Ardour - The Ultimate Digital Audio Workstation Software for GNU/Linux!

As a professional Musician, after switching into the awesome GNU/Linux operating system recently ;-) if you've just found out that you can't "have" your favourite Digital audio recording/mixing utility in GNU/Linux, well, you must be devastated :/.

Although I'm not a professional musician nor I have any advanced knowledge about audio workstation software, etc but after hearing a lot of good things... I just wanted to give a try at a utility called Ardour just for the sake of writing a decent post.

Now the name may not make a lot of sense at first (well it kinda does actually :P) but I soon realised that Ardour is a very professional looking, robust and an excellent digital audio workstation software application (it's free!) that is developed especially for GNU/Linux users (including Mac OSX version as well) which can save some real amount of money when considering some of the so called "professional" software and their costs.


Main features...

*. It primarily rely on a sound server called "JACK" (which is also developed by the same developer) and can use ALSA, OSS, FFADO for connecting with your actual audio hardware.

Thus you don't actually have to worry about Ardour's support for your hardware. As along as the hardware are supported by ALSA, OSS or GNU/Linux Kernel in general... Ardour will be able to use them, so you're good to go :). 

*. You can make unlimited Undo "operations".

*. Supports both Non-destructive and Non-Liner editing.

*. Easily mix any amount of tracks (as long as your PC/audio hardware can handle them) by using 32-bit floating points.

*. Record audio.

*. Easily control regions by using icons and just right-click on the track and you'll be amazed by the options that you'll get (reverse, export, bounce and spectral analysis, etc). 

*. Supports standard file formats, such as BWF, WAV, WAV64, AIFF and CAF, and it can use LADSPA, LV2, VST and AudioUnit plugin formats.

*. Additional Microsoft VST plug-in support. 

*. Mixing using a lot of additional plugins (over 200 free ones), Equalizers, etc.

*. Supports dragging, trimming, splitting and timestretching recorded regions.

*. It can also be used as an audio mastering suite to create final versions, CD writeable files such as TOC and CUE.

You can install Ardour (2.8.11 - the current version) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal by using the below command in your Terminal window.

sudo apt-get install ardour

 

You'll have to confirm the installation by saying "yes" or "no" to the pop-up window that you get. Although both choices have their own drawbacks... but most of the time I think it's pretty much safe to say "yes". But unless you have a bit of a powerful PC/Laptop ("big" RAM, etc), saying "no" is more safe, I think.

You can launch it via: "Applications" -> "Sound & Video" - "ArdourGTK2" (which is the GTK2+ written in front-end GUI). As mentioned, I'm not a professional of this kind ;-) so I may haven't been able to convince you that much here which is not fare for the developer and their hard work.

So as a final note, let me humbly emphasize by saying that, if you're looking for a completely free, professional, opensounce digital audio workstation software for GNU/Linux and Mac OSX environments... then even people like me are impressed by the power of this amazing utility called Ardour. So Ardour can be a highly recommended software if you have the above needs. Enjoy!.

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Install MP3 Diags in Ubuntu 11.04 (Corrupted MP3 Header fixing app for GNU/Linux)

Not just MP3 files any file in general has a portion called a header. But only concerning MP3 files in this instance ... that header contains details such as the bit-rate that has to be used to play the file properly, meta information (artist/album/year... type details), sample rate, preferred audio levels, etc.

Even if you have a bit buggy audio file still if the player is powerful enough then you can play it even after having those errors BUT, there can be occasions that unless you fix the corrupted header, the playback is impossible.

And to make things worse, sometimes, a MP3 track that plays "perfectly" fine in a one player might be "unreadable" in another one. So in those circumstances, our only hope is to find a way to fix that corrupted header.

In that case there is an excellent application that's written for that exact purpose called "MP3 Diags". But remember, there are certain errors which are not fixable, or permanent, so don't hope for wonders here :).

Main features...

*. You can graphically access (its' written in GTK) more than 50 different MP3 header file settings.

*. Fix broken tag information.

*. Find and remove duplicate tags.

