Linux Audio Update: The Fall Fashions

“This week’s entry looks at a unique new audio editor, some
important updates, and a very cool programming environment for
graphics (and much more). As always, some tasty treats are cooking
in the Linux audio kitchen. Ceres

“By default most soundfile editors display audio in the
amplitude domain. For example, when you open a WAV or MP3 in
Audacity you see a display of the sound’s waveform, a
representation of the sound as a series of amplitude values plotted
over time (Figure 1). For most of your work you’ll apply edits and
effects processing to all or parts of the sound in that display.
However, there is another type of audio representation in which the
sound’s frequencies are plotted over time in what is known as a
spectral display (Figure 2). Most soundfile editors provide such a
display, but few offer direct editing of its contents. Spectral
editors are a rare but useful kind of audio editor, and Linux users
are fortunate to have Kjetil Matheussen’s version of the great
Ceres, a spectral editor originally designed by Professor Oyvind
Hammer for use in his work at NoTAM.

“Ceres was first designed for SGI machines, with dependencies
that included the Motif graphics library, libaudiofile, and other
components favored by SGI hardware and software. Fortunately the
program has proven amenable to porting. As a matter of fact, Ceres
was one of the first programs I tried to port back in the late
1990s. Since then various other (i.e. real) programmers have
expanded its feature set and improved its overall usability.”

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