Open-Source Music Production Tools | Hacker News Reader

Open-Source Music Production Tools

midination.com

250 pointsspaceman_202081 comments

Here's a chance for a content maker to make a YouTube channel to show people how to use these tools.

I know that a lot of people's apprehension with these kinds of open source tools is they're afraid of investing their time into a tool that might not be widely supported because if they get stuck there will be little to no support in figuring out the software. And also, if the project is not popular enough then it won't get updated enough and, thus, remain not competitive with commercial software.

There are a couple of yt channels out there, for example https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAYKj_peyESIMDp5LtHlH2A

But nothing like you might expect compared to FOSS creative software in other fields, like Blender or Gimp.

I've never thought of making a youtube channel about it but I have started and stopped a few articles in a series I was planning on creating a song from start to finish with open source tools. I've just never really had the time, or to be honest motivation to sit down and work on it.

That's where I'm going towards next. I'm going to create a song from scratch using just Ardour and Zyn synth. I actually find Ardour's CPU usage to be more efficient than Ableton or Logic. And honestly, the learning curve isn't any steeper

Hello! I'm the author of this page.

I realize that a few tools might be missing. Happy to hear all suggestions.

In the meantime, if you want this list in Google sheet, you can make a copy of this one:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YfVyZHy83WHIiZmQJwHh...

Some notes, hope this is useful.

- Why are helm and dexed called "sequencers"? They're synthesizers. You're missing a massive collection of open source synthesizers, effects units, and so on. Indeed you don't even have this as a category, or some common ones are put under "sequencers".

- You're also completely lacking open source patch editors, arduino and related MIDI tools, and so on.

- And ... you have supercollider but not PD? Not csound? Etc.

Hello Ryan! As long as we're talking open source, can I suggest you Onlyoffice instead of Goggle Sheets? Similar functionality, but with AGPL license, and the personal tier is free as in free beer too. Here's how you doc would look if shared similarly: https://onlyo.co/32FPJAZ

Thank you for the list. There something that bothers me a little. LMMS seems very much like commercial DAWs, but Muse was more of a notation+sequencer program. I remember Rosegarden much like that, but it was too long ago. The rest no idea, but it would be useful a brief commentary adding some additional info to the DAW and sequencer categories, since they seem very broad.

Of course, if someone can share opinions here, it would also be nice.

It's a good list!

If you haven't visited already, maybe you could take a look at https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio

Hm. Last commit "remove REAPER (offensive naming)"

https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio/commit/22f6075...

No idea, but irrelevant here since Reaper isn't FOSS.

There is an issue about that very question! https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio/issues/50

You have LinuxSampler listed as GPL licensed, but it's actually source-available proprietary software.

From http://www.linuxsampler.org/downloads.html:

"LinuxSampler is licensed under the GNU GPL with the exception that USAGE of the source code, libraries and applications FOR COMMERCIAL HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE PRODUCTS IS NOT ALLOWED without prior written permission by the LinuxSampler authors."

This directly contradicts the GPL v2.0 (the relevant version): "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."

Of course the copyright holders have the right to impose whatever self-contradictory license they like, but this combination isn't GPL and it isn't Open Source.

Well, if anything, it's more honest than GPL.

Do you accept suggestions for missing tools?

I've noticed that Surge [0] was missing, it's a softsynth made by the same dev that now works on Bitwig Studio.

0: https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

Happy to include any and all relevant tools. I hope to make this the single most relevant resource for FOSS music production

Another suggestion: Orca [1], which is an experimental sequencer based upon an esoteric programming language and Pilot [2], which is a synth sometimes used together with Orca

[1] https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca

[2] https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Pilot

VCV Rack, anyone? https://vcvrack.com/

Sadly running it as a DAW won't be open source.

Though running the FOSS version on linux allows to route audio back and forth between Rack and external recorders, hosts, plugins, etc with ease via JACK.

VCV Rack is a titan in the FOSS eurorack modular world. nothing else comes close. I have a physical eurorack as well but i use Rack all the time to sketch out ideas and to explore new kinds of modules before i buy something physical.

