7 Feb
2011
7 Feb
'11
7:08 a.m.
On 07/02/11 16:54, Bearcat M. Şandor wrote:
Folks,
I've been thinking about playing with sound effects. For a lot of my
life, i've been interested in the sounds that various things make and i
am wondering if there is a linux program that would allow me to take a
sound clip and manipulate it. Like taking the sound of a chair squeak
and distort it, stretch it, apply filters to it, alter the tone etc.
Is there a linux gui app for this sort of thing? Preferably in with the
gtk tool kit as i have that all loaded up?
I did some digging around, but i didn't see much. Of course there's
always the chance that i looked at something that would do it well and
didn't recognise it.
I'm not sure you'll find something specifically tailored to producing
sound effects, but general audio editing tools should be able to do the
job. There are two types of apps and workflows to look at:
* off-line audio editors: these let you load a sound, process them with
effects, and play back the results. Audacity is the classic example,
though there are a few others around
* real-time audio manipulation: there are a few ways you could do this,
but it could be as simple as loading the sound on to a track in Ardour,
and adding effects to that track. Depending on how far down the
rabbit-hole you want to go, you could combine various real-time apps --
via JACK, you could run the audio out through Rakarrack,
AlsaModularSynth, PHASEX, or any number of other apps.
AlsaModularSynth and PHASEX are both synths, rather than dedicated audio
processors, but both can be set up to read audio from a JACK input and
then run that through their filters and other effects, in much the same
way that many hardware synths allow you to process audio from an
external line input.
I'd start with Audacity -- it has built-in effects for a lot of things,
including pitch and time manipulation, and it can use LADSPA plugins as
well, so you'll have a lot of scope to play with your sounds. The
real-time approach is definitely fun, though, especially once you start
plugging things together!
I recently made a short track that consisted of a looped sample in
Specimen (a standalone JACK sample), run in to Ardour, through some
effects, then through PHASEX, where I had the filter under realtime
control from a MIDI controller, and finally back in to Ardour for some
more effects. It's crazy, but it was a tonne of fun to make.
Thanks
Leigh