Audio production distro/programs recommendation

Forum: LinuxTotal Replies: 9
Author Content
techiem2

May 12, 2008
10:46 AM EDT
Ok, so my sis has a Vista laptop (Dell 1721 as I recall), and it getting frustrated with Vista (what else is new). She's probably going to have me put XP on it, and I told her I will put Linux on as well when I do.

Along with her normal activities (writing, publisher, etc), she like to do some music composition and recording from her midi keyboard (I got her a midi-usb box for her laptop).

So I'm wondering, what apps are good and fairly easy to use for composition via midi and via manual editting?

What distros should I look at that have those programs available easily?

I have started installing a bunch of stuff on my laptop that I need to try, but it might be better to set her up with a distro with such things easily installed and automatically configured (like things that need Jack...).

Any suggestions from the audio experts out there?
Sander_Marechal

May 12, 2008
8:58 PM EDT
Have a look at Audacious and Jokosher: http://www.jokosher.org/
sleepy

May 13, 2008
2:37 AM EDT
Hi techiem2,

There is a huge variety of quality Linux audio apps available. A first port of call would probably be http://linux-sound.org/ with sections devoted to different categories of software including midi software and even distros specialised for audio work. There is also http://news.softpedia.com/news/Top-10-Linux-Distributions-fo... which is a summary of the major audio distros.

I'm not a musician, so I don't play with midi, but I believe Rosegarden is one of the better known options. Ardour is a fantastic digital audio workstation, but it doesn't (yet) do midi sequencing. It is, however, under rapid development.

In the audio area, my main interest has been in recording and re-mastering old vinyl. For this, I have used at different times Ardour + Jack; Audacity + LADSPA plugins; Rezound; and GWC - Gnome Wave Cleaner. All of these should be found in standard repositories for most major distros. I found for my purposes that it all performed adequately without moving to custom kernels etc. QJackCtl reports a latency of 46.4 msecs on a standard Ubuntu 7.10 install. A 'multimedia' kernel should do better, if it matters.

The one thing I did invest in was a decent sound card - in my case an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 (which I'm disappointed to say is not recognised and set up properly by Ubuntu 8.04 - a pulse problem it seems, as Kubuntu recognises it). For a laptop, an quality USB external sound card from a manufacturer such as M-Audio might be useful. I believe some people prefer having the DAC outside of the computer, even if it is a desktop machine, to isolate it from sources of interference. I have recently been purchasing sound equipment for work to be used with laptops for multimedia presentations, and I have been told that all laptops, except Apple, interestingly, have power supplies that tend to induce ground loop hum into the audio circuit. We are investing in cheap hum eliminators.

I hope this is of some help. I'd be interested in finding out how you/she get on with using Linux for audio applications.
nicsmr

May 13, 2008
6:09 AM EDT
Sleepy,

Can you please let me know the make/model, supplier and approximate cost of the hum eliminators?

I am using a laptop for music for dance performances but am getting an annoying hum when the music is not playing.

Thanks Nick
techiem2

May 13, 2008
8:40 AM EDT
Thanks. I'll look around at all that. My basic audio experience in linux has been using audacity to record and split tapes now and then.
sleepy

May 16, 2008
1:09 AM EDT
Hi nicsmr,

Sorry about the delay - I needed to check the details on the order. The hum eliminator we have had recommended is from Hosa, a company known for its audio cables & accessories. I believe its this model: http://www.binarydesigns.com.au/bdstore/HEM462.html We haven't received them yet, so I can't tell you how well they work. They retail for AUD$139.

Sleepy
nicsmr

May 16, 2008
6:08 AM EDT
Thanks Sleepy,

I'll look into it.

Nick
wjl

May 16, 2008
7:15 AM EDT
techiem,

regarding distros, you could give 64Studio a try - I think it's more or less Debian for musicians. Your laptop has to support 64 Bits of course, but other than that...

Oh, and I think Ubuntu Studio more or less tries to do the same.

HTH, Wolfgang
dinotrac

May 16, 2008
10:24 PM EDT
I should mention that Renoise is also available for Linux. Very popular Tracker with some MIDI capabilities. Linux version is fairly recent addition to the family.
helios

May 17, 2008
10:06 AM EDT
Concerning that hum...

I no longer have an audio card that offers the mixer checkmark that produces that sound but I know which you are talking about. Go into your mixer settings kmix/switcher/? I believe the one you are looking to uncheckmark starts with an "E". It hassled me to no end until I stumbled around and found the culprit. I may not be correct here because if I remember right, the sound was a persistent and annoying hiss rather than a hum...you might also turn down the volume on any external mic you have...it could be as simple as that.

h

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