Presentation I did during a University of California Symposium on Open Source for the Arts in UCLA, February 2007. What is Free Software and what does it have to do with Sound and Music.

1. Free Software
for
Free Sound
UCDARNET, Open Symposium
February, 2007
Xavier Amatriain (CREATE, UCSB, CLAM)

2. Index
Free Software and Open Source
Why?
Arts and Free Software
Free Software and Linux for Audio and Music
Digital Luthiers and Open Frameworks
CLAM
Other Music/Audio Open Source Frameworks
Conclusions

3. Free Software and
Open Source

4. What is Free Software?
Freedom 1: unlimited use for any purpose
Freedom 2: freedom to study and adapt to your
own needs
Freedom 3: freedom to copy
Freedom 4: freedom to redistribute
Free (Libre) as in Freedom not as in Beer
Freedom is kept through copyright (because
copyright allows licensing)

5. Open Source
Open Source (OSI) is an initiative that starts in
1998 mainly because of personal differences
between the founder of the FSF and OSI.
It abandons idealistic thinking related to Free
Software and only promotes practical
advantages related to being able to read the
code of a piece of software.

6. Names and Dates
Richard Stallman
Starts the GNU Project (1983)
Defines Free Software (1985)
Introduces the GPL (1985)
Linus Torvald
Develops the Linux kernel (1991)
Eric Raymond
Founder of the Open Source Initiative (1998)

7. Why?

8. Technical/Practical advantages of
FLOSS
Code is revised by many developers
Security (kerchoff's principle)
Estability
Collaborative effort of large communities
Price
Although interesting, there are even more important
reasons...

9. FLOSS and Economy
Proprietary software by definition favors monopolies
that then extend to hardware
FLOSS does not kill software industry
FLOSS can be comercial
It promotes the culture of paying for services, not
arbitrarily priced licences
Large companies like IBM or Novell are already basing
part of their business around FLOSS

10. Free Software and the University
Education should be worried about learning and
learning is promoted through a free and open access to
information (e.g. libraries)
Technology is more than a tool: it is a learning
environment in itself
At the university we must present with several
perspectives and favor criticism and dialog
University teaches how to learn not how to use a
particular tool
Coding is not only for programmers but for scientists,
artists, children...

11. Free Software and Research
Scientific method depends in many senses on the free
exchange of knowledge and ideas
Nowadays implementation is actually part of the result
Software is and should be considered in many cases like
some other sort of publication
With Free Software we:
Facilitate for others to compare results
We preserve knowledge

12. Social and Ethical aspects
Access to software determines people's ability to:
Communicate
Educate
Work
Software should be considered as cultural heritage
Software will condition more and more the vision of the
world new generations have
Who should control these aspects of society? A single
company? Two companies?

13. Arts and Free Software

14. The Piece of Art in the Digital Era
Piece of Art = Content + Techniques
In order to fully understand a piece of art we need to
understand the techniques
Digital Piece of Art = Content + Techniques + System
In order to fully undertand a digital piece of art we also need to
understand the system and be able to access it to the lowest
level (code!)

15. Free Expression
There is no Free Expression without control of the
Tools you use (agnula.org)
Would Mozart have composed a line of music for an
instrument he wasn't exactly sure what was doing internally or
producing its sound?
Would Michelangelo have painted the Sixtine Chapel using a
strange device that might have been recording his personal
conversations while painting
An artist needs to be in full control of the tools (be able
to modify, adapt, copy, redistribute...)
This can be done personally or through trusted technical staff

16. Digital Art Heritage
In order to preserve a digital piece of art we need to
preserve the system
Systems that are closed and proprietary in general
cannot be preserved
There are already key compositions in Computer Music
that have already been lost because the original (closed)
system cannot be reproduced
Digital Art Preservation = FLOSS

17. Sound/Music vs. Video/Image
Due to amazing pressure by Record Industry (through
RIAA, SGAE...) implementing a website such as
Flicker or UTube in the sound/music world is extremely
difficult.
Artists are sometimes not even allowed to post their own
content in their websites
See http://freesound.iua.upf.edu or
http://www.ccmixter.org/

18. Free Software and Linux for
Audio and Music

19. Linux and Audio
There are plenty of applications, even distributions for
Linux audio (visit linux­sound.org)
Kguitar
Amarok
... etc.

