AyeTea

** This thread discusses the content article: Gineau pig #3 checks in **

While there may be no major party plugins, there is certainly a ton of plugins for ardour and audacity:

Audacity
Ardour

I see some ardour plugins in the Ubuntu repos too.

As for the rest of your article - you viewpoints were well thought out and articulated. Thank you for such a thorough review of what you have been doing.

A few notes: I believe Ubuntu does not put restricted extras on by default for legal reasons (dvd playback, etc), which only certain regions are legally allowed to use (I live in the US, so if I use it I get beaten with a stick). Corporations like Canonical have to watch over themselves more than repackages by smaller people like mint.

Not having to "babysit" the OS is a beautiful thing, and it always shocks me when I install linux on a computer how small it is (esp. compared to my work PC).

I personally still dual boot to Windows on rare occasions where I want a few specific games, but that is becoming rather rare. If Autocad would just go to linux (or a worthy competitor stood up), I'd be off Windows there in a heartbeat. Two computers got nailed with viruses this year in my small company (even with AV on), and it took me a day to restore them without a reformat.

Here's a question: If Ardour was equivalent to Cubase, would you use it instead? OR would you stay with the program you paid the money for?

Good luck. Try out Studio64 and let us know if that works out any better for you.

Getting sued for installing codecs is like getting arrested for smoking marijuana, it's probably not going to happen.

Getting sued for distributing codecs is like getting arrested for selling marijuana, it could easily happen.

Software patents are only valid in the USA and a few other countries, so making codecs available for you to download yourself is significantly less likely to get you sued.

That's why these codecs aren't distributed out-of-the box. Linux Mint is illegal in the USA, but they get away with it because it's not sponsored by any one person or company, so there's no one to sue. Ubuntu is sponsored by Canonical, and most of the developers are employed by Canonical, so it's very likely that Canonical would get sued out of existence for including these codecs out of the box.

Add to that the fact that approximately 800,000 companies all have competing patent claims over MPEG (including MP3,) and you've got a real legal nightmare.

To elaborate on my previous post, it's crap like this which is the reason why many distros choose not to include restricted software (Fedora doesn't make it available in its repositories period, you need to add third-party repos to get them in Fedora.) Even if the owner of the rights has given express permission, like Adobe has done with Flash, many of us (myself included) would prefer to see software patents and proprietary (closed source) software stamped out for good. In other words, we want it down in writing that no one will get sued for doing anything (instead of a halfhearted "cross my heart and hope to die, I won't sue you unless I really, really want to.")

Cryophallion wrote:

A few notes: I believe Ubuntu does not put restricted extras on by default for legal reasons (dvd playback, etc), which only certain regions are legally allowed to use (I live in the US, so if I use it I get beaten with a stick). Corporations like Canonical have to watch over themselves more than repackages by smaller people like mint.

...

Here's a question: If Ardour was equivalent to Cubase, would you use it instead? OR would you stay with the program you paid the money for?


That info about the restricted extras certainly makes things a lot clearer. Thank you for alleviating my ignorance a tad

As for switching to Ardour if it was everything I wanted... I think I would switch despite the money I've shelled out on Cubase. Even though the money has been invested, Cubase 4 which I purchased has already be surpassed by Cubase 5, and that'll cost me another £150 to upgrade too... it's that rat race that I'd like to avoid. So I think I would be rather keen.

I've found tons of plugins for Ardour... However, it's the same thing as the Ardour or Cubase/ProTools dilema... I've gotta really drill them and work them in real situations to check they are up to the task. Hence the planned experiement with doing the two mixes. Programming algorithms to emulate anologue outboard gear is no easy task. Even some bundles which cost a hefty bit of coin don't always do it that well.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

Daniel.

No worries about the restricted extras. It stinks that these thing even need to be thought about, but I guess everyone needs to make money somehow, just some things are more sleazy than others.

I'm impressed that you would be willing to make the switch - I know a number of people that couldn't. And Kudos for you for realizing how much these upgrades end up costing you. Mind you, I have no problem spending money for extra features and better software. But simply changing the UI a bit and adding minor features, isn't worth as much money as many are asking. Not to mention changing file types and restricted use as much as they can (Yes Autodesk, I'm looking at you with GenuineDWG and changing the dwg file type config every 3 years, so everyone is forced to upgrade every 3years).

No, here's an experiment for you that might interest you. It's the reason I first went to Linux in the first place, and brought me pretty far. I shot a video for my brother in law in an armory building, which means bad echo. Add to the fact that I had to shoot from the stage behind the speakers due to the way everything was laid out meant I had extremely bad audio. I looked for months to find a tool to remove some of the reverb, but I only found one, which is still in beta and hasn't been updated in a few years, but as far as I am concerned, it is magic. It is a program called Postfish created by Monty at Xiph.org (the guys who created OGG theora and Vorbis, so they know their stuff).

Here is how you can install it in Ubuntu at least, other distros may have different package managers and different package names. You will be compiling the software from source, which is easier than you think, and should take about 5-10 minutes to do:

1. sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion libgtk2.0-dev fftw3-dev

This install the tools to compile, subversion to get the files, and the gnome development packages and sound packages that are required.

2. mkdir ~/postfish
cd ~/postfish
Creates a folder named postfish in your home, then you go into it (remember tab will autocomplete when typing... I did it by accident while writing the cd)

3. svn co svn.xiph.org/trunk/postfish
This will download all the source files to your current directory (Which is postfish)

4. make
Watch all the pretty code compile. Don't worry, planning for problems is GOOD :^)

5. sudo make install
Watch the code quickly install

And now it's installed. It's a command line program, and it was never fully finished, so I'll walk you through the usage:

postfish random_file.wav > output_file.wav

That will import the wav file, and the generated audio will go to the output file. Ignore any wisdom error messages. (although I think this is the first time they have popped up, anyone know the cause? I am doing this as a VMware test since I already had it installed, and I needed to verify the dependencies)

Now we get to the gui. One thing I ran into once was that multi-channel audio had both channels going to each channel, so if the audio seems really loud, that must be it. Output shows speaker and output file, if you uncheck speaker it will work as fast as the cpu allows, otherwise it will go real time. The deverb is the tool I love, the interface for it should be pretty self explanatory. Remember to rewind the file to the beginning and replay when all the settings have been tuned so the entire file is correct.

Have fun, let me know what you think.