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These videos are from over a month ago--actually almost 2 months ago! And like the previous post, Asher has gotten much better since then (even singing the 2nd verse, now!), but this is when Asher had just begun singing "Jesus Loves Me" with us. Such a precious little voice. :-) Don't you agree?!

And here I caught Asher singing all by himself "Yes Jesus Loves ME! The Bible tells me so! Yay!" I LOVE how he's almost shouting it, and he kept doing this over and over and over! Asher may not know who Jesus is, yet, but it makes me happy that he knows this song already and will be able to ask questions about it soon so that we can teach him about the Truth that is in it!

This video clip is almost 3 months old, but I had to start somewhere, right? I remember taking this video because Asher was playing with his "cell phone" and started saying, "hello!" He hadn't really said this word before, so it was very exciting at the time. His vocabulary has since exploded and I hopeto show more of that in future posts.

Pro audio work on Linux can seem daunting, but most of the friction is in the initial setup… after that, a Linux Audio system will remain stable for years, assuming you don’t update core parts of the system without thorough testing. So here’s my preferred method for installing a lean, mean, barebones Linux (Ubuntu) system and the latest version of Ardour — with some FX plugins thrown in for good measure.  I recently did this on a friend’s computer (Darren’s), and it went decently well, though his RME interface is being finicky (probably something RME-specific that I forgot to do).  I’ll try to update this with better info as I can.

Also, if you’re looking for a more full-featured audio workstation, please check out Planet CCRMA, 64 Studio, and Ubuntu Studio; Linux audio customizations that are much more complete than what you’ll get from this tutorial — though hopefully this tutorial will still be useful for you as a reference.

Step Zero:  Visit the ALSA home page to see if your sound card is supported (or the FFADO home page if your interface is Firewire).  In the latter case, you’ll also want to visit the Ubuntu Forums to see if there are some up-to-date instructions for Firewire cards under Ubuntu. It will likely involve compiling FFADO from source code, as I don’t think it is part of a default Ubuntu install yet, but I could be wrong.

1. Go to http://releases.ubuntu.com/9.04/ and make sure you download the alternate installer CD image.
2. Burn this image onto a CD using your favorite burning software.  On Windows, I personally like InfraRecorder ( http://infrarecorder.org/ ) — it’s open-source and lightweight.
3. Boot your computer from the CD you burned.
   

   NOTE: These instructions will assume you will be replacing your whole system with Ubuntu.  This tutorial will erase your whole hard drive if you follow it as-is. If you want to dual-boot, you’ll want to research that a bit first.

4. Press F4 when the option screen comes up, and choose “Install a Command Line System”.  Press enter twice to proceed with the install.



5. Step through the installer.  In most cases, you should be able to accept the defaults (especially if English is your primary language).  Notable options you’ll want to specify are hostname (the name of the computer) and your username/password. When it asks what partition to use, select “Guided: use entire disk”. This is the part I warned you about in step 3.



6. When your command-line system installs and finally boots, log in using the username/password you made up.



7. Download my barebones Xubuntu install script by typing this exactly as-is at the command prompt:wget http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/553885/install-base-xubuntu-audio.sh(optional: Feel free to inspect it for errors if you know what you’re doing:
   nano install-base-xubuntu-audio.sh

   )

8. Make it executable:chmod +x install-base-xubuntu-audio.sh
9. Run it:./install-base-xubuntu-audio.sh
   It will ask for your password. Possibly a couple times, depending on the speed of your internet connection (sudo only remembers your password for so long).

   This will take a while. If it asks any questions during install (such as whether to start such-and-such a daemon), just accept the defaults.

10. The script will remind you to edit your Grub menu to make the realtime kernel default. Here’s how to do that:sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lstLook for the line that says “default 0″ and, if you’ve followed this tutorial from the beginning, you can change it to “default 2″ to make it pick the third kernel in the list. If you’ve added other kernels, you’ll probably want to check the list of kernels further down the file to make sure it’s picking the right one. Note that the kernels are numbered starting at zero.
    Press Ctrl-O then Ctrl-X to save & exit Nano, then reboot the machine:sudo reboot
11. When the machine reboots, you’ll see a lovely Xubuntu GDM theme:
    
12. Open a terminal from Applications > Accessories > Terminal:
    
13. At this point you’ll want to make sure your sound interface is working. Type:
    aplay --list-devices
    If you see some information there about your sound card, it should be working properly. If not… well unfortunately addressing sound interface problems is out of the scope of this tutorial, but there’s lots of information out there on it. Here are a few good places to start looking for info:
    • Ubuntuforums.org (check the multimedia production section)
    • The ALSA home page (ALSA is the primary Linux audio driver collection)
    • FFADO.org (FFADO is the Firewire Audio Drivers for Linux project)
    • LinuxAudio.org (a constortium of Linux Audio Users and Developers, where there are lots of resources… including a few friendly mailing lists)
      

      Here’s one place where Darren and I ran into trouble: To get both my Echo Audio card and his RME card working, we had to get the ALSA-firmware package. This package contains proprietary firmwares for various audio interfaces, and as such can’t be distributed with Ubuntu due to licensing issues… However it can be downloaded from Medibuntu.org, with possibly questionable legality depending on what country you’re in. To see if your card needs one of these firmwares, go here (for 9.04). If your card is listed there, step through the Repository Howto, and then execute this in a terminal:
      sudo apt-get install alsa-firmware alsa-firmware-loaders alsa-tools-gui
      …then reboot your machine, and hopefully your audio hardware will be working.