One of the reasons I haven't been able to fully commit to Linux on the desktop is that I haven't been able to find quality music production tools. I always end up going back to macOS because I miss Logic Pro X and Ableton Live too much. Also the audio routing in macOS is so much easier than any other operating system I've encountered. I would love to hear about music studios using FOSS.

Renoise isn't open source but is Linux native. Aducity is good for recording. And hydrogen is an ok drum machine.

I agree, it's difficult to do music on Linux. I almost punched my computer last weekend because it's so hard. However, two things I can say for sure is that the Linux native of Reaper works great and Ubuntu Studio presents a pretty good OOBE with Ardour. Nothing running on Linux compares to Ableton, so if that's your preferred workflow, just stick with that. Now, if someone could just write a good audio editor that works on Linux... (Audacity is complete garbage).

As somebody who has only used Audacity and Pure Data, what's an example of a good audio editor?

Audacity is a fine editor, but the UI isn't really consistent with platform conventions. A long time ago I learned audio stuff on cracked copies of Sound Forge, which behaved like one would expect a Windows app to behave, then switched to Audacity and hated it because the UI was so weird.

A long time ago Cool Edit Pro was the definitive choice on Windows. It became Adobe Audition and 'disappeared' into their Creative Cloud subscription bundle - it's still actively developed but I no longer hear of people using it.

iZotope RX is meant more for audio restoration (and is the industry standard there), but you can also use it for many audio editing tasks.

I've personally switched to Acustica by Acon Digital. The GUI isn't perfect, but it's very fast, and has an impressive audio separation tool based on Spleeter.

All those tools seem to have taken some influence from that Cool Edit Pro GUI.

Cool Edit Pro. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

I used to love that program for its simplicity. I will cast my vote for ocenaudio as the fastest, most intuitive audio editor for basic tasks (and it does a great job with batch jobs, too, like running the same noise reduction on 10 clips at the same time).

https://www.ocenaudio.com/

I use Amadeus. The ones I hear about most are Sound Forge and Adobe Audition. I think you’d only use Audition if you already had a Creative Cloud subscription. I’m also aware of alternatives like WaveLab, TwistedWave, Fission, Acoustica, and ocenaudio.

ocenaudio is probably the direct competitor to Audacity, since they’re both free.

Not that I've used it so far, just skimmed the list and seen Radium there, which I've been unaware of. Looked interesting.

Anyways, since you seem to know PD, which Radium has embedded as they write, maybe you want to try it?

[1] https://users.notam02.no/~kjetism/radium/index.php

It seems like I have been infrequently using Audacity for close to 20 years now which is surprising to think about.

I've used it to slice up tons of live recordings, mix multitrack audio, clean up, remove background noise, dub aging tape reels to digital, add some post-production effects to music tracks, and teach my dad how to use free software to do some of the same stuff. Some of the work was for broadcast and digital retail.

My most frequent use in the past couple years has been to time stretch a random track once in awhile and listen to it in a completely different light e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZJyxQjdib0

"Complete garbage" seems harsh to me!

I have been using Audacity for about 20 years as well, or at least 15. I feel seething hatred for it. I use alternatives where possible, even if I have to pay for them.

Audacity has the dubious distinction of being the only software that, to my knowledge, has directly caused me physical pain and harm. You see, unlike every other application on the planet, the volume slider in Audacity does not control Audacity’s playback volume. Instead, it controls the system volume (why?). Normally I keep my system playback volume at a safe level but Audacity has, on a few occasions, sabotaged my efforts and hurt my ears in the process.

Then there’s the weird way in with Audacity is designed. It seems like it can’t decide whether it’s supposed to be a DAW or an audio editor, and it ends up being terrible at both. Audacity treats audio files as “projects”. If you are just doing some simple editing, then you probably don’t want to save your work as an Audacity project, you probably want to open a PCM file and save your work as PCM files. Audacity steps in your way at every moment, asking you what format you want to convert to, asking you to add tags, converting your file to 32-bit float without asking (even though Audacity supports 16-bit and 24-bit tracks), and then after you save your work, it asks you if you want to lose your work (because Audacity doesn’t think you’ve saved your work unless you save the project).

