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It’s December and Santa has once again failed to take
your request for a refurbished ATR-100 seriously. Well, I can't
blame him but I can continue our discussion of mostly free, Open
Source stuff that’s useful to audio geeks.
Let’s begin by assuming we want to put together an open
source audio workstation. Fine and good but, most current mouse
jockeys recoil in horror when presented with a text–only
user interface. Text only? Yup! Lurking underneath all modern,
post–Macintosh operating systems is a purely text driven
computer since a graphical user interface or GUI is for us humans
and certainly not the poor microprocessor doing all the work.
There are many open source GUIs out there that lay on top of
raw open source operating system, including GNOME,
a mature but homely choice and KDE,
a particularly nice, integrated environment that’s also
my fave.
Once you have a GUI, you can put together a workstation.
Take your pick of Ardour, Audacity, ReZound,
Snd and Sweep (“Inside
lives a pesky little virtual stylus called Scrubby who enjoys
mixing around in your files.”). There are also a bunch
of simple sound file editors to noodle with, a few being DAP,
GLAME, GNUsound, Kwave,
Lamp, MiXViews and WaveSurfer.
DAP is a RAM-based editor while GLAME and Kwave are GUI–specific
editors (the GNOME and KDE environments respectively), but the
remainder are disk–based and independent of GUI. All run
under Linux and often several flavors of Unix including BSD,
IRIX and Mac OS. They vary as to sound card support but that’s
primarily an OS and driver issue (see sidebar).
The simple editors are largely butt ugly, but the big five are
fairly sweet and
includes some nice features, including visual analysis tools
and object oriented signal processing. Dave Phillips, author
of The Book of Linux Music & Sound, suggests I not forget ecasound. “It’s
a text-based DAW, very complete and powerful. There’s a
nicely evolving GUI available for it too, called TkEca.”
Ardour,
the number two editor in popularity, is a good example of an open
source DAW that runs with RME or
other quality hardware choices. Though Ardour is free, Paul Davis,
the lead developer,
also provides services, such as turnkey systems built to order.
Paul’s take on an OSS–based DAW is that he has “…complete
control over the OS when I use Linux. When I build you a box
to run my digital audio workstation, I don’t have to accept
whatever Apple or MS feels is the right kernel configuration.
I can include additional 3rd party kernel patches, drop extraneous
stuff, do anything I need to make sure you get a box that is
completely optimized for professional audio.” Of course,
if you’re good enough, you can do the same thing with OS
X/Darwin,
POSIX or BSD but that’s not his point. “Digidesign won’t
even certify most Wintel systems for use with ProTools, and every
non–custom DAW maker recommends using a dedicated,
stripped down system for their products. People can’t afford
or don’t want to do that, and this contributes to the instabilities
they face…Most audio practitioners make so little money
that they can’t afford not to fully utilize a relatively
large capital expense.”
Another less obvious advantage of
the strategic use of open source in your business is its potential
for virtual immortality.
Audio
companies come, go, and get absorbed by multinationals, but open
source code is freely distributed, which allows for continued
maintenance and development without its original creators.
Though
OSS includes a wide range of applications and development frameworks
for all sorts of needs, there is a rich collection
of audio stuff. The FreeBSD folks
alone list 416 audio applications and utilities, and that’s
just FreeBSD! There’s a
wide array of software available, including editors and players
for sound files and samples, MIDI utilities, lossy and lossless
codecs, IIR and FIR filter designers, synths and public domain
sheet music along with helper applications such as servers and
asset management for your consumption. If you’re a fan
of on–line file sharing, you can find OS clients for Audiogalaxy and
Lime Wire,
itself an OS enterprise. Then, of course, there’s Gnutella, “…a
network by the people and for the people.” Da,
comrade! The “GNU” in the name provides a hint of
the founder’s political leanings…
We all use MP3 players
and there are several open efforts to create a substitute music
database for Gracenote’s
commercial CDDB. One choice is FreeDB and
another is Musicbrainz.
These organizations maintain servers that enable audio CD and
MP3/Vorbis
players to download metadata about the music they are playing.
Speaking of Vorbis,
the folks at Ogg Vorbis maintain what is probably the most popular
open source lossy codec package on
the planet.
Sometimes you want to run a particular application and
Windows is needed, even though you’ve converted your hardware
to an open source OS. One solution is a double boot arrangement,
allowing you to pick a boot disk and accompanying OS. Another
is an hardware emulator (think Virtual PC) like DOSEMU,
or a “compatibility
layer” such as WINE,
an implementation of the Windows 3.x and Win32 software modules
or APIs on top of X11 and Unix. By
the way, X11 is a graphical user interface toolbox for Unix and
WINE that allows you to run some Windows 3.1/95/NT applications
without Windows. DOSEMU or DOS Emulation, is a Linux emulation
of DOS that runs many DOS programs. By the way, commercial DAWs
won’t run under either WINE or DOSEMU.
I may get into non–audio
applications of open source if you folks request it but suffice
it to say that OSS is not limited
to wild eyed zealots. RealNetworks has
their open source Helix Universal Server, which streams Real
Media, Windows Media, QuickTime,
MPEG 4 and MP3 media, while the Darwin core of Apple’s
OS X is also open source. Old school networking stalwart Novell has
bought Linux distributor Ximian (…and SuSE as
well - OM) and there’s
speculation that Sun
Microsystems, in their own bipolar fashion,
may offer
a Sun–branded Linux distribution as well.
