Calling All Linux Musicians!

[dolson]

The Ubuntu Studio Project (http://www.ubuntustudio.com/) is now online! This is a community wiki. We are working together to make Ubuntu work for you.

----

Alright, so this is where it stands now:

A Multimedia Derivative of Ubuntu will happen after Dapper is released. I have no participation in this currently.

In the meantime, you can use the Ubuntu Studio Project, which is a wiki with tutorials on setting up and using Ubuntu for an audio studio.

We have our own forum here for further discussion, support, etc: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=128

I do not require any further emails from you stating that you want musicians to be supported by Ubuntu. They know, Mark knows. It's going to happen. Just sit back and be patient now.

---
Original post, for posterity:

"If you have not used Linux before, the Ubuntu and Debian distributions are not recommended if audio is your primary goal. These distributions work well for many non-audio oriented users, but they tend to cause many problems (particularly related to initial setup) for users aimed at using applications like ardour."

That is taken directly from the Ardour website.

I want to see Ubuntu succeed, I want to see it become the number one distro out there. But I feel so conflicted being a Linux-only user, and a musician.

Up until now I have been using Audacity for all of my music production, but I want to move on to bigger and better things, all the while keeping Ubuntu.

I have communicated with Mark Shuttleworth, and consequently, I have been tasked to find out how many people share my thoughts. So here it is, your chance to get what you want - an amazing desktop distribution with out-of-the-box studio software oiled and ready to go.

I know that some people managed to get JACK and Ardour working, but it is not that easy for newbies, and even for myself, Ardour does really weird things, like screeching and squealing, but not under DeMuDi...

Please, reply to this thread if you share my thoughts and desires to see an Ubuntu for musicians. Ideally, if you would be willing to have me pass on your name and email address to Mark, please email it to me at dana@rivironline.com and once I collect enough people, I will present it to him.

This is an amazing thing, that he is willing to listen to us and build upon Ubuntu for us. I hope I am not alone in wanting to see this happen.

If someone wants to sticky this for a week or so, I'd appreciate that... I don't know if you take requests. ;)

[MetalMusicAddict]

KICK ***!!

Ide love to have Ubuntu work well with Ardour.

[qalimas]

I'd love it :D I'm having a lot of issues with LMMS, not stable and taking way too much CPU :rolleyes:

[kabus]

out-of-the-box studio software oiled and ready to go.


I'd love to see this happen.:D

[wishyjr]

If i could find a linux distro (preferably Ubuntu) that had a great out-of-the-box audio package, i would probably cry with joy. Its seems so unecessarily difficult to setup properly and i just wish that someone one or something could arm ubuntu (or linux in general) with better media facilities -particularly music ones.

[Minyaliel]

I've sent you an email :)

[Padrig Leamhnach]

I think this would be great as well! I'd love to be able to use Ubuntu more for my music work.

[Ububurns]

I've really enjoyed using Ubuntu for sound recording and editing. Ardour, Zynaddsubfx, Hydrogen, real-time plugins - everything all works, on my P3! I'm really happy!

Although, I do have a latency problem... up to around a quarter of a second? And in terms of appearance, they all lack GTK2 styling. But hey, it's better than nothing.

Other than that, I can't see what is left to be desired. Maybe I'm just sheltered. :)

[raublekick]

I'm down like a clown Charlie Brown.

There is the AGNULA project, but their site is always off and on and I can't seem to get a grip on their development schedule if there even is one.

[MetalMusicAddict]

I think Agnula/Demudi is great but I found it not being as up-to-date annoying. Getting nVidia drivers installed proved impossible. Compiling and such. :)

[oskude]

i dont do music on linux (yet) so its not a problem for me (yet) but heres some pointers that i found from my favorite list
http://plessas.mur.at/audio_computer.html
http://puredata.info/community/pdwiki/Optimize
well, they are aimed for pd, but there are good hints...

and yeah, i would like to have a low-latency ubuntu done easily too...

[Rotarychainsaw]

MAKE THIS HAPPEN!! Besides Civ4, this is the only thing keeping me on windows.

[jonny]

Couldn't agree more. I'm no audio expert myself, but my kids like to dabble. It would be fantastic if things like midi, hydrogen, ladspa and jack just worked out of the box.

I suspect (but have no proof) that the type of person who uses linux is disproportionately likely to also want to play with some of its music and sound editing capabilities. Unfortunately, some of the best of these programs (eg mhwaveedit) aren't even available in Universe.

Having said that, compiling the odd program from source is a good deal better than paying huge sums for a restrictive licence under Windows.

[twowheeler]

Amen to this idea. Not a musician, but my wife is, and I need to record her sessions. It is unnecessarily difficult to set this stuff up.

[Adrian]

Please, reply to this thread if you share my thoughts and desires to see an Ubuntu for musicians.

I agree. Music production is the only reason why I still have a Windows partition.

[dolson]

Well, I thank you guys for your responses so far, but I've only got 4 email addresses to take back to Mark. I will point him at this thread, but I would prefer to give him names/emails.

To Ububurns: I don't know how you did it - Ardour gives me lots of headaches, and it certainly did not work after simply installing it. But congrats on it working.

[23meg]

I do professional audio production of varying sorts and flavors and I'm on my way; I'm trying to get my pro audio card working with JACK and as soon as I can, I'll start using Ubuntu full time for audio production. I don't know what the claim on the Ardour site is based on; it smells a bit FUDdy to me.

There's also the Collage Linux distro project (Ubuntu based) which has its subforum here on the forums, and it has among its aims a patched multimedia kernel and out of the box audio production functionality. It seems to have stalled at the ideas stage, however.

My dream has always been an Ubuntu + AGNULA hybrid. Ubuntu automagic and polish plus AGNULA package variety. But I'd prefer not to have a separate distro for it but a way of installing packages without breaking anything. Like the Planet CCRMA example.

I haven't checked back on AGNULA for a while but I heard they're making an Ubuntu based version now.

[cowlip]

I do lots of sound work with Audaicty, mostly just 2 channel things with a voice and piano, and I love it also because it's crossplatform. For the more serious people I can see how important the other programs are too.

The other thing is MIDI support is still not working on my soundblaster live; regardless of the howto I follow, all I get is silence. I replied to this thread ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=88437 )

In conclusion, this is fully supported by me :D

[MetalMusicAddict]

I haven't checked back on AGNULA for a while but I heard they're making an Ubuntu based version now.
From what Ive heard their live cd is now Ubuntu based but it wouldnt suprise me if Demudi went Ubuntu based. ;)

[matthew]

I'm in as well...I'm no professional, but I've done some amateur recording and would love it if I could use Ubuntu and sell of my tape 4 track.

[dolson]

Alright, thanks for the replies and PMs and emails.

Now, my question is - is anyone available and willing to assist working on this?

[MetalMusicAddict]

Alright, thanks for the replies and PMs and emails.

Now, my question is - is anyone available and willing to assist working on this?
In what fashion? As of now I havnt built the system I want to run this on so best I can help is installing and making sure it runs on my laptop and desktop. Thing is their not purpose built. Using M-audio cards and such. Does it matter?

Side note: Does anyone here use a USB DAW controller in Ubuntu? Are their ones for linux?

[Joey French]

I quit Microsoft because I had had enough. So, now I am onto Ubuntu. As much as I love the distro, I miss the ability to use my home PC to make music (like I used to do everyday). If someone could build a distro where the environment was right to be able to use music apps quickly and easily without all the stupid hoop-jumping, and work as well as Ubuntu- I would ditch Ubuntu in a nanosecond.

There really isn't a Linux that does this, so I hope that Ubuntu may come around. It is by far the better of the linux flavors I have used.

[MetalMusicAddict]

I quit Microsoft because I had had enough. So, now I am onto Ubuntu. As much as I love the distro, I miss the ability to use my home PC to make music (like I used to do everyday). If someone could build a distro where the environment was right to be able to use music apps quickly and easily without all the stupid hoop-jumping, and work as well as Ubuntu- I would ditch Ubuntu in a nanosecond.

There really isn't a Linux that does this, so I hope that Ubuntu may come around. It is by far the better of the linux flavors I have used.
Not that Im tryin to get you to "ditch" Ubuntu but you should check out Agnula (http://www.agnula.org/). Specifically Demudi (http://demudi.agnula.org/wiki/InstallCdRom). Its Debian (http://www.debian.org/) based so its familar but not polished like Ubuntu. ;)

[JimmyJazz]

makeing music is the one thing tieing me to windows really I would prefer to use ubuntu and think it would be great. I'm a electro nerd so I would love programs with linux style control that give me freedom over my sound

[oskude]

if i had time, i would remix my old xm mods with this one

http://www.skale.org/
(best tracker that ive seen under linux)

its free, and at version 1.0 maybe even open source O.o

[MetalMusicAddict]

if i had time, i would remix my old xm mods with this one

http://www.skale.org/
(best tracker that ive seen under linux)

its free, and at version 1.0 maybe even open source O.o
Ever seen Ardour (http://ardour.org/)?

[oskude]

Ever seen Ardour (http://ardour.org/)?yes...
but ardour is not a tracker, and cant edit xm files, right ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM_%28mod_format%29

[MetalMusicAddict]

Tracker as in multitrack recorder? Yes. As for XM, I cant find any info on that.

[oskude]

Tracker as in multitrack recorder? Yes.
no. Tracker as in "Tracker", look the wiki link that i posted :rolleyes:

[MetalMusicAddict]

OOOHHH..... Yea. :) Gotcha now. ;)

[Paulus]

edited : not applicable to this thread

I would love to see an awesome harddisk recording program with midi, audio instrument and VST (really unlikely) instrument support. *wishes*

[ember]

I guess, you won't have VST-plugins, but there the LADSPA-plugins - maybe these help.

[MetalMusicAddict]

does anything in linux support VST plugins? Or any audio instrument support?

Sorry to say this but programs like logic audio, cubase and pro tools are so far ahead of anything i've ever seen in linux, I can't see any serious professional using linux, especially now that logic audio is native on the mac.
If we wanna make a discussion thread about pro audio on Linux vs. Win/Mac we should start a new thread. HERE (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=521756#post521756).

This is really a thread for support of a audio version of Ubuntu. :)

[Paulus]

yes you are right, sorry. :)

[MetalMusicAddict]

No prob sir. Not at all.

[The Mad Scientist]

I am a newbie user to Linux and Ubuntu. I am also a practicing musician who loves the plethora of music tools available. However, nothing seems to work, starting with JACK and moving on to Ardour and Audacity. I have not had the time to play around until it is fixed. I know it can be done, but it would be much nicer to have it work right out of the box.

[MetalMusicAddict]

I am a newbie user to Linux and Ubuntu. I am also a practicing musician who loves the plethora of music tools available. However, nothing seems to work, starting with JACK and moving on to Ardour and Audacity. I have not had the time to play around until it is fixed. I know it can be done, but it would be much nicer to have it work right out of the box.
For the time being try Demudi. Link above. ;)

[jwalch]

Yes! Exactly we're I'm at .... music composition/transposing/recording, with and without midi .... please tell Mike S. that there are many people stick with the MS BGs (Bad Guys) because of music. Making a solid linux base might even induce the people behind Sibelius/ Finale /etc to recompile.

Jim Walch
Stockholm

[lito]

hi
I totally support this initiative!!name and email on its way...

just arrived at linux and very much in love with my computer again thanks to ubuntu/linux.I recently start checking out the audio/midi-side of things in ubuntu and got several things to work but it was almost impossible to get certain apps to work...MusE for instance,so looked around and found out about demudi which is pretty impressive but i'm having some trouble with soundcard-detection in demudi.I do NOT have this problem in Ubuntu:smile:
...so having a ubunto-distro with the capabilities of agnula/demudu would be awesome!!!

p.s.:this is really great news.

lito

[xyz]

I'm not a newbie musician;however I'm a newbie at 'music with computers'...for now!I'm going to download Skale and Ardour but I'm a bit afraid after having read so many 'it doesn't work'...and if some of you guys can't work it, what am I going to do?not much I guess.Never hurts to try,though!
I've also read the LMMS forum and it doesn't seem to be a whole lot better there!
I have the feeling I'd need to be much more at ease with the distro before getting into music progs. that are unstable/difficult to work.
Anyway I sent a mail to Dana (1st post).
It would be just great if making music would have a bigger place in the Ubuntu world!soon maybe.:)

[aum11]

I have just found this thread and so have only now passed on my email address in support of an Ubuntu which can easily support music recording/editing.

This would be truly a great step forward. I have only used Audacity so far and have been pleased with the results.

I will try Agnula in the meantime.

[drucer]

I'm a Linux musician and I also want to see Ubuntu mature as a platform for Linux musicians. It can be done - there's absolutely no question about that.

Actually, the most mature Linux audio distribution at the moment is based on Debian (it's called StudioToGo! and it's a commercial product).

Linux audio software is amazing nowadays! Ardour is the prime example. It would be damn nice to be able to use Ubuntu for composing music as well as using it as a regular day to day desktop platform.

[drucer]

I would love to see an awesome harddisk recording program with midi, audio instrument and VST (really unlikely) instrument support. *wishes*

VST plugin support? Well, it's not unlikely - it is a reality. StudioToGo! (Debian based commercial Linux audio distribution) supports Windows VST plugins. Their version of Rosegarden sequencer software supports Windows VST plugins natively or you can just load VST plugins (just double click them) as Jack clients and connect them to any audio software that is Jack aware (ardour, hydrogen.. you name it). Just about any VST plugin has worked well under Linux that I've tried.

OK, StudioToGo! is commercial software, but it proves that all this can be done under Linux. One day Ubuntu will be as good platform for musicians - I'm 100% sure about that.

[ad noiseam]

IMHO, audio production support is, together with serious pre-press one, one of the two things that lack the most in Linux / Ubuntu. It would be great if musicians could make the switch without having to be geeks or give up functionnalities. Very good idea.

On the topic of Audacity, I wanted to say that I successfully installed a comparable editor that fits a lot better with Gnome, called MhWaveEdit. It is not available as an Ubuntu package afaik, but the package on the Debian site works perfectly.

[xyz]

Hi-
You guys seem to know quite a bit about it!I'm confused.Could some of you advise me as to what I should start with...just to get (little by little) familiar with it?
Thank you for your time.

[horace]

As an old musician and new Ubuntu user, I would be delighted to see this sort of development. I have already been pleased with what I have been able to achieve with Audacity and various abc/midi utilities, and the learning experience involved in getting things working together has probably been useful in developing my understanding, but I can see that the problems I have encountered in the process might put off the less inquisitive!

[drucer]

I created a small list of essential music applications for those of you who are not familiar with Linux audio software.

Ubuntu already has ALSA support. That's a very good start. Now we just need to have JACK on top of it and the rest of the essential applications will work. Here's my list of essential software needed to make work under Ubuntu to attract Linux musicians:

JACK - Professional-quality low-latency audio server and transport control interface (NEEDED for professional quality low latency audio):
http://jackit.sourceforge.net/

QJACKCTL - Excellent Qt-based application to control Jack:
http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/

JACK RACK - An effects "rack" for the JACK low latency audio API:
http://jack-rack.sourceforge.net/

ARDOUR - Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software that already rivals industry standard ProTools:
http://ardour.org

JAMIN - Audio mastering tool:
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/about.html

HYDROGEN - Advanced drum machine for Linux:
http://www.hydrogen-music.org/

ROSEGARDEN - Professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment:
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

AUDACITY - Sound editor:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

LILYPOND - Excellent music notation application:
http://www.lilypond.org/web/

AEOLUS - Amazing pipe organ synthesizer:
http://users.skynet.be/solaris/linuxaudio/aeolus.html

FLUIDSYNTH - Soundfont synthesizer:
http://www.fluidsynth.org/

QSYNTH - Qt-GUI for Fluidsynth:
http://qsynth.sourceforge.net/qsynth-index.html

FREEWHEELING - Sample looper (interesting way to make music):
http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/

LADSPA - Plugin effects:
http://www.ladspa.org/

[dolson]

Thanks to everyone here. You motivate me to help out Mark in whatever way I can.

If you are willing to help out and know packaging and how to work on a distro, then please, please email me. I don't know anything yet (I make all my packages with checkinstall) but I'm gonna try and learn a bit to assist him. I lost my job last week, so I have some free time between job searching to learn some new things.

I've got 10 names and emails so far, I am passing them on to Mark today. I've given him the link to this thread as well to see the interest.

On a side note, if anyone knows how to code, and would like to work on a project independant of this, I would be interested in a GTK port of qjackctl... I don't enjoy installing the QT libs, but that is a sacrifice I will have to make, I suppose. Maybe there's already one, I don't know.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Thanks to everyone here. You motivate me to help out Mark in whatever way I can.

If you are willing to help out and know packaging and how to work on a distro, then please, please email me. I don't know anything yet (I make all my packages with checkinstall) but I'm gonna try and learn a bit to assist him. I lost my job last week, so I have some free time between job searching to learn some new things.

I've got 10 names and emails so far, I am passing them on to Mark today. I've given him the link to this thread as well to see the interest.

I can really only help as a user and monitary support for a site maybe but please keep me filled in. I emailed. Im Cory K.

On a side note, if anyone knows how to code, and would like to work on a project independant of this, I would be interested in a GTK port of qjackctl... I don't enjoy installing the QT libs, but that is a sacrifice I will have to make, I suppose. Maybe there's already one, I don't know.

Ide love to see that as well as a GTK version of Audour. That might make it lag though. I dont know. Would look nice though. :)

[detyabozhye]

I like to make music, but I can't really figure out Ardour, I use FL Studio and Adobe Audition on Windows, it'd be great if I could run them on Linux. WINE isn't much help with that.