A normal task I might have for audio editing is to open up a file, do some basic processing, cut it up, and save the pieces. Audacity lacks basic commands like “copy as new file” or “paste as new file”.

So Audacity has taken a simple task which I may need to do over and over again for an hour at a time, and it adds extra steps which are completely ridiculous and unnecessary.

Another simple task is recording a clip of audio. For various reasons, I often record at 48kHz. In Audacity, you can’t change the rate before you record, because the track doesn’t exist yet. So you start recording audio, stop, change the rate through a fiddly little drop-down menu two layers deep. If you want to record from the second input, you CAN’T DO THAT AT ALL, you have to record from both inputs and then delete one of the channels afterwards (why??????????)

There are also a ton of other minor problems floating around—Audacity freezes while you hit “preview” in a filter until the sound is done playing. This is a real double whammy, a real one-two punch, if you remember that Audacity may have decided to usurp control of the system playback volume from the user (again, why? other apps don’t do this).

Then there’s all that effort that Audacity makes to try and be a DAW, but it doesn’t work very well, and it mostly gets in the way of whatever real work you want to be doing. It seems to have the user interface of a non-destructive editor but without actually providing non-destructive editing.

As a final note, Audacity is prone to crashing. A lot. I opened the latest version of Audacity when writing this comment, and in that short time, Audacity has crashed. This matches my memories of it from 10-15 years ago, because Audacity crashed back then, too.

God, I really fucking hate Audacity.

Honest question: Then why do you keep using it? It's not like it's the only audio editor out there...

I usually don’t. I use Amadeus Lite, which I paid $25 for and I am quite happy with.

However, sometimes I am stuck doing audio work on Linux or Windows, or on a system which is not my own.

I just want to address the audio slider issue. On Windows with the latest version of Audacity (2.4.2), when adjusting the "Playback Volume" slider on the main toolbar (I assume that's the one you're referring to), the track volume changes but the system volume does not. The tooltip for the slider says "emulated" so I assume that means exactly that, it's adjusting the volume without messing with the system mixers.

Perhaps the slider works differently on Linux with its sound subsystem, or maybe this was an issue with older versions of Audacity. Googlign does suggest that the Audio host option on the toolbar, if the "wrong" one is selected, could result in the system volume being directly modified by the slider (https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/device_toolbar.html)

Anyways, maybe just look into that. In my experience people prefer to whine and whinge rather than solve their problems. Take that as an insult if you want (not intended), but if it helps resolve this issue for you then I don't mind.

Not helpful—the problem exists on the latest version of Audacity (2.4.2), and there is no option to change the host. Audacity should never be changing the system audio levels anyway, and it is worrying that the Audacity developers ever thought that this was acceptable behavior.

Honestly, Audacity is just such an all-around nightmare that I don’t think fixing one or two problems would make a difference anyway.

Amen. I want to love it and I’ve tried but the file format thing is a dealbreaker. I fantasize about a fork that fixes the “projects” vs wav files issue, and in my fantasy the keybindings match Sound Forge so it’s not jarring to switch back and forth.

> Nothing running on Linux compares to Ableton

Does this statement include your assessment of Bitwig (https://www.bitwig.com/en/home.html)? The company was founded by former Ableton employees and the software is supposed to run on Linux machines...

Good point, I forgot about BitWig.

Bigwig Studio (https://www.bitwig.com/en/bitwig-studio.html) isn't open source bit definitely comparable to the tools you mentioned. Coupled with the JACK audio routing.... thing it's pretty great for audio production.

