Moving to an Open Source editing program for LUGRadio

[jono]

Hi all,

since we started LUGRadio, many people have questioned why I use Cubase, and this has been explained many times before. As time has gone on, some people have labelled me as the typical use case for an audio editor - someone who edits and mixes a show.

Anyway, while on #gstreamer today, balor suggested that I set up a bounty fund for a 'Jono Friendly' (his words!) editor.

I was wondering, would anyone contribute to this?

[lofty]

Have you tried rezound and ardour?

[billybofh]

My memory of what you needed etc is a bit vague - what do you need that, for example, audacity doesn't do?

[Gomer_X]

VST plugins.

There is some question as to whether VST plugins are even usable under Linux at all (liscensing or something). There are projects out there that allow VST plugins on Linux, but the last I heard you had to custom compile an old version of wine and run an interface layer under that.

Not "Jono friendly."

I think ease of use was another goal stated in the show (and the forums).

Audacity has a Lisp based scripting language (Nyquist?) that seems extremely powerful, but I just never felt like learning enough Lisp to use it. I haven't found much info on other people doing it, either. With decent specs someone might be able to build acceptable plugins. Audacity is still not that easy to use, though.

I've got some links to good information on doing this stuff, but I don't have that stuff with me at the moment.

[mrben]

I'd be up for it.

[Aq]

My memory of what you needed etc is a bit vague - what do you need that, for example, audacity doesn't do?

Mm, yes: a spec would be useful here, I think. For example, does it need the ability to run VST plugins, or would ports of a few key plugins that you use to something such as LADSPA be OK? What would those plugins be? Which features do you use in Cubase? Such a spec would be dead interesting, because it'd be a real use case list for someone who actually does this work rather than developers' theories about what the software needs to do

Aq.

[matt]

Perhaps we could put what's left of the LRL door takings towards such a bounty.

[DanielT]

do i smell a lugradio live 2006 hackfest in the air?...

[Thom]

Let's write it in python!

[Nightwish]

na, let's write it in mono!

seriously, if whatever requirements you have are important to convert other music-oriented people, i'd contribute some money.

[joeolivas]

Sounds like a nice project.

So what is Rosegarden missing that would be necessary? I'm familiar with neither Cubase nor Rosegarden. Rosegarden claims to be a replacement for Cubase... though, perhaps it just blows donkey dong.

[Daisy]

Ardour supposedly can compile with VST support, although cubase wouldn't let them have the needed header files last time I checked (I bet they're scared the ardour team can make a multitracker that doesn't delete your audio samples randomly).

http://www.ardour.org

If only the cakewalk team would make a Linux port and stop being such pansies. Soundforge has got VST support now, maybe we could use their Linux roots and rally them into porting it (Soundforge == Sony).

I've used ardour with jack without VST support and it was brilliant. You don't have to use the Ffwd + Rwd button to navigate solely. (yes I am knocking Cubases lameness).

What does VST have that ladspa doesn't anyhow?

[jono]

I am going to think about this some more as it seems something that the LUGRadio community could help seed.

My initial requirements are:

- Support for VST plugins or good modules with (and this is important) sensible defaults. Modules I use are Compression, Limiting, DoubleDelay, EQ, Reverb etc.
- Support for the M-Audio Delta 44 sound card
- Sensible track volume curve handling. The cubase way is perfect.
- Resizable track views to easily zoom in and out of a waveform.
- Be able to apply effects to a part of a waveform with full previews
- Sensible wave editing. I only use simple stuff, but I should be able to cut and merge waves and insert fades and silence easily.
- It should be able to master to OGG, MP3 and WAV.
- It should be able to import OGG, MP3 and WAV.
- Most important, it should be really easy to use. I don't want to dick around with settings - I want to install it (preferably from a package) and everything should work.

To really, really rock, it should use GStreamer and be written in Python.

