There are plenty of reasons to consider free software tools as part of your toolchain for music making. They might fit your budget, give you needed flexibility, allow you to use a tool driven more by development needs than commercial ones, give you tools that would otherwise lack proprietary commercial niches, allow you to run (via Linux) on a wider variety of hardware or with greater low-latency performance, or allow you to contribute more directly to a project, from documentation to actual development. And increasingly, they don’t mandate some sort of philosophical choice, either – I routinely use free software tools on the proprietary Mac OS, and use commercial, proprietary projects (Renoise) on Linux or (Harrison Mixbus) to make free projects more powerful.

What usually holds people back from free software projects is, simply, not knowing where to begin. Software in general can overwhelm with choice; free software, often, doubly so.

Fortunately, some software gurus have jumped into the legwork so you don’t have to. I have some of my own thoughts on how to put this together, but first I wanted to share the input of these esteemed colleagues. These aren’t all Linux-only – many run on Windows and Mac, too – but if you are looking for a way to put together a robust studio on Linux, they’re a great start.

Webcast, Software Picks, Knowledge Databases

If you like real-time feedback, today, you can join Red Hat’s Adam Drew in a live webcast for “Open Your World,” entitled “Making Music with FOSS.” [Free and Open Source Software] It runs at 11:00a Pacific / 2:00p Eastern, and will be archived. (I’ll update that link here.)

Learn to make open source music–Register now for a webcast with Adam Drew

Warning: I just discovered that this thing pops up an annoying survey that assumes you use JBoss. (And, heck, CDM is indirectly a Red Hat customer – the whole site runs on RHEL.) Trying to tell it you don’t use JBoss makes the whole survey fail. I’m going to try to schedule something separately, as this is … more than a little ridiculous for a music-making survey, and sadly shows Red Hat’s blind spot in regards to end users.

Day job in tech, night job in music making – yup, that’s the M.O. of quite a few people around this community.

I asked Adam for his top picks, and he explained he would demo:

• JACK / qjackctl (the GUI for JACK), the tool for interconnecting audio, MIDI, and sync between applications
• Hydrogen Drum Machine
• Ardour, the terrific, all-free DAW
• Rakarrack, a free guitar effects tool set for Linux (one new to me, in fact!)
• ZynAddSubFX, probably the most capable free standalone soft synth – ugly, but very powerful, and a candidate for a “desert island” synth.

For additional resources, there’s a superb guide on the Fedora site (one that Ubuntu actually might mirror). It’s Fedora-focused, but the advice often applies to other distributions:
Fedora 14 Musician’s Guide

Adam himself operates the FOSS Audio KBase, full of articles on configuration and individual software programs. It’s about the most productive guide I’ve seen:
FOSS Audio KBase

Adam has some more philosophical thoughts:
Webcast preview: Free and open source software for music production [opensource.com]

And you can check out Adam’s music (CC-BY-NC-ND) and Linux-oriented personal blog. I tend to be more pragmatic about some of these issues, so I’m not endorsing all the opinions on Adam’s blog, but it’s a compelling read, and often comes with useful practical advice. (Mainly – I disagree with two points, one, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that proprietary DAWs lack interoperability, and two, I’m far more pragmatic about the future of Android as a platform, mainly because I think it’s currently the best bet for the distribution of free software on mobile. Oh, I don’t trust Google, either, though – that’d be silly.)

Picks from Dave Phillips of Linux Journal

Last weekend, I had the pleasure to meet Dave Phillips for the first time. Dave, an Ohio-based musician and teacher, is bar none the most invaluable writer when it comes to free software and music-making on Linux. His series for Linux Journal in particular is a must-read.

Dave and I joined Columbia’s Brad Garton at Virginia Tech to do a bit of teaching, a bit of playing, and to enjoy the hard work of the Linux Laptop Orchestra. I’ll cover more of that soon, but in the meantime, I took some notes as Dave walked through a current take on the software for Linux that most excited him.

His picks:

• Ardour, naturally
• Ardour 3, the next-generation update to Ardour that at last adds MIDI support (and beautifully executed). Dave noted that you can and should install Ardour 3 alongside the stable Ardour, so you can test both. There are even pre-built alpha binaries, so there’s really no excuse: you could be up and running in less than the time it took to read this. (See a much earlier story from Dave on testing 3.)
• Harrison Mixbus: It’s not free software, but it is now Linux-native and supports Linux plug-ins, and it’s built on Ardour (and, in turn, contributes back to Ardour). As Dave put it, Mixbus is a mind-boggling value “from a company that thinks of a budget console as costing $100,000.”
• IR: LV2 convolution reverb. The work of Tom Szilagyi, IR is a brilliant, no-nonsense plug-in for powerful convolution effects; LV2 support means it runs beautifully in hosts like Ardour 2.8.x and higher and Renoise. I’m really grateful to Dave for turning me on to this one. woo, tangent has a nice blog entry on the plug.
• LV2, generally. Dave credits the evolving state of LV2, and the work of its principle developer, David Robillard, for a lot of innovation in free software and Linux audio. I’m surprised LV2 hasn’t gained more attention, in fact – it might be the best bet yet to finally help plug-in developers escape the shadow of formats like VST. But that’s probably a topic for another article.
• RubberBand Audio Processor Powerful time stretching tool, now on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Available as a library, too, if you’re a developer – or just use it to mangle your audio files as an end user. Someone has already ported it to Renoise.

The focus of Dave’s presentation, though, was one tool so deep, it could easily be your only tool, for the rest of time. AVSynthesis couples visual output in OpenGL with the veritable Csound sound and composition engine. It includes built-in sequencing capabilities, basic sound generators (themselves written in Csound), envelopes and modulation, the powerful MatrixSynthMod instrument, MIDI control, and effects (phasers, choruses, filter, waveguide filter, and so on). There’s shader support on the graphics side, too. The result: based on built-in building blocks or, if you’re adventurous, your own code, you can produce 3D audiovisual musical-eye candy performances. I hope we’ll take more look at this soon; the one question that came up repeatedly – and that Dave couldn’t answer yet – was what the workflow might be for adding your own Csound creations. (The package itself is built in Java.)

