NOTICE THAT THIS IS FROM 1995!
(AND JUST HERE FOR NOSTALGIC REASONS ;-)
VERSION 0.1 AVAILABLE
(FOR TESTING, FLAMES, GETTING DEPRESSED ;-)
listen to a little demo song I recorded with XhdREC;
for those who are interessted in the used equipment (all played by myself)
BassCulture Bass, 5 str, custom modell that was built for me
cheap Strat Copy
Zoom 9030 multieffect (git/bass)
Trace Elliot Quad Chorus (git)
Alesis QuadraVerb (drums)
selfmade tube preamp (git)
Boss Dr 550 Mk II (with hardware changes made by me)
Yamaha 8 channel MiniDisc Recorder
(only used for mixing the in and output of the soundcard)
and (of course) XhdREC, on PII400/64MB/some Creative (tm) cards
lot of alcohol ;-)
What's this thing?
XhdREC is a X-based application, designed for musicians who like to use their
linux box as a recording and/or mixing system. I'm a musician too and therefore
I'm interessted in features I didn't find in any other harddisk-recording system.
In addition, the only reason why I'm using Windoze 9x too is digital-recording
(although I own a 4-track analog and a 8-track digital recorder). It would be very
nice if I could save that waste of diskspace for Linux (mmhh, maybe BeOS too).
It's very difficult to get the same (good) results on a Linux-machine, but with
some (not only dirty) tricks, I found out a good way to get the max out of my Linux-box.
The most harddisk recorders available for linux didn't run (or crashed) on my system,
so I decided to write another one...
How does it work (and how good)?
Well, what do you think? The main operation mode is, of course: full-duplex.
On my system (PII/400, various Creative Labs (tm) cards, 64MB, normal IDE-drives) I'm
able to play 6 tracks (44.1kHz, 16Bit, stereo) on the fly (not bad, isn't it ?).
I included a feature called »mixfile«. If you enable this option, a mixdown file is
created before you start recording. With this option enabled, you're able to playback
as many tracks as you like (okay, it takes a few seconds to create it, but you can use this
time to grab your guitar, bass or whatever ;-). Realtime effects or volume adjustment
is only planned during pure playback. If you're playing an instrument you don't have
time to adjust volumes during recording ;-)
Another Option is to record direct to memory (or play from it), but this feature requires
a lot of memory!
How far's developement?
Anytime you start the program, you have to do the following steps:
enter the audio-settings menu
enter a buffer size (FRAGSIZE) and the number of buffers (FRAGMENTS) for
every available mode (PLAY, REC, FULL-DUPLEX);
after that you'll have to press the TEST buttons, which will determine the
nearest available settings available with your soundcard.
If you don't want to enter a value by yourself (or you don't know what values
you should enter), press the GET DEFAULT buttons.
(But don't forget to press TEST afterwards!)
(Well, why so compicated ? -> simple! I'm tired of applications the crash due
to wrong buffer settings, etc...; This will (of course) be removed in further versions)
full duplex mode works, but has not been optimized (or been tested throughout) yet
the VU-meter doesn't work
some pixmaps missing in the track window (the playback/record button ist the lowest left button!!!)
some drivers report FRAGMENTS=0, while FRAGSTOTAL gives the right value
-> these cards WON'T WORK! <- (happened with a AD1815)
there's no playback mixer yet
exporting tracks does not work
importing tracks is limited to XhdREC's tracks (.xhd)
you can convert tracks with sox:
8 Bit:
sox INPUT.XXX -b -u -r SAMPLERATE -c CHANNELS OUTPUT.RAW
16 Bit:
sox INPUT.XXX -s -r SAMPLERATE -c CHANNELS OUTPUT.RAW
after that you have to rename the output's file extension to .XHD (lower letters)
no effects available (only not-realtime effects planned)
How does it look like?
Take a look at this screenshot .
Where can I get it and what else do I need?
Right at the moment only Linux-Intel based systems are supported (due to little-endian format)
IT WILL NOT WORK ON BIG-ENDIAN MACHINES (HP-UX, etc...)
You'll need the commercial version of OSS to use the full-duplex feature. Otherwise (free-version)
you can't listen previously recorded tracks while recording. If you own a Soundblaster Live! (Value)
you're on the lucky side: Creative's Beta drivers support full-duplex (very restricted right now!) ;-)
Another way is the use of 2 soundcards, but this is not recommended because you can't sync the
two devices (but, it's possible). But this is not yet supported by XhdREC.
Download the source (including a binary linked against glibc 2.0) here .
At last, you'll need the xforms library (version 0.88.1 or newer), get it here.
Feel free to send your comments or flames, but please, include the keyword 'xhdrec' in the subject.