[alfzer0]

YES YES YES!!! This would be one of the best steps that Ubuntu could take right now. Most musicians stick with Apple/MS because there isn't a quality linux distribution out that has the ease and breadth of applications that either of these do. I don't have statistics, but I'm willing to bet that Ubuntu has created the largest number of windows to linux converts of any other distribution (with the amount of time it has been out taken into consideration). By developing a stable, out of the box (or repos), easy to use, and highly functional music creation/recording environment, many more users would be willing to take the step into linux. It may be the straw that breaks the back of the larger music software developers to finally see linux as a serious platform on which to port their software to...causing even more users to "be able" to switch as these native mac/win32 applications are viewed as a neccessity to a very large number of professional and amateur musicians alike.

In the least what needs to be done is have a fully functioning JACK audio server out of the box (tuned for optimum latency would be nice too). Because in the current stage of the game, the sheer hassle of trying to get it to work correctly causes alot of people to just abandon the dream, including myself to and extent.

I pray (even though im not religous), that this can one day be a reality.

-Jeff Williams

[nicholaspaul]

This is a great idea - I'd also love to see ubuntu more musician friendly. i have spent some time wrangling Rosegarden and Jack. The circles I was running in made me too dizzy to keep it up for long, so I carried on using OSX. Ubuntu won't replace OSX for making music (for me) but as a second option it would be great. Having a second machine to build drum loops, mix down tracks and other stuff would be fab. Besides, ubuntu is such a great OS to work in.

Over 50 replies in a week isn't bad. I really hope Mr Shuttleworth makes it happen for all us musos :)

[xyz]

Thanks Drucer.I'll be checking all of this out!

I created a small list of essential music applications for those of you who are not familiar with Linux audio software.

Ubuntu already has ALSA support. That's a very good start. Now we just need to have JACK on top of it and the rest of the essential applications will work. Here's my list of essential software needed to make work under Ubuntu to attract Linux musicians:

JACK - Professional-quality low-latency audio server and transport control interface (NEEDED for professional quality low latency audio):
http://jackit.sourceforge.net/

QJACKCTL - Excellent Qt-based application to control Jack:
http://qjackctl.sourceforge.net/

JACK RACK - An effects "rack" for the JACK low latency audio API:
http://jack-rack.sourceforge.net/

ARDOUR - Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software that already rivals industry standard ProTools:
http://ardour.org

JAMIN - Audio mastering tool:
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/about.html

HYDROGEN - Advanced drum machine for Linux:
http://www.hydrogen-music.org/

ROSEGARDEN - Professional audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment:
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

AUDACITY - Sound editor:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

LILYPOND - Excellent music notation application:
http://www.lilypond.org/web/

AEOLUS - Amazing pipe organ synthesizer:
http://users.skynet.be/solaris/linuxaudio/aeolus.html

FLUIDSYNTH - Soundfont synthesizer:
http://www.fluidsynth.org/

QSYNTH - Qt-GUI for Fluidsynth:
http://qsynth.sourceforge.net/qsynth-index.html

FREEWHEELING - Sample looper (interesting way to make music):
http://freewheeling.sourceforge.net/

LADSPA - Plugin effects:
http://www.ladspa.org/

[Doughsay]

Yes I definately support this. I currently use windows for audio production, but would like to change this. I haven't had much luck setting things up on Ubuntu yet, but that's what I'm looking through here for right now.

[steve k]

I am in total support of this!
Way to go!

btw: has anyone gotten Freewheeling to work? I'm having trouble with the 'make' script.

[EPOX123]

Cool i see a lot of image software so photoshop is done, now we need the other half audio we need a good program like Propellerhead Reason (http://www.propellerheads.se)
but yea I'm down for it :)

[curuxz]

I too would love to do my sound work in Linux, but we realy need something like Ebuntu and Kubuntu for music, a whole setup (maybe one of these meta-package things) that gives us all the audio (and maybe graphics) packages to set our box into production mode, it takes hours and hours for me to get any sounds stuff done in nix though im guna keep trying...

[MetalMusicAddict]

I too would love to do my sound work in Linux, but we realy need something like Ebuntu and Kubuntu for music, a whole setup (maybe one of these meta-package things) that gives us all the audio (and maybe graphics) packages to set our box into production mode, it takes hours and hours for me to get any sounds stuff done in nix though im guna keep trying...
Aubuntu! (A=audio) FYI :)
Subuntu (S=sound)

[matthew]

Aubuntu! (A=audio) FYI :)
Subuntu (S=sound)Audiobuntu?
Sonibuntu?
Mubuntu? (music-ubuntu)

[Dr.Who]

I have no problems running pd with Jack with low latency on an Asus laptop with out-of-the-box installation via synaptic on Breezy but maybe I got just luck, which is rare in my life. Much more problems in the moment is the borked xorg version which creates some cpuloadpeaks with the gui under Gnome so I prefer Blackbox which is much more calm and hope the next versions of xorg are better. So far I use the internal soundcard and the next step is to use a RME which should work fine but we will see. For Jack I use qjackctl which makes starting Jack easy. Ardour I didn't checked out so far on this board but had it running under Horay on a PC and with MacOSX on a Mac but that is a different story. Remember, Ardour is like Protools so it is a complex software. Audacity is an easier way to start recording multitrack. Soundediting is incredible with rezound and much more incredible but also more wired and complicated with the academic classic snd (the emacs for sound they like to call it).

The state of (free) audiosoftware on Linux is amazing in my opinion. The internal connection with Jack is superior to anything I have seen in the windowsworld, much more flexible than ReWire. And by the way a Videojack is in the works! I only missing an outboard-synth editor like the commercial SoundDiver whose development is halted anyway. So I guess Linux is the way to go, lot of refreshing new approaches to multimedia. Although I am a developer on my own I don't like the vendorlockin in windows and mac, where software become a bloated bugladen expensive subscription. Bugs you can have for free on the opensource world :).

No seriously, here is a list I started a while ago with some creative software on Linux:

http://microsound.nexthop.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/LinuxSoftware

and I guess this is THE audiosoftware list:

http://linux-sound.org/

Cheers,

Doctor Who

[MetalMusicAddict]

I like Mubuntu. :)

[passonno]

What an awesome thing!!

I use WinXP for my music, especially with Adobe Audition, ACID, VSTACK, and Ableton Live for experimental stuff.

I use VST instrumentsalmost exclusively, and to record them I use ACID, plus stuff like Guitar Rig for effects.

I want Ubuntu to work for me, but after spending many weeks on getting my Tascam US-122 figured out and working, I now have to figure out vst support, then jack, then configuration of Ardour.

I just want to make music.

Thanks for listening, Ubuntu rocks!!

Anthony Passonno

[Sanne]

I also would very much like to use Ubuntu as an audio platform. I had some success with using set_rtlimits to use the new realtime capabilities built into the kernel as I mentioned here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=552543#post552543) and as yaaarrrgg detailed here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=562993#post562993).

I'm in the proccess to test several audio applications right now, and it seems to work quite nicely so far. What I would like to see (first :)) is that Ubuntu would be tuned to grant every or most applications of the audio group (or another, newly created group for realtime apps) realtime priority, or make it easily configurable for non-geeks (means: people who would be scared away by compiling stuff like set_rtlimits).

[matthew]

While we are all looking at this (an idea that I love, BTW) someone pointed out this distro to me. Anyone else looked at it?

Musix (http://www.musix.org.ar/) (the page is in Spanish but there is an English wiki page linked at the top)

[detyabozhye]

So, has anyone found a good alternative to FL Studio for Linux yet?

[hack_jammer1998]

dolson,

thanks for the initiative, i've sent an email already. kindly advise if you have received it and please keep us updated.

MMAddict - I like the name MUbuntu!

Cheers to all Musicians!

[gosh]

I would love to help.
What kind of help is needed.

I tried Agnula before I discovered Ubuntu. I really disappointed me because I had all kinds of trouble installing it.
I still use XP for music recording, but would very much like to switch to Musik Ubuntu.

[IdoMcFly]

Yes, please make this happens. I4ve tried to set up ardour and it's a failure :???:

[sudokubuntu]

Yeah I've just switched to ubuntu, and my plans were to figure out how to make music on it. I'm tired of windows.
So this is good news.:p

[almahtar]

Yeah, even audacity doesn't work right for me! I have to kill ESD before I run it, and even then it can't do things like playback other tracks while I record a new one. I just get pops and hisses. I'd love to see better audio support for sure.

[JimmyJazz]

I would love to use linux for pro recording oh will that day ever come

[futz]

For any musicians that know of a program called EnergyXT (one of my favorites), the developer (Jorgen) is going to be releasing EnergyXT-2 next year for both windoze and linux. I can't wait!!!

EnergyXT is a super nice modular daw that also works well as a plugin in other programs. Very inexpensive too.

If you have windoze, try out the present windoze-only demo, available at http://www.xt-hq.com/. It's not crippled in any way, except you can't reload stuff you've saved. It does require an ASIO driver. If you don't have any, just go get ASIO4All at http://www.asio4all.com/

Jorgen is a programming maniac. The program is constantly being updated. You can reach him over at the KVR Audio EnergyXT forum http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=36

[sedition]

Hell yeah!

One thing I'd seriously like to see work is Freecycle (http://www.redsteamrecords.com/freecycle/). They have Debian based packages available, and since Ubuntu is based upon it, I'd like to be able to use them. I've run into all kinds of conflicts after adding the sources to my /etc/apt/sources.list and running synaptic to install.
Wired (http://wired.sourceforge.net/?sid=1) would be nice too, since it seems to be a close Cubase alternative.
I originally did a LOT of music production in the Window$ world and after a moment of serious morality, I grew tired of abusing the time and effort that all of the programmers put into their software that I simply can't afford. I love Ubuntu and I'd like to see it become as popular as any other platform out there.

[vininim]

I have had sucess with lots of music tools in linux using Gentoo, mainly because it was so modular that I could remove a lot of stuff withouth problems(believe me, even though a lot of gentoo users have those kinds of problems, I didn't :p ) and build need stuff from scratch. The fact is that a lot of stuff had to be done from cvs, and had a lot of problems (like csound 5.0 cvs depending on portaudio19 wich doesn't "exist" yet).
I think people could do this in Ubuntu(haven't played too much with aptitude/synaptic YET, but it seems very modular) and I don't think all problems are related to the Ubuntu kernel, but some stuff like realtime patchs could be looked up (even though I think they might break other stuff).
But for things to work like intended, we would need stable applications that can be made into packages and doesn't have obscure stuff as dependency. Some good applications fail miserable at this. :)
But hey, it's opensource, let the patchage start!

[Sanne]

For any musicians that know of a program called EnergyXT (one of my favorites), the developer (Jorgen) is going to be releasing EnergyXT-2 next year for both windoze and linux. I can't wait!!!
Hi futz, I know and love EnergyXT. I got it to run ok-ish under Wine, but only so far as to play with it occasionally so I won't forget how it works until release of the Linux version. The latency is too high for serious work under Wine, so I also can't wait for EnergyXT-2! :)

[nalmeth]

Give 'er man!

I don't use ardour, but I use Audacity, and to pick up my USB mic, I actually had to install the windows version and install it in Wine.

Linux comes with an array of music related apps, including tab programs, recording, editing, even a guitar tuner! I would like to see it grow even further.

I fully support you here bro

Agnula is debian based.. I couldn't get it to install all the packages, and still can't get it to, due to a libc6 dependecy problem!! ARG !!

[veratyr]

I'd love to see more support for audio apps in ubuntu. Right now I still use windows for adobe audition 1.5 as I have yet to get my soundcard (Audigy 2) to allow me to capture sound in ubuntu. I have installed and looked at ardour before but the "jackd" thing always seemed like a hassle to me. I was never able to try it out because I still can't get my soundcard to give me any capture options.

This also looks like a very promising piece of software http://bloodshed.net/wired/

[dolson]

Hey all. It's me again.

Everyone who took the time to email me, I've sent off all of your email addresses and names to Mark.

I haven't heard anything from him for a while, so I'm not sure what's going on... I hope he hasn't forgotten about this idea...

That said, I tried out DeMuDi, and I had some issues with Ardour in there too, so... I don't know. Maybe Ardour just sucks at this point in time, I'm not sure. But JACK is working for me in Ubuntu, but I haven't put the realtime module in yet, so I get XRUNs.

I don't think Ubuntu would have too much work to do to get decent audio support. Just needs more packages (FreeWheeling, LinuxSampler, just two I couldn't find in the repositories) and minimal configuration+testing.

Anyhow, I'll keep you all posted on what I hear back from Mark.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Thanx man.

This might end up having to be another community project. ie: We might have to do it ourselves. :)

[dolson]

You know what? I just spent all day screwing around with qJACKctl, Rosegarden, ZynAddSubFX, JACK Rack, Hydrogen, and Qsynth (FluidSynth), and I have to say, I had very few issues. Actually, none, except that Qsynth crashes if you click to restart the engine from the GUI (workaround is to say No, then manually exit and restart the GUI). I had one XRUN during many hours of toying around (I loaded the realtime module). And the cool thing is that I was using all USB audio hardware - a Plantronics headset and an E-MU Xboard49, no PCI or onboard sound cards at all. It's amazing!

I guess the only real problem I have is with Ardour... I get loud buzzes and bleeps and whatnot, even on Audigy2 hardware....

I'm thinking that Ubuntu is almost already there... Maybe just a meta-package to pull in all the great audio tools, a multimedia kernel or binary realtime module package, and maybe a helpful tutorial for users to follow for getting stuff up and running, and how it all works. A video tutorial for this would be great! Obviously there are some missing software that we need too, such as LinuxSampler and Freewheeling, etc.

If anyone knows how to fix the Ardour issues, that would be a great start. Although, I think it is not Ubuntu-specific, since I had similar, although fewer, issues with DeMuDi.

[hack_jammer1998]

WHOA! great work...

btw, have u also tried VST plug-ins? Can't wait to have it all working in ubuntu. go go go man!

I am currently trying out Musix GNU+Linux and it seems to work well in my laptop, there are some issues though during boot up but it can be worked around together with Ubuntu in the other partition. This is also debian based, maybe you can check site www.musix.org.ar and download the live CD. I'll also try the ardour and let you know if it has the same problem.

cheers!

[dolson]

I don't know anything about VSTs, except that the ones I've heard of are all DLL files, which is for Windows.

Chances are that Wine would need to be involved, and that is something I'm not particularly interested in.

[zukakog]

One of the only reasons that I keep Windows around is for Sonar 5. If I could do anything like that in Linux (Ubuntu), I'd love it!!!

[eriqk]

I don't know anything about VSTs, except that the ones I've heard of are all DLL files, which is for Windows.

Chances are that Wine would need to be involved, and that is something I'm not particularly interested in.

It does involve Wine, and it seems like a bit of a hassle, but it can be done.
Fellow KVRian Fake has an extensive how-to on his site: http://www.thefakedj.co.uk/vst_index.htm
There are some open source VSTs out there (a couple of DestroyFX (http://destroyfx.smartelectronix.com/)ones, and there are some NDC (http://www.niallmoody.com/ndcplugs/) plugins out there, too)
IANAcoder, so I wonder how hard it would be to port them.

Groet, Erik

[qbxk]

here here.

[djSeverin]

Alright, thanks for the replies and PMs and emails.

Now, my question is - is anyone available and willing to assist working on this?

Yes. What kind of assistance are you looking at?

[dolson]

Yes. What kind of assistance are you looking at?

I honestly don't know at this point... Mark is not replying to my emails, so he may have axed the idea.

But... I would be willing to work on something with a few community members, to fix the few issues that I see.

If anyone wants to help work on this, email me and we can set something up.

[detyabozhye]

This might be somewhat off topic, but I was wondering which is better: Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) or Sweep 0.9.0 (http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/)
Or a more acurate question would be: how do they compare? Which one is easier for Adobe Audition users? Which one is more professional? etc.

[dolson]

This might be somewhat off topic, but I was wondering which is better: Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) or Sweep 0.9.0 (http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/)
Or a more acurate question would be: how do they compare? Which one is easier for Adobe Audition users? Which one is more professional? etc.

I'm not sure what Adobe Audition is, but Audacity is a good multitrack editor, I use it for all of my music. Sweep looks like more of a virtual DJ thing, but I could be wrong.. I can't tell from any screenshots that it is a multitrack editor.

[23meg]

I'm not sure what Adobe Audition is, It's Adobe's rebranding of Cooledit after they bought it.

[dolson]

It's Adobe's rebranding of Cooledit after they bought it.

Sadly, I don't know what Cooledit is either. I didn't use Windows for very long, and never ended up using anything more than Goldwave/Multiquence for simple audio edits.

[MetalMusicAddict]

It's Adobe's rebranding of Cooledit after they bought it.
Wow really? Man. I didnt even know Adobe bought it. Funny, I know less and less about the windows world lately. :)

[23meg]

Wow really? Man. I didnt even know Adobe bought it. Funny, I know less and less about the windows world lately. :)
Now don't tell me you don't know that Sony bought Sonic Foundry and now we have "Sony Sound Forge 8.x" .. It was one of my favorite apps of all time; no longer.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Yea. I did know about that. I used Vegas Video.

Its weird, Adobe seems to be buying alot lately. Macromedia also right?

[Noremacam]

I'm a musician that likes taking music I hear from church and putting it to multitrack on my computer, changing it, and making it more contemporary. On windows I used a number of programs. I used Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 for recording, and Audio Phonics Guitar Tuner for tuning my guitar. I also found some apps for pitch editing, not that I ever need it, because I'm always singing in perfect tune :D

I have yet to find a guitar tuner that works in linux. Not just find one I like - just find one that works. I believe a year ago, I found one, managed to compile it, and launched it, and the interface didn't react regardless of my audio settings.