More information:
http://www.avsynthesis.net/
AVSynthesis: Blending Light and Sound with OpenGL and Csound5 [Dave in Linux Journal]

AVSynthesis Tour 1

Composing With Csound In AVSynthesis [Dave in Csound Journal]

Lest you think we’re all a bunch of “neckbeard” Marxist free software revolutionaries, though, Dave – who’s had drinks with Stallman on occasion – was also full of questions about Mac OS and curious about it for his own music making. I think largely we’re all technologically curious; if anything, the only people I’ve met who have gotten really emotional are the people who mistrust free software, perhaps because they just need to loosen up and accept that something really can be free.

But as with proprietary software, I think the biggest danger with Linux and free software is that you can become overwhelmed with choices rather than focusing on music. That’s part of why I find these choices so appealing: deep, capable, well-designed, and rock-solid, I’ve found them to be eminently musical. Some of the best demonstrate that free software can provide choice – not, as many believe, only compromise. And I see absolutely no reason that they can’t coexist with other popular proprietary options in your studio. You may not be ready to leap into Linux, but especially given that by now you’ve likely accumulated either extra machines or machines that can easily dual-boot, there’s no reason not to add these free tools to your arsenal.

Got favorites of your own? Let us know; I’ll continue to feature this stuff in coming days.

Harrison is a company with a rich legacy in high-end consoles. Mixbus, their software product, is something of an anomaly. Its analog tape saturation, EQ, filter, compression, and mixing should be sold a la carte for a few hundred bucks each, given the usual business model in this industry. The product should run on some proprietary DAW, and should definitely come with a hardware dongle. And it absolutely, positively shouldn’t run on Linux, because everyone knows you can’t sell a product for Linux.

Instead, Mixbus sells for an intro price for US$79.99. You get the whole package: an entire DAW, plus a software version of Harrison’s 32-series and MR-series consoles, with powerful DSP and mixing features baked in. There’s no dongle. The DAW is the open source Ardour. On the Mac, you get support for Audio Unit plug-ins and any Core Audio interface, plus the superb Mac port of JACK.

And now, in addition to Mac support, you can run the package on Linux, benefiting from native Linux technologies like JACK and LADSPA and (now) LV2 plug-ins. Harrison recommends an audio-based distribution, but two of them – Ubuntu Studio and (Fedora-based) CCRMA – make their packages available in standard Ubuntu and custom Fedora repositories, respectively, which means just about any recent, major distribution will work.

Working with an open source DAW, Ardour, has some practical benefits for users. Aside from benefiting from a mature, open source codebase, the fact that Ardour is free software means you can exchange multitrack projects with friends, even if they don’t own Mixbus or do their work in a different DAW. Ardour takes some time to learn – the interface is spartan, to be sure – but because it’s a free project, it refreshingly focuses on the basics rather than the feature creep that has tended to make the major commercial, proprietary DAWs a bit complex.

Mixbus is simply a joy to use, because it consolidates the user interface into an efficient, productive console, and has some terrific effects to boost. Features:

• “Knob per function” mixing.
• EQ, filter, compression, analog tape saturation, and Harrison’s summing model
• 4 mix bus sends on every channel, and channel strips that each feature filter, EQ, and compression.
• Tone controls, compression, sidechaining, and tape saturation on the mix buses (hence the name), and on the stereo master bus, too – meaning this works nicely for mastering.
• Plugin delay compensation for features like parallel compression.
• Metering with peak, peak hold, compressor gain reduction on each track and bus – again, bringing mastering and mixing into a nice interface.

All of this operates in an extremely lightweight system that runs comfortably on a fairly low-end laptop, without having to sacrifice audio fidelity. (As with any multitrack system, just make sure you have a capable hard disk; that’s what I find to be the most significant bottleneck.)

In short, it’s a brilliant tool for plug-in hosting, thanks to all the routing options, and for finally finishing tracks, thanks to mix- and master-friendly features. On the Mac, support for AU means your plug-ins come with you from another DAW when you want to finish your music. On Linux (and on the Mac), you can use JACK to route in everything from a Pure Data patch to a recording for conventional mixing.

On the Mac, it’s a no-brainer purchase that makes a fantastic tool in your arsenal for finishing music. On Linux, it could be the release that finally makes a Linux-based studio practical.

Version 1.5 also introduces some new features alongside the Linux release, including a key-mappable “play with pre-roll” Transport command and playhead edit range Transport snapping (huge time-savers), thinning for dynamic automation, and a Gain tool you can use to adjust curves in a region.

I spoke to Harrison about some of the details of what’s on offer here.

CDM: Can you describe what’s built into Mixbus’ console from a processing standpoint? What makes this console special? A lot is made of “summing,” but that’s – unless I’m missing something you’re doing – typically the least interesting part of DSP design in a mixer. So tell us what does make working with Mixbus different sonically?

There’s the obvious stuff…. the built-in EQs, compressors, tape saturation, and final limiter…. done by our in-house DSP guys. But I assume that’s not what you mean.

One fundamental difference in Mixbus is the fact that everything is always “in” … for example, when you turn on an EQ, that processing is already allocated so you won’t push your CPU over the edge while undertaking the art of “mixing”. This sounds trivial, but it has significant implications in the workflow, sound, and “immediacy” of the mixer. A second big difference is the fixed number of pre-allocated buses (both graphically and DSP-wise) which is quite different from the normal DAW mixer. This will become more apparent as we develop Mixbus further, in a way that is parallel with – but different than – Ardour and more traditional DAWs.

