28 Jan
2024
28 Jan
'24
8:27 p.m.
Hello, all,
I've signed up for an Introduction to Audio Production course at my
local community college. I mainly want to learn how to record audio in
the field, and edit it into something like radio news segments or
podcasts (for those too young to have heard of 'radio').
When I was playing around with this 5-10 years ago, the go-to software
was Audacity, which I used and liked a lot. However, I understand that
Audacity has gone through some upheavals.
I'm on a Ubuntu 22.04 desktop, and I experimented at one time with
PipeWire, but I can't remember what audio tools are on my system
currently.
Do I need a Digital Autio Workstation (DAW)? Which one, in the FOSS
world, would you recommend? What audio tools (jack? pipewire?) do I
also need?
I'm sure that the college will have professional tools, in a lab, for
us to use, but I'd like to see if I can duplicate all the assignments
using FOSS tools.
Thanks for any advice or guidance for me.
-Kevin
28 Jan
28 Jan
9:08 p.m.
Hi Kevin,
this is a big question. The flippant answer is: it depends. :)
A little less so: JACK, PipeWire, ALSA and PulseAudio are audio drivers.
There are many tools to work with a subset of those. If you mainly think about
importing and cutting field recordings, basic ALSA could be enough, depending
on your tool.
Audacity, to my knowledge, still exists. IIRC the dispute surrounding it got
resolved in the end. Others here would know far more.
Perhaps you would get better and more concise answers, if you could list the
tasks that you'd like to perform: import and edit audio. Recording your own
voiceover? Mix in music? Produce some music for for your podcast? How much
mastering would you like? Do you expect to work more live or work by setting
things up and then simply rendering to disk?
All these things might help to narrow it down?
Perhaps even: which software might you be studying with? The particular
workflow or main focus of your software at college might narrow down the most
likely choices.
Sorry, for being of little help and instead providing more questions than
answers.
Best wishes,
Jeanette
--
* Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound
* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g
* Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c
* GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c
I thought love was just a tingling of the skin <3
(Britney Spears)
10:51 p.m.
Hi, Jeanette, thanks for replying. Some answers in line below:
On Sun, 2024-01-28 at 21:08 +0100, Jeanette C. wrote:
Audacity, to my knowledge, still exists. IIRC the dispute surrounding
it got
resolved in the end. Others here would know far more.
Looking forward to hearing if Audacity is still a good choice. I
enjoyed working with it in the past.
tasks that you'd like to perform: import and edit
audio. Recording
your own
voiceover? Mix in music?
Yes to all these.
Produce some music for for your podcast?
Probably not.
How much
mastering would you like? Do you expect to work more live or work by
setting
things up and then simply rendering to disk?
Not sure I understand this question.
Perhaps even: which software might you be studying
with? The
particular
workflow or main focus of your software at college might narrow down
the most
likely choices.
I'll know better after Wednesday, the first class.
Sorry, for being of little help and instead providing more questions
than
answers.
Your response was very helpful. Thank you.
-Kevin
Best wishes,
Jeanette
11:23 p.m.
Jan 28 2024, Kevin Zembower has written:
...
...
I'm sorry, I expressed myself badly. I meant to ask: do you like to edit
with live feedback, i.e. listen while you adjust things and only at the
very end mix down the result. -- AFAIK Audacity has far more offline
processes, i.e. you set a few parameters and then process the audio and
then listen back. It might be helpful if you find a very standard
processing setup that could even batch process audio. -- I suppose this
is not a very common way and not much in demand. But tools exist and
some people do enjoy it a lot.
Best wishes,
Jeanette
--
* Website: http://juliencoder.de - for summer is a state of sound
* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMS4rfGrTwz8W7jhC1Jnv7g
* Audiobombs: https://www.audiobombs.com/users/jeanette_c
* GitHub: https://github.com/jeanette-c
I thought love was just a tingling of the skin <3
(Britney Spears)
How much
mastering would you like? Do you expect to work more live or work by
setting
things up and then simply rendering to disk?
Not sure I understand this question. 
29 Jan
29 Jan
8:51 a.m.
