digital audio workstations
What’s the word when it comes to ultimate sound editing? DAW…
the digital audio workstation is to music editing what Photoshop is to graphic editing: an all-singing, all-dancing piece of software for recording, editing and mixing all sorts of audio. Traditionally DAWS have been complex, expensive and decidedly proprietary – think things like Pro
Tools – but there are great Linux alternatives. Ardour is an open source, collaborative effort of a worldwide team. Over the past few years it has has undergone quite a few changes, so we’ll be giving that primary focus. We’ll also look at Qtractor very briefly – if you would like to know more, see LXF242 for a proper rundown.
Although Ardour has plenty of MIDI capabilities, its MIDI editing prowess isn’t highly regarded, so we’ll just focus on audio editing for Ardour, and leave MIDI and some other areas to Qtractor.
Ardour
https://ardour.org
The 5.x series of Ardour has a lot of new features, including Windows support, the ability to control group faders with one controller, Lua scripting, a new plug-in wiring system and at last, builtin plug-ins for basic effects.
The GUI has undergone many improvements, with a tabbed interface instead of many small windows, and a far more intuitive workflow. It appears you can now run
Ardour through ALSA, without the need for JACK – this should greatly simplify usage, though presumably this also limits your mixing functionality.
During setup, you’re asked where to place Ardour’s recorded files; whether to use a hardware mixer or have
Ardour play material as it’s recorded; and whether to use the master bus directly, or use an additional Monitor bus (just use the default if you don’t know). Next, you’re given a choice of session templates for getting you straight into a workflow. However, in order to show you the GUI in a pure, simple form, choose Empty Template for now.
Lastly, you will need to define the options for Audio/ MIDI Setup. Our version defaulted to ALSA, though we had to specify the right input and output devices. Once started, Ardour will take over your sound card entirely, so don’t expect to multitask between something like
Ardour and online cat videos.
If you prefer JACK, you will be given a series of configuration options. If you don’t really know what you’re doing here, just make sure the right device is chosen and click Start. If JACK has already been configured, Ardour will start it automatically for you.
Once inside the main screen you will see a track called Master. This is the Master bus: everything passes through it, but you can ignore it for now – first you need to create a track you can record over. To make your first track, you can either do it the long way by clicking Session > ‘Add Track, Bus or VCA’, or you can just right-click on the track panel to the left of the screen.
When the Add Track window appears, there are a selection of track types to choose from. We’re just concentrating on audio, so stick with the default choice of Audio Tracks. In Configuration, choose whether you want mono or stereo, give your track a name and click ‘Add and Close’.
Back in the main editing screen, look to the track panel on the left and click the Record button on the new track. From the main toolbar, click Ardour’s primary Record button (which will flash, meaning it’s ready to write), and click the Play button to start recording.
What a mix up!
Before we go any further, we recommend turning on View > Show Editor Mixer. We won’t cover the complex issue of audio buses here, but we can show you how to apply simple mixing and effects.
Each track has some basic controls on the left, such as Mute, Solo, Gain and record with this track. If you right-click on the track controls there are more options, including basic things such as track colour, and more
advanced options like track alignment and automation. However, to make further mixing adjustments like changing Pan, you’ll need to open the mixer, the button for which is in the top-right corner.
Exporting audio is fairly straightforward in Audacity 5.x. From the main menu choose Session > Export > Export to Audio File(s). It’s best to leave these options alone if you don’t know what you’re doing; with the defaults it should save your work as a snapshot of the entire session. A warning: Ardour crashed the first time we tried to export, so click Save first!
Ardour has been around for 14 years now and is synonymous with Linux audio – there is even a modified proprietary variant, Harrison Mixbus, for serious audiophiles who want a big name behind their software. Nevertheless, it has always suffered from something of an awkward interface. Now it seems the tables have turned, and rival projects will need to up their game.
Qtractor
http://qtractor.org Although Qtractor has evolved into a fully fledged DAW, it was originally meant to be just a MIDI sequencer with some DAW features. Qtractor’s strange evolution has resulted in an endearing hodgepodge of all the major editors, with bits
of Rosegarden, Ardour, old Pro Tools, and chunks of Cakewalk and Cubase for good measure. The last time we used Qtractor it was prone to crashing, but developer Rui Nuno Capela has put a lot of time into fixing bugs.
Unfortunately, starting a project involves running through a series of prompts that may be intimidating and somewhat confusing (much like the bad old days of Ardour!). However, once you’re up and running,
Qtractor has some killer editing features.
Rather than deleting chunks of audio, you can grab the edge of either end of a track and just drag it inwards. Rather brilliantly, you can also drag it back to ‘uncrop’ as it were, even past the start of recently pasted bits of audio. Interestingly, if you hold Ctrl when you click and drag a clip’s border, Qtractor will generate more of the same audio based on what’s gone before it. If you have your BPM set correctly the Snap feature can break down your music into perfect bar-length chunks, which can be dragged around at will. And don’t worry if your wave spills over the edge of what you’ve grabbed, as you can always ‘uncrop’ it.
If you’re into MIDI, Qtractor has a similar piano roll editor to LMMS; double-click on a piece of recorded MIDI to open it. If you use a synth plug-in when adding the MIDI track, you can avoid involving JACK. Calf
Fluidsynth is particularly popular and can load new soundfonts, though Yoshimi if you can’t be bothered!
Exporting audio was very confusing last time we covered Qtractor, but it seems to have a reasonable GUI flow now. To export the session as a whole, choose Track > Export tracks – Audio, and follow your nose. If you choose Master as your output, it will export everything into a wave file, regardless of whether it’s audio or MIDI.
Compared to Ardour nowadays, Qtractor’s cluttered interface is quite confusing. But if you can get into a flow, and understand the Qtractor way of doing things, the combination of wave audio and MIDI may be all you ever need to make music.