The best. Also I think your autocorrect got you: It's "Bitwig"

Haha, that is correct. At least I got the URL right :)

I've been running a Linux DAW in my studio for decades, based around Ubuntu Studio and all the tools that are bundled in that distribution. It is easily one of the most fun DAW's to use in the setup - I have MacOS systems based around UAD (Luna) and Pro Tools as well, as this is a pro studio and we get a lot of musicians in it, who have their own ideas about things - so we accommodate them. The Ubuntu Studio DAW recently got a LOT more use while we got the Mac's upgraded to Catalina and through that painful upgrade/obsolete process - something that just does not happen in Ubuntu.

But whenever someone new comes along who doesn't care what they use to track vocals or backing tracks of whatever, I put them in front of the Ubuntu Studio DAW, leave them alone for a few hours to get their tracking done, and always find its very productive. It holds its own against the other DAW's that are in production as well (MacBooks with REAPER).

The thing that has to be understood is that Ubuntu Studio is designed for 'out of the box' production - you have everything installed that is needed to get started, and if you have good audio hardware (for this system we standardised on PRESONUS, as it is very well supported under Linux) - you can compete with Pro Tools systems, easily. The latency is among the best of the DAW's in the studio, and while its fair to say that the software packages available are not as polished as the commercial offerings, its still an amazing system full of tools to explore and use - thousands of plugins, soft synths and instruments, tons of unique apps that, once you get involved, will give you great capabilities, e.g., seq24, hydrogen, zynaddsubfx = instant jam party, once you get it configured with aconnectgui/Carla, of course..)

Its really worth taking a weekend, installing Ubuntu Studio somewhere, and going through the packages that have been included. They are deep, powerful, and most of all - free and open source. I can't tell you how great it was to have a reverb plugin open and in use, get asked a simple "how does reverb code work?", then bust out the sources and have a look for ourselves .. can't do that with any other DAW, and yet Ubuntu Studio is packed with apps that really work. Having the sources for everything is just astonishing in terms of what it offers the competent producer or engineer in understanding what's going on.

Reaper isn't Open Source but it runs on Linux and it's really good, IMO. And you can try the full version for free.

I can’t speak well enough of qTractor: it has a nice and intuitive UI, it does MIDI and Audio, it supports many different plugin formats, both instruments and effects (VST 2/3, LADSPA, DSSI, LV2), and it supports many forms of audio manipulation including time stretching and pitch shifting. If you’re looking for an open source DAW in my opinion it’s the way to go https://qtractor.sourceforge.io/

One thing missing from this list -- and pretty much any mention of open source music tools for some reason -- is OpenMPT: an open-source Windows-based tracker with full VST support. It runs great under WINE.

It's a tracker, and not a sequencer-style DAW, but unlike every other open source DAW, it is battle-tested, non-beta non-alpha post-1.0 release software, and capable of producing commercial-quality music.

https://openmpt.org/

It also happens to have pretty great compatibility with various tracker music formats like .mod, .s3m, .it and so on.

It’s missing AudioMass https://audiomass.co/

AudioMass was well received in a recent feature on HN.

[0] Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23337091

Carla, LV2 etc host, LV2/JACK patchbay, sound bank support, etc., by falkTX, maintainer of JACK and MOD Devices developer.

https://kx.studio/Applications:Carla https://github.com/falkTX/Carla https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/108225/87578308-26...

Surge Synth[1] has been FOSS for a while now and is being actively developed. It's very good to boot!

[1] https://surge-synthesizer.github.io/

Schism Tracker is an SDL-based reimagination of Impulse Tracker [1]. Jeffrey Lim also made the sources of the original project available [2].

[1] https://github.com/schismtracker/schismtracker

[2] https://bitbucket.org/jthlim/impulsetracker

One of my favorites, not listed there, is qmidiarp.

http://qmidiarp.sourceforge.net/

Looks like this one is in the Arch official repositories as well, I'll have to try it.

Two of my favorites are in the list, Hydrogen and ZynSubAddFx.

Naive, under-researched :) question: what Linux-native program lets me import a bunch of audio tracks, arrange them in a timeline with subsample-level resolution, apply nondestructive edits such as crossfades...

