having your system do
WHAT YOU WANT.
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paco
38 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
Claro claro, dell mini 9, convertido en un hackintosh, se puede decir mas alto!!!!
http://www.cellularoneringtones.org (luc Marseille) http
Free ringtones here.
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Emporium Online
http://www.alliancetec.com Henry Gilbert
I am very impressed.
I work with a music producer Tony White and he uses a Mac with Logic Pro.
Now I am not a musician, I know absolutely zilch about music production and yet (maybe because of
some Linux experience) can do some simple things.
I mean very simple things like adding id2v3 tags or encoding with 'lame'.
All the files on his music page have been encoded and tagged by me from the original.
My current computer is extremely low spec.
But when I get a new one I want to resume my audio studies. Jack, Alsa, Rosegarden, Tymidity, Low
Latency / Patched Kernels that sort of thing.
I want to learn how to do music and videos using Linux.
Your post tells me that I do not need to spend a fortune on a Mac. Everything can be achieved just the
same with Linux. So thanks for clearing that one up for me.
All the best.
Henry / web & music promoter
http://nickleus.com nick
@Iverona: for midi editing use either seq24 (simple) or rosegarden (advanced)
like Kyran said, one great shortcoming of Ardour is no midi support. it also doesn't support mp3.
i can't get audacity to work correctly in karmic. it won't record in jack mode.
despite these setbacks there are always alternatives and workarounds.
i have used windows, mac and linux, but i suggest linux (ubuntu) to anyone who wants to do things for
free and learn a lot in the process.
if you do decide to use ubuntu, i suggest also installing a program called ams (alsa modular synth), the
program that has taught me most about music so far.
39 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
here's a list of core/important programs:
qjackctl
patchage
seq24 / rosegarden
zynaddsubfx
hydrogen
ladspa plugins (open software package manager and search for ladspa)
Piano fan
I had a friend who switched from Piano to Guitar back in 2003. I have had the occasional attempts at
Guitar myself. For me, it was too much messing around. Sure, a Piano costs more, but I have never had
to deal with tuning, restringing, pickups, bar-chords, etc.
To me, if you play 'Guitar' you are not a real musician just a techie try-hard with some motive or
agenda to push.
Seriously I think that people need to just respect that there are many 'instruments' in the music world
and that computers/software simply add another dimension.
I'd much rather see more discussion on the finer points of technique and the shift in creative styel that
Kim noticed with the change in tools. (Did anyone else notice that Kim had somewhat of a creative
turning point at the same time as his switch? I'd like to know if perhaps the change in 'instrument' was
part of the change.)
Many fine artists in a range of fields have a fine tradition of celebrating the differences between (for
example) pencils and oils even when some artists could not afford the best oil paints.
Celebrate the choices we have. Don't divide. Experiemnt, share and explore it is a vast creative
landscape out there.
dubremix
Audacity is horrible. You get what you pay for. It's so bad.
graham
for someone who ruined their installation of OS X on their macbook and had no way to reinstall it,
ubuntu studio, plus kim's and other commenters' advice has been an amazing help! i can finally get back
to making music! thank you sooo much!
Biscuit
I've played percussion and guitar for twenty years now and let me just say this "piano fan" must be
code for "I couldnt figure out how to play guitar so I just gave up." Stick to what instrument you
ALREADY know how to play is so fucking weak A REAL musician CAN tune their instrument,
CAN restring their instrument, do you see a pattern here "Elton"? Sounds like you got alota "quit" in
you "Chopin". Django
40 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
Biscuit
You unkowingly are a damn hypocrite "piano fan". "Celebrate the choices we have, but, fuck ALL
guitarist." You are a MF'n disgrace to musicians everywhere. I LIKE to play piano. But I LOVE being a
guitarist. Still, I have the God-Given knowledge that "singling out ANY kind of musician (and I AM A
FUCKING musician) is simply proof of your immaturity and unmistakable unappreciation of us all. Rot
in Hell F.S.O.B. !!
Biscuit
P.S. "Mr. Piano", May a thousand and one fleas infest your crotch. And, don't give up on the guitar. I
can't begin to explain how the guitar effects your musical ambition.".. the guitar is just a wonderful
instrument. It's everything: a bartender, a psychiatrist, a housewife. It's everything, but it's elusive"
Les Paul Legendary Guitarist and creator of the Les Paul Guitar. I like to think Les Paul would be an
"UBSter" too.
pablo
try this music-oriented, bootable stripped linux cd (no hdd install!), download for free, change boot
drive to optical drive and voila.. I tested it on 10 different pc, http://puredyne.goto10.org
/download.html
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PB-in-AL
This was a very helpful article. I was linked to it from the Ubuntu Studio web site. I'm interested in
exploring Linux as a music/video production platform.