*. Find and fix missing album art/cover files (within the tag of course).

*. Add normalization details.

*. Character encoding errors (for languages other than English).

*. Correct MP3 files that show incorrect playback duration (very useful, this is usually caused because of false bitrate values).

*. Change bit-rate values (remember, just because you change the bit-rate won't let your 32kbps low quality audio to play in 320kbps..., those are not fixable by using any app. But it'll help as mentioned above to fix some "wrong" playback duration type errors).

*. Fix MP3 file seeking errors.

These are few of its main features to mention. But as you can see already, MP3 Diags is pretty useful tool nonetheless.

And also if you don't have much of a technical knowledge about how to apply these settings, then it even has an automated options (4 presets) using which you can let it automatically detect and fix several things (as in the below screenshot).

If you want your MP3 files to have album art images added then MP3-Diags is also capable of doing that using online sources such as "Discogs" and "Musicbrainz.org" or you can manually assign a picture if you like as well.

If you use Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 or 11.04 Natty Narwhal, then you can easily install MP3 Diags using the below command.

sudo apt-get install mp3diags

Remember, especially if you do mass file "fixings" then make sure to first back up your source files (which can be done through the app it self as well), because there can be occasions where it can damage the files (rarely, but possible) :/. But remember, when properly used, it is one of the best/powerful utilities that's I've come across so far nonetheless. The developer do deserve some additional praise, well done :D.  

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Install MP3Splt in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal ( A MP3/Ogg File Splitter for GNU/Linux)

Splitting MP3 or Ogg files can be pretty useful in many occasions. For instance, say that you've found a single track which contains a lot of songs and you just wanted to "extract" a single song from whole audio file, well your only hope is to split that audio file, but how can you do it in GNU/Linux?.

Simple. If you use Ubuntu (I'm using 11.04 for this example) there are few tools that you can use to do that task. The best of the best so far is Audacity, I think. But Audacity is actually more than that and can be a bit hard to use, sometimes.

If you want a more dedicated application with a simple GUI... then MP3Splt is a pretty cool utility. But the default project was actually a command-line one (don't run away now :P) but luckily there is a GTK+ toolkit written GUI for that called MP3Splt-gtk.

Main features...

*. Not the most user friendly actually but pretty decent GUI.

*. Has a built in audio player which can be used several other frameworks/engines such as Gsteramer, etc.

*. Insert "gaps" or sound levels when splitting audio files.

*. Or you can use the "silent" mode which automatically adjusts the split points.

*. Tag-Editing and automatic inserting the source meta-data support.

*. MP3 and Ogg Vorbis supported.

*. Change output directory.

*. Queue support. 

*. CDDB data fetching from online sources.

*. You can either use your mouse or directly enter audio durations to split.

If you use Ubuntu 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04 then you can install MP3Splt-gtk 0.5.6 (current version) by entering the below command in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install mp3splt-gtk

Although the GUI is simple but it can be confusing (if you're the developer, then this is not a judgment, I just love the GTK front-end apart from all that. Thank you :D). It took my dull brain few minutes to figure it out.

Lets do it in easy three steps.

1. Load the app and then click on the "browse" button and add your mp3/ogg audio file to split.

2. Then play the file and when reached to your desired location (say the start of your song in the main track) you can click on the "Add" button on the "player" tab as shown in below screenshot.

3. Then let the song play and when it reaches the "desired end" again click on "Add" button and pause the playback.

Now you'll see two "marks" on the "player" tab. If you don't want to add any split gaps, etc then simply clicking on the "correction mark" at the top of the MP3Splt (have a look at the below screenshot). That's it!.

(By default it saves your split audio files in your Home directory). Enjoy!.

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How to Install Lame and Sound-Converter (GUI) in Ubuntu (11.04/10.10/10.04)?

When it comes to encoding you have to be a bit choosy. Because if you end up with the wrong application that's not optimized for the task... encoding can be a time consuming (it always is, anyway) and frustrating.

