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The iconic monome grid just got native support from Cycling '74's RNBO, the patching tool for exporting Max sounds on other hardware and software environments. There's a fun, free example patch to get you started, too.

The post monome and RNBO now play together – with a free drum sampler patch appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

Fully free, completely open source, Ubuntu Studio can breathe life into old machines and give you powerful free toolsets on new ones. It's one of the easiest ways to get creative with Linux, and this new release looks better, supports more audio configurations, and is simpler to install, as well as bringing the latest-and-greatest package support.

The post Ubuntu Studio 24.10 – the free Linux audiovisual workstation – is here appeared first on CDM Create Digital Music.

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu Studio 24.10 code-named “Oracular Oriole”. This marks Ubuntu Studio’s 35th release. This release is a Regular release and as such, it is supported for 9 months, until July 2025.

Since it’s just out, you may experience some issues, so you might want to wait a bit before upgrading. Please see the release notes for a more complete list of changes and known issues. Listed here are some of the major highlights.

You can download Ubuntu Studio 24.10 from our download page.

Special Notes

The Ubuntu Studio 24.10 disk image (ISO) exceeds 4 GB and cannot be downloaded to some file systems such as FAT32 and may not be readable when burned to a standard DVD. For this reason, we recommend downloading to a compatible file system. When creating a boot medium, we recommend creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO image or burning to a Dual-Layer DVD.

Minimum installation media requirements: Dual-Layer DVD or 8GB USB drive.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/24.10/release/

Full updated information, including Upgrade Instructions, are available in the Release Notes.

Upgrades from 24.04 LTS should be enabled within a month after release, so we appreciate your patience.

New This Release

Minimal Installation

We have now implemented minimal installations in the system installer. This will let you install a minimal desktop to get going and then install what you need via Ubuntu Studio Installer. This will make a faster installation process and lets you customize what you need for your personal Studio.

Unfortunately, at least for the time being, we also had to get rid of the default shortcuts in the panel since it would cause an error when loading without the applications being installed. A solution for this is coming in 25.04.

Generic Kernel

The Generic Ubuntu Kernel is now fully capable of low-latency workloads. As such, with this release, we have switched from the LowLatency Kernel to the Generic Kernel with the boot options to enable the low-latency configuration enabled by default.

These options can be changed via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration and customized depending on your use-case and your workload. If you don’t need the low-latency and wish to have a computer that is more energy-efficient, you may wish to turn off all three options. The choice is yours.

Plasma 6

Ubuntu Studio, in cooperation with Kubuntu, switched to Plasma 6 this cycle. This switch was not without issues, so we expect many of the issues to be Plasma 6 related, especially when it comes to the default configuration and theming.

New Look

Ubuntu Studio had been using the same theming, “Materia” (except for the 22.04 LTS release which was a re-colored Breeze theme) since 19.04. However, Materia has gone dead upstream. To stay consistent, we found a fork called “Orchis” which seems to match closely and have switched to that.

As you can see from the screenshot, it has more vivid colors, round corners, and a more modern look. We hope you enjoy it. We are aware of a bug involving a dark bar under windows which may be an issue, but sometimes switching the window decorations to another variation of the theme is a solution.

PipeWire 1.2.4

This release contains PipeWire 1.2. With PipeWire 1.2, FireWire devices requiring FFADO are supported. Do note that the Ubuntu Studio team does not have any FireWire devices and could not test this.

PipeWire’s JACK compatibility is configured to use out-of-the-box and is zero-latency internally. System latency is configurable via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration.

However, if you would rather use straight JACK 2 instead, that’s also possible. Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration can disable and enable PipeWire’s JACK compatibility on-the-fly. From there, you can simply use JACK via QJackCtl.

Complete Deprecation of PulseAudio/JACK setup/Studio Controls

Due to the maturity of PipeWire, the traditional PulseAudio/JACK setup, where JACK would be started/stopped by Studio Controls and bridged to PulseAudio, is now fully deprecated and the option is not offered anymore. This configuration is no longer installable via Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration. Studio Controls may return someday as a PipeWire fine-tuning solution, but for now it is unsupported by the developer.

Ardour 8.6

While this does not represent the latest release of Ardour, Ardour 8.6 is a great release. If you would like the latest release, we highly recommend purchasing one-time or subscribing to Ardour directly from the developers to help support this wonderful application.

