Table of Contents



DAW

The following list are DAW (digital audio workstation) apps. A DAW allows you to record/overdub numerous “tracks” of audio, synchronized and mixed down (typically to 2 channel stereo). You can typically mute or solo, and apply effects, per each individual track.

Recommended: Ardour, Qtractor, Audacity, LMMS

PageDescriptionTags
Ardour Professional-grade multitrack/multichannel hard-disk recording. Ardour allows you to record and edit both audio and MIDI data, add many different kinds… , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Audacity Audio editor and DAW, in GTK, with support for multiple tracks and 8, 16, or 24/32-bit samples, read/write many file formats, uses LADSPA and VAMP plu… , , , , ,
BEAST/BSE Beast is a powerful music composition and modular synthesis application. It has excellent technical abilities like multitrack editing, unlimited und… , , ,
ecasound daw jack_transport ladspa jack alsa_seq , , , ,
EMi Python GUI for ecasound. daw ecasound ,
Frinika Music workstation software for operating systems running Java 1.5. Information from the Frinika website: Frinika is a free (licensed under GNU GPL) c… , ,
GNUsound GTK sound editor with support for multiple tracks and 8, 16, or 24/32-bit samples, read/write many file formats, and LADSPA plugins. Uses ALSA or JACK… , ,
LMMS it's the Linux MultiMedia Studio, “... a free alternative to popular programs like FruityLoops, Cubase and Logic” midi_software sequencers daw , ,
meterec meterec works as a basic multi track tape recoder. The aim of this software is to minimise the interactions of the users with the computer and allow th… , , ,
MusE MusE is a MIDI/Audio sequencer with recording and editing capabilities written originally by Werner Schweer now developed and maintained by the MusE devel… , , , , , , , , , , ,
nama DAW based on the Ecasound audio processing engine. Provides a command interpreter with a Tk based GUI and project management using git. Productivity aids … , , , , , ,
Non-Timeline The Non Time is a powerful, reliable and fast modular Digital Audio Workstation system, released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It ut… , , , , ,
ocenaudio Cross-platform audio editor and DAW, using the Ocen Framework. Supports multiple tracks and 8, 16, or 32-bit samples. Reads and writes FLAC, MP3, and… , , , ,
ProTux hard-disk recording and audio processing suite. ProTux is not released yet. Version 0.7 can be downloaded, but users are advised to wait for version 1.…
Qtractor Qtractor is an Audio/MIDI multi-track sequencer application written in C++ with the Qt framework. Target platform is Linux, where the Jack Audio Con… , , , , , , , , , , ,
Traverso multitrack audio recording and editing program. Supports Jack, LV2, Jack Transport. daw jack_transport lv2 jack , , ,
Zrythm A digital audio workstation designed to be featureful and easy to use. It allows limitless automation through curves, LFOs and envelopes, supports multi… , , , , , , , , ,

Audio Editors

The following list are audio editing apps. Unlike a DAW, the audio editor doesn't deal with mixing/synchronizing numerous audio tracks. Instead, it concentrates upon editing a single audio file (typically mono or stereo). Because of this precise dedication, it usually allows more fine-tuned editing of the actual waveform than a DAW does. (But some DAWs are more like editors, such as Audacity.) Typically, the waveform is graphically displayed whereby you can zoom in/out, and use the mouse to mark an excerpt for processing.

PageDescriptionTags
Audacity Audio editor and DAW, in GTK, with support for multiple tracks and 8, 16, or 24/32-bit samples, read/write many file formats, uses LADSPA and VAMP plu… , , , , ,
AudioCutter Cinema Java app with an emphasis on editing “surround” soundfiles java audio_editors ,
ecawave audio_editors
Eisenkraut Eisenkraut is a standalone, cross-platform audio file editor using the SuperCollider3 app jack audio_editors META:releasedate=2020-10-06~~ ,
KWave Soundfile editor for KDE audio_editors
LAoE LAoE means Layer-based Audio Editor, and it is a rich featured graphical audiosample-editor, based on multi-layers, floating-point samples, volume-masks, … ,
LoopAuditioneer Loads a .wav file, displays/plays existing markers and loops, and lets you adjust/resave them. Can also create new, cross-faded loops. Uses wxW…
Marlin audio_editors
mhWaveEdit Simple GUI soundfile editor. LADSPA plugin support. Uses ALSA or JACK jack audio_editors ladspa , ,
ocenaudio Cross-platform audio editor and DAW, using the Ocen Framework. Supports multiple tracks and 8, 16, or 32-bit samples. Reads and writes FLAC, MP3, and… , , , ,
Polyphone Soundfont Editor More than a simple editor, Polyphone has been designed to efficiently deal with big sets of instruments involving a large amount of …
Snd Sound editor modelled loosely after Emacs. It can be customized and extended using either s7, Ruby, or Forth. Related projects and documentation: ladsp… , ,
Snd-ls a version of Snd for those of us who “don't know Scheme very well”. snd ladspa jack audio_editors , , ,
Snd-RT realtime audio extensions for Snd. snd alsa_seq ladspa jack audio_editors , , , ,
SndBite “audio editor designed for breaking large recordings into smaller components” audio_editors
Sonic Visualiser advanced waveform/spectrogram viewer and audio annotation editor vamp dssi ladspa jack audio_editors , , , ,
Studio requires Tcl/Tk audio_editors
Swami Sampled Waveforms And Musical Instruments (SWAMI) is a tool in progress for creating, editing, and combining SF2 SoundFonts. Uses JACK. jack audio_edito… , , , , ,
WaveSurfer a soundfile editor, requires the Snack extensions audio_editors