In response to the last editor comment regarding unmounting drives. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS
unmount first!!!! I lost half an album of mixdown because I just wasn't paying attention late one night
and didn't unmount the drive. The next day I was going to let the artist hear what I had completed. I
pulled up Finder, navigated to the external Firewire drive. I was able to see all the file names I was
expecing, but half of them had zero bytes. I just about threw up on the spot.
Lesson well learned.
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http://protofuse.net/ protofuse
if one day I'm not happy with my win7 64bits + Ableton Live, I'll switch with this kind of DAW
really
http://www.buycoppercookware.com copper cookware
Wow this guy sure knows a lot about computers. He is a pretty smart guy. I can't believe he has been
working with computers since the seventy's. One thing that I do know how to work is copper cookware.
41 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
Copper cookware cooks all of you food to perfection.
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http://noisepages.com/members/asokaddd/ Asoka Dissanayake
Hi!
Your article is excellent and it is at a pretty high level of research.
I have no idea about music but write comments on Linux distributions except Ubunbtu unfortunately.I
am going to take some extracts from you for promoting Linux. O.K?
There are many Linux distributions specialized on Music.
1. Dynabolic (Denis RoJo an Italian =I call him Bob Marley of Computer music.
2. Musix from France
3. ArtistX
4. XBMC
They are free all what you have to do is to go to the site and download.
http://noisepages.com/members/asokaddd/ Asoka Dissanayake
Hi!
Your article is excellent and it is at a pretty high level of research.
I have no idea about music but write comments on Linux distributions except Ubunbtu unfortunately.
There are many Linux distribution specialized in Music.
1. Dynabolic
2. Musix
3.ArtistX
4.XBMC
I am going to extract some for your article for promoting Linux.
O.K?
kent t
Just be aware, that Ardour WILL crash pretty often.
http://getlcdmonitor.com Ricky
wow who knew lcd monitor getlcdmonitor.com
42 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
plugins
could someone please lobby Steinberg/Propellerheads to open up their api's being able to use
different software, plugins, etc at the same time not only synced together but being able to even render
to wav the whole lot is really nice in the mac/win world and still sadly lacking in the linix world
or can we put some pressure on those who make the big Win/Mac DAWs to support some open
standards for such things?
Sure a lot of windows apps do run under wine (even sort of had Ableton Live running under wine.. but I
couldn't get to the very important audio settings to increase the buffering to much stuttering on my
P4!)
but windows music apps are best run on windows (unless you can afford pretty beefy hardware!)
I would like to see native linux applications with the sort of run/sync/use/render together functionality
that winows/mac users have taken for granted for years.
(the only reason I need to keep a windows box in the house is for music software!)
pacman
hdiutil eject would eject your USB on OS X.
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Mick E. Hart
Im an old school taper and went from cassettes to DAT to hard drive based live recordings (im a mic
guy and only use soundboards if I can do a 70-30 mix with the mics).
Ive been using Linux for the past 2 years and and am learning every day.
It hasnt been easy to get all my music habits down with Linux but its doable.
One thing that is universal: JACK is great when it works but getting it to work is simply idiotic. I used
LMMS at the beginning because it worked without having to do the JACK dance.
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nnn
mfw's comments don't seem all that fanboyish to me although perhaps a bit rabid. I'm not a mac user
but even from a PC perspective there's a lot more complexity with a linux set up. Also, some of the
linux equivalents don't really compare with some of their paid doppelgangers. You WOULD be taking a
bit of loss if you've already paid for licences for those programs and didn't use them at all. I don't know
that that's necessarily what Mr. Cascone is saying though.
http://www.emitter19.blogsport.de kris
some comments:
"Just be aware, that Ardour WILL crash pretty often."
43 of 45 6/04/2012 12:14 PM
thats not true, go with a stable distro and it wont crash much!
if you want something sounding better that protools go with mixbus on linux (also on mac)
this is a real pro tool!
Jamin I cant recommend on linux for mastering, but the linuxdsp plugins put in the master strip in
ardour/mixbus
I read a lot of comments saying "if not this and that program or some equivalent doesnt work on linux I
will not change"
this means I will never go to visit England till Paris will be also on the island. there are tons of
equivalents and sometimes even better software, but you have to look for it. and be open for new ways
of working on your stuff. stepping to linux 4 years ago changed my workflow, and made it more
efficient..
http://www.best-video-converter.net Fox
The distribution of Ubuntu Studio has built an all-in-one package for music and video production. This
is the reason why i love open source software. Great post !!!
carte r4i gold
your tuto is useful, thanks
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