Summing is a hot-button topic, for sure. On some level, there will be a simple addition, just like there is an addition of voltages/current on the summing bus of an analog console. But nobody would say that 2 analog consoles sound the same. Similarly, there are design decisions to be made on digital mixers. For example, our EQs are implemented in 64-bit, and there is a dither stage in each channel. When multiple channels are summed together, you can handle this dither in different ways. The difference isn’t in the actual summing, but qualitative differences come from these signals when they are summed.

Ed.: That makes some sense – the summing stage itself, which is what people will often describe when comparing DAWs, shouldn’t theoretically be any different, but the way you handle changes in bit depth in various mixing stages prior to summing could make a big difference. I pushed Harrison on this partly because I’ve been having some heated discussions with developers and engineers about this topic, so we can go further into it if interested – but it’s good to know how Mixbus works, and I can confirm that mixing in the software is really a joy. -PK

Finally, there’s the rule that in digital it’s hard to “improve” the quality of sound, but there are a hell of a lot of ways to screw it up. Avoiding these landmines, or designing to accomodate them on a given platform, is something that comes from a lot of experience.

What’s the relationship of Mixbus to other Harrison products? How did they inform this design?

We designed the Mixbus mixer using the same people & process that we would apply to a hardware mixer. Every design has “tradeoffs” associated with it: features, bit depth, gain stages, dithering, oversampling, parameter ramping methods, etc etc. There’s also a lot of thought that gets put into the parameter ranges …. where should the EQ center frequencies be? How wide a range should they cover? These are things that we (a) think about much more frequently than the typical DAW developer and (b) have a very wide experience to draw from.

Aside from the fact that it’s already there, can you talk about some specific advantages of working with Ardour? Any tips you’ve personally found while working with it, from a workflow / usability standpoint?

Coming from the rarified world of high-end audio systems, we recognized a lot of the same qualities in Ardour. Some examples: “The things you do 1000 times a day are very easy to apply, while the things you do once per day don’t matter where they appear” …. “Anything that you do automatically, while really helpful in some cases, will be terribly wrong in other cases” ….. “first-time-user intuitiveness isn’t as important as long-term usability to a pro” ….. “customization on a truly deep level is important for enterprise-class facilities” …. stuff like that.

These are subtleties. How do you make a soundbyte out of the overall “gestalt” that Ardour/Mixbus has? It is the result of many iterations driven by real-world users. Sometimes it’s about going back-and-forth until finally settling on the “least evil” of evil compromises. It doesn’t make good ad copy

One huge point: Ardour (in many cases) is a superset of the features of workstations. For example, the AudioFile (a high end hardware DAW by AMS/Neve) had the feature of “transparent regions”… so you could stack multiple sounds on a single track. Ardour has a “transparent” flag for regions, so you can do this. An interesting point here is that the Ardour session file format could conceivably become the shared standard of nearly other DAW. Presumably we’ll be able to support nearly any workflow that a user wants, once we get the UI’s developed.

Mixbus users – or potential Mixbus users – we’d love to hear from you. If you’re using the tool now, let us know how it’s working for you. And if you’re considering using it, let us know what’d be helpful to you. I suspect a tutorial on setting everything up on Linux would be a good place to start; it’s powerful, but not immediately intuitive out of the box.

http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/

Are you a World Cup fan annoyed by the constant sound of the South African vuvuzela horn? Wish you could remove that sound from your World Cup viewing experience? Do you want to learn a little bit about powerful modular effects routing can be on Linux? Either? Both? Call it “football”? “Soccer”? Any way round, we’ve got you covered.

(Disclaimer: I have nothing in particular against the vuvuzela. But here you go, anyway.)

Updated: Via comments, here’s a Mac plug-in for filtering the horn, also a notch filter, and a sign that this is getting a little carried away. (Mostly, I think this is a useful way to learn about JACK, something you can use after the World Cup. But knowing football fans, “after the World Cup” may not be a phrase with any meaning at the moment.)

JACK is a powerful audio API on Linux, and thanks to rich application support for the tool, you can route sound arbitrarily between software tools, making everything on your computer into a kind of virtual studio. (Mac users should check out the excellent JACK OS X implementation.)

Felix Kaechele, a German-based Fedora community member and Fedora Ambassador, uses JACK to filter out sound from his live World Cup feed. If you’re curious about how JACK works and how to add effects to your system (or record a system audio feed, etc.), this is the way to go. The trick here is that PulseAudio, the default sound API on Linux, actually gets routed right into JACK.

Read the full instructions here:
Vuvuzela Filter using Fedora [Felix' Blog]

Fedora is a superb distribution, and intelligent JACK packaging is a particular strong suit. (Check out the Planet CCRMA project for more.) But part of the strength of Linux is that it is open, so you’ll find these same instructions work on other distributions. In fact, so long as you replace “yum install” with “apt-get install”, you’ll find most of these packages have the same name. (Only “ladspa-swh-plugins” is missing on Ubuntu, though there are other LADSPA plugs available.)

Note that on vanilla Ubuntu, I did need to do one extra step when setting up JACK. When you launch, JACK will actually advise you to do so right in the message window, but here it is, as a reminder:

Please check your /etc/security/limits.conf for the following lines
and correct/add them:
@audio – rtprio 100
@audio – nice -10
After applying these changes, please re-login in order for them to take effect.

These steps tweak real-time performance for better JACK sound results.

Also, I generally like to launch JACK Control with the following command, in order to disable PulseAudio:
pasuspender qjackctl

But in this event, you’d actually install the Pulse module and route Pulse into JACK, as in the instructions.

Setting up Ubuntu is a topic for another article, but there’s a preview. But the musical applications here should be clear: JACK makes it easy to set up a modular rig. Want to add effects to a Pd patch? Record audio from a system application for sampling? Route together some effects to make a virtual stompbox rig for your guitar? Having JACK is a bit like having an extensive patch bay for software.

Let us know how these tips work out for you, or if you’ve got ideas of your own. (And if someone wants to do a Mac version of the tutorial, let us know!)

