Free software thread/club?

nonfatmatt · #1 01-07-2009, 03:06 PM

I'm an avid Linux user, so I use Free Software for all of my music production and have great success. I've seen a few people around here talk about Ardour and I know a lot of people use Audacity. You can do professional level audio using only free software so I thought I'd start a thread that details some of the programs available. Heck, maybe we can start a club.

Note, when I use 'free software' I mean software in the vein of open source - see www.fsf.org for more info, but please don't refrain from sticking a freeware program in the thread if you have a good one.

Free Software DAW/Recorders:

Ardour - www.ardour.org - only works on Mac/Linux but it's fantastic.
Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Traverso - http://traverso-daw.org/ - up and coming but works on Windows

Plugins - Compressors - EQ etc

Audacity has a good collection of LADSPA plugins for Windows - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins

Tom's Audio Plugins - http://tap-plugins.sourceforge.net/
SWH Plugins - http://plugin.org.uk/
CMT (computer music toolkit) - http://www.ladspa.org/cmt/
Caps - http://quitte.de/dsp/caps.html

Sequencers:

Muse - http://muse-sequencer.org/
Rosegarden (also for scoring) - http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

Instruments/Synths

Hydrogen - drum sequencer - http://www.hydrogen-music.org/ (Windows port on site)
zynaddsubfx - http://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.net/

Mastering
JAMin - http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/about.html

If you're interested in audio production and haven't tried Linux before there are a few distributions that cater to multimedia production.

Ubuntu Studio - www.ubuntustudio.org
JACKlab - http://www.jacklab.net/

Also, I've found that straight up OpenSUSE has almost everything I use in its regular repositories - www.opensuse.org
Note that these apps are usually for Linux, but many of them work for Mac because it's easy to cross compile and JACK and LADSPA (plugins) work. Obviously since I don't use Windows I'm a bit short on free software Windows audio apps, so help would be appreciated.

rarisgod · #2 01-07-2009, 03:15 PM

Is there a drum sequencer that works on Windows that is open source?

nonfatmatt · #3 01-07-2009, 03:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rarisgod

Is there a drum sequencer that works on Windows that is open source?

Yeah Hydrogen has a Windows port, it's experimental but it works.

seamonkey · #4 01-08-2009, 05:32 PM

There's the LinuxSampler:
http://www.linuxsampler.org/
(has a windows version too). Especially useful that Tascam discontinued Gigastudio.

Now the "free" thing is a little constricting, there are some products available at quite a reasonable price.
EnergyXT has a Linux port. When you buy some Behringer products you get a lite license.
http://www.energy-xt.com/
I haven't tried it, but it's said to run VST .dll's on Linux without all the normal hassle.

mrufino1 · #5 01-11-2009, 10:09 PM

Check out 64studio too, it has been my favorite distro so far. I am very close to being all open source.

MindSpark · #6 01-12-2009, 04:19 AM

I've been using Linux for over 10 years. I am a software engineer. I prefer it over MacOS and of course windows.
Unfortunately I use my mac for music production, because linux still doesn't have enough support for firewire audio equipment. My mbox doesn't work on it either.
Maybe, one day, if I have enough time, I'll get to work a bit more on open source projects such as ffado or oss. But for the time being, I cannot fully rely on foss.

51m0n · #7 01-12-2009, 05:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MindSpark

I've been using Linux for over 10 years. I am a software engineer. I prefer it over MacOS and of course windows.
Unfortunately I use my mac for music production, because linux still doesn't have enough support for firewire audio equipment. My mbox doesn't work on it either.
Maybe, one day, if I have enough time, I'll get to work a bit more on open source projects such as ffado or oss. But for the time being, I cannot fully rely on foss.

+1 on all accounts other than I dont have a mac.

Plus I feel that linux is a pain to set up for audio, certainly compared to Macs. You get what you pay for to a certain extent here I guess. Not taking a dig at linux in any way (really, my PC's at home have run everything from slack thru deb and mandrake and kubuntu/mubunut and xubuntu), I just dont think I've ever had the time to commit to getting a machine really flying for audio in linux, and I dont have that time to spend. Its a shame cos I really like the idea!