I've taken a break from the recording but it has bothering me, because I know that if I get started again, I have to put windows back on... sigh...

Audacity has never been able to play or record for me in linux. And when I used it in windows, I found the interface rather clunky, albeit sufficient.

I figure it couldn't hurt to ask. Does anyone know of a good guitar tuner in linux?

[EvitaErc]

Could you further encourage us linux noobs by listing down those Windoze apps that already has a counterpart in linux?

i.e. (Windoze : Linux)

Cakewalk Sonar :
Sound Forge :
Vegas :

would greatly appreciate the info...

[23meg]

Yea. I did know about that. I used Vegas Video.

Its weird, Adobe seems to be buying alot lately. Macromedia also right?
Unfortunately. Mergers are always bad news for the users, and the audio software industry has seen many such acquistions in the last few years, with Apple buying Emagic, Pinnacle and then Yamaha buying Steinberg, Sony buying Sonic Foundry, so on. Many people I know who have invested in audio software are fed up with endless upgrade cycles resulting in new bugfests and features coming and going at the mercy of companies. I see a bright future for open source audio.

[detyabozhye]

OK, thx. I guess I'll just stick with Audacity for now.

[chrome]

Saw this at digg.com, interesting(ish) discussion, that I thought was a bit relevant to the thread...
Linux for the musician (http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_for_the_Musician%2C_Musix)
With a link to Musix (http://www.musix.org.ar/) who have got together a bunch of music programs.

I'm a total newbie to Ubuntu and Linux myself, and pc music in general, though I have/had been using Audacity on windows for a couple of months. Great to read the thread on this and see all the options.

[dolson]

Saw this at digg.com, interesting(ish) discussion, that I thought was a bit relevant to the thread...
Linux for the musician (http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_for_the_Musician%2C_Musix)
With a link to Musix (http://www.musix.org.ar/) who have got together a bunch of music programs.

I'm a total newbie to Ubuntu and Linux myself, and pc music in general, though I have/had been using Audacity on windows for a couple of months. Great to read the thread on this and see all the options.

That thread was kinda boring and predictable. Let the Windows users use Windows and their commercial software.

I have nothing against using commercial software, but I refuse to buy Windows or a Mac to do so at this point. Some day, yes, I do want to buy a Mac. But that's in the distant future.

Until then, I think the best thing said in that thread was that an artist can do great work with anything. People need to learn how to be better musicians or music engineers rather than fix everything in software. What will you do when you go to perform live, and you don't have the pitch correction or sample libraries?

All that said, I have had bad luck with Ardour thus far. Someone needs to fix it, and then I think Ubuntu is close to being there. If someone here is using Ardour on Ubuntu with JACK with NO ISSUES, please post how you did it. I always get the buzzing. And I know I am not doing something wrong, because I followed the Ardour tutorial.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Unfortunately. Mergers are always bad news for the users, and the audio software industry has seen many such acquistions in the last few years, with Apple buying Emagic, Pinnacle and then Yamaha buying Steinberg, Sony buying Sonic Foundry, so on. Many people I know who have invested in audio software are fed up with endless upgrade cycles resulting in new bugfests and features coming and going at the mercy of companies. I see a bright future for open source audio.
Speaking of mergers/acquisitions Avid/DigiDesign buying M-Audio. I hope their cards dont change. I hear they have great support in Audour. I need to wait till the end of the year to build my recording rig. I hope by then Ubuntu fixes their Ardour or Demidi comes out with a new release.

All that said, I have had bad luck with Ardour thus far. Someone needs to fix it, and then I think Ubuntu is close to being there. If someone here is using Ardour on Ubuntu with JACK with NO ISSUES, please post how you did it. I always get the buzzing. And I know I am not doing something wrong, because I followed the Ardour tutorial.
Im hoping Demudi has a new release soon. Do you know its release cycle?

[MetalMusicAddict]

Actually Agnula might have hit a roadblock (http://lurker.agnula.org/thread/20060118.123032.6a726fcc.en.html#20060118.123032.6 a726fcc).
Kinda sux cause the rig I was gonna build was gonna be built around Demudi.

Also looks like Ardour is getting updated to GTK2. HERES (http://lists.ardour.org/pipermail/ardour-dev-ardour.org/2005-December/002906.html) the blurb I found while looking through their lists.

[dolson]

Actually Agnula might have hit a roadblock (http://lurker.agnula.org/thread/20060118.123032.6a726fcc.en.html#20060118.123032.6 a726fcc).

Now would be a great time for Canonical to step in and fill the void - possibly take the DeMuDi project under its wing, put some money into it, and integrate it with Ubuntu. I hope Mark is reading this... Cuz I can't tell if he's reading my emails.

Does anyone want to work on a Wiki or something with me to get Ubuntu working well, have a good resource for others, and possibly to try and figure out what is wrong with Ardour?

[Noremacam]

I have good news for people looking for a good guitar tuner for linux. With the new version of wine (ver 9.6), you can use audio phonics guitar tuner flawlessly in wine(after making sure your mic settings are good).

I used it to tune my twelve string. It's a bit slower than on windows, but it works. My computer is a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4, so I don't know how it'll work on slower machines. Works great to me though.

http://www.bigrockeng.com/apgt.html

[C J Pro]

I am a orchestral composer and utilize Sibelius 4 Professional, Garritan Personal Orchestra, Cubasis VE, Kontakt Player, and Audacity to make my music. But unfortunately, I have only been able to install one of these in Ubuntu. Sibelius 4, GPO, Overture, Cubasis, and Kontakt crap out at about 95% of their installations when running from Wine. I'm gonna try these again tomorrow and see if I can get them working. If they work perfectly, all I'll need is a printer that works in Ubuntu (Lexmark X85 and HP PSC 1350 on a networked PC...both don't work amazingly O_o) and I'll finally be able to ditch Windows! Of course, I do have to do some video editing with Adobe and Alias software...but that's a different story.

[October]

All that said, I have had bad luck with Ardour thus far. Someone needs to fix it, and then I think Ubuntu is close to being there. If someone here is using Ardour on Ubuntu with JACK with NO ISSUES, please post how you did it. I always get the buzzing. And I know I am not doing something wrong, because I followed the Ardour tutorial.


First off, KEEP EMAILING MARK, please! :D I've read this *entire* thread and am posting because I think THIS is where the most fertile grounds for planting the pro-audio linux seeds is to be found, sincerely. Also, I'm a fairly experienced Demudi user and yes, Demudi now appears to be in some trouble. I agree that it is the perfect stray-dog project for Canonical. You can tell Mark I said that, and not knowing any of you, I can claim that there are few who have made linux-pro-audio (as a user! There are some great programmers out there too!) their personal quest to the extent I have.

To answer your specific question, YES, I have had Ardour performing flawlessly. In fact most linux audio apps work well under a default Ubuntu (actually I run Kubuntu 5.10 with the latest KDE 3.5)... music apps aren't the real problem! realtime kernel access for normal users is the problem, with full alsa support (see snd-seq problem below). All else aside I would suspect your soundcard (didn't you say it was USB? Also there are known issues with Audigy2's under linux if that helps any... spend a little money on an Maudio Delta! Ebay has them cheap.)

I recently dropped close to US$200 on FLstudio Producer (and Sytrus 2) and while it is excellent software I prefer my studio to be linux based... For me linux comes first, music second.

Here is a screenshot of Ardour, Jamin, Qjackctl and a little icing. Note the "RT" symbol next to CPU usage in Qjackctl and the lack of xruns (warning! freaking huge file if you click the thumbnail!):
http://illhostit.com/thumbnails/9545350618129392/snapshot2.jpg illhostit.com (http://illhostit.com/files/9545350618129392/snapshot2.jpg)

Not all is golden though. I've lost access to my M-Audio Midisport 4x4 and enabling it with modprobe snd-seq kills my realtime access for some reason, something I've never had a problem with in Demudi. The details involved are lengthy to post here... google for "ubuntu breezy realtime" or feel free to check my blog (http://oktyabr.blogspot.com) if you want all the nitty-gritty as that is where I tend to collect all my linux/audio experiences and thoughts.

To those who want to get up and running in a hurry all you have to do is apt-get install qjackctl and all the suggested packages that go along with it... then start "qjackctl" as ROOT/sudo (not what I am doing in the above screenshot, however). This is inherently DANGEROUS to do and if you don't fully understand why... don't do it! I take no responsibility for what you do to your OS or your machine! ;)

VSTi's in linux? Yup, those work too, at least some of them, some of the time, and I've only been successful under Demudi 1.2.1. This in itself requires installation of the custom DSSI packages (http://willem.engen.nl/debian/) (if you have the space I highly recommend mirroring these files for posterity!) on a debian system that already has realtime pre-emptive patches applied and currently working (Demudi 1.2.1 and possibly 1.30-rc1). This is a very similar setup to what is used in the commercial Studio To Go (http://www.ferventsoftware.com/) live CD and is well worth keeping an eye on, as sooner or later realtime DSSI libraries and apps will end up in Ubuntu or vanilla Debian anyway.

When VSTi's DO work they work great! And I've had a lot of fun with windoze VSTi's (the "i" stands for "instrument" as opposed to regular VST's which are primarily inline filters and effects), especially Crystal VSTi (http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/) which I would happily pay for if it wasn't free. But the real gold at the end of the wine+vsti rainbow is the fact that there is literally over one hundred VSTi's to be had for FREE (http://www.kvraudio.com/) and many quality commercial ones too... in fact even FLstudio can run as a VSTi plugin! (Would love to see that in linux!)

Primary music apps that I would love to see in Ubuntu? Outside of a kernel and alsa combination that supported realtime-lsm for regular users "out of the box" (including realtime snd-seq!!!!) my personal list is short: (in no particular order)

All the DSSI debian packages (http://willem.engen.nl/debian/dists/etch/dssi/binary-i386/) including Rosegarden4-dssi

Freewheeling - awesome "live" looper
Ardour - multitrack software DAW. Maybe CVS version too?
Ardour-exchange - software to share Ardour sessions between musicians, remotely
AMS - ("Alsa Modular Synth") soft synth with some interesting sounds
Amsynth - two osc soft synth
QMidiArp - blows away the arpeggiators in most of the $1000+ synths I've played
Rosegarden4 - already exists in Ubuntu... need the dssi compatible version!
MusE - sort of a cross between Ardour and Rosegarden
Qjackctl and dependancies (already in Ubuntu)
JAMin - Excellent mastering suite! *essential*!
Jack-rack - effects rack, makes use of LADSPA plugins
LADSPA - all the plugins!!
Freqtweak - Realtime FFT filter suite
Audacity - CVS version rocks my world
Specimen - awesome wav -> midi assigner
Seq24 - fun midi looping app, particularly useful for live performances
Zynaddsubfx - great soft synth
Hydrogen - best drumkit this side of Redmond
Qsynth - GUI frontend to fluidsynth, a dependancy... loads and plays win soundfonts!
Swami - soundfont editor for linux
PD & friends - too much to list here
Sooperlooper - pro-level loop sampler.
Om - very capable modular synth package
Freecycle - loop splitter worth it's code in gold


Think that list is too long? There are many I missed! Long story made short, if linux-pro-audio was a religion then this would be it's bible. (http://www.linux-sound.org/one-page.html)

Oh, my hardware specs:

AMD64 3500+ venice
ASUS A8NSLI Premium
2x1024 OCZ Platinum 400DDR
M-Audio Delta 44
M-Audio Midisport 4x4
+ a couple of keyboards via midi

[glassgloss]

as I am just a newbie, my voice won't carry very far... however I found this thread and though I confess I didn't read it all... mostly because I am not up to date on what is being discussed, I think it is ESSENTIAL for OS's to package a GarageBandesqe Pro Audio Recording interface that fully supports VSI's

If Ubuntu was the first to do this-- it would get an amazing amount of publicity to the geekiest audio minds of this planet through online reviews, massive magazine coverage, and quite simply--as any audiophile will admit--ubuntu would be one more process in producing or expirimenting with prefect fidelity.


Now that I said my piece--

would any of you be so kind as to sum up this thread in laymens terms, yet detailed enough to better argue my point :)

[October]

Now that I said my piece--

would any of you be so kind as to sum up this thread in laymens terms, yet detailed enough to better argue my point :)

Sure and welcome to the forums!

Basically low-latency pro-audio work is still a bit of a work-in-progress so to speak. There have been several moves towards it in other distros but the capacity to perform serious audio work is something that has been lacking in Ubuntu, hence this thread and others like it.

This thread in particular, and I am really not who should be saying this, was started as a sort of petition to the Ubuntu powers that be (Mark Shuttleworth in particular) as a collective way to show our numbers and desire for Ubuntu to offer an easy way to perform multimedia tasks that up to this time have been rather difficult to do.

Key among these desired multimedia tasks is the ability to work with "realtime" kernel access as a *regular user*. This can be done currently, to an extent, as root/sudo but this is less than the optimal solution for several reasons. Building the kernel access for normal users and getting it to cooperate with other aspects of Ubuntu in a nice way into a is still a bit tricky, even for the most experienced of us. It is certainly far from the sort of "out of the box" support we would like to see.

"Realtime" access basically allows your sound card to work with the kernel (the heart of any linux, indeed any OS) much more efficiently than without it, producing a much lower amount of "latency" (the accumulative *delay* between the sound you are creating and the sound you hear coming out of the speakers) which is especially important for recording multiple tracks over each other and in high-fidelity editing/mastering. In the windoze world similar low-latency work can be done with high-grade sound cards and usually ASIO drivers.

Further more would be the addition of more applications to the standard Ubuntu repositories targeted at serious audio creation such as VSTi compatibility, etc.

Currently there is no real linux equivelant for Band-in-a-Box, at least as far as auto-accompaniment goes, but it's getting there and there ARE several apps (available to linux in general, if not specifically to Ubuntu) to be found that likewise have no true Window's counterpart... Freewheeling, Seq24, and Om as examples.

Take a look at http://www.linux-sound.org to get a better idea of what's out there. :D

[October]

Ooops! Duplicate post! Sorry :)

[bskov]

I'm on....

Playing a lot of music and would love some music tools.

just noticed:

how can post #109 be posted one year before post #108 :confused: :confused: :confused: -- just wondered.

[hack_jammer1998]

I'm on....

Playing a lot of music and would love some music tools.

just noticed:

how can post #109 be posted one year before post #108 :confused: :confused: :confused: -- just wondered.

bskov, you are referrring to the "JOIN DATE", actually this is not the post date :)

[Deniz Taygan]

I wonder if your name have something to do with Taygan

[dolson]

First off, KEEP EMAILING MARK, please! :D I've read this *entire* thread and am posting because I think THIS is where the most fertile grounds for planting the pro-audio linux seeds is to be found, sincerely. Also, I'm a fairly experienced Demudi user and yes, Demudi now appears to be in some trouble. I agree that it is the perfect stray-dog project for Canonical. You can tell Mark I said that, and not knowing any of you, I can claim that there are few who have made linux-pro-audio (as a user! There are some great programmers out there too!) their personal quest to the extent I have.

To answer your specific question, YES, I have had Ardour performing flawlessly. In fact most linux audio apps work well under a default Ubuntu (actually I run Kubuntu 5.10 with the latest KDE 3.5)... music apps aren't the real problem! realtime kernel access for normal users is the problem, with full alsa support (see snd-seq problem below). All else aside I would suspect your soundcard (didn't you say it was USB? Also there are known issues with Audigy2's under linux if that helps any... spend a little money on an Maudio Delta! Ebay has them cheap.)

I recently dropped close to US$200 on FLstudio Producer (and Sytrus 2) and while it is excellent software I prefer my studio to be linux based... For me linux comes first, music second.

Here is a screenshot of Ardour, Jamin, Qjackctl and a little icing. Note the "RT" symbol next to CPU usage in Qjackctl and the lack of xruns (warning! freaking huge file if you click the thumbnail!):
http://illhostit.com/thumbnails/9545350618129392/snapshot2.jpg illhostit.com (http://illhostit.com/files/9545350618129392/snapshot2.jpg)

Not all is golden though. I've lost access to my M-Audio Midisport 4x4 and enabling it with modprobe snd-seq kills my realtime access for some reason, something I've never had a problem with in Demudi. The details involved are lengthy to post here... google for "ubuntu breezy realtime" or feel free to check my blog (http://oktyabr.blogspot.com) if you want all the nitty-gritty as that is where I tend to collect all my linux/audio experiences and thoughts.

To those who want to get up and running in a hurry all you have to do is apt-get install qjackctl and all the suggested packages that go along with it... then start "qjackctl" as ROOT/sudo (not what I am doing in the above screenshot, however). This is inherently DANGEROUS to do and if you don't fully understand why... don't do it! I take no responsibility for what you do to your OS or your machine! ;)

VSTi's in linux? Yup, those work too, at least some of them, some of the time, and I've only been successful under Demudi 1.2.1. This in itself requires installation of the custom DSSI packages (http://willem.engen.nl/debian/) (if you have the space I highly recommend mirroring these files for posterity!) on a debian system that already has realtime pre-emptive patches applied and currently working (Demudi 1.2.1 and possibly 1.30-rc1). This is a very similar setup to what is used in the commercial Studio To Go (http://www.ferventsoftware.com/) live CD and is well worth keeping an eye on, as sooner or later realtime DSSI libraries and apps will end up in Ubuntu or vanilla Debian anyway.

When VSTi's DO work they work great! And I've had a lot of fun with windoze VSTi's (the "i" stands for "instrument" as opposed to regular VST's which are primarily inline filters and effects), especially Crystal VSTi (http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/) which I would happily pay for if it wasn't free. But the real gold at the end of the wine+vsti rainbow is the fact that there is literally over one hundred VSTi's to be had for FREE (http://www.kvraudio.com/) and many quality commercial ones too... in fact even FLstudio can run as a VSTi plugin! (Would love to see that in linux!)