Via OSTATIC; thanks, Brad Linder!

Alongside our Renoise + Indamixx netbook-optimized production competition, I’m kicking off this week a series of CDM and guest tutorials on working with Linux audio tools, Renoise, and more. First up, here’s a basic look at how to route the free-as-in-beer linuxDSP effects toolkit into the powerful, modern, open-source DAW Ardour. Correction: I implied that linuxDSP had an open source license, which is not correct. It should be considered “freeware” but not free software. Ardour, of course, is fully open source, and this is as much a tutorial on how to use JACK to route effects as it is linuxDSP per se.

http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk/

linuxDSP comes with a nice set of basic effects, including a 15-band graphic EQ, stereo reverb, valve-emulating overdrive and compressor, and parametric channel EQ, plus a much nicer graphical patchbay interface for using JACK to route audio between applications. (That last one probably deserves its own look.) linuxDSP is also bundled with upcoming builds of the Indamixx products, and it’s freely available, so if you’ve got Linux and Ardour, you can follow this tutorial  — and if you’re interested in using Linux at all, you’ll want to give linuxDSP a look. Note: The Indamixx version of LinuxDSP is optimized for Atom-based Netbooks and is an Indamixx exclusive.

For those of you used to running VST and AU plug-ins, you may find linuxDSP a bit confusing at first. Instead of opening them as you would a plug-in, you launch them as an application. Thanks to the power of JACK, though, you can freely route audio between software without a lot of the limitations normally associated with plug-in architectures. Of course, when you’re in the habit of doing things one way, that can feel a little strange. So I’m pleased to welcome Mike from the linuxDSP project, who shares with us his own tutorial for getting started with Ardour and linuxDSP.

Also, trust me – this may seem like a lot of steps in the case of a simple insert, but that’s partly because we’ve broken it down to make sure you’re clear on the process. Actually doing this can be pretty fast. And keep in mind that this works for any routing with any JACK-aware application – so you could side-chain a drum track into a surround-sound SuperCollider granular effect you’ve built, for instance. It’s easily worth a little extra effort to get around the comparative rigidity of conventional plug-ins, even before considering these are all free tools.

You can also save a session with routings you want so that Ardour acts like a virtual studio, in which your favorite effects and routings are ready to run. (In fact, because of the modular nature of a JACK Linux setup, you can think of Ardour more like a traditional mixer and patch bay than just a monolithic DAW – keeping in mind that Renoise, the tracker in our competition, now has full JACK support.)

linuxDSP with a Simple Ardour Project

Mike from linuxDSP

1. Open Ardour and linuxDSP. Start up Ardour, and create or open an existing project. In this example, a simple project consisting of one stereo track will be used, as shown below:

In order to connect a linuxDSP plug-in as an insert on the track, we need to launch the plug-in and connect it via the Ardour mixer. Make sure the plug-in is running; you can do this by launching it, just like any other application. In this example, the CHEQ2 is used, since the track is stereo. Ed.: That is to say, there’s both a stereo and mono version of the EQ, so grab the stereo one!

2. Route an insert in the mixer. Next, select Ardour’s mixer window. Here, the stereo track the plug-in is to be inserted into is selected. Now make a new insert point. To do this, right click in the black area above the fader:

From the drop-down menu that appears, select New Insert. The Mixer window will now show the new insert point in the black area above the fader.

3. Select your insert. Double-click on “(insert 1)” in the Mixer window. This will open the insert dialogue.

4. Connect the linuxDSP effect to the Ardour insert point. The insert dialog allows you to connect the insert point to any external JACK application. In this case, the CHEQ2
is going to be used, so the CHEQ2 tab is selected. You will see that the CHEQ2 has two
inputs, "inL" and "inR," and two outputs, "outL" and "outR." In this example, we are going to route
the signal from the channel insert send to the inL and inR connections on the CHEQ2, and then
route the signal coming back out of the CHEQ2 "outL" and "outR" to the insert return.

Click on "inL" in the "Available connections" window. "inL" will now appear in the "out 1" box to the left. Click on "inR" in the "Available connections" window. "inR" will now appear in the "out 2" box to
the left Next do the same for "outL" and "outR" in the "Available Connections" window on the right.

The insert dialogue should now look like this:

5. Activate the setup. Finally, return to Ardour’s mixer window and ‘activate’ the insert by right clicking on it and selecting "Activate" from the drop-down menu.

6. Save and re-use! Once this is set up, if you save the session, Ardour will take care of the routing for you next time the session is loaded. All you have to do is make sure the CHEQ2 has been launched before you start Ardour and load the session.

If you play the track in Ardour, adjusting the controls on the CHEQ2 will affect the sound.

Got more requests for tutorials? Let us know. Next on my slate is using the awesome powers of the JP1 patchbay. It’s a graphical patchbay for JACK, but made a whole lot prettier. If you’re using it already and have some tips, let me know and I’ll incorporate them into the story.

Here’s a switcher story of a different color: from the Mac, to Linux. It’s one thing to talk about operating systems and free software in theory, or to hear from died-in-the-wool advocates of their platform of choice. In this case, we turn to Kim Cascone, an experienced and gifted musician and composer with an impressive resume of releases and a rich sens of sound. This isn’t someone advocating any platform over another: it’s an on-the-ground, in-the-trenches, real-world example of how Kim made this set of tools work in his music, in the studio and on tour. A particular thanks, as he’s given me some new ideas for how to work with Audacity and Baudline. Kim puts his current setup in the context of decades of computer work. Even if you’re not ready to leave Mac (or Windows) just yet, Kim’s workflow here could help if you’re looking to make a Linux netbook or laptop more productive in your existing rig.