Reaper is a windows DAW that although not free it is very very reasonably priced and has a full featured open try before you by nag at the front.

manicbassman · #8 01-12-2009, 07:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 51m0n

+1 on all accounts other than I dont have a mac.

Plus I feel that linux is a pain to set up for audio, certainly compared to Macs. You get what you pay for to a certain extent here I guess. Not taking a dig at linux in any way (really, my PC's at home have run everything from slack thru deb and mandrake and kubuntu/mubunut and xubuntu), I just dont think I've ever had the time to commit to getting a machine really flying for audio in linux, and I dont have that time to spend. Its a shame cos I really like the idea!

Reaper is a windows DAW that although not free it is very very reasonably priced and has a full featured open try before you by nag at the front.

I was really upset when upgrading from Ubuntu Dapper LTS to Ubuntu Hardy LTS to find the soundsystem borked in weird and wonderful ways... Some programs hadn't had support for it compiled in yet and refused to play nicely and for those that did work, the sound output from the soundcard would suddenly mute itself... for no apparent reason... apparently, the Ubuntu guys decided to stick the raw and bleeding edge Pulseaudio system into the distribution without setting it and other programs up properly and testing it... I've had to revert my soundsystem to remove all traces of Pulseaudio and re-install the previous one which had been removed (Alsa)

I still haven't got things set back up as I really want them and as a result, have planned to skip upgrading my other boxes and laptops until they've got the Pulseaudio sound working properly.

From what I've read, it should be a great replacement for the hodgepodge of ways of accessing sound hardware before now... but Ubuntu botched it...

PS. Reaper works fine in Linux using Wine and WineASIO

mrufino1 · #9 01-12-2009, 08:37 AM

I just upgraded 64studio to the new 3.0 alpha and it looks like ffado is built in, that should solve a lot of the firewire audio issues? I say that with a question mark of course, I will be checking it out more extensively this week. But my firepod worked without configuring anything when I loaded up 64studio, and when I tried it with ubuntu way back when it worked right away there as well.

MindSpark · #10 01-13-2009, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrufino1

I just upgraded 64studio to the new 3.0 alpha and it looks like ffado is built in, that should solve a lot of the firewire audio issues? I say that with a question mark of course, I will be checking it out more extensively this week. But my firepod worked without configuring anything when I loaded up 64studio, and when I tried it with ubuntu way back when it worked right away there as well.

The device support list of ffado is here. I have an Alesis Multimix16. Doesn't work. I also have an mbox2. Not firewire, but this one sometimes has issues working on a mac or windows, so I won't even bother giving myself headaches trying to get it to work under linux.
There's much more software out there that works for linux, including a fully fledged multitracking DAW called Ardour. As for midi and music composition, there's Rosegarden.
But the problem with Linux audio is not with software (when did linux have a problem with s/w anyway ?

). The problem is the lack of support for various hardware. I am sure that this will be taken care of in the very near future, but currently, for people with unsupported hardware, Linux is not very useful as a music-making platform.

mrufino1 · #11 01-13-2009, 10:04 PM

That is true, if your hardware is not supported at all, you're out in the cold. According to ffado though, it is the manufacturers who decide whether or not to release source code or supply a unit to let them develop drivers. I can't understand why a manufacturer would not want a team of volunteers to write good drivers for the product, therefore expanding the userbase for their hardware without spending. That is why I am not a marketing guy! But anyway, linux, with supported hardware, can be used for music. But, I have not used it too seriously yet, so we'll see if I can get as comfortable as I was on reaper.

MindSpark · #12 01-14-2009, 05:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrufino1

I can't understand why a manufacturer would not want a team of volunteers to write good drivers for the product, therefore expanding the userbase for their hardware without spending.

I think that this is a very complicated issue. I am guessing there are quite a few reasons why a company would do that.
They might not want to release their "cookbook" to everyone so competitors wouldn't be able to copy off their hardware.
Or it could be a pure business thing. Maybe they've signed some contract with microsoft or something.