[linux-audio-user] Fresh PC waiting for basic installation - Advice?

[Robert Jonsson]

Hi Alex,

On Friday 02 July 2004 10.41, Alejandro Lopez wrote:
> Chaps,
>
> I'd like to set up a music-only PC to produce demos of my songs, by
> installing some simple system from the ground (OS) up. The PC I've made
> available for this is a 1 GHz AMD Athlon if that makes sense and I remember
> well. My preferred method is often to create a complete sequence of a song
> then gradually substitute MIDI instruments by audio tracks of recorded
> musicians.
>
> What would you go for if you wanted the functionalities listed below? (I
> would sacrifice some of the features for the sake of simplicity.)

My main environment is MusE, I think it covers most of things you want to do 
too. A new stable release is coming up real soon now (tm). (I'd recommend 
using the prereleases for this rather than the old stable, the latest 
prerelease also has support for VSTi's thanks to libfst, wheee!)

Some recordings of mine using this setup is on my site: 
http://spamatica.se/music/.

Though, since we have Jack as a kind of glue between audio-applications it's 
not necessary to chose only ONE app. MusE is for instance not so advanced in 
the audio-editing department (though it works pretty good), so you might want 
to use Ardour for the audio tracks. 
Workflow would then be to record the midi parts in MusE, using the internal 
softsynths and running Ardour along side and recording the audio parts there, 
jack keeps them in sync.


> -Sequencer
> -Multitracker / sampler, the "loop" kind (reads waves from disk in real
> time, inserted at any points or measures of the song).
> -Soundfont enabled realtime synth

There are several solutions here, with MusE there is an integrated Fluidsynth 
that works splendidly. Fluidsynth is also available as an external softsynth, 
as well as Timidity.

> -Basic effects for the multitracker: simple reverb + simple equalizer

There are a multitude of LADSPA plugins available that should take care of 
most of these issues.

> -Audio editor hopefully with advanced features such as quantizer (handy for
> drums) and note tuning (essential for 3 piece brass section!) + some basic
> such as compressor

Once again effects are handled by LADSPA plugs. As for the quantizer feature, 
I'm not sure what you mean. Are there tools to quantize audio ?

> -Any low level stuff for the above from drivers to audio mixer

This would be jack then, I suppose...

>
> What would you try if you were me? (Unseccessfully tried to install Planet
> CCRMA before, would give a second try if advisable as a simple solution.) I
> really really need to spend little time in getting it to work but I'd
> definitely like to go open + Linux.

It's been my goal for a long time. And for me it's a reality now :) Everything 
I need works as advertised. 

As for prepackaged solutions there are a number of alternatives.
Mandrake + Thac's rpms (which I use)
Redhat/Fedora + CCRMA
DeMudi (Based on debian I think)
(probably others)

There are a lot of users for all of these so it should be easy to get help 
whichever you use.

>
> I'm sorry if this has been discussed previously, I just joined this list
> and had a quick search for related threads, anyway if this topic has been
> around I would appreciate a pointer to the relevant thread and please
> accept my apologies.

I think this list is most definitely here to help people. Your questions are 
on topic so there's no need to feel sorry :)

>
> Many thanks for any advice, any comments will be much appreciated.
>
> Yours,
>
> Alex
>
> PS: Yesterday I visited a Protools based studio (G4 Mac + 24 channel
> console + big rack with lotsa stuff), needless to say I was in heaven but
> that was a very different story altogether!
>
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/Robert

-- 
http://spamatica.se/music/