{"id":170,"date":"2008-09-10T22:31:15","date_gmt":"2008-09-10T21:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/archives\/2008\/09\/10\/recording-music-on-a-linux-laptop\/"},"modified":"2008-12-07T00:09:52","modified_gmt":"2008-12-06T23:09:52","slug":"recording-music-on-a-linux-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/archives\/2008\/09\/10\/recording-music-on-a-linux-laptop\/","title":{"rendered":"Recording music on a linux laptop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have spent too many hours in my life trying to get a good, reliable audio recording solution on my linux laptop.  For a while, I defected to mac but this evening I&#8217;m back in linux world and very happy.<\/p>\n<p>I figured the first rule out a while ago: <strong>don&#8217;t use any kind of internal soundcard<\/strong>.  Computers generate loads of electromagnetic interference.  You want to do your analog->digital conversion as far from your PC as possible.  Plus, you probably want some preamps and maybe some XLR inputs too.  The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPreSonus-Inspire-Firewire-Recording-Interface%2Fdp%2FB000E6FTVK&#038;tag=nobugs-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325\">Presonus Inspire<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=nobugs-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/> ticks all the boxes.  I&#8217;ve had one for a few years and I love it.  Two XLR,  two 1\/4&#8243; jack and two phono inputs plus two builtin preamps and a headphone socket.  If you&#8217;re tempted to save money and use an internal soundcard &#8211; don&#8217;t!  You&#8217;ll waste hours of your life trying to track down and minimize buzzing noises.  Life is too short &#8211; buy an Inspire and move on.<\/p>\n<p>The Inspire uses Firewire, and my laptop doesn&#8217;t have any firewire ports.  No problem, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&#038;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBelkin-FireWire-Notebook-PCMCIA-videostudio%2Fdp%2FB000ESLEFS%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Delectronics%26qid%3D1221081330%26sr%3D8-1&#038;tag=nobugs-20&#038;linkCode=ur2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=9325\">Belkin PCMCIA Firewire card<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=nobugs-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/> is pretty cheap and works perfectly under linux &#8211; Ubuntu recognized it immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Linux support for the Inspire comes from the <a href=\"http:\/\/freebob.sourceforge.net\/\">FreeBob<\/a> project, which provides a driver which allows jackd to talk to the device.  A bit of help from <a href=\"http:\/\/parumi.wordpress.com\/2006\/12\/19\/getting-firewire-audio-work-on-linux\/\">this page<\/a> got me going.  <strong>Important:<\/strong> you need to plug the power supply into the Inspire &#8211; the PCMCIA firewire card doesn&#8217;t appear to supply power directly.<\/p>\n<p>Once jackd is up and running, qjackctl should show that you now have 4 inputs and 2 outputs (they&#8217;re named &#8220;system&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the core software stack I use for recording and mixing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/qjackctl.sourceforge.net\/\">qjackctl<\/a>: patchbay management.  The software equivalent of plugging in cables between things.\n  <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ardour.org\">Ardour<\/a> &#8211; digital audio workstation.  I spend most of my time here &#8211; recording, mixing and editing.\n  <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hydrogen-music.org\">Hydrogen<\/a> &#8211; jack-enabled drum sequencer.  It&#8217;s no <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fxpansion.com\/\">BFD<\/a> but it&#8217;s fine for demos.\n  <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.alsaplayer.org\">alsaplayer<\/a> &#8211; jack-enabled audio file player.  For play other people&#8217;s music when I&#8217;m bored of my own stuff.\n  <\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/home.gna.org\/fmit\/\">fmit<\/a>: a really good tuner app.  It works well and looks pretty.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Anyone else out there got a similar setup?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have spent too many hours in my life trying to get a good, reliable audio recording solution on my linux laptop. For a while, I defected to mac but this evening I&#8217;m back in linux world and very happy. I figured the first rule out a while ago: don&#8217;t use any kind of internal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,21,19,18,17],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ardour","tag-firewire","tag-jackd","tag-linux","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobugs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}