I said this because in the past I've used few audio encoders which are both GUI and command-line ones and even though some had decent GUIs yet they weren't that optimized and as a result they took more time that it should.

In that sense Lame is one of the best MP3 encoding command-line applications that I've come across (I'm pretty sure I ain't alone for that thought). Although by default there isn't an official GUI yet it's extremely fast and easy to use as well. It's actually one of the widely used app by many other applications + there's even a gstreamer plugin which enables it to integrates with Gstreamer. 

Anyway, if you want to encode MP3 files fast and okay with using a command-line tool then lets install Lame. I'm assuming that you're using Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal but this should work on 10.10 and 10.04 versions and in other older ones I think.

Open your Terminal and enter the below command.

sudo apt-get install lame

That it!. But as said this is a command-line tool so I recommend that you read its manual which you can access by entering the below command afterward (or anytime you want to read it).

man lame

But as mentioned before if you have a lot of files to be encoded then lame can be a bit frustrating. If so, then lets install a GUI which uses the Gstreamer-Lame plugin called Sound Converter which is pretty darn easier to use.

"Sound Converter"...

If you use Ubuntu 11.04/10.10 or 10.04 you can install Sound Converter by entering the below command in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install soundconverter

But we also need to have install the "Gstreamer-plugin-Ugly" package, if you have already installed it then you're good to go, if not we have to install that too.

Enter the below command in your Terminal again (this is for Ubuntu 11.04, but depending on your Ubuntu and Gstreamer version, only change the "0.10" number).

sudo apt-get install sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

Once installed you should be able to run in via: "Applications" -> "Sound and Video" -> "Sound Converter"

Or simply press "Alt" + "F2" and enter the below text into the box.

soundconventer

Thanks to the Gstreamer "ugly plugins" you can not only use sound converter to convert MP3 files but it can also be used to convert Ogg, Flac, Wav as well. Enjoy!.

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How to Install easyMP3Gain in Ubuntu?

Now, there can be situations where when you were listening to a MP3 file and the default volume level was a bit low than usual. Although you can always fix it by raising the volume in your music player or the system volume itself yet, if you have several of these files, then you'll have to do this every time which is certainly not that cool.

In that case if you're were looking for an easy to use GUI which lets you set volume levels in MP3 files so that those volume settings will be permanent (the process is called "volume gain")... then our Italian geek ferramroberto have the answer. It's called, easyMP3Gain and it'll most definitely come in handy for you!.

With it you can load hundreds of audio files (in different format of course) to its main window and can change one by one or set a "standard" volume level (in decibels) and let it apply automatically for all those files!. But remember, there could be those occasional audio files with very low volume levels. So with them you can raise the "decibels" a bit higher but if you apply the same settings to a normal audio file then it can easily create some distortions.

So make sure to set a decent volume gain value to avoid any of those issues. By default easyMP3Gain supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis and MP4 files.

You can install easyMP3Gain in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, 10.10 or 10.04 by entering the below command in your Terminal. Good luck.

sudo apt-get install easymp3gain

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How to Install puddletag in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal? (Audio "Tag" Editor)

By default MP3 files (including other multimedia files) store information about the file such as Artist/Track Name/Year or Album cover (including pictures) in a file called ID. After the "ID" was introduced, these days we're "having" the ID version - 3.

In both GNU/Linux and MS Windows you can easily access this ID3 or Tag of an MP3 file by right clicking on it and selecting properties and once opened, you can manually change the above mentioned data (artist/track/year, etc). This is known as MP3 tag editing. And as said not just MP3 files but almost all other major audio/video files (flac, AAC, etc) also have their own "tags" as well.

Almost all the major music players for GNU/Linux support this feature (including embedding an album art picture into the tag) but changing tag after tag in an audio album where you have hundreds of files ain't gonna be that pleasant. Luckily some music players nowadays can even do this automatically by reading the MP3 file and downloading its meta-data/tag-data via online sources and automatically changing them but this is not always possible.

If you want to manually change a lot of tags of your audio collection (including the above mentioned "automated" option) with ease in Ubuntu then there is a small yet useful dedicated tool called "puddletag".

