Hey all. I have a non-techinical question for yas. My husband uses Windows XP. He's a dj/producer. Well he got a nasty virus, and now he wants to run nothing but Linux (he dual boots). My question is, can anyone reccomend any audio apps that he can use? The main programs he uses now are Acid, Sound Forge, and Cubase so they have to be at least a bit similar so he doesnt give up and go back to Winbloze. Thanks in advance.
much love,
nikki

I'm not familiar with the applications you mention, it's been a while since I used Windows, but for editing music I would recommend that you try Rezound http://rezound.sourceforge.net/

Cool Andrew. Thanks for the link. I'll pass the info on. Take care!
much love,
nikki

http://debianlinux.net/multimedia.html#audio

Here you can find a pretty full list. Some nice apps are Sweep, Ardour, Hydrogen, JACK (not the same as Jack), SoX, and SoundTracker.

For recording/mixing, there are 2 apps I would recommend. Audacity is easy to use, and Aube is highly functional (but a pain to install). If he needs synths, I wouldn't recommend anything that's available on Linux. They just don't compare to the high quality commercial software available on Windows.

Cool guys! Awesome info. Thanks much!
much love,
nikki

Just a side note, but if you need to edit very large files on a system with limited RAM, MHWaveEdit is excellent. (I have edited wav files over 2GB in size on a machine with 256MB of RAM with this):
http://www.mtek.chalmers.se/~hjormagn/mhwaveedit.html

For a Cubase replacement, Rosegarden has something you might want to look at:
http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

Linux music apps are getting there, but there's still no replacement for Acid and Fruityloops on Windows.

Dave

Fruity Loops. Pshaw :P Reason all the way baby. I pray every day for a Reason port for Linux.

Nah. Get your percussion loops done in Fruity, render them to wav, then lay each 4 / 8 / 16 beat loop out in Acid along with your samples.

That way you can rapidly get your drums together, and when you're happy you've got all your loops (with VST effects etc) pre-rendered as wavs taking up virtually no processor time so that you can run everything else without hitting the wall on your processor.

I've actually got a mate who does all his production in Fruity. He just lays out each part of the track in different pages and then programs the page order to make the finished tune. Very nifty. Fruity handles VST instruments very nicely too.

Shame it only runs on Windows, really....

Dave

I will agree on FLP with VST instruments - but man, I just don't think the instruments packaged with FL are worth it. Get Sampletank though and you'll have a buttload of GREAT choices - I love the piano and organ samples. The strings were out of tune for some of the samples though (I'm referring to the ones available for free).

As well, the bundled effects aren't that great. The advantage FLP has over Reason though is aftermarket versatility - since it can use VST instruments and effects, it does pretty well.

I use Reason for more than percussion, though - I write all my music in Reason, excluding guitars and external recordings.

If you'd like to hear what I have done, you can go to http://sound.the-engine.org, hit the listening room, and check out my most popular tracks - The Forever Phase, and Without What I Love were done completely in Reason (they are under "Singles"). Stuff under the Tempted album header are my most recent, having been done in the last few months.

I have yet to find anything that compares to the quality of Reason - Sure, I use aftermarket refills for piano, bass, and rex stuff, but I also make use of the Maelstrom and Subtractor synths.

Here is where you can listen to some songs my husband has done in Acid etc. He uses Fruity Loops sometimes, but very rarely. He prefers to download an Amen and manipulate it in Sound Forge and Acid and then he has a Roland Synth so thats where he gets the synth from. The vocals are just taken from different clips of sloundclashes or a cappellas. Various samples he either trades back and forth or takes them from other songs and then manipulates them.
much love,
nikki

Hi!

My friend developed a program for Linux that is very similar to Fruity Loops.
It's called "LMMS" (Linux Multimedia Studio). The program can be downloaded here:
http://webhochhaus.de/tobias/project_lmms.htm
The page is in German, but the actual program is in English or German.

Hi direx.

That looks extremely cool, but how do you compile it? All I can see that looks like a Makefile is lmms.pro.

Cheers.

Dave