Comments on: Audio in Linux is awesome

By: roger

roger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:50:13 +0000

Note that if you google for ‘windows mp3 editor’ it comes up with audacity for windows.

As a funny side note, if you google for ‘linux mp3 editor’ it comes up with the audacity for windows page. LOL.

By: ClayOgre

ClayOgre — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 02:57:40 +0000

I have not had much luck with Linux sound either. And all I want to do is to simply record sound from the microphone, something that is a breeze under Windoze. Everybody is talking about Ubuntu. The problem is that Ubuntu is just as bad, if not worse. I have tried many different versions of Ubuntu, on TWO different computers, one of which, a System 76, was purchased with Ubuntu pre-installed….and it STILL didn’t work, crashed six times in the first hour. Other distros install and run on this computer, but not the one that it supposedly came with. Right now it is running ZenWalk 5.0, which works just fine, except for less than stellar sound quality, playback is kinda staticky and as usual, I have not been able to get anything recorded from the microphone. Guess I will just have to do sound on Windows and use Linux for everything else.

By: darkfader

darkfader — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:31:40 +0000

hahahahaha!
thank you so much for the laugh.

an irix user.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:05:34 +0000

People are tools. “Don’t use an OS that doesn’t work for you.” “If you can’t figure it out, go back to Windows.” Blah Blah Blah Blah.

Problems like these are typical on a linux box unless you want to run the bare minimum of software that comes on the disc. Seriously, try to do anything out of the ordinary becomes a true pain in the ass.

I love Linux, and I’ve been using it for years, but every fucking time, it’s the same shit. Library version issues, conflicts, missing software you didn’t know existed..

I can always figure it out, but it always annoys me that I had to.

It’s like, shit. It’s almost 2008. Let’s get a fucking move-on here! Fortunately, I believe distributions such as Ubuntu have and will continue to do good things in the future.

By: anthony

anthony — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:27:18 +0000

Linux is a PITA unless you get a distro specific to what you want to accomplish. Had you been using Ubuntu Studio you would have been fine. A more accurate statement: Audio in YOUR SPECIFIC LINUX DISTRIBUTION sucks. Its not a problem with “the linux” its a problem with your linux distro.

By: darkness

darkness — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:01:57 +0000

@Chris Lees: no esd here (setting was unchecked). Presumably Audacity couldn’t grab the ALSA hardware devices because Amarok and/or Flash had them open.

By: Chris Lees

Chris Lees — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:45:21 +0000

pebaasc (Problem Exists Between Audacity And Sound Card). Go to the Sound control panel in Gnome, turn off Software Sound Mixing. It will work fine now.

By: ...

... — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:12:36 +0000

In steps 11 and 12, a sound daemon like esd or pulseaudio may have been blocking audacity from using alsa. Closing audacity and shutting down the sound daemon might have allowed audacity to use alsa, which would have made steps 13 through 36 unnecessary.

Nice finale with the sox and normalize solution. The command line rocks. Even with the 39 step process you outlined, you probably spent less time with the script than you would have if you had edited each file individually.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 00:35:05 +0000

pebkac pebkac

By: Applegates

Applegates — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:26:59 +0000

I personally have not had this much trouble with Linux audio, and I use Fedora Core 8 (I have also used ubuntu, debian, mandrake, suse and a few others, but i prefer Fedora). I have never used Audacity however so maybe that has something to do with it, but in my experience, All I’ve ever needed to play an MP3 is to install Jack, pulseaudio, xmms and the mp3 codecs and it all runs sweet. In my experience yum install jackit will install Jack and the dependencies it needs to make it run without a hitch. Of course you may need alsa to actually hear the sound, but usually this is installed when you install the multimedia components of Fedora. To be short, I think Linux as a Desktop OS is more than ready for those prepared to give it a go and to learn how to use it, And while you can’t play every game designed for windows in Linux (I’ve not tried Cedeaga so whether i’d have more luck with that than with WINE i’m not sure) I don’t think that rules it out as viable OS. Windows has it’s own set of problems that you have to deal with and if you want to use it as your primary OS then so be it, but at the end of the day your choice of OS does not matter. What matters is that your choice of OS does what you want it to do, and for me Linux does what i want it to do. A survey of Linux users recently (want to find it? google it) said that most Linux users use Windows as well as Linux as per their needs, so the argument of Linux vs Windows is irrelevant in the end. For me, and in my experience, Linux audio works fine, is relatively easy to get working if your sound hardware is supported, and only requires around 5 or 6 packages which can be installed easily with Yum and Apt without much configuration required.