Stay tuned, as I’ll have some other stories on how to make your Linux music workflow effective creatively, particularly in regards to leaping over some of the setup hurdles Kim describes. -PK

Historical Evolution

I’ve been working with computers since the 1970s. Inspired by the work of composer David Behrman, I taught myself assembly language and programmed a simple digital sequencer on a KIM-1, single-board microcomputer, controlling an Aries modular synthesizer I had built. I discovered a then-new magazine called Computer Music Journal at the local computer shop and bought every copy I could get my hands on. (I still have them, too.) Later, I helped a friend’s father, an executive at IBM, unpack and set up the first personal computer IBM made. The manuals alone took up two or three feet of bookshelf space.

Fast-forward through a couple of decades of owning Commodore 64s, Apple computers, and PCs. In 1997, I purchased my first laptop: a woefully-underpowered Compaq Presario. It wasn’t fast enough for real-time audio, so I had to render sound files to hard disk using the audio programming language Csound. I created many of the sounds this way for my CD ‘blueCube( )’. But the capacity to work anywhere was enough for me to give up ever owning another desktop computer.

Frustrated with the ‘code-compile-listen’ process of working with Csound and wanting to work in real-time, I switched to the graphical multi-media programming language Max/MSP, which necessitated a move back to Apple hardware, so I bought a PowerBook. Having Max/MSP running on a laptop was the perfect environment for me. I could build the tools I needed whenever an idea presented itself. The computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part.

Apple Seeds of Discontent

When I’m on the road, I use my laptop as a music studio, performance instrument, and administration office. I don’t like surprises on the road. Having a computer fail means a loss of income, and makes for an embarrassing moment if the failure happens during a performance. If watching laptop music bores some people, watching a musician reboot is even worse. So to be safe, I stress-test all new hardware or software in my studio for at least a month before I take it on the road. Max/MSP patches run for hours, software is used for weeks, and hardware is left on for days at a time to help induce failure before I leave home. But as fate would have it, an iBook I was touring with died a few years ago. I brought the laptop into an Apple repair shop in Berlin, where a technician diagnosed the problem as a faulty logic board. The failure rate on logic boards was high for that model of iBook, and in response to public pressure, Apple instituted a logic board replacement program. Luckily, my laptop qualified and the logic board was replaced for free. But the failure and ongoing buggy behavior impacted my work schedule and added to the stress of touring.

I’ve now replaced logic boards on three computers; the other two I paid for out of pocket. The out-of-warranty cost of replacing a logic board on an Apple laptop is around six hundred dollars — cheaper than buying a brand new laptop, but still significant.

If you make your living with applications that run on OS X, there are no options if a laptop fails. You either repair expensive Apple hardware or buy new expensive Apple hardware. This is called ‘vendor lock-in.’

Then, during my 2009 spring tour, my PowerBook G4 exhibited signs of age, with missing keystrokes, intermittent backlighting, the failure of a RAM slot, and reduced performance. As an alternative to repairing the PowerBook, I investigated what a new MacBook Pro and upgrades for all my software would cost. A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadn’t come along and spawn a price-wars on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt. But as a wise uncle once advised, “you invest either your time or your money; never both.”

Meeting Ubuntu

I had tried Linux in 2005 on PowerPC-based Mac laptops, though at the time I couldn’t get audio working, even after extensive tweaking. But I had kept an eye on Ubuntu ever since. After considering MacBook Pro prices, I checked out the new netbooks coming to market and picked up a refurbished Dell Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu pre-installed.

I loaded up my Dell with all a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz audio with effects – not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer — a far cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable.

Getting Past Ubuntu Audio Complexities

There are a few differences between how audio works on Mac OS X and how it works on Ubuntu Linux. OS X uses the Core Audio and Core MIDI frameworks for audio and MIDI services, respectively. All applications requiring audio services on OS X talk to Core Audio, which mixes and routes multiple audio streams to the desired locations. Core Audio is simple, monolithic, and easy to set up, and all the end-user controls are accessible from one panel. You can even create a single aggregate device from multiple sound cards if you need more inputs or outputs than one sound card can supply. To Apple’s credit, Core Audio and the applications that make use of it are the reason why you see so many laptop musicians seated behind glowing Apple logos on stage.

On Ubuntu, audio is a rather different story. Apple’s slogan ‘Think Different’ would be good advice for musicians encountering Ubuntu’s audio setup for the first time. Audio in Ubuntu can appear at first to be a confusing jumble of servers, layers, services, and terminology. Go to System->Preferences->Sound, click on the Devices tab, and check out the pulldown menu next to ‘Sound Events’ at the top of the panel. You will see various acronyms, possibly including cryptic-looking technologies like OSS, ESD, ALSA, JACK, and Pulse Audio. These acronyms represent a byzantine tangle of conflicting technologies that over time, and due to political reasons or backwards compatibility, have ended up cohabiting with one another. ‘Frankenstein’ might be an accurate metaphor here.

Thankfully, there is a simpler way, which is the combination of ALSA [a high-performance, kernel-level audio and MIDI system] and JACK [a system for creating low-latency audio, MIDI, and sync connections between applications and computers]. The battle-scarred among us have learned to ignore all the other audio cruft bolted on to Ubuntu and just use ALSA and JACK. One can think of the ALSA/JACK stack, the heart of most pro Linux studios, as the Core Audio of Linux and in my opinion Jack should be the first thing installed on any musicians laptop. I’d go so far as to suggest placing it in the Startup Applications so it’s always running.

The ALSA/JACK combination is a little more complex to set up and tweak than Apple’s Core Audio, but there’s a lot of good information online. [Ed.: ALSA, JACK, and the real-time Linux kernel also have some advantages over Mac OS X that can be worth the effort. While JACK has been ported to Mac, Linux has more JACK-aware tools, which is necessary for transport sync. Just as importantly, once configured, you can build rigs with Linux that have greater low-latency performance than may be practical on Mac or Windows. In other words, while it may require an investment of time, it can be both free and better! -PK]

Workflow

Over the past ten years, I’ve developed a workflow that has worked well in the studio and on the road. Since I created most of my tools in Max/MSP, they could shape-shift to fit any musical task I encountered. A sound mangling tool I’d written for studio use, for instance, I could then adapt for a performance with Tony Conrad. I modified parts of my performance patch for sound installations. This environment served me well over the years – until recently, when my aesthetic focus changed from using randomness in my work to taking a more deterministic approach. This happened to coincide with my change of operating systems.

