Most of the software and hardware resources mentioned here apply to the Linux (Debian, etc.) and Solaris (X-Windows based) operating environments which run on machines from Sun as well as many other platforms, but a lot of the software has relevance to other Unix platforms as well.

You can jump straight down to the hardware or software sections if you know what you are looking for.

The following products have been added to this document in the last two years (yeah I know that's a long time - but I don't get a chance to update this page very often!):

• - October 2003 - Open-source PCI audio drivers for Solaris - These drivers support most common SoundBlaster cards from Creative Labs, plus some native audio chipsets which are handy if are running the x86 version of Solaris on a PC clone.

• - May 2003 - Ogg Vorbis - A brand new open-source audio compression format which is similar to MP3, etc. except that it is completely free, open, and unpatented!

• - March 2002 - OSS - Open Sound System device driver package from 4front Technologies. This isn't open-source, but a commercial product which is well worth supporting!

• - March 2002 - Xmms - Winamp-inspired audio player for Unix (which works best with the OSS driver, but supports other audio device drivers too).

• - February 2002 - SoundBlaster - Soundblaster PCI audio cards. Very standard in the PC world, but (until recently) poorly-supported in Solaris (but Linux has excellent support).
  

The following products have been removed from this document:

• - March 2002 - Xaudio - MP3 audio player for Unix. This project has been bought out by a digital media developer and there are no longer any non-commercial licenses available. A commercial license for the xaudio SDK now costs US$10000!

• - January 2002 - Coolaudio boards from Antares Microsystems. Antares has dropped all support for it's audio boards on both Sbus and PCI platforms.

Software Resources

SoX - convert and massage audio data:

One of the most universal audio format conversion utilities for Unix is 'SoX', which literally means Sound Exchange.

SoX is the swiss army knife of sound processing programs. It is a command line utility that can convert various formats of computer audio files in to other formats. It can also apply various effects to these sound files during the conversion. As an added bonus, SoX can play and record audio files on several unix style platforms.

It is maintained by Chris Bagwell, and was originally created by Lance Norskog.

Timidity - MIDI to WAV converter/player:

Timidity is a MIDI to WAV converter/player for Unix from Masanao Izumo in Japan.

It uses Gravis Ultrasound-compatible patch files to generate digital audio data from general MIDI files. The audio data can be played through any sound device or stored on disk. On a fast machine, music can be played in real time. TiMidity runs under Linux, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Solaris, and Win32, and porting to other systems with gcc should be easy.

MIDI on Unix! - MIDI libraries for Unix:

A small group of people, led by John Stone, are working on the development of a package of core MIDI system components and applications for Sun machines and other Unix platforms. You should check this out if you're interested in workstation-based MIDI music solutions.

UMP - Unix MIDI Plug-in (for Netscape):

Larry Hoff has created UMP, which is a Unix plug-in for Netscape's popular Communicator/Navigator web client that uses Timidity to play MIDI files on many popular Unix platforms.

mpg123 - MPEG-1 Layer 1,2 and 3 Audio Decoder/Player:

mpg123 is Michael Hipp's freeware real-time MPEG audio decoder/player for layer 1, 2 and 3 encoded audio data. It runs under all popular flavours of Unix.

BladeEnc - MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio Data Stream Encoder:

BladeEnc is a high-quality freeware MPEG-1 3 audio data stream encoder created and maintained by Tord Jansson. Like mpg123, it runs under all popular flavours of Unix.

It is based on the same ISO compression routines as mpegEnc (a commercial MP3 encoder who's parent company likes to take a very heavy-handed approach to freeware MP3 encoder projects like BladeEnc), so you can expect roughly the same, or better, quality . The main difference is the appearance and speed. BladeEnc doesn't have a nice, user-friendly interface like mpegEnc, but it is more than three times faster, and it works with several popular front-end graphical user interfaces.

Ogg Vorbis - A Free, Open, and Unpatented audio compression format:

Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It's roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music such as MP3, etc. but it's different from those other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.

It is designed to be a complete replacement for all other propriety, patented audio formats, which for those of us who like Unix, is a Good Thing indeed! Especially with Frauhoffer trying to claim ownership of the compression algorithm used in MP3 audio encoding...

Ogg Vorbis is a project that's associated with Xiph.org - a non-profit corporation dedicated to protecting the foundations of Internet multimedia from control by private interests. A very worthwhile cause, IMHO!

cdrecord - create CD-R (and CD-RW) burns:

Not strictly a piece of audio-related software, but if you are going to plan on burning your own CD's under Unix, then cdrecord is one piece of software you should give some serious consideration to.