14. Download the second script, which will install/build all the dependencies for building Ardour (this script should also work for Ardour 3, when it’s released):wget http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/553885/install-ardour-deps-ubuntu.shAgain, please examine it if you have security concerns or if you think it could be written smarter. You’ll probably want to make sure that the “VERS” variables are set to the latest releases of libsndfile and slv2.
15. Make it executable:chmod +x install-ardour-deps-ubuntu.sh
16. Run it:./install-ardour-deps-ubuntu.shYou’ll see lots of junk scroll by for awhile.
17. Close out of the terminal, and open up Firefox. There should be an icon in the upper panel for it. Go to http://ardour.org/download .
    
    Download the source code, and pay something reasonable for it, you cheapskate.
18. Firefox probably put the source tarball in your “Desktop” folder. So open a terminal again and move it to your ~/src directory, which one of the above scripts created:mv ~/Desktop/ardour-2.8.2.tar.gz ~/src
    (or whatever the name of the download was).
19. Unpack, build, and install Ardour:cd ~/src
tar -xvzf ardour-2.8.2.tar.gz
cd ardour-2.8.2/
scons LV2=1 && sudo scons install
    (…more nonsense-to-normal-people will scroll by… for a very long time… and it will ask for your password.)

    NOTE: It’s important not to delete the directories we’ve created under ~/src/. Their presence will make it much easier and cleaner to upgrade or uninstall Ardour or any of the libraries built by the script.

    And Ardour is installed! However, it won’t show up in your menu on its own. What I do in in XFCE is:

    • Right-click the panel and select “Add New Items”.
    • Select “Launcher” from the list and click “Add”
    • Enter the information:
      • Name: Ardour
      • Icon: click the button and look for the Ardour icon under /usr/local/share/ardour2/icons
      • Command: /usr/local/bin/ardour2
      • Everything else can be left as-is.

      Then click OK. You should see the Ardour icon show up on whichever panel you right-clicked.

20. Now you’ll want to get Jack, the audio server, set up (actually, you can do this while Ardour is building if you like). Go to Applications > Multimedia > Jack Control, then hit the “Setup” button on the right:
    
    The options here will vary depending on your setup, and there’s lots of info on the web as to how to set up Jack for your sound card, but a few general guidelines are:
    • Under most circumstances, the “Driver” should be set to “alsa”, unless your sound interface is Firewire, in which case it should be set to “ffado”.
    • Make sure “Realtime” is checked, whether or not you’re using the realtime kernel. (The first script should have set up your account with access to realtime threads.)
    • The “Frames/Period” option sets the size of your audio buffer. If you’re running the realtime kernel and decent audio hardware — and that’s important — you should be able to set this at 256 or lower. If using a vanilla kernel and/or low-quality hardware (such as a USB device or on-motherboard sound chip), you’ll probably have to set it to at least 1024.
    • Set the sample rate to the highest rate your card will support. Mine supports a measly 48k.
    • The “Periods/Buffer” is usually 2, but try 3 if you have lower-quality audio hardware.
    • You should be able to leave everything else set to its default settings.

    An important note about realtime performance: For typical DAW work, super-duper low-latency performance is not necessary. Ardour compensates for the latency of your audio hardware while you record. The main benefit of the realtime kernel is evident when you want to use a softsynth or if you’d like to do monitoring/FOH mixing via software rather than using your audio interface’s built-in mixing facilities (if it has any). I personally do not use the realtime kernel in the studio because it causes other issues that I can’t seem to work around.

    When you think you’ve got reasonable settings, click the “Start” button to start Jack. If you’ve misconfigured something, you’ll see an error pop up in the “messages” window.

    For convenence, I’d suggest making the Jack Control application start up with your session, and have it start the Jack server. To do so:

    • From the main Jack Control window, go to “Setup…” and click the “Misc” tab
    • Check the box that says “Start Jack audio server on application startup”
    • Check the box that says “Enable system tray icon”
    • Also check the box that says “Start minimized to system tray”
    • Click OK in the setup window.
      
    • Go to Applications > Settings > Session and Startup
    • Click on the “Autostart Applications” tab
    • Click on the “Add” button
    • Enter:
      • Name: Jack Control
      • (Description can be blank)
      • Command: qjackctl
    • Click OK.
      

    The Jack Control application should now start up your Jack server automatically when you log in. You should see the icon for it in your system tray, and you can start & stop Jack by right-clicking the icon.

21. When Jack is running, click the icon for Ardour and start recording!