[linux-audio-user] Re: Recommendations for audio software

[Conrad Newton]

>From BrbrOfSvl at aol.com on Friday, 2004-01-09 at 01:11:49 -0500:
> 
> In a message dated 1/8/04 5:32:16 PM, 
> linux-audio-user-request at music.columbia.edu writes:
> 
> 
> > But if I had to choose a musical education tool for teachers
> > and young people, might I not be better off with a midi
> > program such as muse or rosegarden4?
> > 
> > What would be the advantage of csound/cecilia?
> > 
> > 
> 
> You will not find better software than Csound for making people actually 
> think about the nature of sound.   I learned more about acoustics/psychoacoustics 
> working with csound than I did in any class on the subject (not a knock on my 
> teachers, however, who have been great).   Its small size and enormous 
> versatility, with the addition of a score-making front-end like score11 or ngen, 

I had not heard of these programs before.  Thanks for the tip!

> could prove an extremely valuable application for advanced students who want to 
> know what's actually going into the sound they are producing.   I don't like 
> cecilia at all - though it does make some things (particularly granular 
> synthesis) somewhat easier.   I feel the great versatility of csound lies in its 
> absence of an encumbering GUI.   I also am not fond of midi, but I guess it's 
> unavoidable.

Trouble is, my target audience will collapse in a heap without a GUI!

> I would not include Ardour unless you want to include other Jack clients.   
> Ardour is buggy (though the newest release is better), and it can be a real 
> pain to use.   I really like Rezound, but it can be a little buggy (particularly 

Ardour is out, according to everything I have heard until now.

> if you are using it as a jack client).   Jack is good if you have a soundcard 
> that will only talk to one program at a time, and you need to do several 
> things at once - with jack you can run Ardour's output into freqtweak, and send its 
> output into rezound for recording on the fly.   Depends on what you want to 
> be able to do with this stuff.   Another decent program you might check out is 
> Pure Data (or PD) - great for realtime applications if you're into that.

Another application I know nothing about.  I will look it up.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Conrad