Primary music apps that I would love to see in Ubuntu? Outside of a kernel and alsa combination that supported realtime-lsm for regular users "out of the box" (including realtime snd-seq!!!!) my personal list is short: (in no particular order)

All the DSSI debian packages (http://willem.engen.nl/debian/dists/etch/dssi/binary-i386/) including Rosegarden4-dssi

Freewheeling - awesome "live" looper
Ardour - multitrack software DAW. Maybe CVS version too?
Ardour-exchange - software to share Ardour sessions between musicians, remotely
AMS - ("Alsa Modular Synth") soft synth with some interesting sounds
Amsynth - two osc soft synth
QMidiArp - blows away the arpeggiators in most of the $1000+ synths I've played
Rosegarden4 - already exists in Ubuntu... need the dssi compatible version!
MusE - sort of a cross between Ardour and Rosegarden
Qjackctl and dependancies (already in Ubuntu)
JAMin - Excellent mastering suite! *essential*!
Jack-rack - effects rack, makes use of LADSPA plugins
LADSPA - all the plugins!!
Freqtweak - Realtime FFT filter suite
Audacity - CVS version rocks my world
Specimen - awesome wav -> midi assigner
Seq24 - fun midi looping app, particularly useful for live performances
Zynaddsubfx - great soft synth
Hydrogen - best drumkit this side of Redmond
Qsynth - GUI frontend to fluidsynth, a dependancy... loads and plays win soundfonts!
Swami - soundfont editor for linux
PD & friends - too much to list here
Sooperlooper - pro-level loop sampler.
Om - very capable modular synth package
Freecycle - loop splitter worth it's code in gold


Think that list is too long? There are many I missed! Long story made short, if linux-pro-audio was a religion then this would be it's bible. (http://www.linux-sound.org/one-page.html)

Oh, my hardware specs:

AMD64 3500+ venice
ASUS A8NSLI Premium
2x1024 OCZ Platinum 400DDR
M-Audio Delta 44
M-Audio Midisport 4x4
+ a couple of keyboards via midi

Okay, you have a lot of great input to this thread, and I thank you!

Firstly, the realtime module is super easy to get working. I know that you already know, but here is how I did it. A super short tutorial for others here that read this thread:

$ sudo apt-get install realtime-lsm realtime-lsm-source gcc-3.4
$ sudo module-assistant
Select PREPARE, hit Enter at each prompt until you're back at the blue screen.
Select SELECT, scroll down to "realtime-lsm" and press Space, then Tab, then Enter.
Select BUILD, select Yes when prompted to install module.
Hit Escape twice.
$ sudo /etc/init.d/realtime start

There, that's it.

Next, my sound card is not USB, I don't know where you got that from. It's an Audigy2, which you later said in your post. I don't know what Audigy2 issues you are referring to. Could you provide some links so I can read? Also, I have a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1. Does it have the same problems as an Audigy2? I am upset by this, as I do not have an income right now, recently was laid off, and shortly before I lost my job, I bought that Audigy2. The M-Audio card cost too much for me at the time then, so now it is very out of the question at the present time.

Okay, moving on. I'm glad Ardour works great for you. That makes no sense that it doesn't work right for me. I doubt it is my sound card. Everything else works perfectly. BUT, I am not using KDE, I am using Gnome. Possibly it could be something to do with that, I don't know. I was thinking about setting up another user on my system for studio work which would use XFce instead of Gnome. Not sure that it would help. I am still puzzled.

Okay, next. Your screenshot shows Audacity working in harmony with JACK. I take it that you compiled the CVS with portaudio support?

Now, your list of audio apps.

Ardour - already in Ubuntu. Not CVS version... And I think that if Ubuntu wants to be stable, which it does, then CVS isn't really an option in most cases.
Ardour-exchange - I think this is in Ubuntu too. I could be wrong. I wouldn't use it either way.
AMS - I swear I saw this in Synaptic in Ubuntu..
MusE - I think this is in Ubuntu.
JAMin - Already in Ubuntu.
Jack-rack - Already in Ubuntu.
LADSPA - A lot of these are already in Ubuntu. I think a couple packages are missing.
Audacity - CVS is great, I know, but stability and reliability is key, I think...
Zynaddsubfx - Already in Ubuntu.
Hydrogen - Already in Ubuntu.
Qsynth - Already in Ubuntu.
Swami - Pretty sure it's in Ubuntu.

The other apps, I don't know, either I never heard of them, or I know they aren't in Ubuntu because I checked.

[October]

Okay, you have a lot of great input to this thread, and I thank you!

Firstly, the realtime module is super easy to get working. I know that you already know, but here is how I did it. A super short tutorial for others here that read this thread:

$ sudo apt-get install realtime-lsm realtime-lsm-source gcc-3.4
$ sudo module-assistant
Select PREPARE, hit Enter at each prompt until you're back at the blue screen.
Select SELECT, scroll down to "realtime-lsm" and press Space, then Tab, then Enter.
Select BUILD, select Yes when prompted to install module.
Hit Escape twice.
$ sudo /etc/init.d/realtime start

There, that's it.

Sounds pretty good, although I had to install the kernel headers too... Here is how I did it:

sudo -i

apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

apt-get install module-assistant

apt-get install jackd libjack0.80.0-dev qjackctl gcc-3.4

m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a get realtime-lsm
m-a get realtime-lsm-source
m-a build realtime-lsm-source
m-a install realtime-lsm

Next, my sound card is not USB, I don't know where you got that from. It's an Audigy2, which you later said in your post. I don't know what Audigy2 issues you are referring to. Could you provide some links so I can read?

Sorry about the USB thing... I DID read this entire thread and I guess some of the posts got muddled together a bit in my memory! Hmmm... apparantly the latest version of ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/index.php?vendor=vendor-Creative_Labs#matrix) has most Audigy 2 chips working correctly. I know that I've personally had problems with an Audigy 2 and Demudi 1.2.1 (a distro that generally excells in serious audio work!)... replaced it with a Live! Value card and the troubles went away. Searching the archives of both the linux audio user and the [a-users] (A/Demudi) mailing list archives should stir up some stories posted by other people as well. If you aren't a subscriber to the Linux Audio User (http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/index.php) mailing list I would advise joining if your trouble requires more technical help.

Also, I have a SoundBlaster Live! 5.1. Does it have the same problems as an Audigy2? I am upset by this, as I do not have an income right now, recently was laid off, and shortly before I lost my job, I bought that Audigy2. The M-Audio card cost too much for me at the time then, so now it is very out of the question at the present time.

I've made lots of music with a Live 5.1 Platinum in the past and while latency is no where near what I can get with my Delta it was pretty much a trouble-free card. Like the Audigy advanced configuration and mixing can be a REAL pain! If you play with any of the advanced config options be SURE you back up a working alsa-config first and take notes or screenshots or whatever to help you backtrace your steps. If you aren't sure what I'm talking about install/run "alsamixergui" and run the slider to the far right. If you see a bunch of "send routing"s like on my Platinum you will begin to get the picture... I also noticed a good deal of sound quality issues if these weren't set "just so" and it took hours and hours of playing around with them before it worked the way I thought it should. Intuitive they were not. Ease of configuration is one thing that got me to purchase the Delta44.

I'm assuming that your sound issues don't correlate with xruns in qjackctl?

Okay, moving on. I'm glad Ardour works great for you. That makes no sense that it doesn't work right for me. I doubt it is my sound card. Everything else works perfectly. BUT, I am not using KDE, I am using Gnome. Possibly it could be something to do with that, I don't know. I was thinking about setting up another user on my system for studio work which would use XFce instead of Gnome. Not sure that it would help. I am still puzzled.

Shouldn't be KDE or Gnome specific. I've built similar realtime systems on vanilla Ubuntu as well and only recently switched to Kubuntu because I found the idea of KDE 3.5 pretty tantalizing :D Also Demudi uses Gnome as it's default desktop and offers Fluxbox as a light-weight alternative. I've not only made music in both of these but also XFCE4 as well which I installed myself.

Okay, next. Your screenshot shows Audacity working in harmony with JACK. I take it that you compiled the CVS with portaudio support?

Actually that screenshot is deceptive. It's just plain old Audacity included to fill up some empty desktop space (if you read my blog (http://oktyabr.blogspot.com) you know I recently upgraded to twinview with two monitors... that screenshot was primarily to demonstrate how this can be useful with linux audio apps), but yet, CVS with portaudio is obtainable... the question is... why? Sure it would be a nice feature to have but with Ardour working correctly (sorry!) or even Jack Time-Machine you really don't need jack in Audacity to make recordings. (Although it IS my primary sound file editor!) For simple jack compliant playback I prefer either XMMS with the jackasyn plugin or somaplayer which also does nice stuff with jack.

Now, your list of audio apps.

Ardour - already in Ubuntu. Not CVS version... And I think that if Ubuntu wants to be stable, which it does, then CVS isn't really an option in most cases.
Ardour-exchange - I think this is in Ubuntu too. I could be wrong. I wouldn't use it either way.
AMS - I swear I saw this in Synaptic in Ubuntu..
MusE - I think this is in Ubuntu.
JAMin - Already in Ubuntu.
Jack-rack - Already in Ubuntu.
LADSPA - A lot of these are already in Ubuntu. I think a couple packages are missing.
Audacity - CVS is great, I know, but stability and reliability is key, I think...
Zynaddsubfx - Already in Ubuntu.
Hydrogen - Already in Ubuntu.
Qsynth - Already in Ubuntu.
Swami - Pretty sure it's in Ubuntu.

The other apps, I don't know, either I never heard of them, or I know they aren't in Ubuntu because I checked.

Yeah, I know most are in Ubuntu but they seem to be placed there rather hapahazardly, especially in regards to jack versions. It would be nice to see a serious program to get pro-audio apps coordinated and updated to latest versions with all dependancies. But I know you share that desire too :)

As for the DSSI libraries and compliant versions (Rosegarden4-dssi in particular) these are tools that MUST be included in a major distribution (Ubuntu!) to really make waves in the Windoze pro-audio world. Dave Phillips has an excellent writeup (http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8519/print) on some of the features including a screenshot of the Crystal VSTi (http://www.greenoak.com/crystal/about.html) (a superb, free WINDOWS soft-synth, better than many that cost money!) running under linux via dssi-jack.

Native plugins are also starting to appear including Whysynth DSSI (http://home.jps.net/~musound/whysynth.html), a very powerful softsynth (with GUI) comparible to many windoze VSTis.

I don't have DSSI working under Ubuntu yet and it's not for lack of trying. The rest of the apps in my list are sort of what I want if I could only have X number of audio applications and most of them are running on my Kubuntu hybrid as I type this, either found in other Ubuntu repositories, converted with alien or built from scratch.

Last note... your sound problems... do you have an on-board sound chip enabled too? Some people have better luck than others getting two chips to run at the same time under linux but if it was my machine the first thing I would do is reboot and disable any onboard sound devices and then run "alsaconf" again. Maybe even "sudo dpkg-reconfigure alsa"?

[October]

As for the name I wonder what the African word(s) for "music" or "make music for humanity" are?


P.S. You have the same problems with vanilla Ardour and ardour-gtk-i686?

[dolson]

I am pretty sure I disabled the onboard sound in the BIOS.

I remember posting about using a USB headset for making music now, so that's probably where you got that from. But I only did that once, on a second machine.

If I could record my Ardour issue, I would. I have the same issue on two PCs with two different sound cards.

Currently, I use Audacity for all of my music. It's a great multitrack editor, if a bit slow.

[onesojourner]

you can count me in on this also. I know of at least a couple people who I could get to switch.

[October]

I'm not sure I understand the problem you are having...

Try these steps, if you haven't already...

Make SURE you have "qjackctl" running first, realtime patch or not. Then try ardour from a command line. Post any problems.

Try the same thing as above as sudo/root. Any difference?

Audacity is quite capable for basic multitrack but once you get Ardour running properly (and I'm sure you will!) you won't use for that much anymore, I'm betting.

Please supply as much detail as possible and I'll help you get it up and running if I can.

[dolson]

Ardour "runs" fine. The problem is that I get a lot of buzzes and crap like that. I had found a tutorial somewhere, can't find it now, that I was following.

Yes, I did have JACK running. As I said, everything else works perfectly fine (Rosegarden, ZynAddSubFX, Hydrogen, all working fine through JACK, with or without Realtime).

The problem is, in Ardour, I open a template of 4 tracks or whatever it is. Then I record onto one of them. Great. Then if I hit Play to listen to it, I get a loud Buzzing overtop of my recorded sound, but it's NOT in the recorded sound track. I hit stop, and the Buzzing remains, but maybe it changed pitch. If I hit Play again, it changes again. Stop, it changes again. The Buzzing that I hear is loud and impossible to work over. And it remains until I exit Ardour. The most I've been able to do is record 4 separate tracks, just short 30-second clips to test, before the Buzzing started. I can record an audio version of what happens, possibly.

[Dr.Who]

Hi, maybe its a routing problem. Ardour and soundcard are connected with the virtual cables of Jack and its easy to create virtual feedback with not so virtual noise by patching the wrong in and outputs.

[hectorC]

Hello,

I'm glad about finding this thread! I just went through all the posts and I would like to share my experience regarding Linux-Music. I'm a music composer (mainly "classical" electroacoustic music) and I've been using Ubuntu Breezy since its release day. Before that I used Fedora+Planet CCRMA and Agnula. In between I tried with Ubuntu Hoary but the latency and drop-outs (x runs) in the audio made it completely unusable (even with the realtime-lsm patch). With Breezy there is a different story: I use Ardour (last 0.99 stable compiled by me), Csound5 and Rosegarden with no problems (beside the expected bugs and/or limitations). I think an Ubuntu Audio workstation might be completely possible. The software is out there and is just a matter of building it and packing it for Ubuntu. The only problem I find is having a very low latency kernel.

Up to now the stock Ubuntu kernel plus the realtime-lsm module allows me to have a latency as low as 11.6 ms, completely stable, or 5.8 ms with very little x-runs (that happen in combination with high graphic activity, i.e. a complicated screen saver, redrawing a complex window). With Agnula I was able to go as low as 2ms completely stable and with no interference from the graphical activity.

I'm not sure what is the real state of the Ubuntu kernel right now but I guess the key difference is in the Agnula kernel having the realtime preempt patch by Ingo Molnar. I don't know how much of this patch has gone into the official Linux kernel in the latest versions and how well the coming Drapper kernel will perform but in order to get this patch applied to the official Breezy kernel might mean to loose some of the functionalities that make Ubuntu so wonderful as a desktop system. The Ubuntu kernel is one of the mos patched kernels in the Linux-distro world. I think it would be almost impossible to have a 100% Ubuntu kernel plus full realtime preemption so the solution might be about finding a balance (a kernel with complete preemption and almost all the functionalities).

I have some experience compiling and using kernels and audio applications and I fully support the Open Source idea so I would like to offer my help in getting Ubuntu to be a good option for professional audio.

Thank you!


Hector Centeno

[dolson]

Hi, maybe its a routing problem. Ardour and soundcard are connected with the virtual cables of Jack and its easy to create virtual feedback with not so virtual noise by patching the wrong in and outputs.
I thought of that, but the way it happens seems to be far too random for it to be the case. However, I don't really know much about Ardour, but JACK and the connection patch bay was easy to figure out, and I got Rosegarden working easily to drive Zyn and Qsynth and Hydrogen as well. If you have some tips for me to follow, what to check in Ardour, etc, then let me know, and I will try it. I'm not optimistic at this point though.

I have set up a Wiki. If you would like to help me out, please PM or email me adolson@gmail.com.

ALSO. I just spent a couple minutes to make a launcher application for music apps. I called it Ubuntu Studio, for now. Here's a screenshot of it.

http://linux.rivironline.com/ubuntustudio.jpg

It remembers which apps you checked off to make it convenient for you. Also, it checks that JACK is running before launching apps.

[October]

Nice looking app!

Yeah, jack connections would have been my second guess with maybe an open mic somewhere getting feedback.

By default Ardour connects LOTS of things in jack. It's best if you disconnect ALL of them and then make your connections one by one as you need them... I usually (but not always) patch audio1 -> Master1->PCM OUT (or Jamin first). Drop the connections for audition connections too.

As Ardour is a gtk app I have trouble finding a reason why you would be having so many problems with it, especially in gnome. You DID try the 686 version too, correct? And the same sound trouble manifests both as user and when ardour is started sudo/root?

[snoop]

Wow, I cannot believe that i found this post only now! I have been looking for a while as to how everything works with all the music programs in linux. Nothing seems to work. Rosegarden and jack (qjackctl) and fluidsynth seem to be doing weird stuff and not working.

Email sent. Hope there is some progress soon, I would love to use music programs in ubuntu.

[dolson]

Nice looking app!

Yeah, jack connections would have been my second guess with maybe an open mic somewhere getting feedback.

By default Ardour connects LOTS of things in jack. It's best if you disconnect ALL of them and then make your connections one by one as you need them... I usually (but not always) patch audio1 -> Master1->PCM OUT (or Jamin first). Drop the connections for audition connections too.

As Ardour is a gtk app I have trouble finding a reason why you would be having so many problems with it, especially in gnome. You DID try the 686 version too, correct? And the same sound trouble manifests both as user and when ardour is started sudo/root?


Yes, I tried the 686 version only.

I know for a fact that it is not feedback. This was a buzzing sound, not feedback. I use a mixer and always lower my levels on all channels that I am not using, and the mic is one I rarely use.

Now, onto the good news.

