Tuesday, March 19, 2013

What is good recording software for linux?

Q. Ive recently started useing ubuntu linux, because it runs better on my computer than windows. Any suggestions for good music recording software? I have An electric keyboard, electric guitar, electric, bass, electric drums, and a sampler (turn tables). Id like something flexible so i can use them all on the same software.

A. Audacity is a the easiest to get jump started and most likely to have drivers for your break out box.

There are several others. If you do a lot of Midi work I suggest Rosegarden. Keyboardists especially tend to favor Rosegarden. I love the interface, full featured but can be picky about which break out boxes it talks too.

Aurdor is another full featured recording software but it's interface is more like Pro Tools while Rosegarden more closely resembles Cakewalk.

Those are the 3 I'd start with. The best way to get them is through your favorite package manager. Synaptic is one of the better ones. Just do a search in synaptic for these packages. They take care of the dependencies for you. Makes installing software on Linux the easiest platform in the world to install software for. Audacity, Rosegarden and Aurdor are all listed in the Multimedia(universe) section in Synaptic. Just check them say yes you want ot install and it's dependencies. Then click on apply when you have selected all the packages you want to install.

You'll also want a good tagger. Easy Tag is solid, I personally prefer Kid3, but there are dozen good ones and Ubuntu comes with Gtag I think it is by default. You should be able to edit ID3 tags through your file browser thought that is a bit tedious.

Installing Lame is a must. If your terrified of a command line you'll also want a Lame front end but to be honest using lame on command line is a no brainer. Open a term window, lame -vbr (name of wave file you want to convert to a mp3) (name you want the MP3 to be)

lame -vbr something.wav something.mp3

This mp3's it using variable bit rate which gives you the best compromise between sound quality and compactness of the output. Most mp3s you download today use lame and it's vbr setting. You get 256k quality where it counts but where there's lots of quiet you get higher compression ratios usually saving a couple megs on the final output without reducing the quality any.

There are dozens of Lame front ends to let you do that without using a command line. Just search synaptic for lame and you'll find them. Audacity, Rosegarden and Audor will plug into Lame and allow you to output MP3s directly as well once you have lame installed. Personally I like to hand rip my stuff, then tag it w/mix & version. Then rename & retag anything I'm sending out to people or the public. Saves listening to 10 copies of the same tune to find that ONE mix you were looking for.

As for sampler software, again there are programs similar to Acid and you can use Rosegarden and Audor though they are not designed for it to do some of it. I don't sample so I can't recommend which are best of breed in that area.

What break out box you have is the trickiest part. I suggest using Maudio or going direct through USB if that's an option. Maudio is decently supported in Linux. Avoid Tascam, nearly impossible to get Linux to talk to a Tascam device.

How would computing look today if Bill Gates and Microsoft did not establish themselves in the world market?
Q. Would the software we use today in general be better e.g. more advanced and faster than it is currently?

A. It would be as good, maybe better. Back in the day there were plenty of good operating systems and software packages competing with Microsoft. Gates bought them, outmanuevered them, or bludgeoned them with brute force marketing muscle.

I used and preferred Novell DOS (aka DrDos, originally from Digital Research) to MS-DOS. It required less memory, ran better, and had more features. SuperCalc, QuattroPro, and even Lotus were far superior to Excel in price, performance, and features.

Even today, I use Openoffice instead of Microsoft Office. I've been using Windows as an operating system only because I haven't had time to investigate Linux alternatives.

How to connect to a mySQL database on a Linux machine from Windows terminals?
Q. Im planning on a new setup for our office, a Linux server that will have the mySQL database, all other terminals have windows OS like WIn98, Win2000 and tey will need to access the database from the Linux server how to do it?

A. There are so many ways, but I'd recommend making your application web-based and server-side only and access via a web browser. Ancient, unsupported systems like Microsoft Windows 98 are barely able to function in todays world.

Go for a LAMP system.



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