Quick question;
Is there something of a plugin for multiband compression, something like JAMin has built in?
Neat for podcasts or mixing for awful sounding mobile devices.
Yup. It is tough question. I fully support this, with all of my heart. For 8 dollars you just cant go wrong. I just hope someone makes an LA2A or DBX studio comp. I have used the ones that are available with Ardour now and they work really well. I plan to upgrade (donate) here real soon after I get the Scully 280 up to specs. You have done something for the world of recording which is spectacular. Thank you.
Wow, I never got notified about replies so I never found this thread! But now that I am doing some recording and tweaking in Free Open Source Software (FOSS) Audacity, googled for some compressor effects, this was the first result that came up!
Although I don’t have any follow up questions, I’ve seen a certain financial attitude at a few places at which I just can’t resist to reply.
I used Ardour back then for the audio part of a no-budget videoclip for a band that doesn’t exist, for fun, for free, free for everyone to download, out of love.
Then there’s people like some in this thread, somehow especially represented in parts of the Linux audio scène.
The problem with some people around projects like Ardour is the whining and begging for money. Spare some change? It’s worse than advertisements, because if you’re not interested, the mood changes. Don’t expect sympathy if you’re only interested in FOSS!
It makes me sad. The love is gone. Do I have bugs in my hair?
Maybe your strategy has a flaw. If there’s one project that’s worth way more than Ardour and the commercial plugins combined, it’s Blender. What, unfair comparison by size? No, it’s a one man project, except through the years he found a way to create fulltime jobs for an entire team. They’ve released 3 awesome open movies so far. One video game. I used the software for the CG in that same videoclip. The community was very helpful, and never ever did anyone ask if I could spare some change for the program itself or for a plugin.
If you ask money for your product, very good. I applaude devs who make a living out of their creativity. I hope you have good customers who will happily pay. But don’t come trolling people like me looking for FOSS that their wishes are absurd. If you want legal grounds for having an attitude about people not spending money, go to some commercial software forum or a capitalism support group.
FOSS people have the ideal that all software should be free. Free as in freedom to use, modify and distribute.
When I’d have a steady studio business and earn a lot of money, ofcourse I’d be willing to pay. But you can bet I’d go for something commercial, backed by a team, like Adobe CS and Nuendo. Or something open, backed by a community, like Blender and Linux itself. Not something too expensive to be free but too insignificant to be renown. So you have a toll road? I take the free road. I’d rather buy me some sandwitches. I had the money to do both and then some, I still wouldn’t take your toll road. I’d take the toll superhighway. Why? Because IN MY OPINION, it’s save to bet on something backed by eather a team or a community.
This situation of complaining is for people affraid to go all in. Stop holding on to your towel while wading your toes in the water. Either go get a tan and hit on the chicks, or take a swim and try to beat the boys. Some people need to make a choice.
Either go Closed Source, make a slim free and fat commercial edition like Podium (http://www.zynewave.com/). You’ll lose people like me, and you’ll gain the group of whatever people make such strategies thrive.
Or stay Free, figure out a strategy in which everyone smiles and you still make money like Blender.
Or go earn money with some different job and do FOSS stuff just out of love. Yes hobbies cost money for everyone including you, and hobbyists can be more professional than professionals so don’t be affraid to admid it to yourself.
Or go work for a bigger company with a bigger clientele, lose creative freedom and gain whineless income.
Don’t want to make a choice? Am I all wrong? Fine. But please please don’t go preach why one should spend a few bucks to people specifically looking for FOSS, because it makes you look unattractive like jehova’s witnesses do when they reject ones reality and substitute their own.
I wasn’t planning on discussing this, I just really felt the need to provide some backburn. So you can either agree with me or be wrong. Naah, just kidding. Agree or agree to disagree.
Oh, and this was for the people either with an attitude or begging. If you selflessnessly help out with the occasional hint of your own commercial product, I can only applaude you. 
@Redsandro: But don’t come trolling people like me looking for FOSS that their wishes are absurd
Nobody came trolling to you. You showed up asking for links to multiband compressors. You didn’t say “Free (as in beer) and Free (as in speech) multiband compressors”. Someone pointed you at a very good one, that happens to not be Free in either sense of the word. You then said “Thanks, but no thanks”. So some people tried to explain, quite politely, why that approach doesn’t necessarily work very well for this stuff.