Hector sent me a .deb of Ardour 0.99 that he made with Checkinstall, and I installed that. Then, instead of making the default connections of 4 tracks like I always did, I simply made it all manual, with no connections. I connected the out of Zyn to the in of track 1 in Ardour, and the out of Ardour to the ni of JAMin. And I did a few play, stop, rewind, play, stop, rewinds, and so far, no issues whatsoever!

I am nearly convinced that my issue is with the particular version of Ardour in the Ubuntu repositories...

However, I am getting Xruns, even with RT.

I think that it is now time to look at getting a custom kernel. I would rather that all this work be done by Ubuntu/Canonical officially, but I think Mark is leaving me high and dry.

Again, I would love help on working on a wiki for this stuff. I started but I really don't know much of what I'm doing with TikiWiki. If anyone would like to help me, please let me know.

Hector and I chatted on MSN for a while, and we're going to work together, and we would love to have other people help out.

First things first, how to make proper debian packages... If anyone has experience with this, and can sum it up easily without tons of reading, please pass that on to us.

Next, how to patch the existing Ubuntu kernel to have the realtime abilities, and make a drop-in replacement for the kernels that are already there, without using the module.

Also, I would like to have short, cut-to-the-chase illustrated tutorials so everyone can know how to set up their home Ubuntu Studio.

If you share my vision and want to help, contact me. October, if you would be willing, you have a lot of knowledge.

If TikiWiki is bad, then we can use whatever else is out there... I'm open to suggestions. I am installing MediaWiki, just to try it... I have used it as a user before, and it seems better, somehow.

[October]

Count me in but I'm really not that technically skilled. I tend to have lots of free time in the winter months and I like the challenges linux can provide me. But I don't normally rely on accumulated knowledge to solve them... I am more a "try this and see if it breaks", bulldoze my way through a bunch of google results sort of problem solver. Still, this is a cause I am whole heartedly in support of and if I can help, I will.

Welcome Hector!

Compiling kernels the debian way:
http://www.holtmann.org/linux/kernel/debian.html
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/system/kernel-pkg.html
http://www.debianuniverse.com/readonline/chapter/21

Roll your own .debs:
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/336
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8047723203.html
http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/Building_Packages0.shtml

debian realtime-lsm:
http://packages.debian.org/testing/base/realtime-lsm-source
http://www.muse-sequencer.org/wiki/index.php/Realtime-lsm_module
http://www.agnula.org/Members/tormod/demudi-kernels/view

custom kernels for ubuntu:
http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Kernel_Compilation
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelHowto


As coincidence might have it I am also having to learn tikiwiki (haven't been working with it near as much as I should be!) so I'm interested in that part too. I think it's a great idea.

[dolson]

Great! I am actually in favor of MediaWiki. It works a lot better... I've made more progress in the last hour than I have in the past 2 days on TikiWiki. It is very easy to use, and pretty easy for me to administer.

We're off to a good start, I think. I'll PM you the link to the wiki in a sec.

[hectorC]

Thank you for your welcome.

I tried to build a kernel in Ubuntu, with the realtime preempt patch by Ingo Molnar, not long time ago. I wasn't successful mainly because of the many patches that have to be applied beside this one. I didn't pursue it any longer than a couple of tries specially after talking with someone from the Ubuntu development team in the IRC channel. He basically told me that it would be impossible to apply all the Ubuntu patches on top of the realtime one (you get errors at the patching stage). So I've been thinking that we could try to find out which patches apply and which ones don't in order to have a real idea of which functionalities would be missing.

There are very good how-tos in the Ubuntu Wiki about building custom kernels:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelBuildpackageDetailedHowto?highlight=%28kerne l%29
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelBuildpackageHowto?highlight=%28kernel%29
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelByHandHowto?highlight=%28kernel%29
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelCompileHowto?highlight=%28kernel%29

I'm not sure if the errors that I got at the patching stage were just about changes in the expected line number (fuzz). In order to successfully build the kernel the first patch to be applied is the realtime preemption one (it has to be applied to a pure 2.6.12 kernel from ww.kernel.org ). Then it would be a matter of applying all the Ubuntu patches one by one. In order to get the Ubuntu patches you can download the Ubuntu kernel source and check inside the patches folder or you can install the package linux-patch-ubuntu-2.6.12. This last one will install the file /usr/src/linux-patches/i386/2.6.12/debian/patch-2.6.12-10.26.bz2 containing a single file with all the patches and descriptions of them.

All this process sounds like a lot of work so I wonder if it is really worth it or if we should just accept that Ubuntu is not a distro intended for professional media work. I'm still looking forward to the new 2.6.15 kernel in Dapper (I might install the Flight 2 cd later today). I guess Linux in general is about being able to have choices so I don't think one distro has to be suitable for everything (windows style). What do you think?

I got to go for now... talk to you later!

Hector.

[dolson]

Is there something about the Dapper kernel that is better? We could get it and install it. Or get the sources and compile it.

What is the real difference between the realtime=lsm and the patch you are talking about?

[hectorC]

Is there something about the Dapper kernel that is better? We could get it and install it. Or get the sources and compile it.

What is the real difference between the realtime=lsm and the patch you are talking about?

I can't tell you down to the detail what's the difference. I know that the realtime-lsm allows users to start processes in realtime (that means with a timed and fast response from the kernel, for more read here http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9837719278.html ). I think the 2.6 kernels already has realtime capabilities and the realtime-lsm is a patch that makes it accessible to non root users (thats why you need it to start jackd in realtime as a user, something that you can do as root without the patch). Read this for more information: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/man/man2/sched_setscheduler.2.html specially the Scheduling Policies section.

On the other hand the "realtime preemption" is about taking the kernel to a much higher responsiveness by making it process the threads in a timed manner, without making the information flow to delay (i.e. the audio data stream to and from your audio card).

You can find some more information here: http://tapas.affenbande.org/ Look in the left menu for realtime-lsm and realtime preemption. The kernels used by Agnula/Demudi and Planet CCRMA use both the realtime access to non-root users and the realtime preemption. In fact Fedora Core 4 + Planet CCRMA is a great distro for audio.

I think the Dapper kernel (2.6.15) has some realtime preemption in it without the need of a patch (not sure about this). If not, it might be possible that the Ubuntu developers listened to the user's needs and included the realtime preemption in it (this might not be true because with some hardwares the realtime preemption patch makes the system unstable, something that goes against the Ubuntu philosophy). There is a thread here in the forums about trying to use the Dapper kernel in Breezy but seems to be not a really good idea as in the new kernel the way devices are handled has been changed (I tried this already and I think had some problems with mounting devices).

Hector.

[dolson]

I see. So then which is better, from a performance standpoint: running JACK as root, or running JACK with realtime-lsm?

Did you have a look at the wiki? I did a bunch of work on it last night.

[dolson]

I have good news for people looking for a good guitar tuner for linux. With the new version of wine (ver 9.6), you can use audio phonics guitar tuner flawlessly in wine(after making sure your mic settings are good).

I used it to tune my twelve string. It's a bit slower than on windows, but it works. My computer is a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4, so I don't know how it'll work on slower machines. Works great to me though.

http://www.bigrockeng.com/apgt.html


Have you looked at http://home.gna.org/fmit/ss.html ?

http://home.gna.org/fmit/figs/complete.png

[October]

Hector and all,

I've had some recent success with the new Dapper Flight 3 and described my progress my blog at http://oktyabr.blogspot.com

Much of the same information will be found at dolson's "Ubuntu Studio" wiki once it goes public.

[uberlaff]

Definitely, I'm playing with Audacity right now and its got some issues with audio. This would be a huge plus for a linux distro!

[uberlaff]

Definitely, I'm playing with Audacity right now and its got some issues with audio. This would be a huge plus for a linux distro! \\:D/

[dolson]

GOOD NEWS!!!

Mark finally got back to me. He was very busy, as I suspected.

He's willing to work on getting a good kernel into Ubuntu for us!

If you are wanting to help out, please contact me, so that we can discuss it. I want to keep the focus on the Ubuntu Studio wiki as well, which I'd love more members to be a part of.

We're getting really close to our goal already, so it won't be long before there's a real good ability in Ubuntu.

Also, he mentioned helping out DeMuDi, so October, please contact me about that, since I think you're the closest to knowing any of them.

[Lagiv]

Have you looked at http://home.gna.org/fmit/ss.html ?
Wow, that tuner looks hardcore! I'm still using XP mostly for audio (and gaming) reasons, and I'm very glad to see all these audio apps getting better and better!

[gosh]

GOOD NEWS!!!

Mark finally got back to me. He was very busy, as I suspected.

He's willing to work on getting a good kernel into Ubuntu for us!

If you are wanting to help out, please contact me, so that we can discuss it. I want to keep the focus on the Ubuntu Studio wiki as well, which I'd love more members to be a part of.

We're getting really close to our goal already, so it won't be long before there's a real good ability in Ubuntu.

Also, he mentioned helping out DeMuDi, so October, please contact me about that, since I think you're the closest to knowing any of them.


Very good news!:D

I can acknowlegde that the Ubuntu Studio wiki is well under way. Good job, Dolson and October!=D>

I support Dolson's request to you all to become an active member on the wiki.

We'll be heading to a great Ubuntu Music version.

[dolson]

Okay, I've officially announced the wiki project.

The link is in my sig.

I will be cutting off the public registrations link shortly, so that an influx of bots and malicious users can be prevented. New users can still sign up to help by emailing, and I can create the accounts.

Thanks everyone.

[dolson]

I got Ingo Molnar's realtime-preemption patch working with a vanilla kernel in Ubuntu Breezy. I got my latency down to 1.33ms with an SB Live! 5.1 and I was playing XMMS w/ JACK plugin through JACK-Rack, out to ALSA and not a single Xrun in over two hours, and I recompiled the kernel, I'm using Gnome, not Blackbox, surfing the web in Firefox, chatting on Gaim, AND RUNNING BURNK7 (part of the cpuburn package). This is amazing! I don't know how well it will stand up once I start using real applications in JACK though, but I expect pretty freakin' well. I am using set_rlimits to launch the apps.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Because Im petrified to do anything on the Wiki Ill post here.

Heres what Id like to see from UbuntuStudio.

-Gnome based because Ardor2 is being moved to GTK2. :)
-Support for dual-monitors out-of the-box if possiable.
-Its own cd download with its own look and feel.

[dolson]

Ubuntu Studio is just a wiki project with how-tos and whatnot.. It's not a separate distro.

There might end up being a metapackage at some point, if I can make one myself, and if we can get everything into Ubuntu proper.

Right now, I'm working with Mark and some other guys from Ubuntu as well as Free from DeMuDi to get a lot of DeMuDi stuff into Ubuntu, as well as a hopefully a CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT kernel option.

I'm not opposed to working on a separate add-on distro to Ubuntu, just like DeMuDi was to Debian, but that is for down the line if Canonical doesn't pull through officially, and after we all figure out exactly what we're doing. Right now I have not had very much help with adding stuff to the wiki, but there is a lot of progress nonetheless. If other people want to make a distro then that's fine.

If I can get a metapackage like kubuntu, I would want it Gnome-based as well, since that's Ubuntu, and it just makes sense. However, there might be other reasons to switch to IceWm or Fluxbox, namely that Gnome, XFce, and KDE are crap for realtime apps. Too much overhead at this point.

Dual-monitor support has really nothing to do with music. I'd rather see that as a default support out-of-the-box for ALL of Ubuntu. Wouldn't you agree?

If it becomes an official thing with Canonical, I'm sure there will be a separate CD download.

And I like my wallpaper. It fits with the default Ubuntu theme.

I want to stress that Ubuntu Studio is NOT a distro... It's a bunch of how-tos, a community resource for help on getting Ubuntu to do what you want it to do. I hope more people start adding their knowledge because I haven't even been using JACK for more than two weeks myself. I don't have a clue where to really start with Ardour. Etc.

[lito]

.

I want to stress that Ubuntu Studio is NOT a distro... It's a bunch of how-tos, a community resource for help on getting Ubuntu to do what you want it to do. I hope more people start adding their knowledge because I haven't even been using JACK for more than two weeks myself. I don't have a clue where to really start with Ardour. Etc.

Hi,

What problem do you have exactly with ardour because i didn't have any :???:

btw the ubuntu-studio wiki is starting to look nice ...yes i agree it could use some more contributions but very nice work already!

lito

[MetalMusicAddict]

Ah... I see. I thought you might be going for its own cd. ;) Like Demudi. Personally I would like to see this. A stand alone installiable cd totally dedicated to sound and Gnome based.

Was the "wallpaper" thing directed at me? :) I didnt mean anything by requesting the speaker logo from you. :)

[dolson]

Well, what I want to see is everything be officially supported by Canonical, and efforts are underway as we speak to figure out what all has to happen.

At the end, we could look at repackaging it all, but I need to learn a lot. I can't even build a real .deb yet! I would think that it would happen if there's a metapackage for musicians, akin to kubuntu. But it is satisfactory enough to me that I could install Ubuntu and then install a metapackage. Who knows what the future holds? There is a lot of work to be done before I even think about that.

I like my wallpaper, and I just meant that your "look" comment is pretty easy to fix with just that wallpaper, I think. But that's maybe just me. :)

[MetalMusicAddict]

Maybe we could get something like a "server install" then install a metapackage to get a trimmed down UbuntuStudio? I hoping with all the speed improvments being put into Gnome we wont have to use a lighter DE come Dapper for audio purposes.

Im just looking to get a trim install for a "audio only" PC I want to build thats all. Im not trying to be pushy with my reasons. ;)

I did see you posted the "speaker only" logo. Thanx sir. ;)

[dolson]

No problem for the logo. :) Make sure you don't take the one off the front page, as it has no transparency.. Get the file from the Wallpaper page. It's higher res too.

Anyhow, if you use a -rt kernel, you can use Gnome with no issues because of how exactly realtime-preemption works. The problems only come in when you enable realtime access to apps that aren't realtime-friendly. Otherwise, you will be hard pressed to get an Xrun. For example, if you don't give firefox or java realtime access (no reason to!), then you can surf java pages to your heart's content, with no Xruns.

The problem with Gnome is not the speed factor. It's the fact that it takes so much RAM. Looking at it right now, I have:

Nautilus at 45M
Evolution-exchange-storage at 33.4M
Evolution-data-server-1.4 at 32.5M
Clock applet at 306M
Gnome-panel at 24.6M
and so on. I don't have that much RAM I don't think so obviously some of this stuff is shared, but the point is, you don't have any of that if you use Blackbox or Fluxbox.

Also, Firefox is a huge hog... I am liking links2 -g for a lightweight browser. My firefox right now says 464.8M!

You will want all the RAM possible for your studio apps, assuming you use more than just one or two. Soundfonts take a lot if you use quality fonts, and samplers... Etc.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Ahh... I see about the RAM. Im thinking in terms of what I would be building and RAM @ 2gigs I wouldnt think would be an issue. This not something most people here will be able to do. Building a "audio only" PC.

I have 6 in the house now and I have to remind myself sometimes most people arent as fortunate.

[dolson]

I still run 512MB, with no sign of being bumped up to 1GB anytime soon, being that I was laid off right before Christmas. Sucks... But hopefully something will happen soon.

[drucer]

I wonder if there already is some Ubuntu/Agnula DeMudi collaboration going on, because just last friday I downloaded Agnula DeMudi LiveCD and to my surprise it seems to use Ubuntu LiveCD as the base OS.

[dolson]

I wonder if there already is some Ubuntu/Agnula DeMudi collaboration going on, because just last friday I downloaded Agnula DeMudi LiveCD and to my surprise it seems to use Ubuntu LiveCD as the base OS.

That's how it always was.

And the anwer is no.

I am talking with the Ubuntu and DeMuDi team to try and get everything from DeMuDi into Ubuntu. Most of it is in Debian now, so Ubuntu can get it easily. The only thing really missing is a multimedia kernel, and some software that not even DeMuDi had (DSSI stuff and a couple synths).

[dolson]

And now the bad news...

In the current discussions I am having, it doesn't sound like Ubuntu's kernel team is interested in Ingo Molnar's patch.

So, we will need to move to a new distro for audio work, or compile our own.

This is a big disappointment to me.

I don't know where we will go from here.

[goslackware]

It's understood that Ingo Molnar's patch is not wanted in the general kernel. So, why not just have the patched "Multimedia Kernel" in a seperate package. The kernels available in Ubuntu that I know of so far are:
linux-386
linux-686
linux-686-smp
linux-k7
linux-k7-smp
My suggestion is to add an alternative multimedia kernel to each of the above, which would then add:
linux-386-multimedia
linux-686-multimedia
linux-686-smp-multimedia
linux-k7-multimedia
linux-k7-smp-multimedia

Thus now making available 10 kernels in the Ubuntu repo.
The real question now I believe is: Any volunteers to modify each of the 5 kernels, (386, 686, 686-smp, k7, k7-smp), with apropos multimedia patches and make available in Ubuntu?
To add to the Official repo will take some additional communication with Canonical Ltd as well.
~Darren

[BobSongs]

I'm adding a post to this thread: YES!!
I've sent you my email address.
I've created an account at UbuntuStudios.com.


I've downloaded Demudi, but I haven't installed it yet. I don't want to mess with my Ubuntu.

It's been said before: Music is about the only reason left for keeping my XP partition alive. Please help me wipe XP off my HDD forever!

Thanks.

[Edit]: Perhaps the response in this forum might be small. But once a version of Ubuntu tweaked for musicians would be available I believe the response would be much better (i.e., in the number of downloads and requests for CDs). Ubuntu is all about simplicity of use. A ... "Mubuntu", a Music Ubuntu, would require the same philosophy.

I'm not a programmer. But you've got my support.