[underscan]

I understand the desire for a working FOSS multitrack recording application. Its not humble but I would argure I understand it better than most Linux users. This discussion on a possible new application has gotten me thoroughly confused.

First, I would prefer to back a sort of good and/or mostly working multitrack audio app as opposed to being "Not Invented Here." and creating yet another multitrack recorder. But I feel that is not the most important issue.

I am a hobby musician & I too have used Cubase & have bought Cakewalk Sonar 3 Producer Edition. I have a M-audio card & it is pretty sweet but it is not enough. The Linux kernel, specifically ALSA & its userland tools to control the HW are not good enough. Let me be clear, I am not talking about bitrates & sampling rates. I am talking about the pieces of the recording chain that we interface with. Hardware audio chipset support & the userland GUI tools SUCK and are not user friendly at all. Please for the love of ease of use read this http://apreche.net/blog/2005/05/21#linuxsound. He is making his case for better Linux audio support for multichannel use specifically games but this is only 1 example of how ALSA works but is just not good enough. We can have the slickest GUI that puts ProTools & Cubase to shame. We can have virtual instruments & effects that users can edit & share because it is FOSS. We can have it all & it won't matter until ALSA is cleaned up, streamlined & fixed. Today we have 2 channel (stero right & left) support in Linux that works OK. I won't even suggest that it works fine or great since there are common HW audio chipsets that have problems with ALSA. The Linux user can not take advantage of current audio HW features because practically all of drivers for generic 5.1 channel audio chipsets/cards built on the motherboard that are shipped in today's PC are nowhere near being feature complete or stable as compared to Windows drivers. Gstreamer, a real sweet project, will not fix this since GS sits above the HW and above the drivers.

Audio is a funny topic. Developers, users, musician, listeners, producers, consumers, hardware manufacturers, system builders etc all obey the concept of "It sounds good to me." or "Its good enough for me." These concepts are grounded on some real physical behaviors and psychological perceptions of sound & audio. One such item is that there must be a low latency continuous stream of audio or the human ear & brain will be able to detect a problem in the stream. There is also a certain threshhold of perceived audio quality that behaves like the law of diminishing returns. Very poor audio quality is quite noticable but once a certain level of quality is reached and exceeded, then it is "good enough" for the shear majority or users & listeners. This "Good Enough" behavior is why most folks are OK with audio quality of music from broadcast radio stations or poorly ripped & compressed mp3s. This is why computer speaker companies like labetc & altec lansing sell mostly 2 channel speakers & not 5.1 surround systems. This is why most developers & users don't really care whether or not we have working stable multichannel support in ALSA. This is why support & development of necessary features or friendly userland tools is somewhat stagnant. So far Linux audio has achieved the goals of being OK or "good enough" for common usage. Recording multitrack audio is not a common usage scenario and that is why we have such a poor end user offering on Linux. We need more feature complete & stable drivers. We need more GUI easy to use userland tools like mixers or volume controls.

We support & give accolades to user friendly Linux projects constantly: Ubuntu, Project Utopia, Linspire, GNOME. Those projects & other are great because they help to lower the barrier of entry for the common user. In other words, the (insert project name here) user does not have to be a guru or a sysadmin to get (insert project name here) working. We need Linux HW & driver and userlan tools to be improved so that the Linux user does not have to be a HW guru or syadmin in order to figure out & use audio applications.

[Gomer_X]

I think the fact that podcasting is not going away may be a driver for some of this change. It's obvious that sound is a problem that needs corrected, and the ability to record under Linux will become more and more important. Of course some promote "record live and don't edit" as the only way to do a podcast, but I don't agree. When podcasts are a dime a dozen (it's almost there now), sound quality will matter.

I don't know how we encourage this change, rather than waiting for it to happen, especially if the change needs to happen at the kernel level. I'd hate to see more and more people just do recording on their Macs (or Windows) because it's too hard to do on Linux.

Of course there are low-latency kernel patches and the like that help, and the guys at dyne:bolic are doing good work, but it's not quite there yet.