18 Mar
2004
18 Mar
'04
11:28 p.m.
On Thu, 2004-03-18 at 09:29, Hawkeye Parker wrote:
hi all,
i'm fairly new to linux and linux audio, and i've been just trying to
get my bearings amid the staggering amount of audio software.
i'd like to use linux as a hard disk sampler, and here is the general
functionality i'd like:
-ability to "compose" with samples, in the same way that you'd use a
sequencer to work with a synth. i.e., be able to arrange samples into
tracks and specify when (rhythm) and at what pitch the samples play.
-some sort of mixer to mix things down so i can record it.
-ablility to add software effects to the above tracks.
essentially, what i'm looking for is some way to reproduce the ~nature~
of Sonic Foundry's Acid for Windows. i don't really *want* Acid, or even
one specific piece of software, but just some way to use samples in a
similar sort of way.
one thought i've had is to use fluidsynth/swami to build soundfonts of
the samples i want to use, and then drive those samples with MusE. MusE
supports LADSPA, so i would have per/track access to LADSPA plugins on
top of the samples. right??
building the soundfonts will take time, though, and i wonder if there
isn't a more direct way to accomplish the same thing (like Acid, where
you drag and drop waveforms right onto your track). i've looked at
Simsam (sampler) as well, and the occured to me that i could run
multiple instances of Simsam through multiple jack-racks, but this is
obviously a kludge, and there must be a better way (?)
i'm also considering diving into TerminatorX -- it looks very promising
. . .
any suggestions?
First, welcome. Good to have you here.
You might want to look at LinuxSampler. It's not really ready for prime
time yet, but it's moving in a direction that may be of interest to you
one day. It's more like GigaSampler than Acid though, and so far there
is no work being done (that I know of) on an editor to allow you to
build your own gig files with your own samples, but possibly someone is.
You could also look at using a tracker like SkaleTracker. It's
interesting and handles some of the things you want to be able to do.
We had some discussions about Acid-like features in the Ardour lists a
year ago. There was some work done and a few features put in, like
dragging a loop and having it repeat, but I don't know much of anything
about their current feature set. Check it out.
It might now be very 'artistic', but I suspect that a lot of this stuff
could be done at the command line with scripts that take sample files,
pitch shift them, concatenate and mix them, etc. Linux has lots of tools
that could do things like that.
Good luck,
Mark