:D

[dolson]

It's understood that Ingo Molnar's patch is not wanted in the general kernel. So, why not just have the patched "Multimedia Kernel" in a seperate package. The kernels available in Ubuntu that I know of so far are:
linux-386
linux-686
linux-686-smp
linux-k7
linux-k7-smp
My suggestion is to add an alternative multimedia kernel to each of the above, which would then add:
linux-386-multimedia
linux-686-multimedia
linux-686-smp-multimedia
linux-k7-multimedia
linux-k7-smp-multimedia

Thus now making available 10 kernels in the Ubuntu repo.
The real question now I believe is: Any volunteers to modify each of the 5 kernels, (386, 686, 686-smp, k7, k7-smp), with apropos multimedia patches and make available in Ubuntu?
To add to the Official repo will take some additional communication with Canonical Ltd as well.
~Darren

This cannot be done by Canonical because of how they build their kernels. They are all built from a single source, with different config files for each of those packages. And they have made it clear that they do not want to add more kernels to Ubuntu. I myself have been in contact with them, as stated earlier. No, if we want a kernel, we need to build it ourselves as a community, and host it ourselves as well.

At least this was the case last night...

But today, Mark Shuttleworth has informed me that he is getting in contact with people who can pull this off for us. So stay tuned, as I will post updates as I get them. His words were, "don't worry, you'll get it."

Until that time, I will be adding tutorials to my wiki on compiling kernels with the needed patches. But that is whenever I get the time to do it, or if someone else does it.


I'm adding a post to this thread: YES!!
I've sent you my email address.
I've created an account at UbuntuStudios.com.


I've downloaded Demudi, but I haven't installed it yet. I don't want to mess with my Ubuntu.

It's been said before: Music is about the only reason left for keeping my XP partition alive. Please help me wipe XP off my HDD forever!

Thanks.

[Edit]: Perhaps the response in this forum might be small. But once a version of Ubuntu tweaked for musicians would be available I believe the response would be much better (i.e., in the number of downloads and requests for CDs). Ubuntu is all about simplicity of use. A ... "Mubuntu", a Music Ubuntu, would require the same philosophy.

I'm not a programmer. But you've got my support.

:D

You ever look at the output of whois mubuntu.com ?

I've heard something about a spinoff distro called Moobuntu or something though, from Brazil... Haven't heard a lot about it yet though.

But I'm hoping to hear soon from Mark regarding who can work on the kernel. I would try tackling it myself, but I haven't got too far in that yet.

[BobSongs]

<snip>You ever look at the output of whois mubuntu.com ?

I've heard something about a spinoff distro called Moobuntu or something though, from Brazil... Haven't heard a lot about it yet though.</snip>
Not yet, actually. Mubuntu was just a suggestion. But, in answer to your question, WhoIs says of "mubuntu.org": "Registrant Organization:Canonical Ltd". So that's covered. I've got a rough idea for the logo. I haven't worked it out yet but I'll post it as soon as idea becomes design.

:D

But I'm hoping to hear soon from Mark regarding who can work on the kernel. I would try tackling it myself, but I haven't got too far in that yet.I'm a total Linux n00b. I've got lots of Windows experience. But I have a few friends who've put some time into Linux. Maybe we can help with the kernel development. No guarantees. At this point I don't know if we're talking rocket science or just a few simple tweaks. I'll get back to you on this.

If the Canonical boys feel they've got as many kernels as they're going to produce, then we should take an alternative route. If this takes off and a music-based Ubunto distro becomes wildly popular perhaps they will consider adding a low latency kernel to their current list. Let's at least prove to them that there's an interest.

I'm saying: you've got my vote... and any talents and time I've got to give to the project. Cool?

Bob

[October]

As has been stated before the Dapper kernels have CONFIG_PREEMPT=y (enabled). I'm not sure what else on the Ubuntu desktop would benefit from this besides real time audio. Anyone else able to shine a little light on this?

[dolson]

Pre-emption benefits the desktop, period. It's not recommended for servers. This has been known for years, and many people even patched their 2.4 kernels with it for the performance boost in desktop use. There was also a separate low-latency patch for 2.4, which the audio users used.

So big deal, Dapper has preemption, but it's not realtime preemtion. It is better than no preemption, but don't deceive yourself; this was not done for the audio users specifically. Ubuntu is, first and foremost, a desktop OS. Preemption is good for the desktop. It likely wasn't enabled by default in Breezy because some of the Ubuntu drivers that they added were broken by it, so I'm told.

Here are the descriptions for the various types of preemption:

No Forced Preemption (Server) - CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE:
This is the traditional Linux preemption model geared towards throughput. It will still provide good latencies most of the time but there are no guarantees and occasional long delays are possible.

Select this option if you are building a kernel for a server or scientific/computation system, or if you want to maximize the raw processing power of the kernel, irrespective of scheduling latencies.

Voluntary Kernel Preemption (Desktop) - CONFIG_PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY:
This option reduces the latency of the kernel by adding more "explicit preemption points" to the kernel code. These new preemption points have been selected to minimize the maximum latency of rescheduling, providing faster application reactions, at the cost of slighly lower throughput.

This allows reaction to interactive events by allowing a low priority process to voluntarily preempt itself even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call. This allows applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the system is under load.

Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop system.

Preemptible Kernel (Low-Latency Desktop) - CONFIG_PREEMPT_DESKTOP:
This option reduces the latency of the kernel by making all kernel code that is not executing in a critical section preemptible. This allows reaction to interactive events by permitting a low priority process to be preempted involuntarily even if it is in kernel mode executing a system call and would otherwise not about to reach a preemption point. This allows applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the system is under load, at the cost of slighly lower throughput and a slight runtime overhead to kernel code.

(According to profiles, when this mode is selected then even during kernel-intense workloads the system is in an immediately preemptible state more than 50% of the time.)

Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop or embedded system with latency requirements in the milliseconds range.

Complete Preemption (Real-Time) - CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT:
This option further reduces the scheduling latency of the kernel by replacing almost every spinlock used by the kernel with preemptible mutexes and thus making all but the most critical kernel code involuntarily preemptible. The remaining handful of lowlevel non-preemptible codepaths are short and have a deterministic latency of a couple of tens of microseconds (depending the the hardware). This also allows applications to run more 'smoothly' even when the system is under load, at the cost of lower throughput and runtime overhead to kernel code.

(According to profiles, when this mode is selected then even during kernel-intense workloads the system is in an immediately preemptible state more than 95% of the time.)

Select this if you are building a kernel for a desktop, embedded or real-time system with guaranteed latency requirements of 100 usecs or lower.

As you can clearly see, the option that audio users want the most is CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT. The next best thing is CONFIG_PREEMPT. But the difference is huge... Unfortunately, CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT is not a part of the default kernel at this time. But it IS possible to get a kernel working on Ubuntu Breezy with CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT, and it IS worth it. My latencies are at 1.3ms, and I can use JACK while compiling the kernel, running a CPU burn program, surfing the web with Firefox, and chatting in Gaim, all under the Gnome desktop, with NO XRUNS. This is not possible with just CONFIG_PREEMPT.

Now, all of that said, I have written a tutorial for people still using a stable version of Ubuntu Breezy to enable CONFIG_PREEMPT in an exact copy of the Breezy kernel. This is now in the wiki: http://www.ubuntustudio.com/wiki/index.php/Enabling_Pre-Emption_in_Breezy

Note that the CONFIG_PREEMPT* options are something totally separate from the capabilities or realtime-lsm, which allow applications to request realtime access. This is outlined in the wiki as well.

-----

UPDATE:

Here is a page with package names of the applications that we deem as needed for a music studio: http://ubuntustudio.com/wiki/index.php/Important_Audio_Software
This wiki page also shows you how to QUICKLY check which software from our list IS and IS NOT included in any of these distros: Ubuntu Breezy, Ubuntu Dapper, and Debian Sid.

I recommend you check it out, and add to it if you have any package names that you think need to be in Ubuntu at some point. Package names only; no versions, no descriptions. Try to not guess the package names, otherwise the matches will either never happen or return incorrect results.

[cvmostert]

Bye bye XP - totally, if this happens!

[RAZZ]

Sure! I've been interested in adour and jack for years, but it seemed so complicated to get it working, so I actually never really tried. In fact, good alsa support was important for me, when I bought my sound card, even though I only used it in windows, so far.

In short, I am really, really interested in this.

[goslackware]

I installed the demudi multimedia kernel as well to my breezy. Much better response times! Although- opengl can now freeze the system and I have no network connectivity when booted into that kernel. But much more responsiveness!

[goslackware]

From: http://demudi.agnula.org/
"Currently the A/DeMuDi project mainly deals with sound and music software, but it will eventually include state of the art video tools too."

Will Ubuntu Studio span to a video studio as well. Many of the same needs for music, ie latency issues, etc., also applies to video needs.


BTW- demudi's fluxbox, with demudi package installed (adds fluxbox menu I believe) is very nice, ubuntu's fluxbox is more vanilla and bland than chalk.

[dolson]

From: http://demudi.agnula.org/
"Currently the A/DeMuDi project mainly deals with sound and music software, but it will eventually include state of the art video tools too."

Will Ubuntu Studio span to a video studio as well. Many of the same needs for music, ie latency issues, etc., also applies to video needs.


BTW- demudi's fluxbox, with demudi package installed (adds fluxbox menu I believe) is very nice, ubuntu's fluxbox is more vanilla and bland than chalk.
Ubuntu Studio is not a distro. It is a wiki. At this time, it is focussing on music creation software.

However, you can still use some of the howtos there to get your system set up for realtime-preemption (once I or someone else adds this tutorial), preemtion, realtime access, and so on. But I do not plan on covering specific video software, how to set it up, how to use it, etc.

So far I have done the majority of the wiki on my own, and I don't deal with video stuff at all, so I do not plan to add any. Last I checked, I couldn't find a video editor that would open, say, two DivX files, allow me to put in a transition, and then render it back out to a DivX file.

For us to expand the wiki to include information about video, it would require a slight reorganizing of the wiki and people who actually know about video to contribute. So I'm not saying that it can't happen, but that it won't, until someone decides to share their knowledge.

[dolson]

However, you can still use some of the howtos there to get your system set up for realtime-preemption (once I or someone else adds this tutorial)

I have added this today and tested it on my system. Works For Me.

[dolson]

Dudes, digg it! http://digg.com/linux_unix/The_Ubuntu_Studio_Project,_a_Wiki_for_Musicians

[dolson]

Thanks to the work done for PAM on Dapper by our user Woho, I was able to figure it out and create a procedure for patching PAM on Breezy. I have a pre-built deb as well as the how-to compile it yourself now. THIS ELIMINATES REALTIME-LSM AS WELL AS SET_RLIMITS! If you notice any problems, please let me know.

http://www.ubuntustudio.com/wiki/index.php/Rlimits-Aware_PAM

[October]

Edited For Content by author:

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[dolson]

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[October]

Edited For Content by author:

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[woho]

It's generally considered polite etiquette when progressing from the work of others to supply more than just a name... A link to published work; threads, wiki, mail list archives, whatever, would have been very nice to have.


Sorry for the trouble, October. I'm completely new to Ubuntu and still on the way finding my way into the relevant forums/wikis, so bare with me ... Dana didn't have much to link to.

I've put up a new page in the wiki rtprio-aware PAM with Dapper (http://ubuntustudio.com/wiki/index.php/Rtprio-aware_PAM_with_Dapper), it's linked from the Dapper notes (http://ubuntustudio.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_Development_Notes). I hope it's helpful, and I'd appreciate feedback if you find something missing/unclear/wrong.

In regards to Dapper, it is only two months away from making Breezy obsolete. As the official designation would imply it is for "testing" and that is excactly what I am doing with it. In regards to music in ubuntu this is a perfectly acceptable way to use Dapper (even testing) or any other distribution, as most of the sort of experimental kernel modifications that are used are far beyond what most would consider 'stable', which is why this thread exists in the first place.
Yes, living on the bleeding edge is fun, isn't it?

I have some experience with Ingo's RT patches on a linuxfromscratch-based system. Latency-wise they are great, and giving enough stability for pure audio work. But I have troubles with some of my hardware. Network (a Marvel Yukon II requiring the new sky2.ko driver) randomly freezes the system, and no way for me to get proper OpenGL performance. Both will surely change as soon as 2.6.16 with sky2.ko in mainline is out, and when X.org supports my ATI X300 with opensource DRI. But for now, it's eighter low-latency or fullfeatured system for me.

On another topic: does anyone know of an Audacity build with portaudio v19 to have JACK/ALSA support? Or is there a way to make Audacity output to JACK via some tricky OSS->ALSA->JACK setup?

Thanks,
Wolfgang

[dolson]

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

[Sanne]

I didn't keep an eye on this thread for some time and just came back checking what happened in the meantime. Wow, I'm amazed by the development. Now we even have a wiki!

dolson, thank you for starting this and for all your work, and also thanks everybody who contributed!

Sanne

[drucer]

I don't like the tone of your voices. I'm afraid I will not want to have anything to do with this project.

Besides, is this project launched for the love or the money? Looks to me like someone is hoping to make some money out of it. This is where I lose my interest.

[handy]

Dana, I've followed this thread all the way. You have not just initiated something wonderful, you have done the hard yards that have made things happen, you have changed Ubuntu for the better for musicians!

That is really something to be proud of, you have made, & are making a difference, thankyou.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Besides, is this project launched for the love or the money? Looks to me like someone is hoping to make some money out of it. This is where I lose my interest.
How does it look like anyone wants to make money from this?

[dolson]

Apparently no one is allowed to accept donations for a non-profit site anymore.

Makes me wonder why drucer is using Ubuntu, since Canonical is hoping to make money, but isn't forcing you to pay them.

I am paying out of my pocket for the hosting and domain name, so I don't understand what the problem is. If someone wants to help me financially, they have that option. If they don't, they have that option.

[MetalMusicAddict]

Keeping a good site going takes money. Period. Donations a great.

You know what. I still dont care about paying money. If you got a audio distro working Id pay you.

Why does everyone get so worked up over money in the linux world?

[TTT_travis]

Right now I am listening to the fan on my computer

[dolson]

I have added namespaces for Dapper and Breezy so we can separate them easily.

[ToastedToad]

You have my support in this endeavor. Email sent, and thank you very much.

[dolson]

Besides, is this project launched for the love or the money? Looks to me like someone is hoping to make some money out of it. This is where I lose my interest.

You know what? I am very offended by this post. I started this project for the love of MUSIC and the love of UBUNTU.

Thanks to everyone else for your support.

[matthew]

You know what? I am very offended by this post.Understandably. It was an offensive post.

Why does everyone get so worked up over money in the linux world?Because they value money far too highly. Money is a tool. People are valuable. Use money, not people. That and often money=control in people's minds (or power) and there's this weird idea that everything should be free as in cost as well as in freedom.

Anyway, dolson, I believe you are doing this because you love and want to do it and I applaud you as do many others here. Thank you. I haven't participated in this thread much, but I am still following it with GREAT interest.

drucer, I'm glad you've lost interest. You have a bad attitude anyway. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[October]

I encourage *everyone* who loves the idea of realtime audio in ubuntu to contribute whatever they can to this project, even just simple "I tried it and it broke..." kind of posts. As a group grows so do the differences in personal opinions... someone once said "You can make all of the people happy some of the time, some of the people happy all of the time but you'll never make ALL the people happy ALL of the time!"

Let's try to remember that and work around our personal differences?

We are still a relatively small group compared to ubuntu as a whole, with very large ideas and implications. Our strength is in our numbers and our enthusiasm, not in money or politics or anything else.

As for money, as someone with experience in sales and marketing I can tell you that if dolson wanted to get rich and pay all his bills with this project there are LOTS of more productive ways to do that than with a simple "Donate" button! He's paying for the wiki and bandwidth out of his own pocket. Give him a break or at least don't be so quick to criticize...

[swregulator]

I would love bette music support. I'm an amateur musician who does simple things like Barbershop arrangements. Rosegarden looked great, as it does notation and goes even farther. However, I haven't been able to get the sound to work. After hours trying various things from the forums, I get "Jack audio subsystem is losing sample frames? when I try to play back a simple composition.

I searched around a bit for Windows-based notation software and found two very simple shareware pieces (Noteworthy Composer and Finale Notepad) that both give me an ability to do simple compositions and have them play, for free. Finale offers much more with commercial upgrades. The installations were simple, with everything recognized, and and my very simple (4 part) arrangements PLAYED without me having to be a programmer to make them play.

I'm probably going back to Windows. Rosegarden looks very nice, but it seems like you have to be programmer to get it to work.

[dolson]

Rosegarden works for me, but it doesn't keep me MIDI device settings for some reason.

Have you looked at Lilypond and Denemo? They might do what you're looking for.

I don't know much about notation, as I can't read any music. I know FACE and EGBDF, but I can't *read* music. But from what I've heard, those two apps work together and are the shiznit for notation.

[October]

Rosegarden really likes to handle making the audio/midi connections for itself and can get flustered like that if you try to do everything with Jack. You don't have to be a programmer to get it to work, you just need to read the manual and maybe a tutorial or two ;)

On a tangent has anyone tried Musescore (http://mscore.sourceforge.net/) yet? Has midi in/export and looks very nice too (I can't read music either so I'm not sure if it's good or not!)

[hack_jammer1998]

yo dudes!

i have followed this thread from start and i am with Dolson and supporting this humble project all the way. I have exchanged emails with him thru PM and i believe "MONEY" is not his main objective. (Let's just ignore those who think and speculate otherwise, they are only wasting space but cannot hinder us).

This is for the love of music and freedom. Go go go dudes!

[bountonw]

I am a new linux user who has been doing some recording in Windows XP using cool edit pro. I am hoping to switch my recording to ubuntu.

I read the first couple of pages in this thread and the last page. I appreciate all who are working through the issues. Yes, I would like better audio support for ubuntu, but I haven't gotten that far yet as I am still dealing with basic problems. (Getting firefox to work etc.) Ah, the joys of being a newbie:)

Keep up the good work, though. It is a noble plan. Sorry I don't have the technical skills to help.