To help support Ardour’s funding, you may obtain later versions directly from ardour.org. To do so, please one-time purchase or subscribe to Ardour from their website. If you wish to get later versions of Ardour from us, you will have to wait until the next regular release of Ubuntu Studio, due in April 2025.

Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration

Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration’s Dummy Audio Device now also has a much-requested Dummy Audio Input.

Additionally as described above, Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration has an option to configure the default boot parameters that are commonly used to enable the low-latency capabilities of the Linux kernel used in Ubuntu. For more information about that, see the Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration page.

We’re back on Matrix

You’ll notice that the menu links to our support chat and on our website will now take you to a Matrix chat. This is due to the Ubuntu community carving its own space within the Matrix federation.

However, this is not only a support chat. This is also a creativity discussion chat. You can pass ideas to each other and you’re welcome to it if the topic remains within those confines. However, if a moderator or admin warns you that you’re getting off-topic (or the intention for the chat room), please heed the warning.

This is a persistent connection, meaning if you close the window (or chat), it won’t lose your place as you may only need to sign back in to resume the chat.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does Ubuntu Studio contain snaps?
A: Yes. Mozilla’s distribution agreement with Canonical changed, and Ubuntu was forced to no longer distribute Firefox in a native .deb package. We have found that, after numerous improvements, Firefox now performs just as well as the native .deb package did.

Thunderbird also became a snap so that the maintainers can get security patches delivered faster.

Additionally, Freeshow is an Electron-based application. Electron-based applications cannot be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories in that they cannot be packaged in a traditional Debian source package. While such apps do have a build system to create a .deb binary package, it circumvents the source package build system in Launchpad, which is required when packaging for Ubuntu. However, Electron apps also have a facility for creating snaps, which can be uploaded and included. Therefore, for Freeshow to be included in Ubuntu Studio, it had to be packaged as a snap.

We have additional snaps that are Ubuntu-specific, such as the Firmware Updater and the Security Center. Contrary to popular myth, Ubuntu does not have any plans to switch all packages to snaps, nor do we.

Q: Will you make an ISO with {my favorite desktop environment}?
A: To do so would require creating an entirely new flavor of Ubuntu, which would require going through the Official Ubuntu Flavor application process. Since we’re completely volunteer-run, we don’t have the time or resources to do this. Instead, we recommend you download the official flavor for the desktop environment of your choice and use Ubuntu Studio Installer to get Ubuntu Studio – which does *not* convert that flavor to Ubuntu Studio but adds its benefits.

Q: What if I don’t want all these packages installed on my machine?
A: Simply use the Ubuntu Studio Installer to remove the features of Ubuntu Studio you don’t want or need!

Get Involved!

A wonderful way to contribute is to get involved with the project directly! We’re always looking for new volunteers to help with packaging, documentation, tutorials, user support, and MORE! Check out all the ways you can contribute!

Our project leader, Erich Eickmeyer, is now working on Ubuntu Studio at least part-time, and is hoping that the users of Ubuntu Studio can give enough to generate a monthly part-time income. We’re not there, but if every Ubuntu Studio user donated monthly, we’d be there! Your donations are appreciated! If other distributions can do it, surely we can! See the sidebar for ways to give!

Special Thanks

Huge special thanks for this release go to:

• Eylul Dogruel: Artwork, Graphics Design
• Ross Gammon: Upstream Debian Developer, Testing, Email Support
• Sebastien Ramacher: Upstream Debian Developer
• Dennis Braun: Upstream Debian Developer
• Rik Mills: Kubuntu Council Member, help with Plasma desktop
• Scarlett Moore: Kubuntu Project Lead, help with Plasma desktop
• Cristian Delgado: Translations for Ubuntu Studio Menu
• Dan Bungert: Subiquity, seed fixes
• Len Ovens: Testing, insight
• Wim Taymans: Creator of PipeWire
• Mauro Gaspari: Tutorials, Promotion, and Documentation, Testing, keeping Erich sane
• Krytarik Raido: IRC Moderator, Mailing List Moderator
• Erich Eickmeyer: Project Leader, Packaging, Development, Direction, Treasurer

David García Goñi released a new version of Elektroid, a sample and MIDI device manager for devices by Elektron, Arturia, Eventide, Moog, and Novation.

The project started out as a FOSS alternative to Electron Transfer, then the developer merged code from from his other projects, MicroDude (Arturia MicroBrute librarian) and phatty (Moog Little Phatty librarian).

