Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes) under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation.

The application requires GTK+ version 2.0.x. Other dependencies include: glibc-2.3 (or higher), CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) and libstdc++.so.5.

Floola supports all common used iPod features including artwork, podcasts and smart playlists. It is also able to convert audio or video incompatible with the iPod so that you can copy almost any file to it.

Floola 2.6 is now available.

Linux MAO writes about professional recording studio from Paris, France, which is based entirely on Linux. In SAZ Paris studio some DAW software is used, although no details are given (Ardour?). However, LADSPA and VST plugins are also used.

Homepage of SAZ Paris recording studio.

NtEd is a new musical score editor for Linux. Here’s a list of its main features:

• real WYSIWYG, i.e. what you see on screen is exactly what you get on printer output
• (up to) 4 voices per staff
• N-tuplets 1 < N < 14
• up to 5 lyrics lines
• drum notes
• grace notes
• system layout (braces, brackets, …)
• block instructions
• context change (key, clef, time signature change)
• import MusicXML
• export midi
• export PostScript
• library usage as little as possible (Cairo, Gtk, X11, ALSA)
• antialiasing.

Download NtEd here.

Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application for Linux, written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit. It is still in some alpha stage of development, but already functional.

This short tutorial describes how to record audio tracks and then mix them all down using Qtractor. It allows us to record soundtracks, add MIDI files, arrange, mix music and adjust the volumes, effects, and clean up the sound.

Read more…

Linux Journal published second part of its “Multimedia Command-Line Tools” series. This time Transcode is presented.

Transcode is a new command-line tool on the horizon for video and audio transformations. Transcode used to give me horrors, but it is much better now. It does take some time to learn its wonderfully unintuitive syntax – the author used all the lowercase and uppercase English alphabet letters for specifying the command-line options. Using longer mnemonic options common in other Linux commands might have made things easier.

Author of the article gives some remarks on:

• applying certain video filters to smooth, blur, enhance, add or remove logos, apply masks and so on with Transcode,
• taking sound files as audio input for the video and redirect the output audio to a different file,
• applying a huge filter chains.

The article is available here.

Rivendell is a complete radio broadcast automation solution, with facilities for the acquisition, management, scheduling and playout of audio content. It includes support for both PCM and MPEG audio encoding, full voicetracking and log customization, and for a wide variety of third party software and hardware.

Main features:

• Up to three full automation logs may be operated from a single computer.
• Support for both PCM16 and MPEG Layer 2 audio formats.
• Full support for both analog and AES3 digital audio interfaces, using high-quality audio adapters manufactured by AudioScience Inc. and the JACK Audio Connection Kit.
• Designed by radio broadcasters, for radio broadcasters.

Rivendell includes several independent modules:

• RDAdmin – system configuration and management tool
• RDLogEdit – log editing tool
• RDLibrary – audio acquisition and management tool
• RDAirPlay – on-air audio playout application
• RDCatch – automatic audio recorder and event scheduler

AudioFormat is a simple, unobtrusive audio format converter for Linux and GNOME desktop. It can be used as a standalone application or integrated with Nautilus.

AudioFormat supports audio file formats recognized by GStreamer. PyGTK, GStreamer and GNOME desktop are required to install this application.

The latest release (0.6) is available here.

Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application for Linux, written in C++ around the Qt4 toolkit. It is still in some alpha stage of development, but already functional.

Qtractor 0.1.0 has been recently released. Here is the list of the most important improvements:

• Audio clip time-stretching makes its debut, with code adapted and refactored from the SoundTouch library, under the (L)GPL umbrella.
• New “Options…/Audio/Playback/Quick seek time-stretching” global option, providing a quick seek mode (hierarchical search) while doing all audio buffer time-stretching.
• Changing session tempo will automatically apply the corresponding time-stretch percent factor to all in-place audio clips. Audio clip dialog also includes a new time-stretch property setting.
• Fixed instrument bank selection method, “Bank MSB” (2), which was broken enough to never send the correct bank number.
• Mouse-wheel horizontal scrolling is now accessible on every view, while pressing a modifier key (Shift or Ctrl).
• New auto-backward transport option: when enabled the playhead will be reset backward automatically whenever transport stops playing.
• A suicide-crash has been fixed while invoking the bus dialog from the respective mixer bus strip context menu.
• Master (default) buses are always set to Duplex mode, being now an enforced update policy while on the Buses dialog.

Rui Nuno Capela, Qtractor’s developer, tells about his motivation:

Qtractor has been my hobby, kind of personal purpose in life and should stay in that status for quite some time. […] It could be seen as my “masterpiece”, although you might find I’m no master at all. Take it as my pet project, because, in fact, it is just that, really! If you feel minimally interested, you might want to come along and be welcome. I’ll cherish you, that’s what friends are. Willing to share the journey, and follow the turns. No commitments, just fun!

amaroK Web Collection is a web interface for your amaroK playlists.

This script produces a HTML page which contains your playlist. A marker is used to show if the title is in the playlist or not. An other one shows if the title has already been played. Click onto a title to add it to the playlist.

The homepage of amaroK Web Collection.

Wired is a music production and creation free software running on the Linux operating system. It brings musicians a complete studio environment to compose, record, edit and mix music without the need of expensive hardware.

Few weeks ago an updated version (0.6) of Wired appeared. Here’s the list of improvements:

• Saving now works for the BeatBox and the Wired Sampler (rest of plugins coming soon)
• Midi files can now be loaded on AMD64 (and hopefully on all 64bits platforms).
• Saving of midi pattern created with a midi keyboard (and the wired sampler) to a .mid file ; though it may not be useful anywhere else than in Wired.
• Unfortunately, an unpleasant problem appeared: when changing something in the settings, all plugins are removed with no warning!

Visit Wired’s homepage.