Your story about Blender is cute but wrong. Blender raised at least 100,000 EU from its user community by begging for it, in order to buy out the IP inherent in the source code. It then went on to be then beneficiary of some huge grants from the EU and Apple Computer. It also has the big benefits that (a) it runs on Windows (b) it involves graphics, which invariably means that it has a user base at least 10x larger than any audio software. I could write an entire multipage article on how the resulting cash flow for Blender (which is quite substantial) comes primarily from options that are not applicable to audio plugins, or even to Ardour.
You want good plugins to use in your work. You appear to believe that people will write them for free. There’s evidence that this may not be correct, at least for a good multiband compressor, although the CALF one may stand as a counter-example.
Redsandro: You started the thread by mentioning JAMin, which is, for whatever reason, not suitable for your workflow. The first response was from linuxDSP advertising his plugin, which was in no way out of the question, especially considering you didn’t mention that you needed the solution to be FOSS. Then you explained that FOSS was a requirement. The very next post linked to two plugins that fit the bill, although neither of them is very good. So at this point, your question had been both answered and reanswered, although it had been explained that linuxDSP’s plugin works better than either FOSS solution. From there, many posts come in agreeing with the idea that linuxDSP’s multiband compressor is the best there is for linux. While I do think Beejunk may have come across as somewhat condescending, nobody here has been begging for money. Basically, if you need a FOSS solution for a multiband compressor, there ARE options: namely, the incomplete calf plugin, the low-quality telasopia plugin, or JAMin, which is only available as part of a complete mastering suite. If none of these fit the bill, your only other option is linuxDSP, which happens to be closed-source and commercial. Why the hostility?
Thanks for taking the time to reply @Paul. Although not addressing anyone specifically, I didn’t mean you. I don’t know if you’re secretly appalled by people like me, but from my point of view, you’re one of the good guys, making a very nice piece of software, allow me to use it for free, ask for donations which I am not obliged to pay and it looks like (but I don’t know if you make your goals) you have a very reasonable balance between efford and income going on. And importantly, you’re not trolling people for money except for the perfectly logical donation options and pages on the website.
That said, I do detect a little misrepresenting the events in your reply (for what good?)
I litterally said “free though, open source”, got literally replied “you’re not going to get sympathy for free software” and “please consider buying it” and “Please pay $8” followed by discussion on paying.
Yes I exaggerated the negativity and an constrained an above average flourishing project, because I got a little annoyed by reading similar conversations. Yes Blender got grants, but who do you think initiated the orchesta? Blender started off asking donations just the same. There’s no problem in that. One could buy their source or one of their movies on DVD. Fine. But nowhere in a community like that do you get an attitude for choosing not to pay.
As to your “buts”, Ton (Blender author) made a (smart?) choice to a) support Windows, it’s not just ‘his luck’. And if you compare to Ardour itself, you could choose to b) involve video in Ardour, just like Nuendo does (increasing it’s value much above Cubase). I mean, if you bring constraints into the comparison, you should see them as options instead.
Also in your last paragraph, you (purposely?) misinterpret my actions again. Nowhere do I express belief that plugins should be written for free on the spot. I was just wondering if there’s a FOSS multiband comp plugin out there. And yeah, now that you mention it, since for example debian has over 25,000 currently maintained FOSS packages available, there must be an awful lot of free stuff out there. Hey could have been an multiband comp plugin, no? Just my luck.
-update-
Now that I am posting, @macinnissrr replied. You also get into length about summarizing the thead. Why do you people think I cannot read myself? Now read the summary in the 3rd paragraph of this post and we’ve all read each others summaries.
My notion of ‘begging for money’ is from multiple threads I’ve read in a google session. Some from here, some from other forums, funnily also about audio. Something just snapped. This was my thread. I had to reply here. The percieved hostility is reaping what you sow. And for the rest: Your conclusion was the perfect response for my second reply and the topic could have ended:
there are options: namely, the incomplete calf plugin, the low-quality telasopia plugin, or JAMin, which is only available as part of a complete mastering suite. If none of these fit the bill, your only other option is linuxDSP, which happens to be closed-source and commercial.
Nice, thanks! And also a thanks to @Benjamin, who actually said it first, right after I failed to check this topic again for close to a year. And so I conclude my long-due reply by saying: I do not agree. IMO, if slow […] development for linux would be certainly the lack of income for developers, we wouldn’t have so god awful much FOSS software.