Cdrecord runs without problems on a loaded Solaris system. The cdrecord distribution contains a special SCSI user level transport library. The SCSI library is suitable to talk to any SCSI device without having a special driver for it.

Cdrecord may be easily ported to any system that has a SCSI device driver similar to the scg driver. Systems with compatible SCSI device drivers include Linux, xxxBSD, Irix and HP-UX. On SunOS/Solaris you need the SCSI general driver 'scg' in order to run cdrecord, and it is also nice to have the 'fbk' driver to mount files that contain images of file systems. Fbk means File simulates Block device.

Yiff - Sound Server for Linux:

YIFF is a Y Sound Systems compliant sound server from Wolfpack Development (who are the same people that created the XShipWars multi-player space gaming system) which allows multiple client access to the recorder (sound card) by use of a network transparent library (libY2).

In a nutshell, YIFF is basically designed after the X Window System. With the exception that it plays sound rather than provide graphical i/o, it is virtually identical in usage and implmentation.

audiofile - the Silicon Graphics AudioFile Library:

Michael Pruett's Silicon Graphics Audio File Library provides a uniform and elegant API for accessing a variety of audio file formats, such as AIFF/AIFF-C, WAVE, and NeXT/Sun .snd/.au. Supported compression formats are currently G.711 mu-law and A-law.

It's distributed under the GNU Library General Public License. Michael started the Linux port in 1998, but as of July, 2000, he's now working for SGI and has merged in significant amounts of code from the original IRIX version (written by revered old-timers such as Doug Scott, Chris Pirazzi, and Scott Porter).

Tk3play - a Tcl/Tk-based MP3 Player for Linux:

Tk3play is a Tcl/Tk-based MPEG audio player for Linux that's been created by Brian Foutz. MPEG layer 3 is an awesome way to store high quality audio. You can get near CD quality at 12x compression.

Tk3play is a front end to the mpg123 command-line decoder written by Michael Hipp. It controls a mpg123 | bwavplay pipeline to play mpeg audio. Currently the audio support provided in mpg123 is not used, but Brian plans to use it in the future. This should make tk3play portable to other unixes.

Javalayer - A Java-based MP3 Player:

If you're interested in a Java-based solution for MP3 playback, check out the official web page of the JavaLayer project (100% Java MP3 decoder/player). This is not a commercial project. JavaLayer is an open source project, and anyone can add his/her contribution.

Mp3Daze - Source for Unix MP3 Players:

A good source of leads to Unix MP3 players can be found at Mp3Daze.com. The index of players is fairly extensive, and each player has a brief description, screenshot (if available) and a star rating.

OSS - Device-Independent Audio Driver for Unix:

The Open Sound System (aka OSS) from 4front Technologies is an excellent digital audio device driver package for Unix which supports many types of PCI audio cards on many different hardware platforms (including Sun Ultrasparc systems running Solaris).

Despite being a commercial product, it is well worth the cost of purchasing a license (the cost is reasonable). The full software package is available for limited-time evaluation - a licence must be purchased in order to remove the time limit. Free updates are provided to licence-holders as new drivers are released.

Xmms - Winamp-Inspired Audio Player for Unix:

Combined with something like a SoundBlaster or similar PCI audio card, and the OSS device driver package, Xmms makes one of the best X-Windows-based audio player applications I have come across.

It is modelled off Winamp and borrows many features from that application, but adds additional features specific to the Unix operating environment.

Solaris PCI Audio Drivers - Audio Device Drivers for Solaris/x86 and Solaris/Sparc:

Sun's support of 3rd-party audio hardware has always been less than ideal, so these generic Solaris PCI audio drivers fill the gap.

The drivers support the most common types of SoundBlaster cards from Creative Labs, and for those of you running Solaris on x86-based systems, the drivers support some of the more common audio chipsets often used in PC's.

More coming soon...

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Hardware Resources

SoundBlaster - Sound Cards for PCI-based workstations:

The SoundBlaster PCI audio boards are supported by the OSS drivers for most common Unix platforms, and also by generic open-source Solaris PCI audio drivers. These cards are industry-standard products for audio on Wintendo systems, so it's natural they should be well-supported by OSS (being a commercial product), and also by generic open-source device drivers.

More coming soon...

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