Remember last month,
I included a quote that, for most programmers “…contributing
(to open source development) is simply way too hard.” The
same can be said of open source in general. On the user side,
it’s the same guts and glory thing that also drives some
Windows users that need to feel a sense of mastery over an unwieldy
and arcane knowledge. One thing I need to make clear here and
now is that, by and large, OSS is for those who are comfortable
pushing bits around the old fashioned way, in a CLI or Command
Line Interface. Though modern distributions of open source operating
systems are partly or completely wizard driven, many open source
utilities and applications are installed and configured under
the guidance of a CLI. Also, for all the computer users out
there who have had a virus or spyware infestation in the past
12 months
or who’s understanding of the OS is as deep as an episode
of Friends, you should probably stick with commodity product.
Though
many open source apps look and behave just like their commercial
brethren, Mozilla and OpenOffice for
example, at this stage in its development, a large percentage
of open source is
still aimed at experienced, administration–level computer
users. Nick “The Piano Player” Porcaro opines, ”Open
source stuff is great for the academic community, because there
aren’t as many commerical pressures and so, in theory,
more people can contribute with a freer mindset. But in reality,
lots of folks have some sort of agenda…BTW, I just blew
off Linux for my web server because it was much more time consuming
to configure than Windows 2k server.” That’s from
a programmer/musician who’s been beating Unix into submission
for many years! So, if you’re good to go with the übergeek
factor, don an apron, grab a terminal window and join me in the
download trough for a free feeding frenzy…Happy holidays!
by Oliver Masciarotte
Bio — OMas is gearing up for next week’s
2003 O’Reilly & Associates OS
X Conference in the beautiful
Santa Clara Convention Center…talk about übergeek!
Thanks go out to Dave Phillips for his suggestions!
This month’s
Bitstream was created while under the influence of Charlie
Hunter Quintet’s
Right Now Move
and Akira Kurosawa’s stark, sassy soba
western, Yojimbo.
Pedant In A Box — This month’s timely
technobabble includes…
Recursive Acronym — A programming tradition, begun
at MIT,
to choose acronyms or abbreviations that refer humorously to
themselves or other acronyms/abbreviations. Very popular in the
open source movement, GNU, Gnome, LAME and WINE are all recursive
acronyms.
CLI — The command line interface harkens back to
before the Macintosh, before Windows, when a graphical user interface
was still trapped in the labs of Xerox PARC. CLI tools, such
the Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt
in Windows and the Terminal in UNIX variants (~/Applications/Utilities/Terminal
in Mac OS), provide the most basic of high level command and
control tools for modern operating systems and behave much like
an acoustically quiet version of the noisy, electromechanical
teletypewriter ancestors from which they descend.
The default CLI for Mac OS 10.2
Sidebar One:
For audio geeks, one of the most crucial deficiencies of Linux-based
audio workstations used to be the lack of standardized programming
interfaces, both plugins and hardware. As with other operating
systems, long and passionate discussions have led to different
concepts for plugins, the most widely accepted being LADSPA,
the Linux Audio Developers’ Simple Plugin API. Our friend,
VST plugins, are also supported in Linux.
The AGNULA and PlanetCCRMA projects
are good examples of what’s
available packaged up for download: system enhancements including
a low-latency kernel, Java support in the case of PlanetCCRMA
and drivers for common hardware, synthesis engines, audio software
development packages, simple editors, mixers and “CD managers,” along
with tool sets of various kinds including applications for DJs,
computer–assisted composition, lossy codecs, file serving/streaming
and conversion, DSP, MIDI, music notation and speech processing.
For hardware, Jack and ALSA,
the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, are the big kahunas of
APIs.
Sidebar Two:
Last month, I mentioned some of the political aspects of Linux.
Unfortunately, I have to again this month. The reason why has
to do with SCO,
the company that owns the intellectual property that was System
V. SCO has waged war on the Linux community.
To illustrate, here’s a quote from the SC0 web site: “On
July 21, SCO announced that it has received U.S. copyright registrations
for UNIX System V source code, a jurisdictional pre–requisite
to enforcement of its UNIX copyrights. The company also announced
plans to make binary run time licenses for SCO’s intellectual
property available to end users.” They continue, “…Many
customers are concerned about using Linux since they have become
aware of the allegations that Linux is an unauthorized derivative
work of the (System V version of the) UNIX® operating system…many
are running critical business applications on Linux. Some customers
have asked their Linux distributors to indemnify them against
intellectual property infringement claims in Linux. The Linux
distributors are unable to do so because of the terms and conditions
in the General Public License (the most common open source licensing
scheme - OM).
“
SCO has an obligation to stockholders, customers and employees
to protect the value of its assets. SCO is also sympathetic to
the end-user’s predicament. SCO has determined that it
can accommodate both conditions by offering a license that cures the IP infringement in Linux.”
In other words, SCO is using the classic Microsoft FUD approach to making money: create fear, uncertainty and doubt about another vendor’s product, then create mind share that their offering will allay the FUD. Some say they’re doing it so they can be acquired by IBM or Novell. Other just think they’re smokin’ something. At press time, a few big vendors have ponied up but most vendors and end users and sitting on the side lines, waiting for the courts to make key decisions on the validity of SCO’s claims.
Related Links - Linux creator Linus Torvalds responds (“They are smoking crack.”) to the SCO suit in an eWeek interview…
Part One of this three part open source discussion | |