...with a fast, simple UI? :)

So far I've poked at Ardour, but

a) I was pretty sure it was absolute overkill for my simple purposes,

b) The program felt kinda clunky, like if I moved wrong it would crash, and

c) I wasn't sure the program was subsample-accurate.

I've pretty much never pursued playing around with audio or music because all the software out there is either undiscoverably obscure, or firmly out of my price range (which is $0, since I a) have no idea if audio editing will even be interesting, and b) don't know what program would be the most appropriate).

After throwing my hands up in the air for the 20th time at Audacity's remarkable sluggishness I stumbled on ReZound (http://rezound.sourceforge.net/ss.shtml) a few years ago and discovered a refreshingly fast tool with VUs that would happily run at 60fps on the ~20 year old machine I was using at the time. (2014 was interesting. I was using an 800MHz AMD Duron with 320MB RAM. And to reiterate, ReZound was completely usable on that machine.)

Sadly, while the most-recent SVN of ReZound does compile on modern Linux, project saving has been broken since the paleolithic era so you have to (re-)export as FLAC to save... and sometimes the edit process subtly injects single-sample gaps of silence which sound like clicks/pops (!), making the program unusable. Not to mention it uses the destructive edit model.

Wish it was in better shape, it's a fairly excellent program.

> Ardour felt kinda clunky, like if I moved wrong it would crash

I'd say Ardour is one of the more mature(re: stable) open-source solutions on linux and has a fair bit of development effort behind it.

Personally usability wise I never quite figured it out, although it seems fairly feature packed (if you can figure it out)

Apparently Qtractor also supports non-destructive audio editing but I haven't really tried it yet.

Aside from that I know this is a thread on open-source, but I will point out Reaper has experimental native Linux builds which I've found to work quite well and Reaper (not $0, but minor nag screen) is also non-destructive.

Audacity works well for that purpose. But not all things are intuitive and the interface looks quite dated to be honest.

It's not open source but for your purposes of figuring out if audio editing is for you Reaper could be a nice introduction. It runs on Linux and works pretty similar to most commercial DAWs. You can run its evaluation mode for free indefinitely with a nag screen at startup. I started with that and then graduated to Cubase when I decided I wanted to pursue further.

REAPER runs really very well on Linux, it has to be stated, and is one of the easier DAW's to learn thanks to things like "The REAPER Blog" and "RAPER MANIA" channels on Youtube that really make REAPER great. It is one of the best values for money in the DAW world as well. VERY, very powerful software, great price.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/user/audiogeekzine

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq297H7Ca98HlB5mVFHGSsQ

"I've pretty much never pursued playing around with audio or music because all the software out there is either undiscoverably obscure, or firmly out of my price range (which is $0, since I a) have no idea if audio editing will even be interesting, and b) don't know what program would be the most appropriate)."

Not to be a dick, but it doesn't sound like you have a need to play around with audio or music. People who really want that make it happen, no matter how few tools they have at their disposal.

I totally understand where you're coming from, and to an extent I agree.

I didn't adequately clarify the sentiment I was getting at.

There are a million things I want to do with technology: machine learning, advanced robotics, data science, UI/UX research, networking/homelab experimentation, music/drawing/animation, photography, programming.

Sometimes significant events happen in life that throw you very far away from the path that you'd logically gravitate towards. Sometimes those events make sense; sometimes they don't. One of those happened for me in 1998, when my family realized the only viable resolution to the concerns they'd raised regarding the public school I was attending, would be to home-school. (The school was quick to clarify that it was not legal to transfer between schools.)

In any world, if I did things over I would absolutely have ticked the "[x] sound education" box. I don't understand math. I don't understand electronics. I don't understand a lot of things. I feel very much undone. It took 15 years to finally learn I had high-functioning autism and ADHD, figure out why the public school I'd attended had been so oppressive and condemning, and make sense of why my poor mother's best efforts never seemed to make a dent in my understanding. I'm now trying my best to make up for lost time, albeit without adequate resources.

