List of Linux audio software
The following is an incomplete list of Linux audio software.
Audio players
Main article: Comparison of free software for audio § Players
GStreamer-based
- Banshee is a free audio player for Linux which uses the GStreamer multimedia platforms to play, encode, and decode Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and other formats. Banshee supports playing and importing audio CDs and playing and synchronizing music with iPods. Audioscrobbler API support.
- BMP, also known as Beep Media Player, is a free audio player based on XMMS multimedia player (mentioned below). It looks like Winamp and also supports its skins, including XMMS’s. BMP supports most of the audio formats that XMMS does; the main difference is between plugins that these players use. BMP has been discontinued in favor of BMPx, which shares very little of BMP's codebase.
- Clementine is a cross-platform, open-source, Qt based audio player, written in C++. It can play Internet radio streams; managing some media devices, playlists; supports visualizations, Audioscrobbler API. It was made as a spin-off of Amarok 1.4 and is a rougher version of said program.
- Exaile is a free software audio player for Unix-like operating systems that aims to be functionally similar to KDE’s Amarok. Unlike Amarok, Exaile is a Python program and uses the GTK+ toolkit.
- Muine is an audio player for the GNOME desktop environment. Muine is written in C# using Mono and Gtk#. The default backend is GStreamer framework but Muine can also use xine libraries.
- Quod Libet is a GTK+ based audio player, written in Python. Its main distinguishing feature is its approach to music library management. Instead of categorizing the songs by genre, artist, and album, the focus is on search and display. Quod Libet supports regular expression searches of its music library, and is stated to perform efficiently with music libraries of over 10,000 titles.
- Rhythmbox is an audio player inspired by Apple iTunes.
- Songbird is a cross-platform, open-source media player and web browser. It is built using code from the Firefox web browser. The GUI is very similar to Apple iTunes, and it is also capable of syncing with Apple iPods. Like Firefox, Songbird is extensible via downloadable add-ons. It's able to display lyrics retrieved from the net, and also the ones embedded through metadata (ID3v2 tag) after adding the LyricMaster plugin. Linux official support for Songbird was discontinued in April, 2010. But in December, 2011 a group of programmers openly forked it into Nightingale.
MPD-based
- GMPC (Gnome Music Player Client) is a front end for Music Player Daemon. It’s fast and easy to use, while still making optimal use of all the functions in MPD.
- Cantata is a KDE-based front-end for Music Player Daemon.
- Ario is a light GTK2 client to MPD
Other
- Amarok is a free music player for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems using KDE. It uses Phonon to play audio.
- aTunes is a free, cross-platform audio player for operating systems supporting the Java programming language (Linux and other Unix-like OS's, Windows, Mac). aTunes is also capable of playing Internet radio streams and automatically displaying associated artist information, song videos, and song lyrics.
- Audacious is a free media player for Linux or Linux-based systems. Audacious can be expanded via plugins, including support for all popular codecs. On most systems a useful set of plugins is installed by default, supporting MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files.[1] Audacious' classic interface looks and feels very similar to Winamp. It is compatible with ladspa plugins.
- cmus is a small and fast text-mode music player for Linux and many other Unix-like operating systems.
- JuK is a free software audio player for KDE, the default player since KDE 3.2. JuK supports collections of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC audio files.
- mpg123 is a real time MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 audio player/decoder for layers 1,2 and 3 (MPEG 1.0 layer 3 aka MP3 most commonly tested). Among others working with Linux, MacOSX, FreeBSD, SunOS4.1.3, Solaris 2.5, HPUX 9.x, SGI Irix and Cygwin or plain Windows. It is free software licensed under LGPL 2.1
- MOC is an ncurses-based console audio player. It is designed to be powerful and easy to use, and its command structure and window layouts are similar to the Midnight Commander console file manager. It is very configurable, with ALSA, OSS or JACK outputs, customizable color schemes, interface layouts, key bindings, and tag parsing.
- SoX is a multi-platform command-line audio editor.
- XMMS (X MultiMedia System) is a GTK1-based multimedia player which works on many platforms, but has some features which only work under Linux. XMMS can play media files such as .ogg, MP3, MOD’s, WAV and others with the use of input plugins. It is a free software audio player similar to Winamp that runs on many Unix-like operating systems. However, development of XMMS has been deprecated in favor of XMMS2, a new audio player built from scratch on the more modern GTK2 libraries. See also Audacious on this page as a successor to the historic XMMS.
