Category Archives: Linux Audio

Crash course: Embedded programming with Arduino

Posted on December 20, 2011 by tuxcarla| Leave a comment

Please enjoy my fast and furious introduction to the wonderful Arduino embedded platform and electronics hackery: Crash course: Embedded programming with Arduino.

Demand for embedded programming is growing like crazy, so anyone looking for some job security might consider becoming an ace embedded programmer. It helps to have some programming experience, but even raw beginners can get started inexpensively and learn on their own. One of the friendliest introductions to embedded coding is Arduino. Arduino is a popular open embedded hardware and software platform with hundreds of howtos and projects to try out. Today we review the basics of both electronics and Arduino coding in a fun holiday project, Singing Holiday Snowman.

I’m going to take my old plastic snowman (figure 1) and outfit him to sing holiday songs whenever anyone approaches within a few feet, and to blink some festive red and green LEDs. (Half the fun of Arduino is blinky lights.) You, of course, may use any object you want

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Posted in Developer, embedded, Hardware, Linux Audio, software

The 10 best open source apps you never heard of

Posted on July 18, 2011 by tuxcarla| Leave a comment

More of my favorites on IT World: The 10 best open source apps you never heard of

“There are thousands of excellent open source programs to choose from. Here are 10 of my favorites that rarely get breathless buzz or make top 10 lists, presented in no particular order, rhyme, or reason.

“Ardour Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

“The Ardour digital audio workstation is a first-rate multi-channel audio recorder, editor, and mixer. It runs on Mac OS X and Linux, which are both superior audio production platforms. It supports a wide range of audio file formats, has non-destructive editing with unlimited undo, and unlimited tracks and buses. (Limited only by your computer when it reaches its limits and keels over.)

“Ardour organizes a recording session by buses. An audio bus, whether hardware or software, is a grouping of tracks. Then any edits are applied to all tracks on the bus, as though it were a single track. For example you might route all the bassoon tracks to a single bus because you want to get editing the bassoons over with quickly…”

Posted in Linux Audio, Linux news, software

Assembling and Testing a Complex Ogg Theora Video with Command Line Tools and VideoLAN Client

Posted on June 28, 2011 by tuxcarla| Leave a comment

Assembling and Testing a Complex Ogg Theora Video with Command Line Tools and VideoLAN Client (VLC) is a great howto by Terry Hancock at Free Software Magazine:

“Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last few years, you probably know about the free multimedia codecs with the fishy-sounding names from Xiph.org: Ogg Vorbis (for sound) and Ogg Theora (for video). You might be less familiar with other family and friends, including FLAC (lossless audio), Skeleton (metadata stream), and Kate (subtitles). However, together this collection of codecs can be used with the Ogg container format to provide all of the functionality of a DVD video file — multiple soundtracks, full surround sound, high definition, and selectable subtitles. Having created the various streams for a prototype release of “Sintel” in my last few columns, I’m now going to integrate them into a single video file and test it with some players.
Making Movies with Free Software

“This article is part of an on-going series on the challenges I’ve faced in producing two free-licensed movies, Marya Morevna, through the Morevna Project and Lunatics, which we are working on as Anansi Spaceworks.

“In this series of articles, I’ve been assembling a prototype for Lib-Ray — a format I’m inventing in order to have a free, non-DRM way to distribute high definition video. In previous columns, I covered how to create a Theora video stream from PNG images, how to create Ogg FLAC and Vorbis soundtracks, and how to create OggKate subtitle tracks from SRT files. Now, I’m going to put all these together into a single multiplexed stream..”

Enjoy the rest here!

Posted in Developer, Linux Audio, Multimedia, software

Whirlwind Intro to Audacity on Linux: From Recording to CD in One Lesson

Posted on April 6, 2011 by tuxcarla| Leave a comment

Whirlwind Intro to Audacity on Linux: From Recording to CD in One Lesson

“Audacity, the popular cross-platform software audio recorder and editor, is easy-to-learn yet very capable. To get started, I’ll show you how you can create your own CD in Audacity on Linux. From simple recording all the way to mastering the CD, you’ll learn the basics of doing audio production in Audacity.”

Posted in Linux Audio