Basic recording

The following list are simple audio recording apps. They typically don't display the waveform, nor have elaborate editing. Some may not even have a graphical user interface, and should instead be run from a terminal window (command line).

PageDescriptionTags
Manauton simple_rec
QARecord Simple multithreaded stereo recording tool jack simple_rec ,
screcord.lv2 a simple, ultra lightweight Lv2 capture plugin Include a mono and a stereo capture plugin. using libsndfile <http://www.mega-nerd.com/libsndfil… ,
Time Machine “I used to always keep a minidisc recorder in my studio running in a mode where when you pressed record it wrote the last 10 seconds of audio to t… , ,

Basic playback

The following list are simple audio playback apps. They typically don't display the waveform, nor do recording. Some may not even have a graphical user interface. Most support numerous audio file formats, and some play video files too.

Recommended audio: Amarok, Aqualung, XMMS
Recommended video: MPlayer, VLC, xine

PageDescriptionTags
AlsaPlayer A new type of PCM player. It is heavily multi-threaded and tries to excercise the ALSA library and driver quite a bit. It has some very interesting …
Amarok * <http://amarok.kde.org/> excellent feature-rich music player for Linux players
Aqualung A music player for GNU/Linux. Aqualung plays audio CDs, internet radio streams and podcasts as well as soundfiles in just about any audio format and … , ,
audiobrowse.bash simple commandline audio preview of directories for sample-artists / musician and producers Because deadsimple audition of directories with sa… , , ,
MPlayer Simple media player, supports a large variety of video and audio formats players jack video_software , ,
OggVorbis Player file player with GTK interface oggvorbis players ,
SnackAmp multiformat player handles MP3/WAV/Ogg files, requires the SNACK toolkit players
squelch nice OggVorbis audio player with playlist and tag editor, requires Qt players oggvorbis ,
VLC Media Player a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, a… , ,
XAnim players video_software ,
xine a most excellent multiformat audio/video player players video_software ,
XMMS excellent player for MP3, MOD, WAV and other formats mpeg_players_and_encoders ladspa players jack , , ,
XMovie DVD and Quicktime movie player, supports JPEG Photo, YUV2, and raw RGB modes, with stereo audio in PCM, ulaw, or IMA4 formats players video_software ,
Zinf simple powerful audio player formerly known as FreeAMP, supports MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, WAV and CD audio, SHOUTcast/Icecast HTTP streaming players mpeg_playe… , ,

