AyeTea

Hello again all,

Well, I have started the audio side of things in Linux. I installed Ardour. It automatically configured itself to the inputs and outputs of my eeepc, making it good to go almost straight after install. So, I took my subnotebook to a recording session of  Afterlives, a popular audio drama that I am very honoured to be a colaborator for. Now, like I have said previously, this isn't really a test of the software. All it tells me is that the programme runs and can record audio a-ok. But everything has to start somewhere.

First impressions or Ardour? Well, ProTools it ain't, nor Cubase for that matter. However for a free programme it is rather impressive. It seems like a fresh approach has been taken in the implementation of the GUI, with less options in the menus and more intuitative options made available on the main screen. A bit of reading shows that the main guy behind this has had backing from SAE and SSL. For those who don't know what I'm on about, that's DAMN impressive credentials. Using Ardour really gives the impression that it was designed for someone proficient in such things by a kindred spirit. Using the likes of Reaper or Audacity leaves you feeling they were designed for a home user with no specialist interest in DAW software. This is not an insult. I have found Audacity invaluable, but I cannot imagine trying to mix 24 tracks of audio with it and be able to easily and convieniently manage all the parameters needed.

Now! Plugins. I normally use Cubase. I love the Waves Mercury bundle. I think it's pretty much everything that anyone should ever reasonably need. But in Linux things are going to be a bit different. No commercial plugins. I set about downloading the plugins recommended from the Ardour website. I spent a few hours trying to compile these from a command line interface. I got practically nowhere. It seems the sudo command in ubuntu is actually 'su' or similar in other distros. So the instructions provided threw me off track slightly. However, after spending a bit of time thinking "there really ought to be an easier way to do this" I discovered there was. Enter synaptic package manager. Amazingly, without being told where Ardour was installed (and I don't know anyway...) the plugins automatically integrated fully with the Ardour, and appear in the channel strip when needed.

Sadly the  screen resolution of the eeepc is too small for ardour to function properly. The screen jumps to allow the bit you can't see to get on the screen, resulting in the other part disapearing. This pretty much rules out any serious use of this package on this computer. "So...", I thought "time to get this installed on my desktop".

I was fascinated by the 'install inside windows' option of Ubuntu. Surprisingly it installed a boot menu, when I thought it'd literally run inside windows, or a 'window' rather than emulate a dual boot. Anyways, I was so impressed I hunted out an old 80gb hard drive, added it to my system, and installed Ubuntu 64bit to it exclusively. Along the way I had some troubles removing the old boot menu from the 'inside windows' installation but google was my friend. Cleverly, the Ubuntu installation allows you to put the boot loader onto whatever drive you wish. I added it to newly installed drive, which the BIOS is set not to boot from. This means that the girlfriend can turn the computer on and boot straight into Windows without even a sniff of Grub. To get to Ubuntu it's a matter of hitting escape to enter the BIOS boot menu, then select the Ubuntu drive. All very neat and tidy. If you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't even know the system could be dual-booted. All thanks to some insightful installation option from the Linux world.

 So, to continue testing I'll cut, EQ and compress the Afterlives recording. I shan't be uploading it for all to hear as it'll be minus backing music and SFX. Above all the official release is quite a while away (I can't give the story away). The next test will be to export a Cubase project, track by track into Ardour. I'll upload a mix of the project (a song) which was made in Cubase, and a mix which was made in Ardour. You, the great public, can decide if Ardour can cut the mustard on a very demanding mix. The song is a heavy metal track. Before people wince, there is a very good reason for choosing such a tune. It is a demanding mix to balance. Due to high gain levels on the guitars, they have a very small dynamic range. This in turn means that other instruments have to be compress judiciously also, otherwise they bob above and below the guitars all over the place and never really settle in the mix. Threshold, attack and release settings are of upmost importance. This is especially true of drums, which will also need vicious EQ to get that modern rock sound (up to 16db of gain added to certain bands). Finally, the song in question has a vocal part distorted by a guitar amp simulator plug-in that I use an awfull lot in Cubase. Finding a suitable alternative will be a trick, as distorting vocals is a unorthodox business.

That's all from me for the time being,

Dan.