Yeah thanks. I was wondering if there’s something free though, open source, actually preferably without the graphics.
good luck finding one that’s better or free, with or without graphics. If you like linux and decent native audio plugins to go with it, then please consider buying it
Hi Redsandro,
I know of 3 multiband compressors for the linux world.
- Jamin - you are asking for an alternative for this one
- Calf Multiband Compressor - only in svn for now, looks good (but then again even more “graphical” than LinuxDSPs MBC2), but I couldn’t get it working in a satisfying way which is probably why it’s still in svn and not officially released yet.
- LinuxDSPs MBC2.
I can really recommend the MBC2. You can test it for free, and if you like it only a little bit, 5 pounds are around “for free” in my opinion.
In case open source is critical for you, please have a look at discussions about financing open source projects (http://ardour.org/node/3415 for example, and there are many other discussions and explanations around). Even Ardour is still struggling with the financial situation, and it’s the role model of a full time open source project without company support. Btw I 've just realized we’re about to miss the financial goal for 2nd time in a row…
Regarding the (let’s face it) still poor choice and low number of good plugins for linux, especially multiband compressors, I’m even more thankful for the high quaility and cheap LinuxDSP plugins. Open source would be nice, but one reason for the slow plugin development for linux is certainly the lack of income for developers.
Best
Benjamin
Sorry, Resandro, but you’re not going to get sympathy for free software here.
Please pay $8 to buy Linux DSPs plug-in. Spend two weeks without buying fast food/cigarettes/beer/whatever-poison-you-like and you’ll be set.
And while you’re at it, please donate to Ardour. This may sound harsh, but people need to start paying, or the software we love is going to go away.
agreed, linux and open source software devs need to eat and support themselves too (honestly, the quality you pay for in linuxdsp plugins is worth MUCH more than the $8 USD price…)
You can find a Multiband Compressor here:
@88Keys: I had a brief look at the teliasopia plugin code, I may be mistaken, as I only had a quick look, but it appears as if it just uses ‘cook-book’ second-order biquad filters in the crossover, in which case I would not expect the frequency response to sum back to flat in the absence of any level changes (by the compressor sections or otherwise). If this is the case, then with this arrangement the phase shifts involved will normally cause noticeable notches at the crossover filter cutoff points.
I had a brief look at the teliasopia plugin code, I may be mistaken, as I only had a quick look, but it appears as if it just uses 'cook-book' second-order biquad filters in the crossover, in which case I would not expect the frequency response to sum back to flat in the absence of any level changes (by the compressor sections or otherwise). If this is the case, then with this arrangement the phase shifts involved will normally cause noticeable notches at the crossover filter cutoff points.
Whereas I have absolutely no idea what is going on in the linuxDSP code. The 8 bucks isn’t the problem. If I wanted to use a mystery box I’d be running Reaper and using any number of very good sounding plugins.
@projectMalamute: Thankyou. If you don’t wish to use my software for whatever reason then that is entirely your decision and I respect that. Normally I would be perfectly happy to provide explanations or information about how the software works to anyone who takes the trouble to ask.
@projectMalamute: I’m sorry, mystery box? That is absurd. What exactly is it that you want out of extremely niche plug-in software? The only way that I can interpret this comment is to conclude you are dreaming up security problems that do not exist, or you are applying an unrealistic open-source purity test to all the software you use. Either way, I would politely suggest you examine what it is you think open-source software should be, and why you use it.
LinuxDSP, I just recently purchased your multi-band compressor, and it is at this moment doing fantastic things for my current mixes. Thank you for your work.
Either way, I would politely suggest you examine what it is you think open-source software should be, and why you use it.
I would suggest that open source software is software for which one has access to the source code. Not really that complicated.
You are truly the Lau Tzu of digital audio.
Hi
question for Linuxdsp…
Ive been demoing using Ardour for a few months and like it very much - hence decision to donate.
Having searched for high-q user-friendly plugins, I am really impressed by your plug ins and want to purchase the 2 “non-free” plugins.
Question is this …
Ive been cleaning and re-installing my system quite a bit lately to get a clean set up of Ubuntu Studio and Ardour optimised as best I can. This is still a WIP so its possible I may wipe and start again with US and 64Studio dual boot after buying your plugins ( or getting authorisation code if thats how it works )
If I pay to activate will I be able to back up the plug ins if I need to do a fresh install ?
PS - Paul - thanks for bringing Ardour to the DAW community - I spent years getting frustrated with buggy commercial windows products that messed up my workflow.
Rgds
Pete