I do a lot of location recording while on tour. My rig consists of an Olympus LS-10 digital recorder and an Audio Technica AT-822 single-point stereo microphone. I record at 96kHz/24-bit to a 16GB SDHC card in the LS-10. When I want to audition sound files in the field, I use my netbook’s SDHC reader, renaming sound files directly on the card. I can look at some of the files in Baudline if I need to check for low-frequency rumble or technical anomalies. I have come to use Baudline on a daily basis.

Back in the studio, using the sound editing program Audacity, I remove voice slates, trim heads and tails, adjust gain and EQ as needed, then save them to a project folder. And because I don’t like surprises in the studio, either, this folder gets backed up onto a remote network drive as well as a local USB drive.

Building my sound library takes weeks or months. During this time, I start filling a notebook with ideas, drawings, plans and marginalia, from which a score emerges. I import all my project sound files into the open-source Digital Audio Workstation Ardour, arranging them to loosely resemble the score in my notebook. Once my Ardour session is set up, I move sounds around, try different effects, create new textures by layering, then render and re-import sub-mixes until the piece starts to take shape. I use a KORG nanoKONTROL as a mixing surface. I assign faders, pans and switches assigned to the DAW allowing me to quickly play around with different mix ideas.

Once the piece sounds finished, I mix down to a stereo .WAV file at 24-bit/44.1kHz, without using compression or EQ on the mix bus. Tip: mastering engineers really appreciate getting a raw 24-bit master that hasn’t been fiddled around with by the musician. For performances, I also use Ardour and the nanoKONTROL to do an acousmatic presentation. This version of the Ardour session will have compression and/or EQ on the mix bus, since I want the material to sound more polished. As a side note: I am looking into using the mastering tool JAMin [JACK Audio Mastering Interface] for this purpose in the future.

Sayonara, Apple

After ten years of working on Apple laptops, I’ve left the fold. Not only was the expense of owning and maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to me. Details like not having a tree-view in the right hand panel of the Finder window slowed me down. Ubuntu, on the other hand, feels more like an operating system made for grown-ups. And what’s especially nice is that Ubuntu scales nicely to the expertise of the user. Your cousin the computer geek or your Grandma can install and use Ubuntu and get as deep as they like. Combine this with the recent rash of cheap, powerful laptops, and Ubuntu’s market share is bound to grow.

A Request

It’s important that kernel and audio application developers (1) ensure all audio creation software has support for JACK, (2) improve and update tools for JACK to make it easy for musicians to install, configure, and use, (3) ship distros with the realtime kernel already tested and configured for use, (4) to integrate the real-time kernel patches into the mainline kernel. [Ed.: On each of these points, distributions and kernel builds are steadily improving, partly thanks to feedback from communities like the music production community. The realtime kernel likely won't be the default, mainline kernel, but it's important to have well-maintained optional packages at the very least. That doesn't mean you have to wait for improvements to happen, though, and in future articles I'll talk a bit about how you can configure your system now to take advantage of this functionality. -PK]

Most importantly, consider paying a subscription to support developers of JACK and your favorite Linux audio software, or, if you can write code, proofread text, write a manual, do a translation, contribute graphic design, or create content; please help by contributing something to the development of the software you use.

I would like to thank Ken Restivo, Mike Rooke, Paul Davis, Philip DeTullio, Jörn Nettingsmeier and Matt Griffen at Canonical Ltd. for advice and inspiration in the writing of this article.

Kim Cascone is a composer, sound artist, touring musician, lecturer and writer. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife Kathleen and son Cage.

Links:
http://www.osnews.com/story/6720/Introduction_to_Linux_Audio
http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Main_Page
http://ardour.org/node
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
http://www.kokkinizita.net/linuxaudio/
http://www.baudline.com/
http://jackaudio.org/
http://drobilla.net/software/patchage/
http://www.ladspa.org/
http://lv2plug.in/
http://dssi.sourceforge.net/
http://jamin.sourceforge.net/en/about.html
http://linuxaudio.org/
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://code.goto10.org/projects/puredyne/
http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html
http://rt.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.pulseaudio.org/
http://developer.apple.com/audio/overview.html

Corrections / clarifications:

Ed.: I originally claimed that JACK Transport sync is not possible on the Mac OS X port of JACK. As kindly pointed out by a reader, this is not correct. JACK Transport-aware applications on the Mac will work.

Secondly, Kim argued that you could pull out a drive without having to go to a lot of trouble unmounting it first. At least one commenter argues that risks data loss, and given that users may be using something like FUSE to access foreign file systems like NTFS or the Mac’s own HFS+, I don’t yet know what the exact details will be. As I said in comments, however, Nautilus and the command line eject function for me are quicker and more effective than similar unmounting on Windows and Mac, so I still notch this one for Linux. -PK

Renoise has already earned a passionate following among lovers of trackers. The once-forgotten alternative to conventional sequencers, these music editors were beloved for their quick workflow and vertical, atomic approach to assembling beats and patterns. But Renoise is increasingly poised to appeal to other kinds of music makers, too, not just tracker purists.

2.1 you can sum up pretty easily: now you can integrate Renoise with other stuff easily. There’s ReWire support (appropriately enough for a tool beginning with “Re” in the title). And if you’re on Linux, you can pipe control and audio through the ultra-elegant, ultra-powerful JACK. (If you’re not on Linux, you may have just gotten a good reason to give it a try.)

http://www.renoise.com/

This is on top of a rapidly-growing set of features like multi-core balancing, automatic delay compensation, audio recording (cough, Reason), and MIDI inputs and outputs. In other words, this is a tracker you can use without giving up modern luxuries. Maybe it’s like the difference between having a tent in gorgeous mountainous wilderness, and having a mansion with a hot tub and a T1 Internet line.

