[SGVLUG] Re: Audio meeting

[Dustin]

On Sun, 4 Sep 2005, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:

> Dustin sense I don't have the easy access to planet ccrma sense I am tring 
> to setup a PPC laptop what packages are the minimium packages?
> jack(I picked cvs as that is what the basically suggested)
> I alos got qjackctl as the jack website suggested it.

Yes, definitely you want qjackctl to control jack.

> I am not sure with ardour should I use release or CVS?

The best advice if you're willing to build it yourself is to get the daily
tarball he puts out on the Ardour website and build from source:

http://ardour.org/download.php

Since you're trying to do this on PPC you don't have a choice about
building anyway, so I know you'll Do The Right Thing. :-)

> What other packages do you suggest as a start?

There are two categories: the Pro Audio stuff that is jack-aware, and 
other cool things that are not (and thus can be used independently).

Jack-Aware:

Ardour is the core of your workflow if you're recording, and it won't even
start without Jack, so those are the two absolute necessities.  With those
you can get sound into your computer and mix it, so that's enough to get
started and more.  From there it depends on what you want to do.

* If you want to apply effects to your recorded tracks (note that even
  fine-grained EQ would qualify, I don't just mean flange the bejeesus out
  of it or something), you need a big box of LADSPA plugins (this is the
  plugin architecture that Ardour and all the other Pro Audio tools
  support).  Debian has several packages of LADSPA plugins, probably other
  distros do as well, so at least the x86 crowd shouldn't need to build 
  from source.  I'm sure Planet CCRMA has source .rpms for Fedora, that's 
  what you'd build from, other people can just install binaries from the 
  planet, or Demudi (for Debian), or AudioSlack, or whatever, as
  appropriate.  If you go crazy with effects, you might need jack-rack, 
  but probably you'll just use them within Ardour or Audacity.

* If you want a drum machine, Hydrogen is very nice.  For one thing, I've
  never used a drum machine and I was able to start using it without 
  reading documentation (so it must not be unix software, eh?).

* If you want to work with written notation and/or MIDI, there are a bunch
  of choices I haven't explored yet.  Check out Noteedit, SoundGarden,
  Timidity, and ZynAddSubFX.

Jack Not Needed:

* Audacity is a very handy soundfile editor.  It can also do simple
  multitrack recording.  It isn't anywhere near Ardour's league for
  recording, but it is a much better editor for already-recorded 
  soundfiles and a nice entry point into Linux Audio.  It uses LADSPA
  plugins, so you may want those too.

* Once you have your instrument attached to the computer all the time 
  you'll not want to unplug to tune it, so you might like a software
  tuner like guitune (K, Qt, and Gtk flavors) or FMIT (actually this is
  jack-aware but I can't get it to build).

I guess this should go on the website, shouldn't it?

Dustin