Linux Audio the way to go!?

[VT67]

The last few days I'm experimenting with Pardus. The issues I had with Ubuntu, which I tried before, are non existing in this distro. It's a non well know Linux distribution, at least I never heard of it, but I can recommend it.

http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/

Regards

[soundcheck]

Originally posted by pinkmouse
Not until idiots like me can use it. I keep banging on about this because I consider it important, Linux will never become commonly accepted until it gets over its geeky way of doing things. Unfortunately, I think the coders want to keep it that way, a sort of intellectual snobbery if you like.

I don't think you're right here!

These Linux folks are as much DIYer as we are in this forum, perhaps even more DIY than many people around here, by looking at the stuff they produce.

Did you ever have a look at e.g. Openoffice? This looks as good as MS stuff developed as
Opensource and beside that its fully compatible to MS, developed by a DIY community.

Get yourself a DVD with Ububntu 6.10 , or download the iso.image. It'll take you not more than an hour to get it all up and running incl. Internet - Openoffice and
most probably even audio. You don't need Unix knowledge to get it started.
It is mainly autoinstall. It just needs max. 4 gig space on your HD.

The audio quality delivered by the basic setup will be already better than any Microsoft setup.


When it comes to special configurations, it is getting tricky. I agree.
It takes some knowledge to get it done. My intention with this thread, was
to share this knowledge.
It took me a while to get the realtime-setup up'n running. Now it works.
You'll learn a lot by doing it!
The great side effect though, Unix specialists are rare in the IT world.
I think it's great to build up knowledge, gaining it while running your hobby.

However, just to put my Linux efforts into perspective, it took me ten times more to get my DAC and AMP ready and 20 times longer to get my speakers done.
So what's the issue by spending two, three days to get your source done!

It delivers audiphile sound quality and it is BTW all free of charge!

Cheers

[soundcheck]

Originally posted by GeWa
The last few days I'm experimenting with Pardus. The issues I had with Ubuntu, which I tried before, are non existing in this distro. It's a non well know Linux distribution, at least I never heard of it, but I can recommend it.

http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/

Regards

Hi.

I tried quite some smaller audio distros before.
You won't get very much support on these.
That's a real problem. If you don't have to touch them they are OK. As soon as you
run into issues, you most probably won't be able to get the issues solved, which ends up dropping your project.
If you go for RedHat, Ubuntu, Suse you'll always have up2date stuff and lots of forums to discuss the issues.

For now, as a Linux beginner, I stay with the big ones.

I think that is actually the issue with Linux. Instead of focussing their limited powers on a few well done distributions, they widely spread their taskforce, which lowers quality and slows down the evolution in the end.

Cheers

[lm317t]

You do not have to recompile a kernel to get DeCSS to work. Use: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/deb/
to download the package for your architecture (AMD64/i386, etc)

You probably did have to recompile to get fast disk access to play back DVD's since the motheroard manufacturers rarely release Linux drivers, the default IDE is slow, although I have seen more and more recently supported by manufacturers. No coding knowledge necessary, just the ability to follow diretions.

Pinkmouse, Please don' spread the false rumor that Linux is for coders. This statement is ignorant and may incite riots. I am no coder, ABSOLUTELY NO coding/hacking knowledge is needed to run any distro, especially Ubuntu, just a little DIY spirit, and the ability to follow directions. Some are easier than others, but no coding man! If it were hard no one would do it but coders, which is clearly not the case, considering who uses it.

[Daveis]

Why the intense interest in playing DVD's from a PC?
Are you all planning on doing DRC/EQ/crossover on the PC?

$400 HD players are starting to surface.

[lm317t]

I put my DVD's on my PC and store the discs. This eliminates piles of discs on top of my DVD player and discs falling on the floor. Discs are fading as a technology as bandwidth and disc space per buck approach 0.

[kevinkr]

Mainly we were talking about audio from pc's using linux. I added the dvd issue as sort of a red herring in regards to the differences in ease of configuration and media types supported in Windoz as opposed to Linux. (Devil's advocate) Incidentally I am a big fan of Ubuntu, so I wasn't saying it wasn't worth the effort..

[houstonian]

I think Linux audio for DIYers is very hard to beat. I use:

Hardware:
Intel Core Duo (Smithfield)
RME multiface
Triamped 3-way hybrid horn system (horn mids and tweets)
6 channel stepped attenuator for volume control

Software:
alsaplayer or xmms (soon to try aqualung)
jackd
qjackctl
brutefir
octave
DRC
qloud

I use octave to create FIR crossover filters, which I then plug into brutefir. Then I use DRC to measure the impulse response and do room correction. The large number of channels supported by the RME multiface and the amazing flexibility provided by jack makes this an incredibly flexible setup. For even more flexibility, I use the SPDIF input on the RME to get audio from a separate Windows box.

[soundcheck]

Originally posted by houstonian
I think Linux audio for DIYers is very hard to beat. I use:

6 channel stepped attenuator for volume control

Very interesting setup. That's what I am looking at for the furture.
However, I havn't heard any filter, which is 100% transparent.
That's why I run my my PCM stream, without any manipulation, straight
to the DAC. What's your experience here?

Ever tried digital volume control?
I mean - you're manipulating the response digitally anyhow! On 24bit is should work quite well! Why still doing it on the analog side?
Did you ever come across a 32 bit float dsp volume control or similar under Linux!
I'd like to have some kind of plugin for a certain player application.

Are you running realtime-preemption? Which distro?

[houstonian]

I have tried various approaches to digital volume control, and it works fine. The downside is that you are giving up resolution by doing so. That's why I switched to a stepped attenuator with a remote control. However, I still do not have it scaled quite right (the RME output is too high), so I at the moment I have some attenuation also built into my brutefir config, defeating the purpose of the stepped attenuator.

I have used jackrack's attenuator and it is very simple to use and effective. I have also use brutefir, and it works fine, but is not easy to adjust on the fly. I have a griffin USB volume wheel, and considered using that to control brutefir for volume control (should not be too hard to do), but opted for the analog attenuator instead.