ReWire is the headline, but some of the live performance tools may make an even bigger difference. Live control tools and live pattern sequencing could make Renoise a lot more useful in performance, even without just ReWiring into Live and recording clips. The pattern triggering looks especially nice, because it brings a feature Game Boy trackers have often used live. (Add JACK on Linux, and you could add your own custom instruments.)

And, oh yeah, the whole program runs on every OS, has an incredibly responsive and involved community that impacts the direction of the tool, and is distributed on a shareware model rather than with painful copy protection.

Full disclosure: I’m slightly biased by enjoying a couple of beers with Renoise’s Dac, and by the fact that I think this looks completely delicious.

Here’s the full changelog.

Full ReWire Slave & Master support (on Windows & OSX)

ReWire allows you to connect and synchronize multiple software applications, so that you can run them side by side while passing Audio/MIDI information between them.

For example, you could connect Renoise to Logic, program your drums in Renoise, while arranging the bulk of your song in Logic. Or you could connect both Reason and Ableton Live to Renoise, arrange your track in Renoise, control Reason’s built-in synthesizers, and play around with loops in Live. All it takes is some ReWire enabled software and you are good to go.

ReWire has two modes, both of which are fully supported by Renoise: *ReWire Master* (ReWire Mixer) and *ReWire Slave* (ReWire Synth)

Jack Transport Support (Linux only)

Similar to ReWire, Renoise now supports the Jack transport protocol. Jack transport allows Linux users to start, stop and reposition multiple audio programs, all connected/running through Jack. 

New Pattern Sequencer Features:

Decoupled Sequencer Playback Now Possible: This new feature allows the user to detach the current playback position from the edit position. This lets you edit a pattern while other patterns are playing.

Live Pattern Triggering:

Patterns can now be "scheduled" for playback via a new column in the Pattern Sequencer. Without stopping playback you can now trigger new sequences in the song "in real time". 

New meta devices (Modulation / Automation Device fun)

• Hydra Device: Automate/change/broadcast multiple FX parameters with a single parameter. Think of this as a magic slider, which connects itself to up to 9 other parameters – allowing you to change multiple settings with just one slider or automation.
• Keytracking Device: Modulates parameters depending on an instruments key (note) value. Like what the "*Velocity Device" does with Velocities, the Keytracking device does with Keys/Notes.  
• MIDI Control Device: This device replaces the old "MIDI-CC Device", finally offering Pitchbend, Channel Pressure, Program Change & regular controller (CC) in a single device.

I hope to check this out in June when I can sit down and get back to production.

Despite its quirks, Windows can be a wildly underrated OS for music. Of course, that has little to do with the way it works out of the box. It’s a matter of tweaking your setup so you reshape it into a finely-tuned musical tool. And I believe in sharing that info, because ultimately you should be able to make music on whichever OS you choose.

Rain Recording, a custom PC vendor that specializes in building systems for music and creative work, asked me to write up some of my favorite tools for just that job. For the first part, I looked at the unpleasant stuff — tools for troubleshooting your system and keeping it operating at maximum efficiency.

Part 2 is more fun — the goodies that actually help your musical workflow. I kept this entirely to utilities for MIDI and control, but thanks to the effort of some passionate musician-programmers, that winds up being an impressive toolkit. Quite a few items are Windows-only. (I do actually intend to cover Mac OS and Linux, too, but Windows stacked up pretty well.)

My picks, all free, donationware (and do donate and support these tools!), or relatively cheap:

1. MIDI-OX: This is usually the first utility I install on any PC — it’s a do-everything MIDI monitor and MIDI-processing utility, for watching messages, troubleshooting, and performing various processing tasks. Donationware.

2. MIDI-Yoke: Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have built-in inter-app communication between apps using MIDI, but MIDI-Yoke performs the task elegantly. (Note, Processing lovers: it also works with Java, so this can allow you to build wild interfaces for music in Processing that control other apps.) Donationware.

3. Bome MIDI Translator: A fantastic tool for creating custom MIDI mappings, translating MIDI to QWERTY keystrokes (and back again), and building rules for performance. Prices range from free to EUR59 for end-user releases, but this is one spending money on.

4. SendSX from Bome sends System Exclusive data. Free.

5. Bome’s Mouse Keyboard gives you an on-screen, clickable interface for controlling synths — essential for when you’re doing some last-minute synth programming and set editing on the go. (Yes, like if you decide to make a last-second tweak in the hotel room before a gig.) Free.

6. Edrum Monitor This tool is useful enough for drums alone, with powerful features for adapting input from electronic drum kits and drum sensors for better accuracy. But they didn’t stop there: with deep data monitoring tools, visual meters for calibration, and support for keyboard, mouse, and joystick inputs, this is just an insane do-everything tool that deserves its own category. Donationware.

7. Jack for Windows An inter-app or even inter-computer audio server, ported from Linux. Linux does Jack better, but if you can’t bear to part with your Windows software, it’s worth testing this – and hopefully someone can help the talented Jack team support and develop it further on the Windows OS. Free.

8. Wormhole2: Think Portal for your host of choice: insert this VST plug-in, and you can route audio to and from different apps, different PCs, or even between Macs and PCs easily. Finally, you can bridge the platform divide and the Mac can lie down with the Windows PC happily. This began as commercial software from Plasq, but it’s now free and open source.

9. MCmu: Emulate Mackie Control with devices that don’t support it. Make devices that do support Mackie Control better. Get the controller power you need with apps like Ableton Live and SONAR. Brilliant stuff. EUR39.