[dolson]

I am a new linux user who has been doing some recording in Windows XP using cool edit pro. I am hoping to switch my recording to ubuntu.

I read the first couple of pages in this thread and the last page. I appreciate all who are working through the issues. Yes, I would like better audio support for ubuntu, but I haven't gotten that far yet as I am still dealing with basic problems. (Getting firefox to work etc.) Ah, the joys of being a newbie:)

Keep up the good work, though. It is a noble plan. Sorry I don't have the technical skills to help.
You can still help! Let us know if things don't work for you, correct our spelling and grammar, etc. Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Also, I have built new debs for the 0-day Ardour release. hehe. These are real debs, and I built them properly - none of this checkinstall junk. :) (no offense to those who use it... I used it up until today myself!)

You can get the Dapper debs from the Dapper Notes page in the wiki.

I am really hoping that we see an official release of this in Dapper, but for Breezy I just don't see that happening.

I have not had success backporting this to Breezy, so if someone wants to help me, please catch me on MSN/AIM/Yahoo/ICQ/IRC.

[glassgloss]

I am about t try and install N-tracks, a windows recording program.. using wine... ill let you know what happens

[glassgloss]

well, in order to install n-tracks, you have to install .net framework 2.0 and upon installing that I got this error:

Setup has determined that the following prerequisite programs were not installed:

Microsoft windows installer 3.0
microsoft windows explorer 5.01

anyone know what .net framework is?

[dolson]

What is N-tracks and why do you want to run it on Linux instead of using a native app?

.NET is a framework for applications. In the Linux world, this is called Mono. Ask the people who make N-tracks to port it to Linux.

I wouldn't use Wine for my music, with the only possible exception being VSTis, assuming that they work ok.

[groovywombat]

Awesome! I'm so happy this is being addressed. i was considering building a whole other computer for audio (as well as video editing and 3d modeling... basically everything but web stuff) and probably will still have to, but it'd be nice if i didn't have to for audio.

[everdred]

Alright, so I'm way back here on page 11, but I too would love to see this!

[tlaloczint]

if only could make rosegarden work with jack and all tha rest of plugings I will be in heaven thats a nice tough

[handy]

My wife is a professional musician, who uses Sibelius as her primary tool, I have tried to install this software under cedega, but it won't run, which doesn't surprise me.

I hope that this project sets the scene for linux to be seen as a viable music OS for professional & hobbiest musicians alike, which will then hopefully, have the benefit of the developers of Sibelius & such like, porting their software to the linux based distributions.

This would then bring a lot of muso's to the linux world, & as the linux musical software matures, it would very likely have users leaving the likes of Sibelius for open source software.

This project is very important, I do hope that the Ubuntu administration, appreciate what a profound effect getting music right for the pro's will have on the musical world of today?

Thankyou to all concerned, for your efforts! :KS

[dolson]

Just a small update.

I packaged mx44, ubuntustudiolauncher, and a patched seq24 and uploaded them to REVU in hopes of them getting into Dapper.

Also, Forest has uploaded his package of DSSI to REVU, also for inclusion in Dapper.

If you are a MOTU and are reading this, please check these out and let us know if we need to change anything...

[timbosa]

Not that I mind so much having to configure things to get them to work properly, I'd love to be able to give friends who are used to sonar and pro-tools a taste of freedom.

The difficulty of trying to setup an audio workstation with gnu/linux in its current un-new-user friendly state often seems a too daunting for people who have invested great time, effort and money on their current audio software to even bother.

If Ubuntu could work out of the box for musicians with minimal fuss and effort as it does for general computing, it would be so much easier for non gnu/linux musicians to get a taste of the potential for gnu/linux.

Originally Posted by dolson
Let us know if things don't work for you, correct our spelling and grammar, etc. Any and all feedback is appreciated.

I'll do my best. This is a great idea and I would love to see it succeed.:D

[dolson]

It is my goal to work with Ubuntu developers to get it up to par, but honestly, this is a general-purpose distro, so it might not ever be at the stage we want it to be at. But Dapper is getting there by leaps and bounds. The only thing about Dapper that I am not happy with is that it doesn't have a -rt kernel... Yet. Mark was supposed to look into it more and get back to me.

Dapper is still missing a few applications, but Forest and I are packaging and uploading to REVU as fast as we can before the deadline of the 23rd. But surely we can't do it all on our own, so not every application will make it. But we will have more than before.

[linuxted]

I too am a big fan of Linux/Ubuntu. Unfortunately I have been quite frustrated using a music notation package on Linux. I've tried abc (which is nice) but I'd like to be able to play back my songs on my computer (abc2midi is supposed to do this but I never got it to work) and have it be wiziwig.

Then I heard that lilypond is a great package. Well, I installed it and realized the ubuntu version is 2.2.6 when the latest is 2.7. I couldn't get the 2.2.6 version to compile even the simplest of files nor could I install the latest 2.7 version successfully.

Needless to say, I am very frustrated with my inability to get a wiziwig notation program in Ubuntu with playback. If I could have that (to use a phrase from another user in this thread) I might cry with joy :)

Thanks

[October]

http://mscore.sourceforge.net/

Musescore looks very promising but I have yet to find any debs for it that would install properly and building from source has been a challenge too.

You *might* take a look at Rosegarden, especially if you compose via a midi keyboard or similar. The latest version, 1.2.3, is very slick about notation placement, even when entering notes in realtime.

[UbuWu]

Needless to say, I am very frustrated with my inability to get a wiziwig notation program in Ubuntu with playback. If I could have that (to use a phrase from another user in this thread) I might cry with joy :)


http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/linux/NOTATION/

[linuxted]

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/linux/NOTATION/

Thanks for the post - looks promising. Have you gotten any of these to work successfully with Ubuntu?

[dolson]

Alright, here we are, on Feature Freeze Day for Dapper.

What is the status?

Well, there are many new applications that have made it into Dapper that were not in Breezy, or even Debian, packaged by Forest and myself. These include, but are not limited to:
-linuxsampler
-qsampler
-qmidiarp
-jdelay
-ubuntustudiolauncher
-kaconnect
-qmidiroute
-more

DSSI is in Debian, and a sync request has been made to get it into Dapper. It hasn't shown up yet.

No fully-preemptible kernel as of yet. For now, we have a tutorial on the wiki. More info on this at a later date.

And the best news so far, PAM has been patched to be rlimits-aware. This eliminated three different tutorials that we had in the wiki for Dapper, and provides the best solution available at this time for non-root user applications requesting realtime priority.

This is where it is at. Don't expect a lot to change now that we have passed the Feature Freeze. If your choice application wasn't added, well, I'm sorry, but we were just two people doing the packaging, and we did our best. We have well over a dozen new packages added to Dapper, and since we only started working on this 12 days ago, I'd say we did pretty well.

If you want Dapper+1 to be even better, then don't delay your contributions! The mad rush toward Feature Freeze was painful, but we made it through. But work doesn't end here. It has only just begun.

[Aviatrixie]

Hi all :)

I was just searching the forum for clues on what was being done to address the DAW issue with Ubuntu and found this thread. I'm THRILLED to find that there are people working to make Ubuntu a viable base for music apps. After years of getting comfortable with Cakewalk's "Guitar Tracks Pro 3" and "Guitar Studio" series and assorted other M$ DAWS like "Acid" and "Internet Tapedeck" I've decided to let go of Windows. I bought myself a stand-alone Roland DAW and signed over ownership of all my software to my son. Yes... I'm 100% Linux now.

Ardour looks like it's off to a good start and I did download Mediainlinux to give it a try but gave up when I couldn't figure out how to get Jack to work. I've been using computers for almost 30 years (mostly Mac and Win but TI, C64 and even C/PM before that) and yet this Linux thing makes me feel like a beginner!

Anyway... virii, validation of software, and arrogance on Microsoft's part have made me decide that I do not want to use Mr. Gates' product anymore and I'm on the Penguin's side for the long-haul. I'm hoping I can once again use my PC to record my music.

As a life-long musician and a sincere Ubuntu user, let me know if I can help.

Sincerely,

Erika


p.s. Everything else on Ubuntu works wonderfully! :)

[gosh]

Alright, here we are, on Feature Freeze Day for Dapper.

This is where it is at. Don't expect a lot to change now that we have passed the Feature Freeze. If your choice application wasn't added, well, I'm sorry, but we were just two people doing the packaging, and we did our best. We have well over a dozen new packages added to Dapper, and since we only started working on this 12 days ago, I'd say we did pretty well.

If you want Dapper+1 to be even better, then don't delay your contributions! The mad rush toward Feature Freeze was painful, but we made it through. But work doesn't end here. It has only just begun.

Well done!
Thanks for the hard work put into this!

[Rita]

Alright, here we are, on Feature Freeze Day for Dapper.

What is the status?

Well, there are many new applications that have made it into Dapper that were not in Breezy, or even Debian, packaged by Forest and myself. These include, but are not limited to:
-linuxsampler
-qsampler
-qmidiarp
-jdelay
-ubuntustudiolauncher
-kaconnect
-qmidiroute
-more

DSSI is in Debian, and a sync request has been made to get it into Dapper. It hasn't shown up yet.

No fully-preemptible kernel as of yet. For now, we have a tutorial on the wiki. More info on this at a later date.

And the best news so far, PAM has been patched to be rlimits-aware. This eliminated three different tutorials that we had in the wiki for Dapper, and provides the best solution available at this time for non-root user applications requesting realtime priority.

This is where it is at. Don't expect a lot to change now that we have passed the Feature Freeze. If your choice application wasn't added, well, I'm sorry, but we were just two people doing the packaging, and we did our best. We have well over a dozen new packages added to Dapper, and since we only started working on this 12 days ago, I'd say we did pretty well.

If you want Dapper+1 to be even better, then don't delay your contributions! The mad rush toward Feature Freeze was painful, but we made it through. But work doesn't end here. It has only just begun.

Thanks for what you're doing to make Dapper a success and enjoyable to work with.
:)

[kanem]

Hi all,

So I'm wondering what you experts think of the Beast (http://beast.gtk.org/). I've been looking for general GUI sound synthesis software and so far the Beast is the only one I've found that lets me synthesize the sounds and compose the music in the same application. Still following up on the links in this thread.

I was surprised to not see the Beast mentioned here. Is it not considered that great? Or maybe there's a better alternative?

thanks for any opinions.

[plb]

Well since there seem to be so many musicians....how about an "ubuntu song" openbsd has a song, gentoo has a song...how about Ubuntu? :p

[dolson]

Hi all,

So I'm wondering what you experts think of the Beast (http://beast.gtk.org/). I've been looking for general GUI sound synthesis software and so far the Beast is the only one I've found that lets me synthesize the sounds and compose the music in the same application. Still following up on the links in this thread.

I was surprised to not see the Beast mentioned here. Is it not considered that great? Or maybe there's a better alternative?

thanks for any opinions.
I looked into it before, but I never really understood how to use it. Does it have JACK support?

[kanem]

I looked into it before, but I never really understood how to use it. Does it have JACK support?
According to this (http://beast.gtk.org/wiki:JackSupport), maybe, but not easily.

I don't really know if the Beast is for recording and editing live music. I've used it as an all-in-one app for sound synthesizing and editing. All of the other apps I've seen are either editors for music that's already been recorded, or sound synthesizers that don't allow you to lay tracks with the sounds you've created.

[dolson]

I see. I do remember reading that now that you linked it. Seems too complicated for most users just to get JACK support.

The advantage of using JACK as a central hub for other apps is that you can use the best of each application and have them work together - you can, for example, have seq24, Rosegarden, or Muse driving ZynAddSubFX, AlsaModularSynth, amSynth, Om, and/or mx44 and have them effected by JACK-Rack or JACK Eq, and have those pumped into TimeMachine or Rezound, or you could have all the synths plugged into Ardour, which can record each to their own tracks and then you can apply LADSPA effects to each track, adjustable in realtime, and then output those tracks through JAMin to master the tracks. It is a modular system, where you don't need to rely on features in a single app, but instead can use many applications that excel at specific functions.

I don't know what apps you would use for live performance, with the exception of Freewheeling, and posibly seq24. There are more I'm sure, I just don't know what they are.

[kanem]

The advantage of using JACK as a central hub for other apps is that you can use the best of each application and have them work together - you can, for example, have seq24, Rosegarden, or Muse driving ZynAddSubFX, AlsaModularSynth, amSynth, Om, and/or mx44 and have them effected by JACK-Rack or JACK Eq, and have those pumped into TimeMachine or Rezound, or you could have all the synths plugged into Ardour, which can record each to their own tracks and then you can apply LADSPA effects to each track, adjustable in realtime, and then output those tracks through JAMin to master the tracks. It is a modular system, where you don't need to rely on features in a single app, but instead can use many applications that excel at specific functions.

Ah. That description of JACK does sound like an advantage. I think I must have never put enough effort into figuring out it's full capabilities or getting programs to work with it. Beast was just easy to start with.

Thanks

[dolson]

I haven't had a lot of time myself yet to mess with it, but it sure seems really versatile. It's like a virtual patchbay, and you can connect ins and outs of anything and it's really cool, and has people asking questions when I show screenshots. :)

[jrincon87]

Hey. I don't know if this is the space to ask for questions about the process described in the Wiki itself. But I'm a total newbie in compiling things into the kernel or such. The step where I go is "Breezy: Enabling preemption". Before I screw up my system:
cd /usr/src/
tar jxf linux-source-2.6.12.tar.bz2
mv linux linux.old

When I did this last step the following error came up:
mv: no se puede efectuar `stat' sobre «linux»: No existe el fichero o el directorio


In english it would be something like:
'stat' can't be done on <<linux>>: The file or directory doesn't exist.

What does this mean? Am I lacking of something?
Thanks.

[dolson]

Sorry, I'll have to add a note about that in the wiki or change the command to not give any kind of output. It's normal if you haven't done anything before in /usr/src to not have the linux symlink already. You can ignore it. :)

[jrincon87]

Another question. Now I have my system properly configured. Is it recommendable to load Ubuntu always from the preempt kernel, or do I better load from my k7 kernel for my daily stuff (internet, listening to music, etc.)? I mean do I have to load the preempt kernel ONLY when I'm gonna make some music? Does it make any difference?
Thanks.

[glassgloss]

dolson and others,

Hey, I have followed all of the instructions on ubuntustudio.com to achieve 95% preemption by rebuilding a vanilla kernel. This is great, but as the wiki mentions, many of my drivers will not function. These are must have devices and applications, so any help is appreciated.

1. it won't recognize my flash drive unless I boot with it in the usb slot
2. no sound
3. no wireless

in the device manager I can see my usb or my wireless card as being in there--but I cannot get them to work. somone mentioned downloading the drivers online--I would like to do this and put them on my flash drive--but I am not sure I can get them from there to my linux computer seeing as how its throwing a fit. Got any advice on how to get wireless activated?

[dolson]

Another question. Now I have my system properly configured. Is it recommendable to load Ubuntu always from the preempt kernel, or do I better load from my k7 kernel for my daily stuff (internet, listening to music, etc.)? I mean do I have to load the preempt kernel ONLY when I'm gonna make some music? Does it make any difference?
Thanks.

Well, if everything works for you, I don't see why you couldn't just use the -rt kernel always.

dolson and others,

Hey, I have followed all of the instructions on ubuntustudio.com to achieve 95% preemption by rebuilding a vanilla kernel. This is great, but as the wiki mentions, many of my drivers will not function. These are must have devices and applications, so any help is appreciated.

1. it won't recognize my flash drive unless I boot with it in the usb slot
2. no sound
3. no wireless

in the device manager I can see my usb or my wireless card as being in there--but I cannot get them to work. somone mentioned downloading the drivers online--I would like to do this and put them on my flash drive--but I am not sure I can get them from there to my linux computer seeing as how its throwing a fit. Got any advice on how to get wireless activated?

It baffles me that your USB drive does not work with a vanilla kernel, because I have been using a couple different USB drives for several years with nothing more than a vanilla kernel, and they have always worked.

If your system worked with Ubuntu's kernel, you could just download them right in Linux using Ubuntu's kernel, reboot, and try using what you downloaded.

In the end, I would suggest you simply not use the -rt kernel, or get the appropriate patches and try applying them to the -rt kernel. There are reasons that Ubuntu does not ship with the -rt patches, and some of them are that there are conflicts.

However, if you are on Dapper, you can contact me via email, IM, or IRC and I can give you a -rt patch that will work with the Ubuntu kernel, with only a couple minor things to keep in mind (one module doesn't work, and ndiswrapper is untested at this time). We don't release this publicly yet because it hasn't undergone enough testing, but if you want to help test it, let me know.

[glassgloss]

Actually, I am going to second jrincon87's question. Since I am having all this trouble, wouldn't it be easier to boot in the k7 kernel (is this the original ubuntu kernel) instead of the -rt. or is this stupid? a hassle? I could then use the -rt kernel only when I was using jack and the audio apps... and use the ubuntu kernel for everything else. I am on breezy badger

If your system worked with Ubuntu's kernel, you could just download them right in Linux using Ubuntu's kernel, reboot, and try using what you downloaded.

Is this easy?

I will obviously still need to get my soundcard working. heh.

thanks for the reply dolson :)

[bobbyshane]

What happened to the wiki? Is there any way it can be put on a more dedicated server? It's hardly ever up...

[Morbett]

I started a thread for the following questions but nobody saw it, so I decided to post here. Have been trying to find the answers online but haven't succeeded:

Hello all,

I have Ubuntu 5.10 and I'm looking to purchase some interface like the M-Audio Firewire 410 or Solo that will double as a sound card. (I only have the factory card in my dekstop computer).