Arturia MicroFreak support

This paraphonic synth by Arturia is 5 years old, but it still has its dedicated following. Much of that is thanks to Arturia’s policy to release major annual updates adding new features: new oscillators, custom wavetables and samples, granular engines, and an increase in the number of presets you can store on the device.

Elektroid made a pretty good use of that: you can upload both presets (zipped and unzipped), wavetables, and samples. Wavetable uploading is new for the application, so David also added minor new features like renaming wavetables and samples. This could be even more useful when support for more devices by various manufactureres starts landing eventually.

Digitakt II support

This version also features support for Digitakt II, a rhythm machine introduced by Elektron in April this year.

Other changes

There are various UI improvements and other changes in the release:

• Improved waveform zoom limits and better sample visualization for small samples.
• Sample information can now be displayed in the remote browser that list files on the device.
• Improved visualization of the audio system in the status bar.
• The status bar now uses Unicode symbols to show if the expected backend is actually running or not.
• MIDI Sample Dump Standard code received various improvements.
• A very basic Preferences dialog has been added.

The new version is about to land to Flathub, source code is available on GitHub.

The next version is likely to bring support for Elektron Machinedrum (originally released in 2007 and now discontinued), initial code has been available in a git branch for a while.

It’s entirely possible that David will release Overwitch 1.2 next. This is a JACK client for syncing Elektron devices (the original software by Elektron is called Overbridge). The new version will bring GTK4 port, SysEx support, and various improvements.

Libre Arts is a reader-supported publication. If you appreciate the work I do, donations are once again possible. You can subscribe on Patreon or make a one-time donation with BuyMeACoffee (see here for more info).

It’s 2024. You’ve probably got one or more pairs of wireless headphones around the house. [Barnso] prefers wired headphones with a long cable, but he also decries the fact that it often gets tangled in his chair. The solution? A pulley system to make everything easier.

The concept is simple. [Barnso]’s system uses three pulleys. The headphone cable goes to the PC, and then runs over the first pulley. It then runs under a second pulley which is free to move, but weighted so that it naturally wants to fall down under gravity. The cable then comes back up over a third pulley, and then runs to the headphones on [Barnso]’s head. Basically, it’s a super simple cable retraction mechanism that keeps the long headphone cable organized and in one place.

It’s nice to see a simple mechanism that makes life easier, particularly one that solves a problem so many of us have faced in real life. The construction shown in the video is almost (intentionally?) maddeningly hacky but it does the job. If you prefer to go wireless, though, we can show you how to do that too.

While the death of Apple’s Lightning Connector can’t come soon enough, swapping the ports on their products as “category-defining innovations” seems a bit of a stretch. [Ken Pillonel] has designed a set of streamlined, repairable, USB-C adapters for the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max that show Apple what innovation really means.

If you’ve followed [Pillonel]’s work in the past, you’ll know he’s as a big a fan of repairability as we are here, so this isn’t just a cheap knockoff dongle that’ll be in the trash as fast as your counterfeit wireless earbuds. In the video below, he walks us through his quest start-to-finish to design something compact that gives you all the joys of USB-C without the pain of buying a whole new set of headphones.

We like the iteration on the connector, showing that flexible circuits can do some amazing things, but are still subject to failure at extreme angles. Using a combination of 3D printing, a cool robot sandblasting machine, a pick-and-place, and some old fashioned hand soldering, [Pillonel] treats us to a polished final product that’s put together with actual screws and not adhesive. His designs are all open source, so you can DIY, or he sells finished copies in his shop if you want to give one to your less-than-techy relatives.

[Pillonel] may seem familiar as he’s the guy who added USB-C to the iPhone before Apple and redesigned the AirPods Pro case for repairability. Apple is getting better about repair in some of its devices, for sure, but unsurprisingly, hackers do it better.

The GStreamer Conference team is pleased to announce that the full conference schedule including talk abstracts and speaker biographies is now available for this year's lineup of talks and speakers, covering again an exciting range of topics!

The GStreamer Conference 2024 will take place on 7-8 October 2024 in Montréal, Canada, followed by a hackfest.

Details about the conference, hackfest and how to register can be found on the conference website.