Misc. audio tools

PageDescriptionTags
audiobrowse.bash simple commandline audio preview of directories for sample-artists / musician and producers Because deadsimple audition of directories with sa… , , ,
basef Manipulates parameters found in AIFF soundfile header. Requires Csound. soundfile_util csound_helper ,
bash drumloopslicer Using purely bash. This is handy for automating generation of sample libraries e.g. requirement: bc, sox and vamp-example-plugins warning… , ,
bash seamless loop wavfile bashscript which turns an wavfile into a seamless loopable wavfile (using a crossfade technique). The faderatio indicates the length… , ,
calcamp calculates what factor a sample needs for amplification to maximum volume (requires libsndfile) soundfile_util
declick soundfile_util
fdmf soundfile_util
Gnome Wave Cleaner Digital audio restoration of CD quality audio wavefiles. Dehiss, declick and decrackle in a GUI environment. soundfile_util
JOrbis JOrbis is a pure Java Ogg Vorbis decoder. JOrbis accepts Ogg Vorbis bitstreams and decodes them to raw PCM. oggvorbis soundfile_util java , ,
OggVorbis Tag Editor includes a patch for editing tags in XMMS oggvorbis soundfile_util ,
SampleCat - Audio File Browser A very useful browser and catalog app. MySql and Sqlite can be used for the database. jack soundfile_util ,
samplescan.sh Automatic sample-categorizer for lazy artists. BASH-script which converts directories with audiosamples into symbolically linked trees sorted on… , ,
samplesort.sh Automatic audio sample-tagging for lazy artists. This bash-script converts audiosample-directories into symbolically linked trees sorted on tags … ,
sauditor jack soundfile_util ,
shntool shntool is a multi-purpose WAVE data processing and reporting utility that supports various lossless audio formats. These include SHN (shorten), FLAC, …
Sonic Annotator command-line app for feature extraction and annotation of audio files using Vamp plugins. Writes to RDF or text file. vamp soundfile_util ,
soundfont instr2raw SF2/XI instrument inspection/conversion utilities + looppoint insertiontools for AIFF/WAV..all for loopedinstrument fanatics There are man… ,
soundgrab soundgrab is a perl script which allows the user to interactively select and save their favorite portions of a long volume of ogg or raw audio data. …
soxmasterhouse Automatic (commandline) mastering of audio using sox/ladspa/vst effects. Why? to automate post-processing of music, specifically to ease masteri… ,
Swami Sampled Waveforms And Musical Instruments (SWAMI) is a tool in progress for creating, editing, and combining SF2 SoundFonts. Uses JACK. jack audio_edito… , , , , ,
Vorbix oggvorbis soundfile_util ,
wavbreaker/wavmerge This application's purpose in life is to take a wave file and break it up into multiple wave files. It makes a clean break at the correct p…
Wavelength soundfile_util
WavSplit WavSplit splits large WAV files at given time positions. To find out split positions you can use any WAV player or editor with a time display. soundf…

File format conversion

PageDescriptionTags
*2raw file_conversion soundfile_util ,
aifc2wav file_conversion soundfile_util ,
audio convert a script to convert wav, ogg, mp3, mpc, flac, ape or wma files into wav, ogg, mp3, mpc, flac or ape files. with an easy to use interface it's act… ,
AudioMove AudioMove is a simple, easy to use GUI-based batch audio file copy-and-conversion program file_conversion soundfile_util ,
Dolby AC3 to IEC958 Converter (Direct link) file_conversion soundfile_util ,
mp32ogg file_conversion soundfile_util ,
sample-multi-shotifier A sample 'stitcher'. Breath new life into your hardware/software samplers by using multishots + start-sample-offset-parameter. Combine a… , , ,
sfArkXTc file_conversion soundfile_util ,
soundconverter The sound conversion application for the GNOME environment. It reads anything the GStreamer library can read (Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MP3, FLAC, WAV, A… ,
SoX SoX is a cross-platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, etc.) command line utility that can convert various formats of computer audio files in to other formats. … , ,
PageDescriptionTags
abrowse abrowse is a program which allows you to read AKAI S1000/3000 sample CD's and write the samples into wav audio format. soundfile_util hardware_linux ,
Lakai soundfile_util hardware_linux ,
mirage-disk soundfile_util hardware_linux ,
SQ80 Toolkit soundfile_util hardware_linux ,

Guides/Tutorials

PageDescriptionTags
An Analysis of Sample Rate Conversion in SoX on-line technical paper on-line_articles and_now_for_something_rather_different sox soundfile_util , , ,
Audio Processing Pipelines howtos_and_faqs soundfile_util sox , ,
Editing Audio In Linux howtos_and_faqs soundfile_util ,
The Linux Soundfile Editor Roundup on-line_articles_by_dave_phillips soundfile_util on-line_articles and_now_for_something_rather_different , , ,
The Trouble with Vorbis on-line_articles and_now_for_something_rather_different soundfile_util , ,
Which Sounds Better, MP3 or Ogg ? on-line_articles and_now_for_something_rather_different soundfile_util , ,

Unmaintained software

PageDescriptionTags
DarkWave Studio DAW An open source, Digital Audio Workstation for Windows daw unmaintained ,
KHdRecord daw unmaintained ,
MixMagic audio mixing program for GNOME, handles large soundfiles daw unmaintained ,
QRT QT port of Paul Lansky's Rt realtime soundfile mixer daw unmaintained ,
SLab hard-disk recorder, will record up to 64 tracks Graphical user interface, and support to ALSA. No Jack-support. daw unmaintained ,
Wired audio/MIDI music production system. Uses JACK. daw midi_software sequencers jack alsa_seq unmaintained , , , , ,
XO Wave Java-based hard-disk recording/editing system Project is discontinued. New project for same people is Xonami daw unmaintained ,
apps/daw_apps.txt · Last modified: 2014/03/18 08:00 by j_e_f_f_g