i asked a similar question on another thread, but didn't get much of a
response so i thought i'd post this question(s) again. i need a somewhat
portable set up to do some upcoming recordings.

1. i'm wondering the best place to purchase a linux box to use to record
audio. just wondering the best and cheapest place to purchase a box
that can run red hat.

2. i'm wondering if anyone that reads this board uses a linux-based
system to record audio. can you give me any input about apps that
you've had success with or apps i should avoid?
cheers,
brian

You can buy any PC and run Red Hat or whatever Linux distribution you like on it. There are drivers for Linux for pretty much any PC hardware available.

I don't think I ever recorded onto a Linux machine... I think what software would work for you will depend partially on what hardware you're using to capture sound, if you've got a ton of inputs or whatever. I'd start by finding a good audio capture card or multi-track system that's supported on Linux.

http://www.linux-sound.org/
http://www.djcj.org/LAU/guide/index.php

On a similar note, there's this audio processing software for Linux called SND that I am kind of in love with. I know very little about it, I haven't used it - I've just read the documentation. Not much of an endorsement, I know, but I swear it's cool.

The software: http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/software/snd/

This was created using SND: http://www.notam02.no/9/index.html

i'm aware that you can run red hat on pretty much any pc.
just wondered if anyone was aware of any screaming deals
on boxes out there on the information super highway.

i've looked through a far amount of documentation and believe
that i'll start with:
http://ardour.sourceforge.net/requirements.html

if anyone has a particular set up - hardware or software - that they
particularly like, input is appreciated.

brian

really quickly:

I would suggest that you get a laptop to run redhat 9/ planet-ccrma upon. A laptop is more portable than a tower or desktop box, and you don't have to lug around a monitor as well. You know, all the advantages of a laptop. Especially if you are going to use external storage like firewire drives or whatever.

I'd start with Ardour and see what you think, there's actaully so many programs out there, it's tough to wade through them all.

Greg successfully used Audacity (a program that is developed using wxWindows [i think that's the name of the programming language] so it's cross-platform) on a w2k machine to edit together a song for a band to listen to later on. Audacity is dead simple, and worked great for this purpose.

I'll post more later, but let's keep this thread going.

russ

Greg successfully used Audacity

wait, greg can use a computer? what the?!?!......

edit - i just reread russ' post and realized i had my head up my ass....

>i'm aware that you can run red hat on pretty much any pc.

You were asking about "a box that can run red hat," which implied to me you weren't aware of this. All cleared up now.

How cheap a box you can get depends on what your needs are. They're so cheap these days, it's hard to go wrong.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=615104&Sku=H30-1076%20P

If you add a couple hard drives to that, use one for your system and the other two for audio, that would likely keep you happy for quite a while. You could probably find something similar for a few dollars cheaper, but they're all mighty cheap these days. So absurd, a year ago those DVD-RWs cost almost as much as this whole system.

That machine is probably overkill for audio, really, so you could probably go with something slower & spend your savings on hard drives & a swell audio capture system, or something else people that know about this shit might think you should get.

You can also go to dell.com, they're trying to keep up with the cheap places and doing a good job of it. Cheap laptops too.

You may want to check out these sites occasionally for good deals on hardware (complete setups or components):

http://slickdeals.net
http://techbargains.com

russ wrote:wxWindows [i think that's the name of the programming language]

Actually wxWindows is a GUI toolkit, providing a cross-platform user interface library. Audacity itself is written in C/C++.

James.

I would say to be more concerned about what audio interface you buy being Linux compatible than the actual machine you run it on. I will second Russ' recommendation that you investigate the Planet-CCRMA package collection for use with Redhat. I would also have a look at http://www.alsa-project.org to see what audio hardware is compatible with the alsa drivers. When the 2.6 kernel is released, alsa will be part of the standard linux distribution and there will be no more OSS (for all intents and purposes). Your audio recordings will only be as good as the hardware which does the A->D conversion, choose wisely.

2. i'm wondering if anyone that reads this board uses a linux-based
system to record audio. can you give me any input about apps that
you've had success with or apps i should avoid?
cheers,
brian

I have a similar question I'd like to pose: I'm just getting my feet wet regarding computer recording and I'm wondering what people might regard as the better of these two options.

1) UNIX machine running whatever the sound program is

2) Pro Tools

Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Not givin' up my 4-track, though.