Audacity

[Harry Kuhman]

This is just an observation, it might help to explain why so many people are still using Windows.

I use the audio recording and editing program Audacity. It's a really nice open source program available for both Linux and Windows.

I've typically used this on my desktop and notebook computer, mostly my HP notebook, under Windows98 on the desktop and XP on the notebook. It works great. One of the features of this program is that you can record a track of audio and then go back and record another track of audio. Audacity is able to play back the tracks together, allowing you to edit each track individually, adjust the volume individually and so on. You can do this for many tracks. Works great. Under Windows that is.

I fired up the Knoppix 5.0.1 DVD. As past versions of Knoppix, it recognized the sound system in my notebook just fine and played the familiar "Inniating startup sequence" sound. I fired up audacity and recorded a few seconds of sound. It played back just fine. Of course, as long as the mic hardware was detected I would expect this of an open source package available for both Linux and Windows when run under Linux. But then I recorded a second track in parallel to the first. When I play the two tracks back together, the first track plays properly, but the second track plays about an octave lower than it should. Not slower, the second track keeps up with the first track in time, it's just an octave lower than it should be! And this is apparently something that happened in the recording process, not the playback process, since I can delete the first track and just play back the seond track and it is still an octaive lower. And let me state again that this is the same program running on the same hardware that works fine under Windows XP.

Before anyone points out that Audacity has an "effect" that will change the pitch of a track, I did try this edit to the bad track, it improved the track somewhat, but there is still a big quality loss and something not quite righ about the track (maybe it wasn't exactly an octave off in the first place, it still sounds a bit low after the transformation). And this clearly should not need to be done.

So like many things with Linux I'm left poking and proding and trying to figure out why I can't use a tool that I know and completely expected to work. This may or may not be a problem related to Knoppix, but it certainly seems like a Linux related problem. Anyone have any insight on what it is? Or how I should go about tracking it down?

It is things like this that cause me to use both systems; although I would cerainly like to ditch Windows completely before Vista gets here, I don't see how I can.

[django]

It's always a frustration when something that used to work doesn't.

That said, it is not unusual for a new version of an operating system
to break applications that ran on the previous version, particularly if
there have been major changes of any sort. Windows changes regularly
break applications. Vista is going to break a lot of applications. Apple's
operating system changes have broken applications. I've seen people
scrambling to fix shell scripts when Unix upgrades included changes to
shell languages.

My strategy would be to stick with the version of the operating system that
works with your applications until either the os or the application are
upgraded to where they work together.

By the way your observation regarding poking and prodding and trying to figure
out how to make something work rang true here. I spent more than a month
getting Knoppix to access the internet with persistent configurations
(for example, nothing I'd read had said that the configuration disk needed
to be linux formatted.) And now I'm poking and prodding and trying to
figure out how to transfer large files back and forth between Knoppix and
Windows while preserving the security of the Windows machine (which due
to its vulnerabilities never goes online.) I'm considering the CD burner.
In any case...

Regards

Django

PS: Once I get secure internet access nailed down I plan to experiment
with the Linux audio applications. I'm a long time Cakewalk user (currently
Sonar 3) but I think Vista has the potential to break a lot of applications
and introduce a lot of instability. We shall see.