This year's topics and speakers:

• GStreamer State of the Union
  Tim-Philipp Müller, Centricular
• HLS master playlist management made easy
  Sanchayan Maity, Asymptotic
• What's going on in my pipelines?
  Guillaume Desmottes
• GStreamer Nervous System for AI Brain : Introducing Python Analytics
  Aaron Boxer, Collabora
• New developments with the WebRTC crate
  Mathieu Duponchelle, Centricular
• Real-Time Network Audio with GStreamer on Windows
  Taruntej Kanakamalla, Asymptotic
• GStreamer & Rust: What has happened over the last 5 years
  Sebastian Dröge, Centricular
• It’s time for some clock rate matching
  Arun Raghavan, Asymptotic
• Embedded audio policies made easy with WirePlumber
  George Kiagiadakis, Collabora
• GStreamer Vulkan Video: 2024 edition
  Stéphane Cerveau, Igalia; Victor Manuel Jáquez Leal, Igalia
• librice: a sans-IO ICE networking library
  Matthew Waters, Centricular
• Open Standards for Media including ST 2110 and IPMX
  Dan Maloney, Matrox Video
• State of QUIC in GStreamer
  Sanchayan Maity, Asymptotic
• Gst.WASM Launched
  Jorge Zapata, Fluendo
• A New RTSP Source Element Written in Rust
  Nirbheek Chauhan, Centricular
• GStreamer NVIDIA memory in Jetson: looking for an efficient way to process video frames when handling raw CUDA kernels
  Diego Nieto Munoz, Fluendo
• From GL to your Encoder, Zero-Copy Made Possible
  Nicolas Dufresne, Collabora
• unixfd: Zero-copy multi-process pipeline
  Xavier Claessens, Netflix
• GStreamer Meets GPAC: Enhancing GStreamer's Capabilities through GPAC Integration
  Deniz Ugur, Motion Spell
• Update on Encrypted Media Extensions in GStreamer
  Jordan Yelloz, Collabora
• Which plugin should I use on Windows?
  Seungha Yang, Centricular
• GstWebRTC / WebKit state of the union
  Philippe Normand, Igalia; Carlos Bentzen, Igalia
• How we rewrote GStreamer in Elixir - 8 years later
  Mateusz Front, Software Mansion
• Video Editing with GStreamer: an update
  Thibault Saunier, Igalia
• GStreamer RTP sessions in Rust
  Matthew Waters, Centricular
• AI-assisted video encoding with AMD Alveo MA35D
  Jakub Adam, Collabora
• TV channel in the cloud with GStreamer
  Jurijs Satcs, Veset.tv
• Tea. Earl Grey. Hot. Automated Air-Ground Communication with GStreamer
  Aaron Boxer, Collabora
• Real time volumetric video streaming
  Sudarshan Bisht, Nokia
• Gst-Analytics: Advancements in Machine Learning and Analytics Pipeline
  Daniel Morin, Collabora
• Experiences during the development of point cloud encoding for real-time 3D video streaming using GStreamer
  Jozsef Szabo, Nokia
• HDR in GTK
  Matthias Clasen, RedHat
• macOS and iOS Support: Recent History and Near Future
  Nirbheek Chauhan, Centricular
• AMD's Video Processing Engine
  Harry Wentland, AMD
• Windows Graphics Stack Improvements – Direct3D12
  Seungha Yang, Centricular
• Raven AI Engine: a framework to develop AI computer vision GStreamer elements
  Andoni Morales Alastruey, Fluendo
• Learnings of building a scaleable webrtc media pipeline in rust using gstreamer
  Ramyak Mehra, Dyte
• LiveKit Support for GStreamer WebRTC Elements
  Jordan Yelloz, Collabora
• Perfect Harmony: How we synchronized Audio and Video from Multiple Sources using GStreamer for Seamless Real-Time Streaming
  Tokunbo Quaye, IPS; Michael Yackavage, IPS
• Developing and debugging on Windows, Fluendo experience.
  Rubén Gonzalez, Fluendo; Diego Nieto Munoz, Fluendo
• Playback support, 2024 update
  Edward Hervey, Centricular
• Streamlining Video Presentation and Recording with GStreamer-Based Processing
  Tomasz Mikołajczyk
• GStreamer and display clock synchronization
  Jochen Henneberg, Centricular
• Scenic and GStreamer on stage : collaborative theater adventures at the Society for Arts and Technology
  Olivier Gauthier, Society for Arts and Technology
• GStreamer and VR
  Jan Schmidt, Centricular

Lightning Talks:

• GQuark in GStreamer structures — What nonsense!
  Sebastian Dröge, Centricular
• Integration testing video with Test Containers by example
  Johannes Nel, Genius Sports
• Silhouette, the ML/PipeWire-powered virtual camera device app
  George Kiagiadakis, Collabora
• Last year's updates in Fluster
  Rubén Gonzalez, Fluendo
• A new GStreamer plugin to leverage the skia 2D drawing library
  Thibault Saunier, Igalia
• New RTP payloaders & depayloaders in Rust
  Sebastian Dröge, Centricular
• How easy it is to write a video sink plugin
  ramyak mehra, Dyte
• Closed Captions: Additional Things GStreamer Can Do
  Matthew Waters, Centricular
• Is an H264 encoder base class for hardware accelerated API possible?
  Victor Manuel Jáquez Leal, Igalia
• Effects of a GStreamer version upgrade on Yocto-based application
  Michael Yackavage, IPS
• GstVA updates
  Victor Manuel Jáquez Leal, Igalia
• GStreamer plugin updates on webOS as a platform
  Seungwook Cha, LG Electronics
• An update on GStreamer validate
  Thibault Saunier, Igalia
• Fluendo and Cerbero, testing challenges
  Jorge Zapata, Fluendo
• Yet another V4L2 update
  Nicolas Dufresne, Collabora
• A new Windows web browser source plugin - webview2
  Seungha Yang, Centricular
• Seeking Perfection: Challenges and Solution attempts in Implementing HLS Stream Seeking with RTP Synchronization Using GStreamer
  Tokunbo Quaye, IPS
• ...and more to come
• Submit your lightning talk now!

Many thanks to our amazing sponsors ‒ Platinum sponsors Collabora, Igalia, and Pexip, Gold sponsors Centricular, La Société des Arts Technologiques, Axis Communications, and Genius Sports, and Silver sponsors Laerdal Labs, asymptotic, Cablecast, and Fluendo, without whom the conference would not be possible in this form.

We hope to see you all in Montréal! Don't forget to register as soon as possible if you're planning on joining us, so we can order enough food and drinks!

The Ubuntu Studio team is pleased to announce the beta release of Ubuntu Studio 24.10, codenamed “Oracular Oriole”.

While this beta is reasonably free of any showstopper installer bugs, you will find some bugs within. This image is, however, mostly representative of what you will find when Ubuntu Studio 24.10 is released on October 10, 2024.

Special Notes

The Ubuntu Studio 24.10 image (ISO) exceeds 4 GB and cannot be downloaded to some file systems such as FAT32 and may not be readable when burned to a DVD. For this reason, we recommend downloading to a compatible file system. When creating a boot medium, we recommend creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO image or burning to a Dual-Layer DVD.

Images can be obtained from this link: https://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntustudio/releases/24.10/beta/

Full updated information, including Upgrade Instructions, are available in the Release Notes.

New Features This Release

• Plasma 6.1 is now the default desktop environment, an upgrade from Plasma 5.27. This may have some unknown bugs that we’re ironing out as we go along, along with theming.
• Ubuntu’s Generic Kernel is now capable of the same low latency processing as Ubuntu’s lowlatency kernel when certain boot parameters are used. Additionally, the lowlatency kernel is eventually going to be deprecated. With this in mind, we have switched to the generic kernel with the low latency boot parameters enabled by default. These boot parameters can be tweaked in Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuation.
• Minimal Install Option for new installations. This allows users to install Ubuntu Studio and customize what they need later with Ubuntu Studio Installer.
• Orchis is now our default theme, which replaces Materia, our default theme since 19.04. Materia has stopped development, so we decided to
• PipeWire continues to improve with every release and now includes FFADO support. Version 1.2.3
• Ubuntu Studio Installer‘s included Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration utility for fine-tuning the PipeWire setup now includes the ability to create or remove a dummy audio input device. Version 1.30
• The legacy PulseAudio/JACK has been deprecated and discontinued, is no longer supported, and is no longer an option to use. Going forward, PipeWire or JACK are the only options. PipeWire’s JACK integration can be disabled from Ubuntu Studio Audio Configuration to use JACK by itself with QJackCtl, or via other means.

Major Package Upgrades

• Ardour version 8.6.0
• Qtractor version 1.1
• OBS Studio version 30.2.3
• Audacity version 3.6.1
• digiKam version 8.4.0
• Kdenlive version 24.08.1
• Krita version 5.2.3

There are many other improvements, too numerous to list here. We encourage you to look around the freely-downloadable ISO image.

