Comparison of free software for audio
This list of free audio software is free software (and usually open source software) for use by sound engineers, audio producers, and those involved in sound recording and reproduction.
Technologies
- Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), a sound card management system in the Linux kernel
- DSSI, a plugin architecture for software synthesizers
- JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK), a sound server
- Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API (LADSPA), a plugin architecture for digital signal processing
- Open Sound System, a standard interface for making and capturing sound in Unix operating systems
- PulseAudio, a sound server
Platforms
Various projects have formed to integrate the existing free software audio packages, including the Ubuntu Studio, dyne:bolic, AGNULA, Musix, and 64 Studio Linux distributions, and the Planet CCRMA set of packages (in RPM format).
Recording and editing
The following packages are digital audio editors.
- Ardour, a multi-track audio recorder (DAW) (Linux, Mac)
- Audacity, multi-track audio recorder/editor (GNU/Linux, Mac, Windows)
- Audiobook Cutter, MP3 audiobook splitter (Windows)
- Ecasound, audio recorder (Linux, Mac)
- Freecycle, beat slicer (Linux)
- Jokosher, a multi-track audio editor (Linux)
- Kristal is a digital audio editor, multi-track recorder and sound mixer (Windows)
- LMMS, a powerful musical studio intended as a replacement for Cubase-like software (DAW) (Linux)
- Mp3DirectCut, edit MP3 files without decoding or re-encoding them. (Windows)
- Mp3splt, splits MP3 and Vorbis files without decoding (see mp3splt-gtk and libmp3splt) (Linux, Mac, Windows)
- MusE, MIDI sequencer (not to be confused with MuSE; see below) (Linux)
- Rosegarden, MIDI sequencer and multi-track recorder (Linux)
- Snd (software), audio editor (Linux, Mac)
- SoX, command-line multi-track audio editor/processor (Linux, Mac, Windows, others)
- Sweep, audio editor (Linux)
- trakAx, a multi-track sequencer and video editor (Windows, Mobile)
- Wavosaur, audio editor (Windows)
- Wired, all-in one music studio (DAW) (Linux, Mac)
Converters
- winLAME, a tool to convert between various audio formats (Windows)
- MediaCoder, an audio/video batch transcoder which uses open source audio and video codecs (Windows)
- MPlayer, an all in one audio and video media player and converter
Trackers
- CheeseTracker, an Impulse Tracker clone (Linux, Mac)
- Jeskola Buzz, a Modular Tracker system (Windows)
- ModPlug Tracker. released as free software in 2004 (Windows)
- Psycle is a tracker combined with modular capabilities
- Schism Tracker, another Impulse Tracker clone (Windows, Linux, Mac)
- SoundTracker, a Fast Tracker clone (Unix-like systems)
Programming languages
Computer music programming languages that are implemented in free software include Csound, SuperCollider, ChucK, Nyquist, and Pure Data.
Modular systems
Streaming
- MuSE is for mixing, encoding, and streaming of encoded audio. Not to be confused with MusE; see above. (Linux)
- Icecast is a broadcast server to serve audio signals to clients over the HTTP protocol. (Linux, Windows)
- PeerCast, a peercasting tool (Linux, Mac, Windows)
- Firefly Media Server streams music to DAAP clients like iTunes and Rhythmbox (Linux, Mac, Windows)
- VideoLAN, conists of media and server programs for video and audio streaming. (crossplatform)
Radio broadcasting
- SomaPlayer, radio broadcasting scheduler automation
- Campcaster (Linux)
- Rivendell - radio broadcast automation suite
- Cue - Broadcast Audio Player (Windows)
Softsynths
- ZynAddSubFX (Linux, Windows)
Audio analysis
- Praat (Linux, Mac, Windows)
Others
- abc notation
- Hydrogen, an advanced drum machine (Cross platform)
- libsndfile, library for reading and writing many sound formats
- NU-Tech, powerful Digital Signal Processing (DSP) platform to validate and real-time debug complex algorithms, simply relying on a common PC