Main features...

*. Written in Python language and the GUI is designed using the gorgeous Qt-4 toolkit.

*. Change all the MP3 tag information such as - Year/Title/Album name/Track-Genre, etc and you can even add your own comments as well.

*. Easy to use GUI.

*. Supports a lot of audio formats such as - MP3, MP4 (mp4, m4a, etc.), VorbisComments (ogg, flac), Musepack (mpc), Monkey’s Audio (.ape) and WavPack (wv).

*. puddletag also has the ability to use online sources (Amazon, FreeDB, Discogs, etc) and automatically update tag information (including album covers).

*. Load hundreds/thousands of file into the main window.

If you use Ubuntu 11.04 (including 10.04/10.10) and want to install puddletag, then download the package from here and double click on it once downloaded. Follow the instructions on your screen and it'll automatically install it, including all the dependencies.

If you use Fedora Core 15/14 or other version then you should be able to install it using the below command as well.

yum install puddletag

Enjoy!. 

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Introducing Split-lossless Script (Nautilus) - "Extract" Lossless Audio Files Into Other Formats With Ease

Cue sheet or ".cue" extension is a container format in which it holds various information such as Track numbers, Titles, etc which is commonly seen in Audio CDs. But it's certainly not confined in those but can also be seen in data CDs as well.

Anyhow, if you have a CD or a single file which contains few lossless audio tracks within itself that has to be split or Extracted into mp3 or Flac under Nautilus file manager as easy as right clicking on it... then Split-lossless is a very valuable little tool without a doubt!.

One good thing about Nautilus is that you can easily expand its functionality by using simple commands/codes called Nautilus Scripts. Although, even without learning about programming Java/C++, etc... if you're familiar with bash-commands (you know those standard commands that we put into the Terminal such as "su" or "sudo" for instance), once you get familiar with its coding style... we can easily use these already existing bash-commands together in a single "script" and create a command of your own!.

Anyhow, if you don't have time for that sort of a thing :) and simply want to know how to install the Split Lossless into your Nautilus... then start your Terminal window and enter the below command to install it in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (I think it should work on 10.10 and 10.04).

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cokicd/split-lossless
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install split-lossless

Once installed... simply right-click on your .cue file and from the menu that Lossless Split adds you can choose your codec (flac/mp3). And the cool thing about it is that, all the meta information such as Album name, Artist, Track name, Year, etc are automatically fetched for you!, a huge time saver.

Depending on your needs, you can choose the best possible audio bitrate, a built in progress indicator, a preview before splitting is done, automatic notification when done + you can even tell it to automatically delete the source file as well.

Seriously... it may be a script... but this is one of the impressively useful tool for those of us who deal with audio related "stuff" without a doubt :).

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Install Asunder in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, A Powerful Audio-CD Ripper/Endocer for GNU/Linux!

If have all the proper codecs installed then ripping an audio CD (not ripping it apart, you know the software version, ...just kidding :P) in GNU/Linux is pretty darn easy. In that sense for most of us, installing another dedicated audio-CD ripper like the Asunder may not be necessary. But...

... once installed, Asunder will let you do almost anything with your audio-CD. For instance, out of the box, it can be used to convert your large in size audio-tracks to a lot of both lossey and lossless, proprietary and open sources codecs with ease.

Main features...

*. Supports re-encoding WAV to WAV and MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Wavpack, Musepack, AAC, and Monkey's audio files.

*. While the encoding goes on, Asunder automatically search an internet based audio CD database called CDDB (a standard method actually, not a brand) and fetch album information, etc automatically. 

*. Manually add Year, Title, etc.

*. Automatically creates M3U playlists for the encoded files.

*. Rip and encode at the same time.

*. Although it's written in GTK+ but does not depend on any desktop environment either.

So if you have installed Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal or 10.10 or 10.04... then you can easily install Asunder by entering the below command in your Terminal.

sudo apt-get install asunder

If that does not work under 11.04, then simply download the .deb file from here and double click on it. That should do it. 

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