I've learned that under-resourcedness is generally counterbalanced by having connections, and that a social network - a real, functional, practical one, not the all-thumbs kind you see on interactive TV - is one of the critical components of success in life, especially when (multiple) circumstances beyond your control make you stick out like a sore thumb and make sustenance of equilibrium orders of magnitude harder than the statistical average. But when those very circumstances make socialization and communication difficult, things can become very depressing. I guess the GP was a bit of a rant.

TL;DR, I have a VERY long list of "hey that could be a thing I could be really good at". It's huge. I've carried it for 20 years. I have no idea what I'm concretely good at. And I currently have no way to find out. It's a bit of a catch-22.

(Yes, I really was using a machine with 320MB of RAM in 2014.)

If you're simply working with audio files, then I'd say Audacity is a really good option. A full-fledged DAW is useful if you're working with external plugins and MIDI files. But for basic audio work, Audacity will do well enough.

It's also one of the best supported and mature audio programs around, so stability won't be an issue at all

This is great. Does anyone have an equivalent list for design and illustration software?

I don’t have a link to a comprehensive list but my personal suggestions are:

* GIMP for photo editing

* Krita for freehand drawing and for CMYK support

* Inkscape for vector images

* Scribus for desktop publishing (booklets, flyers etc)

* Blender for 3D graphics (modelling/rigging/animation) [1]

* Blender for 2D animation [1]

* Blender for video editing [1]

* Blender for compositing [1]

[1] Basically Blender is expanding in fields that are outside of 3D graphics and I believe that over time it became the best alternative in those fields.

I did some video editing in Blender a few years ago. I was surprised how solid and featured it was compared to other actual video editing suits on linux at the time.

I did a zine almost 15 years ago w/ Scribus and even back then it was an excellent piece of software.

there was a website that was tracking that stuff. Not sure how often its updated, but:

https://alternativeto.net

So punching in illustrator:

https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-illustrator/

Here's a decent list centered around photography:

https://pixls.us/software/

Synfig for 2D vector animation:

https://www.synfig.org/

Another DAW:

https://www.zrythm.org/

I witnessed a supposed open source music app "in the wild" on YT recently:

https://youtu.be/U6Og9wtO9jE?t=640

Context: Someone was using fiverr to get people to play a tune on bass guitar. The supposed "pro" player was hooked directly into Ubuntu (it looks like Unity)

Anyone know what app in the background?

The application icon is Ardour's.

This is a list of different multimedia related tasks that you can do with Debian, from DAWs to animation:

https://blends.debian.org/multimedia/tasks/

I'd love to see more synthesizers on the list, and more open-source synths in general. MIDI controllers and SBCs are plentiful and cheap enough that you can do some really amazing custom rigs, but the sound generations options aren't there yet.

> MIDI controllers and SBCs

I recently discovered this niche, of building/using portable "digital instruments" with a heart of Linux, in my case running on Raspberry Pi with audio interface.

It's so exciting how affordable and practical this is, I feel like it's an area of exploration worth more attention.

A couple of related open-source/open-hardware projects:

Pisound - https://www.blokas.io/pisound/docs/

Zynthian - https://github.com/zynthian

In the latter's wiki/documentation, there's a big list of open-source synths bundled with their Linux distro.

http://wiki.zynthian.org/index.php/Zynthian_Supported_Synth_...

The above link is down at the moment, I think they may be switching CMS backend. Here's an archived page: https://web.archive.org/web/20191020093102/http://wiki.zynth...

---

Edit: Here's a good one, from another comment:

https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio#synthesizers

I have only experience with Propellerheads Reason and what I like there that lots of instruments and synthesizer settings are available. Where do I go for instruments when using open source software? How is this topic being handled?

Having followed the development of one back when I used to listen to LUGRadio: Jokosher hasn’t been updated in over 10 years, yes it’s free and open but doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hassle including in the list.

Comprehensive? No PureData.

Hi, author here. I aimed this list at non-technical people who wanted to make music for free. I avoided things like PureData and Sonic-Pi for this reason. Though if I'm honest, the learning curve for something like Sonic Pi isn't necessarily steeper than that for Ardour :)