- Tomahawk is a cross-platform music player built with social media and multi-source music streaming in mind. It features support for services like Spotify, Grooveshark, Dilandau, SoundCloud, 4shared, Jamendo, Last.fm, Ampache, Owncloud, Ex.fm and Subsonic.
Distributions and Add-Ons
- 64 Studio (Debian-based)
- dyne:bolic
- Musix GNU/Linux
- Planet CCRMA, a major add-on for Red Hat Linux with lots of excellent tools and system mods
- puredyne (Ubuntu based)
- Ubuntu Studio, an Ubuntu-based distribution geared toward multimedia
Graphical programming
- Pure Data or Pd, graphical programming language.
- VSXu does not produce/filter sound but can visualize audio data in real time.
Audio programming languages (text-based)
- ChucK, an audio programming language for realtime synthesis, composition, and performance.
- Csound, composition, synthesis and processing.
- Nyquist, Lisp-based language for sound generation and analysis. Audacity supports plug-ins written in the Nyquist language.
- SuperCollider, Smalltalk-like language for real-time audio synthesis.
DJ tools
Drum machines
- Giada, a loop/drum machine, sequencer, live sampler and effect host
- Hydrogen, drum machine and sequencer
Recording, editing and mastering
Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs)
- List of digital audio workstations (DAWs)
- Ardour, a multi-track audio recorder. GPLv2+
- LMMS, music composer. GPL
- Qtractor, a full featured multi-track Digital audio workstation (DAW), with audio and MIDI sequencer. GPL
- Rosegarden, MIDI sequencer. BSD
- Traverso DAW, a multi-track audio recorder. GPL
- Tracktion, proprietary and commercial digital audio workstation
Score manipulation
Audio editors and recorders
Sequencers
- MusE, MIDI/Audio sequencer.
- Renoise, commercial modern tracker-style sequencer.
- Seq24, a loop based midi sequencer.
Other
- Baudline, signal analyzer.
- Buzztrax, music composer.
- Gnome Wave Cleaner, denoise, dehiss and amplify.
- Impro-Visor, edit and playback jazz solos over chord changes and rhythm.
- LinuxSampler, sampler.
- Mp3gain, adjust MP3 playback volume without re-encoding.
- Mp3splt, splits MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files without re-encoding.
Sound servers
- aRts, the KDE 3 soundserver.
- Phonon, the multimedia framework provided by Qt 4 and used in KDE 4.
- EsounD, the Enlightened Sound Daemon.
- JACK Audio Connection Kit, real-time sound server.
- NAS, the Network Audio System.
- NMM, Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware.
- PulseAudio, a sound server. A drop-in replacement for EsounD.
Patch bays
- Qjackctl, JACK control panel and patch bay
Synthesizers
- Amsynth
- din, software synthesiser, musical instrument (uses computer mouse as bow)
- FluidSynth, with the QSynth interface.
- Gnaural, binaural beat and pink noise synthesizer.
- LMMS, tracker/sequencer/synth.
- PySynth, a simple software synthesizer in Python.
- TiMidity, Play/Convert MIDI files as/to PCM
- ZynAddSubFX, software synthesizer.
Effects processing
- FreqTweak, real-time audio processing with spectral displays.
- LADSPA, the Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API.
- DSSI, Disposable Soft Synth Interface, a virtual instrument (software synthesizer) plugin architecture.
- SoX, the Audio Swiss Army knife.
- LV2, is the new audio Linux standard for plugins.
Format transcoding
- OggConvert
- SoX (Sound eXchange)
Radio broadcasting
- Airtime, an automation system for radio stations.
- Campcaster (discontinued), an automation system for radio stations.
- Icecast, free server software for streaming multimedia.
- OpenBroadcaster, Radio station in a box.
Radio listening
- Streamtuner, browse and listen to hundreds of streamed radio stations.
Tablature software
- TuxGuitar, a tabulature editor, score writer and player oriented for guitarists.
See also
References
External links
- Linux Audio and Sound – Application and Software Index at linuxaudio.org
- Linux Musicians - Making music on Linux linuxmusician.eu.pn
- Consortium of free Linux audio software makers