I'm a complete newbie to Linux and digital recording so I don't even know what I can use. I read the list of ALSA-supported sound cards, but I don't want to buy a new card to install. I like the idea of the M-Audio interfaces. I'm looking for simplicity and solid quality.

My questions are:

1) Is it even possible to record via Firewire or USB in Ubuntu?

2) Can anyone recommend a good interface for simple recording needs (synth, guitar, etc)

Thanks for your help.

[hack_jammer1998]

Hi Morbett,

I have same plans, although my M-Audio is yet to arrive in a few weeks. I'm using a laptop right now in dual-boot. If I get this all working in ubuntu (esp in the dapper release), I'll totally dump my M$. Currently, I read some issues on firewire problem in laptops but I haven't had time to deal with it yet. Once my 410 arrives, I'll have a better position to answer you. For your reference, I chose firewire 410 over solo because of the flexibility/versatility I think I can make.

Just gave this initial reply for not driving you off the thread. This may not be the total solution for musicians yet but we will get there.

Cheers!

[dolson]

What happened to the wiki? Is there any way it can be put on a more dedicated server? It's hardly ever up...

What?? It's up every single time I go to it, and I go to it many, many times daily...

The next time it is not working, go on irc.freenode.net and join #ubuntu-studio and tell me, so that I can see what is going on.

You are the first to report it, and a lot of people visit. I find it hard to believe that my hosting company, whom I have been with for a LONG time, is giving issues. Especially when I've been working on this site day in and day out.

[Morbett]

Hi Morbett,

I have same plans, although my M-Audio is yet to arrive in a few weeks. I'm using a laptop right now in dual-boot. If I get this all working in ubuntu (esp in the dapper release), I'll totally dump my M$. Currently, I read some issues on firewire problem in laptops but I haven't had time to deal with it yet. Once my 410 arrives, I'll have a better position to answer you. For your reference, I chose firewire 410 over solo because of the flexibility/versatility I think I can make.

Just gave this initial reply for not driving you off the thread. This may not be the total solution for musicians yet but we will get there.

Cheers!

Hey Hack Jammer. Thanks so much for your reply! Good to see someone has the same plans as me. We shall see if it works. I've been close to buying the 410 lately - just want to see if it will be recognized in Ubuntu. Keep in touch about your project and I will do the same.
my email : novascotiarobots at hotmail

[hack_jammer1998]

Originally Posted by bobbyshane
What happened to the wiki? Is there any way it can be put on a more dedicated server? It's hardly ever up...

What?? It's up every single time I go to it, and I go to it many, many times daily...

The next time it is not working, go on irc.freenode.net and join #ubuntu-studio and tell me, so that I can see what is going on.

You are the first to report it, and a lot of people visit. I find it hard to believe that my hosting company, whom I have been with for a LONG time, is giving issues. Especially when I've been working on this site day in and day out.
------------------------------------ * ---------------------------
@DOlson,

If it is a 404, probably bobbyshane is trying to access the "old" URL. The same thing happened to me last time when we were still starting the wiki.

@bobbyshane,

I also visit the 'new' wiki site almost daily and I have no problems. FYR.

[dolson]

Well if that's the case, I don't understand why it is only coming up now.. That URL was used for less than a week, and I didn't even post it in this thread at all.

Either way, the site is www.ubuntustudio.com

[rorowe]

This is awesome! Sound issues are the one and only reason I still have to dual-boot with Windows XP.
Count me in!

[MrChips]

Oye!
This is great to have some instruction on getting Ubuntu on par with some digital recording. After reading a bit it sounds like Dapper is going to be a better kernel for this project. So I'm looking forward to trying that out.

And being new to this I have gone through and done all that you ask but I feel I have skipped something. The launcher works, everything seems to be installed (i.e. Hydrogen, jack, etc.). They're in the package manager listed as installed but not on the apps menu or the launcher. I have had trouble installing Hydrogen before...

I only need the basics...multitracker and drum sequencer. The project looks good and well thought out. I just think my newbness is the prob here.

Great job! :KS

[dolson]

Nope, it's not your fault. If the app is not listed in the GNOME menu, it won't be listed in the Launcher app. It's an issue with Breezy, but on Dapper a lot of work has gone into ensuring a lot more apps have icons.

Dapper is coming soon..

[MrChips]

Dapper is coming soon..

Looking forward to it!

So I guess I'll find the apps for now and just create the launchers. I've got Hydrogen working so far. I'm halfway there already!

I would like to ditch Demudi and start from scratch. I like the Ubuntu community, very helpful. Now if I could just actually pick up a guitar to play something and stop tinkering with the comp! ;)

[dolson]

Heh, yeah, since I started working on the wiki and Dapper, I haven't written any music.. There comes a point when you have to stop and change directions, and I have a feeling that soon I'll get inspired to take that short break and come up with a new song. Using the Linux software now, of course.

[ShanghaiTeej]

I just wanted to say that I'm really psyched that this project is happening. I miss my pirated version of Sonar, but I'm happy that I'm using free software to manage my tunes.

[vector]

ill add my two cents . in the last year I have converted from windows to linux. However I have never been able to get studio (like cakewalk or sonar) working on linux and I tried many a distro.. i gave up.. for a while at least. I have had ubuntu running for some time now and want to get back into my music again and today went searching for anything linuxy, bass and tab like.
I came across this....
the problem i have with linux stuff is there is always hundreds of posts and xross posts and this n that and i get like lost man. its why i run ubuntu... it worked outa the box. :) well mostly I stripped all my usual uses for a PC and just went basic user for a while and ubuntu was fine but now im startn to branch out a little. like i just got songwrite

ok ill nick off now and look at this wiki forum and see what i can find


Please make this work for newbies please.. im a muso not a IT guy. this last year i have survived using a PS-04 portable 4 track ::( and im mean survived just.

[dolson]

If all you need is a multitrack, you should be able to get by with Audacity in the digital realm. I used it for all but one of my songs, and some of my projects had 12-15 tracks+. It doesn't even require JACK or anything like that.

[vector]

wow yea patches and reassemble number 5..:( not for this bunny


ill keep watching tho :)
anyone know the history on songwrite ? ie import gp5 stuff.. it all looks a little quite on the development front..maybe I should use something else.

[Karlos]

I was having a browse about came across this thread again. Dolson said this ..

Right now, I'm working with Mark and some other guys from Ubuntu as well as Free from DeMuDi to get a lot of DeMuDi stuff into Ubuntu, as well as a hopefully a CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT kernel option.

I'm not opposed to working on a separate add-on distro to Ubuntu, just like DeMuDi was to Debian, but that is for down the line if Canonical doesn't pull through officially, and after we all figure out exactly what we're doing. Right now I have not had very much help with adding stuff to the wiki, but there is a lot of progress nonetheless. If other people want to make a distro then that's fine.

If I can get a metapackage like kubuntu, I would want it Gnome-based as well, since that's Ubuntu, and it just makes sense. However, there might be other reasons to switch to IceWm or Fluxbox, namely that Gnome, XFce, and KDE are crap for realtime apps. Too much overhead at this point.


I've been playing around with Musix http://musix.org.ar/en/index.html lately.
It has been very interesting. They have incorporated some excellent ideas using a combination of ICEwm and the rox-filer pinboard.
The emphasise has definately been centred around the fact that your average muso/artist is not so interested in the command line.
on your ICEwm toolbar in musix is several icons which when clicked give different backdrops with different icons based around the type of program you want to use.
ie: midi, audio, graphics, net etc..
This is a seperate thing to virtual desktops it's very clever worth checking out.
Also the distro comes loaded with examples and pre-configured setups which make it really easy to be making music whithin seconds of installing.
It is made of a combination of Knoppix and Demudi and from what I can make out it works very well. full credit to the people involved..
My point is that if any of you people working on this project ie: an ubuntu based but seperate distro then have a look at musix. it will give you some good ideas i'm sure.
In particular the customization of ICEwm for music use it is brilliant and proves that ICEwm is perfect for music .. it has to be seen to be believed.

I personally am well up for seeing a spin off from ubuntu for music use. I will be willing to do something to help if only I knew what I could do. maybe someone could contact me, with a list of things that they need help with?
ciaow Karlos.

[Morbett]

I'm trying to find an app that I can use to master some waveforms. Something with a few decent presets for mastering. I can't quite figure out JAMin. It doesn't seem to open waveforms. Any other recommendations?

[dolson]

@Morbett: You could find Postfish and try that...

But JAMin is really where it's at, I think. You need to play something in a JACK-supported client (Ardour, XMMS, whatever) then using QjackCtl, route the output of that client into JAMin, and JAMin out to your sound card. Then you can master. When you've got your settings how you like, route JAMin into a recorder - TimeMachine, Rezound, Ardour, Qarecord, all those should work.

@Karlos: That is way over my head, to be honest. I may check it out to see what you're raving about though... I'm not at the point where I want to start ANOTHER distro though. The question is, if it's not built-in to Ubuntu, and you want a spinoff distro, then why not just use another distro that already exists? I think that the world is polluted with half-finished distros, so I'm hoping to do a small part towards helping Ubuntu get better.

@vector: What are you talking about? Recompiling what? If you don't want to recompile your kernel, then you're going to have to use high latencies. If you don't want to recompile PAM and you're not on Dapper yet, you're going to have to install set_rlimits. That's just how it is. If you don't like it, then maybe Linux isn't for your recording needs at this time.

Recompiling your kernel on Dapper is very painless when you follow a tutorial, which holds your hand through EVERY step.

Maarten and I have merged the -rt patch into the Dapper kernel source, so you lose no functionality (except one single add-on module that he couldn't figure out, which should affect hardly anyone, but hopefully we can solve it soon).

I am likely going to provide pre-built kernels as well at some point. But we'll see what happens...

[MrChips]

If all you need is a multitrack, you should be able to get by with Audacity in the digital realm. I used it for all but one of my songs, and some of my projects had 12-15 tracks+. It doesn't even require JACK or anything like that.

Yes that will work. But like you say you need a low-latency kernel or at least something that will allow such programs as hydrogen to run without hinderance. I need a drummer and most are hard to find or for me hard to find time to get together with. (why do I always have to go where they're set up?;) I have trouble running this program in Breezy. Sluggish, CPU up to 100%.

I have never compiled a kernel before and your steps seem fairly easy to follow. So I may give it a go sometime, perhaps when I get the Dapper release. Anything improved upon with Dapper for the audio junkies right out of the box?

Ubuntu has been the easiest for me to use so far and most other music distros lack support in some important areas (samba, nvidia) or lack a certain amount of "newb" support. Or they just plain get deserted.... Ubuntu has a lot to offer and I appreciate you trying to expand that.:)

[dolson]

Yes that will work. But like you say you need a low-latency kernel or at least something that will allow such programs as hydrogen to run without hinderance. I need a drummer and most are hard to find or for me hard to find time to get together with. (why do I always have to go where they're set up?;) I have trouble running this program in Breezy. Sluggish, CPU up to 100%.

I have never compiled a kernel before and your steps seem fairly easy to follow. So I may give it a go sometime, perhaps when I get the Dapper release. Anything improved upon with Dapper for the audio junkies right out of the box?

Ubuntu has been the easiest for me to use so far and most other music distros lack support in some important areas (samba, nvidia) or lack a certain amount of "newb" support. Or they just plain get deserted.... Ubuntu has a lot to offer and I appreciate you trying to expand that.:)
I did a song a long time ago using Hydrogen for drums, and I didn't even know what JACK was back then. Are you absolutely sure that you need JACK for it these days? You can still build your drums up, then export them as a WAV, then load that in Audacity and layer your other instruments on top. I did a lot of songs with just Audacity, recording each layer individually, since I'm just one person. :) It worked great, but I'd like to move away from all hardware-based.

I remember Hydrogen being bad in Breezy too. I haven't used it too much in Dapper, but it does have way too many features for me... It's basically a bloated sampler. Don't get me wrong, it's a great app, but for me, I'd rather sequence in Seq24 instead.

My steps should be very easy to follow, but I'd hold off until you upgrade to Dapper. Breezy has a lot wrong with it, IMHO, starting with Hydrogen, as you said. The kernel is the worst in Breezy, but that's not all.

As far as Dapper's improvements, there are many new apps thanks to Forest Bond and I, as well as what was new from Debian. On top of that, it includes rlimit-aware glibc, bash, and PAM, out of the box, so the steps in Breezy are pretty much eliminated with Dapper, and the only real dirty work is down to the kernel. Aside from this, my Studio Launcher app is also included in Dapper, which may not be useful for anyone but myself, heh.

I think Ubuntu may not ever be as good as, say, DeMuDi or Musix, out of the box, but it is really a general distro. A lot of people are mad that it doesn't continually update the apps to newer versions throughout the 6-month cycle, but that's too bad for them. They can choose to run Ubuntu's development distro or switch to Sid, Gentoo, LFS, whatever if that's all they want. Although I agree that some apps should be updated via backports, and I'm trying to get in contact with the Backports team to see if we can work together through Dapper, as some apps are new that might not be in Dapper (seq24's new version, Ardour's newest stable verison, etc, which I requested UVF exceptions for).

That said, I recently became an official Ubuntu Member, with hopes of making a small difference. And I encourage everyone to get involved too. I didn't know how to make a package a month and a day ago, but on Feb. 10th I started making them, and Dapper has over a dozen new audio apps to show for it, and I even had a Debian Developer come into our Ubuntu Studio IRC channel to ask me to put these new apps into Debian. It really isn't hard work as long as you have a knack for computer stuff (which you likely do, since you run Linux in the first place), you don't have to be a programmer, and the Ubuntu MOTU team are really quite helpful. I'm willing to help out too, when I can. If you want to help out for Dapper+1, please start now - don't wait until a dozen days before the Feature Freeze like I did. :) This isn't directed solely at you, but to everyone who wants to and is willing to help improve Ubuntu on behalf of audio users.

[BobSongs]

I was wondering if anyone else got the same thing on Audacity that I'm getting. It's really easy to test.


Ensure a microphone is attached to the sound card.
In Audacity: File > Preferences
Audio I/O tab
[x] Play other tracks while recording new one



Once that's checked click the red button and just say a few words into the microphone.
Click the stop button.
Click the record button again and, while listening to your previous words say a few more words.
Click the stop button.
Play it back.


In every instance and every Ubuntu set-up the second track plays garbled nonsense that's wayyy lower than anything I ever spoke.

Is this universal?

[dolson]

I don't have that issue on Breezy or Dapper. What sound card are you using?

[BobSongs]

I don't have that issue on Breezy or Dapper. What sound card are you using?Our survey says:

Vendor: Creative Labs
Product: SB Live! EMU10k1
OEM Vender: Creative Labs
OEM Product: SB Live! 5.1 Model SB0100

Pentium III 933 MHz
GeForce 2 video card
Ubuntu 5.10
512 Mb RAM

Is this good, doctor? Will my PC survive? It could be my crazy motherboard. It's an older dual Pentium III network board. I should upgrade the thing. It's a 694D Pro (MS-6321) ATX Mainboard. Supports Dual Intel Pentium III (FC-PGA) Processors.

Note: this never happens in XP. I can record layer upon layer upon layer and it all plays back just fine. If I can just get this aspect working in Ubuntu then I'd be laughing. So, at times I still slip back *shudder* into XP to do recording.

Of course, if my problem is the main board... there's not much anyone can do to help me.

[dolson]

Hmm, now that I try it again, I do get some crackling in Audacity on my system on the second and third tracks I add... I don't know what is going on, but I recorded several songs in Breezy with over 10 tracks each and had no issues like this... I have an Audigy2 ZS.

Perhaps a bug report is in order.

[BobSongs]

Perhaps a bug report is in order.Uhm... are you handling that? If not, I'll do it. Just lemme know.

Note: Audacity 1.3.0b (beta) is already released with many additional dodads added. So this problem might be resolved. I've downloaded it and I'll give it a test run. I'll let you know if there are any improvements.

Another note: Here's a piece of software that's not true music software but might be handy for musicians who have lots of songs to remember. It's called "Asaph". It's a system of adding lyrics and placing chords over the right spots. I've seen folk bands have their music on stands before them in coffee shops. I figure it's quite useful. I use it all the time. I can write up a tutorial if its value is considered questionable or more info is desired.

[GreveFelix]

yes, good idea. I am a very new umbutu user and I appreciate your efforts....

[dolson]

Asaph looks cool, but the last update was over a year ago? Will it work with the Java stuff that is included in Dapper or Breezy? If so, I think we should package it and get it into Dapper+1 and backport it to Dapper.

I didn't open a bug on Audacity. If you do, link it here or subscribe me to it. If the new version of Audacity solves the issues for you, and Debian updates their package, then I will request a UVF exception, unless you want to.

[BobSongs]

Asaph looks cool, but the last update was over a year ago? Will it work with the Java stuff that is included in Dapper or Breezy? If so, I think we should package it and get it into Dapper+1 and backport it to Dapper.I use Asaph for my band without a hitch. I have two databases open all the time (English and French songs necessary here in Montreal). I use the Java that comes with Automatix and all seems 100%. Very, very stable. Very flexible software too. Well thought-out features. Perhaps if the original product is abandoned new updaters could be found to add new features and clean up any bugs.I didn't open a bug on Audacity. If you do, link it here or subscribe me to it. If the new version of Audacity solves the issues for you, and Debian updates their package, then I will request a UVF exception, unless you want to.Let me give the new version a whirl. You see: if it doesn't fly with Ubuntu then I'm going to give your kernel tweaks a try. If that fails then I'm forced to find another distro. Because I host sites I can't keep flipping from Linux to Windows. I need a solid music solution in Linux and I need it yesterday. And bug fixes usually take a long time to trickle into the software.