Audacity
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds, which has been known to work on the OLPC using build 650 and Joyride-2131.
Possible uses
A simplified (simpler interface, slimmed down, stabilized) Audacity activity would make an excellent tool for...
- citizen journalism... As a radio journalist, all you would need is an OLPC, with Audacity and an FTP client installed (or integrated), to create radio packages.
- song creation... almost all commercial songs use some sort of multi-track editor for creation -- so many songs have been created using Audacity!
- sound effect creation ("Foley artistry")... recording and performing various filters on short sounds with Audacity are how many sound effects for some XO games (Kuku, Spray Play, Bounce) were made at the Boston Game Jam 2007)
Installation
To install Audacity, go to the Terminal activity, and type
sudo yum install audacity
- Answer y to any installation questions. The installation typically requires about 6 to 7 megabytes of disk space.
- Type
audacity
to launch Audacity. You will be asked to choose a language, then the application will run.
This can be wrapped into a Sugar activity by following the Pippy shell command example to simply run "audacity", then "Keep"ing the Pippy instance "As an activity".
if someone could post how to install audacity through the usb in the xo laptop, it would be greatly appreciated. I will need to install audacity in xo laptops that do not have internet connection in a rural community.
Resource Usage
For recording, software playthrough is turned on. Bold indicates CPU usage percentage.
- Recording, fist track, project rate 16000 hz:
2272 olpc 20 0 63008 25m 13m S 47.4 11.1 0:40.10 audacity
- Recording, first track, project rate 48000 hz:
2272 olpc 20 0 65732 28m 13m S 58.7 12.3 1:51.16 audacity
- Idle after recording one track:
2272 olpc 20 0 62608 25m 13m R 5.3 11.0 1:38.67 audacity
- Playback, one track, project rate 48000 hz, Bollinger band points each second :
2272 olpc 20 0 67408 29m 13m R 59.2 12.8 3:23.92 audacity
Known bugs
- "Change pitch" crashes Audacity (Audacity 0:1.3.2-21.fc9 using latest Joyride)
Expression 'SetApproximateSampleRate( pcm, hwParams, sr )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_ linux_alsa.c', line: 1114 Expression 'PaAlsaStreamComponent_InitialConfigure( &self->capture, inParams, self->primeB uffers, hwParamsCapture, &realSr )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 16 65 Expression 'PaAlsaStream_Configure( stream, inputParameters, outputParameters, sampleRate, framesPerBuffer, &inputLatency, &outputLatency, &hostBufferSizeMode )' failed in 'src/hos tapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1789 Illegal instruction
- Console warnings on launch (Audacity 0:1.3.2-21.fc9 using latest Joyride)
Expression 'SetApproximateSampleRate( pcm, hwParams, sr )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_ linux_alsa.c', line: 1114 Expression 'PaAlsaStreamComponent_InitialConfigure( &self->capture, inParams, self->primeB uffers, hwParamsCapture, &realSr )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 16 65 Expression 'PaAlsaStream_Configure( stream, inputParameters, outputParameters, sampleRate, framesPerBuffer, &inputLatency, &outputLatency, &hostBufferSizeMode )' failed in 'src/hos tapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1789
yum install audacity lame madlib
Then run audacity from Terminal window. Project can then be exported as mp3. Tested on XO-1 and replayed on other computer.
External Links
- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Official Audacity website.
- http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=801.0 Thread on the olpcnews forum about installing Audacity on the XO.