On Sun, 28 Jan 2024 21:51:19 +0000
Kevin Zembower <kevin(a)zembower.org> wrote:
Hi, Jeanette, thanks for replying. Some answers in line
below:
On Sun, 2024-01-28 at 21:08 +0100, Jeanette C. wrote:
Just dropping in here...
The status of Audacity is still not clear, regarding telemetry.
There is a fork that has NO telemetry and is truly FOSS called Tenacity that is
under active development. I've been using it for some time now without any
issues. I'm hopeful they will add a proper Jack connection, rather than going
via Port Audio.
--
Will J Godfrey {apparently now an 'elderly'}
https://willgodfrey.bandcamp.com/
http://yoshimi.github.io
Say you have a poem and I have a tune.
Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.
Audacity, to my knowledge, still exists. IIRC the dispute surrounding
it got
resolved in the end. Others here would know far more.
Looking forward to hearing if Audacity is still a good choice. I
enjoyed working with it in the past. 
9:52 a.m.
The nice packagers at MX Linux have packaged Audacity at
https://mxrepo.com/mx/testrepo/pool/test/a/audacity/
No telemetry - the "dfsg" label implies that.
I'm using it on Debian 12 Bookworm and it works well. Just need to download
https://mxrepo.com/mx/testrepo/pool/test/a/audacity/audacity-data_3.4.2+dfs…
and
https://mxrepo.com/mx/testrepo/pool/test/a/audacity/audacity_3.4.2+dfsg-1~m…
then install them locally for other Debian 12 based distros, or from
repo if using MX or AVL-MXE.
10:38 a.m.
Thank you Will for the information. I just downloaded and tested it. It looks nice but the
main
improvement of Audacity version 3.x that I'm using often is not there. It's the
high quality pitch
correction that was introduced in version 3. I was waiting for improved pitch correction
for a long
time and the improved quality of the new algorithm is a big step forward. I hope, the
source of the
algo is still open and will find its way into Tenacity as well.
On 1/29/24 08:51, Will Godfrey wrote:
Just dropping in here...
The status of Audacity is still not clear, regarding telemetry.
There is a fork that has NO telemetry and is truly FOSS called Tenacity that is
under active development. I've been using it for some time now without any
issues. I'm hopeful they will add a proper Jack connection, rather than going
via Port Audio.
28 Jan
28 Jan
9:11 p.m.
Hello,
On 28-01-2024 20:27, Kevin Zembower wrote:
I've signed up for an Introduction to Audio
Production course at my
local community college. I mainly want to learn how to record audio in
the field, and edit it into something like radio news segments or
podcasts (for those too young to have heard of 'radio').
When I was playing around with this 5-10 years ago, the go-to software
was Audacity, which I used and liked a lot. However, I understand that
Audacity has gone through some upheavals.
It's still there and there's also a community fork:
https://tenacityaudio.org/
I'm on a Ubuntu 22.04 desktop, and I experimented
at one time with
PipeWire, but I can't remember what audio tools are on my system
currently.
Do I need a Digital Autio Workstation (DAW)? Which one, in the FOSS
world, would you recommend? What audio tools (jack? pipewire?) do I
also need?
From what I understood there are a number of people that use Ardour for
recording and editing podcasts. You could give it a try, it doesn't need
Pipewire or JACK, just run it with plain ALSA if you don't need to use
other audio software simultaneously.
Best,
Jeremy
9:17 p.m.
On Sun, Jan 28, 2024 at 1:11 PM Jeremy Jongepier <jeremy(a)autostatic.com>
wrote:
From what I understood there are a number of people that use Ardour for
recording and editing podcasts. You could give it a try, it doesn't need
Pipewire or JACK, just run it with plain ALSA if you don't need to use
other audio software simultaneously.
And if you're doing a podcast with a 2-person interview recording in 2
tracks, Ardour even has a dedicated editing mode for this.
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days inactive
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days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
8 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Gerhard Zintel -
Jeanette C. -
Jeremy Jongepier -
Kevin Zembower -
Paul Davis -
Roger -
Will Godfrey