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Wired: a music production and creation system

The first official release (version 0.1) of Wired, a Linux-based audio and MIDI recording application, was announced this week.
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Wired aims to be a professional music production and creation software running on the Linux operating system. It brings musicians a complete studio environment to compose and record music without requiring expensive hardware. Wired supports unlimited Audio/Midi tracks playback and recording, and introduces a Plugin system for instruments and effects. It can also read AKAI CDs and import 18 different Wave formats.

[Wired] Wired contrasts with Ardour, another multi-track audio recorder project that recommends the use of one of several expensive multi-track capable sound cards for best results. Also, Ardour does not include MIDI support, although it is a project goal. The Ardour project status has been stuck on the verge of the 1.0 release for a long time, we look forward to progress there.

The Wired features that have been implemented to date include:

  • Multi-track audio recording/playback.
  • Multi-track MIDI recording/playback.
  • Support for an unlimited number of Audio and MIDI tracks.
  • MIDI editing capabilities.
  • Sequencer capabilities.
  • Support for the ALSA and OSS audio drivers.
  • Preliminary support for the JACK Audio Connection Kit.
  • A plugin system that supports effects and sound sources.
  • Support for wav, Midi, and AKAI CD file formats.
  • Undo/Redo capability.
  • An online help system.
Features that are planned for future releases include:
  • A loop sampler with time-stretching capabilities.
  • A beatbox for creating drum sequences
  • A MIDI-controlled sampler.
  • High pass, low pass, and notch filters.
  • A compressor/limiter effect.
  • An audio delay effect.
Wired appears to use the window manager within a window approach for managing most of its GUI components. See the screenshots page for examples.

Wired has been released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the source code is available for download here. Dependencies include GTK2, wxWidgets, PortAudio, SoundTouch, and libsndfile.


(Log in to post comments)

Ardour requirements

Posted Nov 18, 2004 12:31 UTC (Thu) by trutkin (guest, #3919) [Link]

Ardour doesn't *require* an expensive high-end soundcard. It will work with any card that is supported by ALSA. High-end soundcards are recommended because they allow for lower latency and more simultaneous inputs.

Ardour requirements

Posted Nov 18, 2004 17:35 UTC (Thu) by cook (editor, #4) [Link]

That's why I put "for best results".
I suppose I should change "requires" to "recommends".

uh-oh

Posted Nov 18, 2004 18:44 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

The very first trademark infringement suit over a domain name, ever, was filed by Wired Magazine (they sued Women's Wire for using "wire.net"). I fear that the authors of this program might be hearing from someone.

uh-oh

Posted Nov 20, 2004 7:29 UTC (Sat) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link]

You might want to re-read what you said. It was filed over a _domain name_. This Wired's homepage looks like http://bloodshed.net/wired/?sid=1, which, to me, doesn't look anything like a homepage that Wired magazine would want.

There is a different potentially valid trademark problem, however. Although normally things with similar names in somewhat different areas can get away with it, this runs into difficulties with so-called "famous" trademarks. Wired magazine could well be considered one.

Rosegarden has musical notation editing

Posted Nov 22, 2004 0:28 UTC (Mon) by Wills (guest, #1813) [Link]

Rosegarden has the same features as Wired, and one very useful extra feature that will be appreciated by classically trained musicians: editing of musical notation (sheet music scores).

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