10. OSCGlue: Broadcast OpenSoundControl messages from within a host, ideal for gluing together music software and live visuals. Free, from the vvvv community.

11. WMIDI: Transmit MIDI from Wacom (or other brand) tablet input, complete with tilt and pressure, to turn your graphics tablet into an expressive musical controller. Free.

12. GlovePIE: Somehow I left this out of my original round-up. Take joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, MIDI input devices, Wiimotes, and other devices, output MIDI, keystrokes, and other forms of control (even OSC). It’s my favorite software for control input/output. Requires some scripting, but there are some good sample scripts; hope to post more soon. Free.

Full details and more commentary (plus some additional picks):

Essential Toolkit for Windows – Part 2: (Mostly) Free Musical Utilities for Power Users [Rain Recording Pro]

Previously:
10 Free Non-Musical Windows Software Every Musician Should Use

Of course, this is just a short list of my personal favorites. Any I left out, Windows users?

plasq, the wonderful people who brought us Skitch and Comic Life, have been giving their audio tools new lives rather than orphaning them. We’ve already seen plasq’s live performance-savvy instrument and effects host Rax show up as an Audiofile Engineering product, and AE in turn recently promised in comments that great things were coming for Rax.

Now, we have some great news for Wormhole2: it’s gone open source:

Wormhole2 @ Google Code

Product Page and Features (still up at press time)

Discussion at plasq.com Forum

End users can just download AU (Mac) and VST (Windows) binaries, plus a PDF manual. It’s even a Universal Binary for Intel Macs.

Developers: because VST isn’t an open-source format, you have to download Steinberg’s VST SDK to use it, but plasq will actually go the trouble of sending you the files once you agree to Steinberg’s license agreement. (AU isn’t either, but Apple ships all the developer tools you need with the OS.)

I’m really hopeful someone will build something cool with this. You’ll need something else to route MIDI (though the Mac does that over networks out of the box, cough, Windows). But there are powerful audio-over-network options here which would be hard to work out on your own. It’s unclear how useful Wormhole2 will be to the existing, open source JACK audio project, which is also capable of routing audio between apps and (via netjack) networked computers. JACK uses a client/server model as opposed to Wormhole’s plug-in approach. But for end users, having both tools available free is a very good thing, and the price tag is an extra incentive to be brave and see if these tools can help power up your rig.

In the “bad” category, Paul Davis, the creator of JACK and Ardour, writes:

Leopard has stopped JACK and other inter-application audio routers from being used as the default audio device. Apple is now distributing an SDK that is aimed at “aiding” developers in writing user-space CoreAudio “drivers” such as JACK and SoundFlower. Early reports suggest that the SDK requires a much more complex design. JACK still runs on Leopard, and so JACK-aware apps (i.e. Linux audio apps ported to OS X like Ardour and Jamin) can use it, but native apps can no longer be connected to each other or to JACK applications. Work is underway to make JACK use this new SDK but it appears to be a non-trivial effort. Apple’s motive in making this change is not clear.

Now, the good news. JACK OS X’s developers chime in in comments to point out progress is being made. And this is even a good thing. (Unfortunately, such is the way with OSes — for even small improvements, you have to break, then fix things, then reap the benefits, sometimes not immediately.) From Stephane:

SoundFlower is actually a “kernel space” driver that is somewhat much more easier to develop and maintain

• Apple SDK is definitively a step forward to develop more compliant “user-space” drivers, even if mastering the new code layering takes some time…
• as Dan said, the new version is almost ready and should be more compliant (more application working correctly with it)

And a beta is available now.

In other words, if you use these apps in a critical project, you might want to hold off upgrading, but otherwise all is well. I’ll be sure to post an update when a fix is ready. Note that Audio Hijack is now compatible with Mac OS X 10.5, though that doesn’t allow many of the musical applications possible with JACK and SoundFlower.

A subtler UI annoyance, Apple has somewhat crippled the audio previews you get in Finder’s multi-column view. You get the “play” button in the last column, as before, but no scrubbing or volume control. QuickLook, fortunately, solves the problem. Hit space and you get a full view of your audio file. At first, I thought this would be less convenient, thinking you’d have to preview files one at a time. But you can navigate from one file to another by scrolling up and down with the keyboard to select different files. Thanks to David Hollands for this tip; David says he’s finding QuickLook to be slower than using multi-column view.

Another alternative would be to use a dedicated utility like Iced Audio’s AudioFinder for your sample sorting, which may be better than Leopard or Tiger anyway, depending on your preference.

Sure enough, today we learn that AudioFinder’s new sample editor is in beta. Combined with AF’s other sample juggling tools, the fix may actually be more interesting than the problem.

There’s something to be said for making connections in hardware studios: if you’ve got the cables, you can make it happen. In the world of the computer, it’s another story. The vision of Jack is to make routing audio between software as flexible. As the creators put it:

Have you ever wanted to take the audio output of one piece of software and send it to another? How about taking the output of that same program and send it to two others, then record the result in the first program? If so, JACK may be what you’ve been looking for.

Previously, Jack lived primarily on Linux and Mac. But Stéphane Letz’s brilliant jackdmp implementation, which fully supports multiple processors (among other things), is now available on Windows, via Stéphane’s hard work. Even the Qjackctl graphical front end gets a port, thanks to Rui Nuno Capela. With all three platforms supported, it’ll be interesting to see what’s next — perhaps more development of netjack, the over-the-network rendition of the idea.

I think it’s also worth mentioning, after all Microsoft’s puffery about “innovation” for musicians in Vista, here’s something genuinely innovative and practically useful for XP and Vista alike. That’s not just to take a slam at Microsoft, either. I hope that these larger companies (all of them) will start to take notice of the value of some of these independent efforts of developers for the larger good. (Developers! Developers! Developers!) For OS development, it means better document your APIs. Be public about changes, earlier and wider. And install these tools, use, and test them.

jackdmp project, background, and details, for all three platforms