# Music/Production



## Purple_Q (Dec 20, 2009)

I've used GarageBand for creating beats, and Traktor DJ Studio for mixing live sets, all on the Mac.

I'd like to know if any of you have any recommendations for similar such softwares available to us here in FreeBSD. I refuse to use Windows, and i've used Apple since I was around 5 years old, but i'd love to have mixtapes or live mixes.....powered by FreeBSD:e
  --Q


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## vivek (Dec 20, 2009)

Music mixing is not my thing but you can search for packages in ports:

```
cd /usr/ports
make search key=keyWord
```


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## lyuts (Dec 20, 2009)

I'm using Cubase Steinberg on Win, and I tried to find a similar app for FreeBSD. I have found ardour and LMMS (haven't tried this one yet). As for ardour, very similar to Steinberg, but I had some problems with it. I tried to record some riffs, but they appear to be shifted in terms of time.
Lets say I have drums track. On the first BOOM of drums I'm supposed to start the riff. But when I play the resulting mix my guitar starts with a delay, only after the 2nd ot 3rd BOOM.


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## vigol (Dec 25, 2009)

I'm working in old analog system/studio with accoustic instruments. So I havn't experience with app/digital systems, but I found a utility :  *audio/beast*. I just say : not bad, and I don't think it shall solve your problem, but maybe  it give you a clue for searching similars.


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## jjthomas (Dec 26, 2009)

As an MCSE I was locked into Windows.  Heck, it paid my bills.  When it came down to buying an Apple or staying in the Windows relm, I stayed in Windows.  I run Sonar 7.5 with Vista.  What can I say, it works.

I've done some audio editing on Linux.  It has a ways to go.  I've used LMMS, it looks awesome.  (I have Fruityloops, under Vista).  I've tried mixxx under Ubuntu, but encountered ext4 errors, compile errors, etc.  I never really got it going.

I said I would give FreeBSd another try when it got nvidia drivers under 64bit and the UDMA error thing went away.  So I'm back.

It looks like there are a lot of audio applications in ports.  I have not looked in to FreeBSD as far as doing real time audio mixing.   Windows has ASIO and WDM for low latency sound processing; Linux has jack and Pulseaudio for it's low latency mixing.  I did see jack and pulseaudio in ports, but I have not been able to find out how FreeBSD address the latency issues of live sound mixing and editing.

MIDI also seems to be a problem under FreeBSD.  There is some hardware that is supported (I think my sound is one that does have MIDI support under FreeBSD), but not everything has MIDI support.

I'm not sure how good FreeBSd will be as a DAW.

-JJ


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## roddierod (Dec 26, 2009)

jjthomas said:
			
		

> ...but I have not been able to find out how FreeBSD address the latency issues of live sound mixing and editing.



The latency issue with live instruments is a real problem when trying to record audio with FreeBSD. There have been a lot of changes in the sound for FreeBSD 8, and I happened to see yesterday that one tunable was:


```
hw.snd.latency
```

I have not had a chance to experiment with it yet, wondering if anyone else has?


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