Known Issues

• Due to the transition to Plasma 6 and Qt6, there may be some theming inconsistencies, especially for those upgrading. To work around these issues, reapply the default theme using System Settings and select “Orchis-dark” from Kvantum Manager.
• Some graphics cards might find the transparency in the Orchis theme difficult to work with. For that reason, you can switch to “Orchis-dark-solid” in the Kvantum Manager. Feedback is welcome, and if the transparency becomes too burdensome, we can switch to the solid theme by default.
• The new minimal install mode will not load the desktop properly with the extra icons (gimp, krita, patchance, etc.) in the top bar, so those had to be removed by default. If you find them useful, you can add them by right-clicking in the menu and clicking “Pin to Task Manager”. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Official Ubuntu Studio release notes can be found at https://ubuntustudio.org/ubuntu-studio-24-10-release-notes/

Further known issues, mostly pertaining to the desktop environment, can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OracularOriole/ReleaseNotes/Kubuntu

Additionally, the main Ubuntu release notes contain more generic issues: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/oracular-oriole-release-notes/44878

How You Can Help

Please test using the test cases on https://iso.qa.ubuntu.com. All you need is a Launchpad account to get started.

Additionally, we need financial contributions. Our project lead, Erich Eickmeyer, is working long hours on this project and trying to generate a part-time income. Go here to see how you can contribute financially (options are also in the sidebar).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does Ubuntu Studio contain snaps?
A: Yes. Mozilla’s distribution agreement with Canonical changed, and Ubuntu was forced to no longer distribute Firefox in a native .deb package. We have found that, after numerous improvements, Firefox now performs just as well as the native .deb package did.

Thunderbird is also a snap this cycle in order for the maintainers to get security patches delivered faster.

Additionally, Freeshow is an Electron-based application. Electron-based applications cannot be packaged in the Ubuntu repositories in that they cannot be packaged in a traditional Debian source package. While such apps do have a build system to create a .deb binary package, it circumvents the source package build system in Launchpad, which is required when packaging for Ubuntu. However, Electron apps also have a facility for creating snaps, which can be uploaded and included. Therefore, for Freeshow to be included in Ubuntu Studio, it had to be packaged as a snap.

Also, to keep theming consistent, all included themes are snapped in addition to the included .deb versions so that snaps stay consistent with out themes.

We are working with Canonical to make sure that the quality of snaps goes up with each release, so we please ask that you give snaps a chance instead of writing them off completely.

Q: If I install this Beta release, will I have to reinstall when the final release comes out?
A: No. If you keep it updated, your installation will automatically become the final release. However, if Audacity returns to the Ubuntu repositories before final release, then you might end-up with a double-installation of Audacity. Removal instructions of one or the other will be made available in a future post.

Q: Will you make an ISO with {my favorite desktop environment}?
A: To do so would require creating an entirely new flavor of Ubuntu, which would require going through the Official Ubuntu Flavor application process. Since we’re completely volunteer-run, we don’t have the time or resources to do this. Instead, we recommend you download the official flavor for the desktop environment of your choice and use Ubuntu Studio Installer to get Ubuntu Studio – which does *not* convert that flavor to Ubuntu Studio but adds its benefits.

Q: What if I don’t want all these packages installed on my machine?
A: We now include a minimal install option. Install using the minimal install option, then use Ubuntu Studio Installer to install what you need for your very own content creation studio.

The GStreamer team is pleased to announce another bug fix release in the new stable 1.24 release series of your favourite cross-platform multimedia framework!

This release only contains bugfixes and it should be safe to update from 1.24.x.

Highlighted bugfixes:

• decodebin3: collection handling fixes
• encodebin: Fix pad removal (and smart rendering in gst-editing-services)
• glimagesink: Fix cannot resize viewport when video size changed in caps
• matroskamux, webmmux: fix firefox compatibility issue with Opus audio streams
• mpegtsmux: Wait for data on all pads before deciding on a best pad unless timing out
• splitmuxsink: Override LATENCY query to pretend to downstream that we're not live
• video: QoS event handling improvements
• voamrwbenc: fix list of bitrates
• vtenc: Restart encoding session when certain errors are detected
• wayland: Fix ABI break in WL context type name
• webrtcbin: Prevent crash when attempting to set answer on invalid SDP
• cerbero: ship vp8/vp9 software encoders again, which went missing in 1.24.7; ship transcode plugin
• Various bug fixes, memory leak fixes, and other stability and reliability improvements

See the GStreamer 1.24.8 release notes for more details.