20. Linux and Audio
Linux has unique and outstanding features for
professional audio and music
Low latency LAC 2007 ­ Berlin
Stability
Standard protocols
Very active community
...

21. Free Software and Audio
So what about other platforms?
Most of the previous apps are compatible with
Windows/OSX
But if you are not going to use proprietary software...
what is the point of not using Linux?

22. Open Frameworks

23. Digital Luthiers
The ultimate degree of freedom is to be able to create
your own tools (personally or through a digital luthier)
Many digital pieces of art rely on unique systems and software
that have been tailored for the ocasión
Sometimes it is not enough with having an open
application ­> you need an open framework!

24. Frameworks
Framework: “a set of classes that embodies an abstract
design for solutions to a family of problems”
(Johnson&Foote, 88)
Framework = model + design patterns + code
A framework is a set of prefabricated building blocks
that can be extended or costumized for specific
applications
Both the visual and audio domain have a rich history of
application frameworks

25. CLAM

26. Highlights
Won the 2006 ACM Best Multimedia Open Source
Software award.
Constantly compiled and tested on Linux, OSX and
Windows
> 250 C++ classes, 50K loc
Although it currently specializes in audio and music,
it presents a metamodel that has proven valid for
general multimedia.

27. Applications

28. CLAM Components

29. Infrastructure. CLAM Network model
The CLAM
network is a
graphical model of
computation
based on
Dataflow Process
Networks
Scheduling can
be performed both
statically and
dynamically,
depending on the
particular
application.

30. Infrastructure. Processing

31. External Open Source libraries
FFTW (FFT) Libsndfile, Ogg­Vorbis,
Xercesc & libxml (XML libmad (mp3), id3lib, for
using DOM API) handling audio files.
FLTK and QT GUI oscpack
toolkits libjack
RtAudio, PortAudio or CppUnit (testing
DirectX (for Windows framework, only used for
audio) development)
pthreads (multithreading
on Windows)

32. Demo

33. Demo: Visual Prototyping
XML XML

34. Other Free Frameworks

35. At UC
UCSB
CSL: similar to CLAM but less ambitious and easier to master
UCB
OSW
UCSD
Pd (really, why are people still using Max/MSP?)

36. Elsewhere
Aura (Dannenberg, Carnegie Mellon Univ.)
STK (Cook/Scavone, Stanford Univ.)
SndObj (Lazzarini, National Univ. of Ireland)
Marsyas (Tzanetakis, Univ. of Victoria)
Jsyn (Phil Burk, CA)

37. Conclusions

38. Conclusions
Free Software = Open Source + Freedom
Freedom of Expression => Free Software
The future of digital arts is at stake
If you are convinced to use FLOSS there is no reason
not to use Linux
If developing your own app. try to first see if you can
build it out of an existing open framework.

39. Links
CLAM
http://www.clam.iua.upf.edu
Audio Libraries
Distributions and Open ID3LIB
http://id3lib.sourceforge.net
Source Audio Repositories Lame
http://lame.sourceforge.net
Linux Sound LIBSNDFILE
http://linux­sound.org http://www.mega­nerd.com/libsndfile
AGNULA LIBVORBIS
http://www.agnula.org http://xiph.org/vorbis
Planet CCRMA MAD
http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software http://www.underbit.com/products/ma d
mpeg123
http://www.mpg123.de
Oscpack
CLAM­related environments http://www.audiomulch.com/~rossb/code/oscpack
PORTAUDIO
CSL http://www.portaudio.com
http://www.create.ucsb.edu/CSL PORTMIDI
Jsyn http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/portmusic
http://www.softsynth.com/jsyn/ RTAudio
Marsyas http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtaudio
http://opihi.cs.uvic.ca/marsyas
OSW
http://osw.sourceforge.net
Pd
http://puredata.info
SndObj
http://music.nuim.ie/musictec/SndObj
STK