I'm going to check out that stuff, Dom, but as a technical - what's the
opposite of wizard, wussard? - I'm not very sanguine about my chances
of being able to manipulsate [sic!] the software. Still, 'ave a go, Joe...
mj
Dominic Fox wrote:
>Please excuse the interruption - I thought some of this might be
>pertinent to what Lawrence was saying about recording sound poetry,
>but if not then please just ignore: the conversation about Wordsworth
>and autobiography/influence etc. is vastly more intrinsically
>interesting and worthwhile than the techie blether that follows, and I
>may in any case be attempting to teach my grandmother (so to speak) to
>suck eggs...
>
>Recently I've been playing with some free/open source software for
>sound recording, generation, manipulation and mixing. When it comes to
>audio, software is only part of the picture: even if it's all free,
>getting the best results still depends on having a reasonably good (in
>particular, low-latency) soundcard and a reasonably fast processor.
>But the cost of hardware is constantly decreasing: I don't have any
>high-end gear myself, but can get very good results on what was a
>middle-range PC (about 750 quid - and no, I still haven't finished
>paying for it) two years ago. Before that, I was using a PIII 450Mhz
>PC with rather older and slower memory and hard drive, which wasn't
>great but was nevertheless adequate for all the sonic manipulation
>(ring modulation, filtering, reverb, chopping up samples and other
>such jazz) that went into the first four w/trem CDs. It is in fact
>still in use, or so I understand: the person I gave it to apparently
>does audio work of his own with it. The fact that I gave it away
>should tell you something about the availability of such hardware - I
>wouldn't have got a lot for it even if I'd tried to sell it, and there
>are similar systems available second-hand for not that much.
>
>Back to the software, which you can get for nothing (assuming access
>to an internet connection). Nothing free (as in beer) has worked
>better for me than Buzz, which is Windows-only - see
>http://www.buzzmachines.com for downloads. It has a plug-in model for
>generators and effects, and an enormous library of both (again, all
>free as in beer). It's possible to set up signal chains of some
>complexity - splitting off a signal, running it through a high-pass
>filter, running the filtered part through a delay then recombining it
>with the original signal in a ring modulator, say - and to run
>recorded samples through those signal chains, re-recording the
>results. Buzz is essentially a tracker (a type of fairly rudimentary
>sequencer), but the ability to combine plug-ins in this way is what
>gives it its real power.
>
>Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ - is a perfectly good GPL
>audio recorder and editor, good for capturing sounds, treating them in
>various ways, and chopping them up. It runs on Windows, Linux and OS
>X.
>
>Ardour - http://ardour.org/ - is the nearest thing Linux currently has
>to CuBase. It's very good, but difficult to set up; Linux isn't
>particularly friendly to multimedia applications, although the
>architecture is improving (i.e. everything you need is a bit
>cutting-edge, and consequently tends to be either flakey or badly
>supported). The main requirement is a piece of software called Jack -
>http://jackit.sourceforge.net/ - which allows multiple processes to
>pipe audio to one another: it's a kind of low-latency digital
>patchbay. There are an increasing number of small modules that work
>with Jack, such that one can compose quite complex signal processing
>environments out of a collection of self-contained modules. Fun if you
>have the time; I confess I've had problems getting it to work even on
>quite recent Linux distributions, but there's a dedicated multimedia
>distro called DeMudi, based on Debian, that simplifies the process
>quite a bit.
>
>Speaking of things that are fun if you have the time, CSound is
>amazingly powerful. But also amazingly hard, being based on a kind of
>assembly language for sound design. It's worth a look if the
>expression "assembly language for sound design" doesn't bring you out
>in a cold sweat. I kind of need a spare life to do all that stuff
>in...
>
>There are other things I haven't mentioned - I'm told GarageBand on
>the Mac is quite fun - but my main point is that for audio at least
>one no longer needs access to dedicated studios full of amazingly
>expensive gear to do interesting work.
>
>best,
>Dominic
>
>
>
--
Flow My Tears is a novel of nonstop intrigue set sometime in the future of an alternate reality. It has a great ending and really makes you think about life and similar things. - Online review by Keith.
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