Book Review: The Book of Audacity by Carla Schroder

Audio software, Books No Responses »
Jun 282011

A nice review at the excellent Free Software Magazine. FSF is full of detailed howtos on making movies and recordings with Free Software and open codecs, and a lot of other interesting FOSS topics.

“Audacity is one of my favorite free software applications, and it has really improved over the years. This book covers the latest features in the 1.3.x series, which is expected to lead directly to the version 2.x Audacity. The book covers more than just Audacity, though. In the process of covering several different uses, it also discusses everything from hardware equipment selection to copyright and business problems that may come up in a project. Overall, it’s a good read and a good introduction to Audacity, audio recording, and audio processing.”

Read the rest here.

Posted by Carla Schroder at 1:44 pm

More Favorable Reviews

Books No Responses »
Jun 022011

More good reviews, hurrah! And a lot of good suggestions that will go into the second edition.

Amazon reviews

O’Reilly.com reviews

Posted by Carla Schroder at 9:23 pm

Introducing Mixbus And The Ardour3 Alpha

Audio hardware, Audio software No Responses »
Apr 182011

Dave Phillips’ latest at Linux Journal: Introducing Mixbus And The Ardour3 Alpha

“Mixbus has been designed to emulate the best features of an analog mixer with the added value of Ardour’s audio capabilities and Harrison’s unique DSP core. Indeed, current Ardour users will find familiar territory in the Mixbus recorder/editor and a whole new world in the mixer section.”

Posted by Carla Schroder at 1:21 pm

Another Favorable Review

Books No Responses »
Apr 182011

Review: The Book of Audacity by Dan Mason on the Thomson Foundation:

“To be honest, I don’t think the book’s title does it justice. This is the ‘Everything you wanted to know about sound but didn’t know where to start’ book. Whatever the title, the content is excellent.

“Writing about software isn’t easy. Either authors strut their knowledge leaving readers’ eyes to glaze over on the second page, or they keep it so simple we’re left skipping whole chapters.

“Schroder knows what she’s talking and doesn’t need to prove it. In fact, she devotes a good deal of space to bursting the bubbles of audiophobes who might be trying to flog you gold-plated cables or convince you that valve amps hammer digital for sound quality.”

Thanks :)

Posted by Carla Schroder at 1:16 pm

Book Review: The Book of Audacity

Audio hardware, Books No Responses »
Apr 132011

A positive review by Michael Larsen on the Testhead blog. Thanks!

“Most of all, the book gets out of the way to let you work on the projects you want to work on in the way you want to work. It also strikes a balance between technical discussion and everyday reality, with a tone that is both engaging and entertaining (yes, technical books can be entertaining, too, it is possible). For those looking to go beyond the basics, and want to use Audacity as their tool of choice, The Book of Audacity would be a good title to help get the most out of that decision. “

Posted by Carla Schroder at 7:00 pm

Audacity Fast Start on Linux- From Recording to CD

Uncategorized No Responses »
Mar 222011

Linux.com just published my nifty little howto Whirlwind Intro to Audacity on Linux: From Recording to CD in One Lesson . It’s a quick-start that runs through the basics from making a recording, editing, and exporting to a CD-ready file.

Posted by Carla Schroder at 1:49 pm

Tip for Diagnosing Linux Audio Failure

Audio hardware 9 Responses »
Mar 192011

Linux audio is powerful and flexible, and annoying as heck. When you have no sound it can be as simple as Alsamixer resetting everything to mute when you shutdown (Why? Who the heck knows) to problems caused by device conflicts, and our ever-popular friends* Java and Adobe Flash. Java and Flash need drama in their lives, so they break things to get attention.

If you have sound at startup, and then sound quits sometime during your session, the lsof (“list open files”) command will tell you if a process has hijacked your audio. This example shows Java locking up my audio and not letting it go. First take a look in /dev/snd:
Continue reading »

Posted by Carla Schroder at 8:03 pm

Control your Fender amp with Linux!

Audio hardware No Responses »
Mar 142011

Dave Phillips, the guru of FOSS audio, has a great article on Linux Journal about controlling a Fender Mustang amplifier with Ubuntu Linux. This amp has a class-compliant USB port and appears to Linux as a USB audio device. Read all about it at PLUG And The Fender Mustang

Posted by Carla Schroder at 8:36 pm Tagged with: , ,

Book of Audacity released!

Books 1 Response »
Mar 142011

At last it is here, my shiny new “Book of Audacity”! Enjoy a free sample chapter from No Starch Press, or buy it from Amazon.com

Learn how to make podcasts, digitize your precious old vinyl LPs, do multi-track recording and editing, make great live and studio recordings, make multi-channel surround recordings, tune your Linux or Windows PC for best audio production, clean up damaged recordings, apply special effects, and way more!

Posted by Carla Schroder at 6:14 am Tagged with: , ,

Multicore CPUs and Audacity

Books No Responses »
Mar 142011

Audacity tip: Audio processing stresses your CPU, so the more powerful your CPU the better. Audacity is not written to take advantage of multi-core CPUs, but you will get better performance from more cores because those extra cores will handle system processes and Audacity better than a single core CPU.

Posted by Carla Schroder at 6:10 am Tagged with: , , ,
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