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Open-Source Music Production Tools

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Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#41

Post by avhon1 »

amazing_stories wrote: post #40
keeblers_n_bits wrote: post #13

One of the reasons I haven't been able to fully commit to Linux on the desktop is that I haven't been able to find quality music production tools. I always end up going back to macOS because I miss Logic Pro X and Ableton Live too much. Also the audio routing in macOS is so much easier than any other operating system I've encountered. I would love to hear about music studios using FOSS.

I agree, it's difficult to do music on Linux. I almost punched my computer last weekend because it's so hard. However, two things I can say for sure is that the Linux native of Reaper works great and Ubuntu Studio presents a pretty good OOBE with Ardour. Nothing running on Linux compares to Ableton, so if that's your preferred workflow, just stick with that. Now, if someone could just write a good audio editor that w…

As somebody who has only used Audacity and Pure Data, what's an example of a good audio editor?

Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#42

Post by tomc1985 »

avhon1 wrote: post #41
amazing_stories wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it's difficult to do music on Linux. I almost punched my computer last weekend because it's so hard. However, two things I can say for sure is that the Linux native of Reaper works great and Ubuntu Studio presents a pretty good OOBE with Ardour. Nothing running on Linux compares to Ableton, so if that's your preferred workflow, just stick with that. Now, if someone could just write a good audio editor that w…

As somebody who has only used Audacity and Pure Data, what's an example of a good audio editor?

Audacity is a fine editor, but the UI isn't really consistent with platform conventions. A long time ago I learned audio stuff on cracked copies of Sound Forge, which behaved like one would expect a Windows app to behave, then switched to Audacity and hated it because the UI was so weird.

Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#43

Post by lioeters »

spankalee wrote: post #17

I'd love to see more synthesizers on the list, and more open-source synths in general. MIDI controllers and SBCs are plentiful and cheap enough that you can do some really amazing custom rigs, but the sound generations options aren't there yet.

> MIDI controllers and SBCs

I recently discovered this niche, of building/using portable "digital instruments" with a heart of Linux, in my case running on Raspberry Pi with audio interface.

It's so exciting how affordable and practical this is, I feel like it's an area of exploration worth more attention.

A couple of related open-source/open-hardware projects:

Pisound - https://www.blokas.io/pisound/docs/

Zynthian - https://github.com/zynthian

In the latter's wiki/documentation, there's a big list of open-source synths bundled with their Linux distro.

http://wiki.zynthian.org/index.php/Zynthian_Supported_Synth_...

The above link is down at the moment, I think they may be switching CMS backend. Here's an archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20191020093102/http://wiki.zynth...

---

Edit: Here's a good one, from another comment:

https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio#synthesizers

Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#44

Post by trts »

amazing_stories wrote: post #40
keeblers_n_bits wrote: post #13

One of the reasons I haven't been able to fully commit to Linux on the desktop is that I haven't been able to find quality music production tools. I always end up going back to macOS because I miss Logic Pro X and Ableton Live too much. Also the audio routing in macOS is so much easier than any other operating system I've encountered. I would love to hear about music studios using FOSS.

I agree, it's difficult to do music on Linux. I almost punched my computer last weekend because it's so hard. However, two things I can say for sure is that the Linux native of Reaper works great and Ubuntu Studio presents a pretty good OOBE with Ardour. Nothing running on Linux compares to Ableton, so if that's your preferred workflow, just stick with that. Now, if someone could just write a good audio editor that w…

It seems like I have been infrequently using Audacity for close to 20 years now which is surprising to think about.

I've used it to slice up tons of live recordings, mix multitrack audio, clean up, remove background noise, dub aging tape reels to digital, add some post-production effects to music tracks, and teach my dad how to use free software to do some of the same stuff. Some of the work was for broadcast and digital retail.

My most frequent use in the past couple years has been to time stretch a random track once in awhile and listen to it in a completely different light e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZJyxQjdib0

"Complete garbage" seems harsh to me!

Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#48

Post by SyneRyder »

avhon1 wrote: post #41
amazing_stories wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, it's difficult to do music on Linux. I almost punched my computer last weekend because it's so hard. However, two things I can say for sure is that the Linux native of Reaper works great and Ubuntu Studio presents a pretty good OOBE with Ardour. Nothing running on Linux compares to Ableton, so if that's your preferred workflow, just stick with that. Now, if someone could just write a good audio editor that w…

As somebody who has only used Audacity and Pure Data, what's an example of a good audio editor?

A long time ago Cool Edit Pro was the definitive choice on Windows. It became Adobe Audition and 'disappeared' into their Creative Cloud subscription bundle - it's still actively developed but I no longer hear of people using it.

iZotope RX is meant more for audio restoration (and is the industry standard there), but you can also use it for many audio editing tasks.

I've personally switched to Acustica by Acon Digital. The GUI isn't perfect, but it's very fast, and has an impressive audio separation tool based on Spleeter.

All those tools seem to have taken some influence from that Cool Edit Pro GUI.

Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#49

Post by phre4k »

keeblers_n_bits wrote: post #13

One of the reasons I haven't been able to fully commit to Linux on the desktop is that I haven't been able to find quality music production tools. I always end up going back to macOS because I miss Logic Pro X and Ableton Live too much. Also the audio routing in macOS is so much easier than any other operating system I've encountered. I would love to hear about music studios using FOSS.

Bigwig Studio (https://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig-studio.html) isn't open source bit definitely comparable to the tools you mentioned. Coupled with the JACK audio routing.... thing it's pretty great for audio production.

Re: Open-Source Music Production Tools

#50

Post by exikyut »

Naive, under-researched :) question: what Linux-native program lets me import a bunch of audio tracks, arrange them in a timeline with subsample-level resolution, apply nondestructive edits such as crossfades...

...with a fast, simple UI? :)

So far I've poked at Ardour, but

a) I was pretty sure it was absolute overkill for my simple purposes,

b) The program felt kinda clunky, like if I moved wrong it would crash, and

c) I wasn't sure the program was subsample-accurate.

--

I've pretty much never pursued playing around with audio or music because all the software out there is either undiscoverably obscure, or firmly out of my price range (which is $0, since I a) have no idea if audio editing will even be interesting, and b) don't know what program would be the most appropriate).

After throwing my hands up in the air for the 20th time at Audacity's remarkable sluggishness I stumbled on ReZound (http://rezound.sourceforge.net/ss.shtml) a few years ago and discovered a refreshingly fast tool with VUs that would happily run at 60fps on the ~20 year old machine I was using at the time. (2014 was interesting. I was using an 800MHz AMD Duron with 320MB RAM. And to reiterate, ReZound was completely usable on that machine.)

Sadly, while the most-recent SVN of ReZound does compile on modern Linux, project saving has been broken since the paleolithic era so you have to (re-)export as FLAC to save... and sometimes the edit process subtly injects single-sample gaps of silence which sound like clicks/pops (!), making the program unusable. Not to mention it uses the destructive edit model.

Wish it was in better shape, it's a fairly excellent program.

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