List of Linux audio software

The following is an incomplete list of Linux audio software.

Audio players

GStreamer-based

• Banshee is a free audio player for Linux which uses the GStreamer multimedia platforms to play, encode, and decode Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and other formats. Banshee supports playing and importing audio CDs and playing and synchronizing music with iPods. Audioscrobbler API support.
• Beep Media Player (BMP) is a free audio player based on XMMS multimedia player (mentioned below). It looks like Winamp and also supports its skins, including XMMS’s. BMP supports most of the audio formats that XMMS does; the main difference is between plug-ins that these players use. BMP was discontinued in favor of BMPx, which shares little of BMP's codebase.
• Clementine is a cross-platform, open-source, Qt based audio player, written in C++. It can play Internet radio streams; managing some media devices, playlists; supports visualizations, Audioscrobbler API. It was made as a spin-off of Amarok 1.4 and is a rougher version of said program.
• Exaile is a free software audio player for Unix-like operating systems that aims to be functionally similar to KDE’s Amarok. Unlike Amarok, Exaile is a Python program and uses the GTK+ toolkit.
• Guayadeque Music Player is a free and open-source audio player written in C++ using the wxWidgets toolkit.
• Muine is an audio player for the GNOME desktop environment. Muine is written in C# using Mono and Gtk#. The default backend is GStreamer framework but Muine can also use xine libraries.
• Quod Libet is a GTK+ based audio player, written in Python, using GStreamer or Xine as back ends. Its distinguishing features are a rigorous approach to tagging (making it especially popular with classical music fans) and a flexible approach to music library management. It supports regular expression and Boolean algebra-based searches, and is stated to perform efficiently with music libraries of tens of thousands of tracks.
• Rhythmbox is an audio player inspired by Apple iTunes.
• Songbird is a cross-platform, open-source media player and web browser. It is built using code from the Firefox web browser. The graphical user interface (GUI) is very similar to Apple iTunes, and it can sync with Apple iPods. Like Firefox, Songbird is extensible via downloadable add-ons. It's able to display lyrics retrieved from the net, and also the ones embedded through metadata (ID3v2 tag) after adding the LyricMaster plug-in. Linux official support for Songbird was discontinued in April, 2010. But in December, 2011 a group of programmers forked it openly as Nightingale.

Music Player Daemon based

• Gnome Music Player Client (GMPC) is a front end for Music Player Daemon (MPD).
• Cantata is a Qt-based front-end for Music Player Daemon.
• Ario is a light GTK2 client to MPD

Other

• Amarok is a free music player for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems using KDE. It uses Phonon to play audio.
• aTunes is a free, cross-platform audio player for operating systems supporting the programming language Java (Unix-like: Linux, BSD, Macintosh), and Windows. aTunes can also play Internet radio streams and automatically display associated artist information, song videos, and song lyrics.
• Audacious is a free media player for Linux or Linux-based systems. It can be expanded via plug-ins, including support for all popular codecs. On most systems a useful set of plug-ins is installed by default, supporting MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files.^[1] Audacious' classic interface looks and feels very similar to Winamp. It is compatible with LADSPA plug-ins.
• cmus is a small and fast text-mode music player for Linux and many other Unix-like operating systems.
• JuK is a free software audio player for KDE, the default player since KDE 3.2. JuK supports collections of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC audio files.
• mpg123 is a real time MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 audio player/decoder for layers 1, 2 and 3 (MPEG 1.0 layer 3 aka MP3 most commonly tested). Among others working with Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, SunOS4.1.3, Solaris 2.5, HPUX 9.x, SGI Irix and Cygwin or plain Windows. It is free software licensed under LGPL 2.1
• Music on Console (MOC) is an ncurses-based console audio player. It is designed to be powerful and easy to use, and its command structure and window layouts are similar to the Midnight Commander console file manager. It is very configurable, with Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), Open Sound System (OSS) or JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK) outputs, customizable color schemes, interface layouts, key bindings, and tag parsing.
• Sound eXchange (SoX) is a cross-platform command-line audio editor.
• X MultiMedia System (XMMS) is a GTK1-based multimedia player which works on many platforms, but has some features which only work under Linux. XMMS can play media files such as .ogg, MP3, MOD’s, WAV and others with the use of input plug-ins. It is a free software audio player similar to Winamp that runs on many Unix-like operating systems. However, development of XMMS has been deprecated in favor of XMMS2, a new audio player built from scratch on the more modern GTK2 libraries. See also Audacious on this page as a successor to the historic XMMS.
• Tomahawk is a cross-platform music player built with social media and multi-source music streaming in mind. It features support for services like Spotify, Grooveshark, Dilandau, SoundCloud, 4shared, Jamendo, Last.fm, Ampache, Owncloud, Ex.fm and Subsonic.