Binaries for Android, iOS, Mac OS X and Windows will be available shortly.

There’s a million reasons why you would want to record audio coming from your browser, some — innocuous, some — nefarious. You can definitely record blank video with just the sound in OBS, but that’s not necessarily what you want.

So to record just the browser audio on Linux, you will need two applications and a fairly recent Linux distribution that has the new PipeWire audio system, preferably installed by default. I’m currently using Fedora 40, but it should be the same with the latest Ubuntu long-time support release.

The first application is Sound Recorder (soon to be renamed to Vocalis).

It’s literally one-click software to capture anything that goes into your mic that you selected in system settings. And the latter is the problem we need to rectify with the second application called Helvum.

Helvum exposes an important aspect of PipeWire — you can route audio and video streams between hardware and software however you like. PipeWire makes some connections automatically. For example you can see here that GNOME’s settings service is always listening to whatever audio capture device you selected.

You’ll notice that while Sound Recorder is running, it isn’t listed here in Helvum. That’s because the program only opens input ports when it starts to actually record. So let’s do just that. Click the Record button in the headerbar.

Now when you go back to Helvum, you’ll see Sound Recorder with two ports, one for the left channel and one for the right one.

The amount of ports depends on whether you are recording to mono or stereo. You need to make that choice in the hamburger menu before you start recording.

So let’s go to the browser and start playing something. Now you can see Google Chrome in Helvum with multiple ports. Because my USB audio interface of choice has 4 outputs, PipeWire automatically creates four matching output ports for Chrome and connects them. But we only need two of them. FL, which is front left, and FR, which is front right.

What we do now is click on the output_FL port and drag the wire to Sound Recorder’s input_FL port, then same same for the right channel’s port.

Now when you go back to Sound Recorder, you can see the waveform moving. This means you are recording whatever is playing in the browser.

By the way, if you have a mic attached to the external audio interface, depending on what you are recording, you might want pressing the phantom power button. This will temporarily cut off the signal from the mic.

Alternatively, you can lower the input gain either in settings or on the interface itself. Or, well, remove some of the wires in Helvum. But toggling phantom power is just so much easier.

If you aren’t a GNOME user or dislike GTK, Helvum has an alternative called qpwgraph.

Personally, I find it somewhat easier to use, because to disconnect something, you just click on the wire and then press Delete. You can even press and hold Ctrl to select multiple wires or do a rubberband selection and then press Delete. Helvum makes things like that unnecessarily difficult, but I can see how it could be preferable to some users.

You can also replace Sound Recorder with something like Audacity, especially if you plan to do some editing afterwards.

You now know how to record your browser audio on Linux. Please use it responsibly, and see you in the next one.

Anklang is a digital audio synthesis application for live creation and composition of music. It runs on Linux and is Free Software.

I’ve created a small YouTube Video for the latest 0.3.0 release. You can watch this if you are curious about how Anklang looks and feels like.

Besides some cleanups and bugfixes, the 0.3.0 release contains

• a new SFZ based sampler device called LiquidSFZ, which also supports Hydrogen drumkits
• a new Saturation device
• improvements to the BlepSynth device (our two oscillator subtractive synth)
• various UI improvements

The full list of changes and the release itself can be found on the GitHub Release Page.

After almost a decade of silence, linux audio live is back with more than ever. More skills, more experience, and above all, more determined. Their stage gear has seen a tremendous upgrade: a year-2017 laptop powers a two-in-two-out audio interface. The current line-up counts with an electric guitar and eight midi pads and knobs.

Behind the scenes we can still see SooperLooper running, that beast of a live looping sampler! Guitarix, one of the new members, takes care of all guitar amplification needs. All audio is eventually channeled into jack_mixer, displaying and controlling every single sound going outside.

That roster has proven stable with less than 10 milliseconds latency and things are much easier than in the old times. The first post on linux audio live, in 2008, was a how-to set up real-time kernels, another post on the same topic followed in 2009. Today, real-time kernels work out of the box on all major distributions.

It is exciting to see what lal is going to bring on. There probably will be some visual redesigns, likely one or two new partners, and maybe even new colors and typefaces. Who knows? The table is set and everybody is waiting.