Open-source music and audio is finally delivering the goods: useful and unique tools that make sense even alongside commercial/proprietary software. And as a sign that the mainstream could get a taste of these tools soon, Intel is exhibiting at the massive Las Vegas CES consumer electronics show with Transmission, says Trinity Audio’s Ronald Stewart.
Transmission is Trinity Audio’s open source software bundle and live Linux distribution. It’s built for Trinity’s Linux-powered Trinity mobile studio device, which we’ll be seeing more of soon. At CES, it’s running at the Intel booth on the Samsung Q1 Ultra Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC). (The advantage of the Trinity over the UMPC for audio folks: XLR jacks, among other things.) But you can also run this free software on your PC — try the live CD link below. Haven’t tried it on Intel Mac yet, but that should work, too, theoretically.
Audacity [the open-source waveform editor]
Burn is a cd burn app
DJ is IDJ for live podcasting ( i love this with a mic)
Drum is Hydrogen [the simple but fun software drum machine]
Mixer is the Gnome ALSA mixer [for mixing virtual channels of audio on your system — something not nearly as functional on Mac or Windows]
Mixxx 1.6 beta (rips with the touch screen grabbing the tracks and faders)
Record is Ardourino (Ardour is so awesome) [the open-source DAW]
Sequencer is Qtractor (another great app)
Synth is amsynth
Upload is an ftp app [so you can upload your tracks]
Zynaddsubfx is another great synth
For more description and links to the individual tools — an excellent selection of the creme de la creme on Linux — check the Transmission site. (warning: auto-plays audio!)
But no need to have a UMPC or Trinity device to give this a spin. This live CD will do the trick. For Mac users, it even includes the native (non-Linux) Ardour for Mac, an excellent free and open source DAW for Mac users.
Even as someone dedicated to proprietary software I really can’t live without (hello, Ableton!), I think there’s huge potential in using these applications for specific applications (like mobile devices), for collaboration, and file exchange. If we were really lucky, some of those major developers would start to build in support for, say, Ardour’s file format. But that’s the subject of another story.
Below: the Trinity mobile device getting celebrity treatment.
So, now we only need to get max/msp 5 on linux and we are ready to go open source. I guess that could be happening during 2008 if I understand Cycling 74 correctly.
I guess it also would be good to get some vst plug-ins to work.
I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to switch to Linux, it's just a matter of getting FLStudio and my pile of VSTs to work. I'm building a little junker to be my linux test box after I played with ubuntu and found it to be so much smoother and more effective than windows.
gola: some VST plugins like this?
> google linux vst plugins
http://ladspavst.linuxaudio.org/
as for max/msp, yes, that would be nice, but in the meantime we have PureData which does about the same amount of stuff, just a little different.
Thanks for the hookup.
I've been looking a audio/midi Linux live CD.
Studio to go is way overpriced.
Yeah I saw a demo of the silver model at an expo. It was the first time I actually could understand what was going on. I want one!!
[…] show off pro audio and music production on the Linux-based Transmission, from Trinity Audio, as we saw earlier this week. I’m not entirely sure what got Intel thinking our geeky way, but I’m going to enjoy it […]
Does anyone know if the Live Master CD is still available? I'd like to try it but the link above requires a username and password.
Many thanks!
[…] or … transmission is Trinity Audio’s open source software bundle and live Linux distribution. …http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/08/ces-free-transmission-audio-distro-running-on-umpc-trinity-…016035952X: "Report on Copyright Implications of Digital Audio …Find the best deals on […]
Any recent updates on products from Trinity? I’m looking to obtain a version which will run on a new macbook pro.
Any recent updates on products from Trinity? I’m looking to obtain a version which will run on a new macbook pro.
Any recent updates on products from Trinity? I’m looking to obtain a version which will run on a new macbook pro.