Distributions and add-ons

• dyne:bolic
• Musix GNU+Linux
• Planet CCRMA, a major add-on for Red Hat Linux with lots of excellent tools and system mods
• puredyne (Ubuntu based)
• Ubuntu Studio, an Ubuntu-based distribution geared toward multimedia
• AVLinux (Debian-based)

Graphical programming

• Pure Data (Pd), graphical programming language.
• VSX Ultra (VSXu) does not produce or filter sound, but can graphically display audio data in real time.

Audio programming languages (text-based)

• ChucK, an audio programming language for realtime synthesis, composition, and performance.
• Csound, composition, synthesis and processing.
• Nyquist, Lisp-based language for sound generation and analysis. Audacity supports plug-ins written in Nyquist.
• SuperCollider, a language like Smalltalk for real-time audio synthesis.

DJ tools

• Mixxx
• xwax

Drum machines

• Giada, a loop/drum machine, sequencer, live sampler and effect host
• Hydrogen, drum machine and sequencer

Recording, editing and mastering

Digital audio workstations (DAWs)

• Ardour, a multi-track audio recorder. GPLv2+
• LMMS, music composer. GPL
• Qtractor, a full featured multitrack digital audio workstation (DAW), with audio and MIDI sequencer. GPL
• Rosegarden, MIDI sequencer. BSD
• Tracktion, proprietary and commercial digital audio workstation.
• Traverso DAW, a multi-track audio recorder. GPL

Score manipulation

• Denemo, score editor
• LilyPond, score typesetter.
• NoteEdit, score writer.
• MuseScore, score writer.

Audio editors and recorders

• Audacity, audio editor.
• Ecasound, audio recorder.
• Jokosher, audio editor.
• Sound eXchange (SoX).
• Sweep, audio editor.

Sequencers

• MusE, MIDI-audio sequencer.
• Renoise, commercial modern tracker-style sequencer.
• Rosegarden, a music composition and editing environment based on a MIDI sequencer.^[2]
• Seq24, a loop based midi sequencer.

Other

• Baudline, signal analyzer.
• Buzztrax, music composer.
• Gnome Wave Cleaner, denoise, dehiss and amplify.
• Impro-Visor, edit and playback jazz solos over chord changes and rhythm.
• LinuxSampler, sampler.
• Mp3gain, adjust MP3 playback volume without re-encoding.
• Mp3splt, splits MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files without re-encoding.

Sound servers

• aRts, the KDE 3 soundserver.
• Phonon, the multimedia framework provided by Qt 4 and used in KDE 4.
• Enlightened Sound Daemon (EsounD, ESD).
• JACK Audio Connection Kit (JACK), real-time sound server.
• Network Audio System (NAS).
• Network-Integrated Multimedia Middleware (NMM).
• PulseAudio, a sound server, drop-in replacement for EsounD.

Patch bays

• Qjackctl, JACK control panel and patch bay

Synthesizers

• Amsynth
• DIN Is Noise (din), software synthesiser, musical instrument, uses computer mouse as bow.
• FluidSynth, with the interface QSynth.
• Gnaural, binaural beat and pink noise synthesizer.
• LMMS, tracker, sequencer, synthesizer.
• PySynth, a simple software synthesizer in Python.
• TiMidity, Play-convert MIDI files as-to PCM
• Yoshimi, software synthesizer.
• ZynAddSubFX, software synthesizer.

Effects processing

• FreqTweak, real-time audio processing with spectral displays.
• Linux Audio Developers Simple Plug-in API (LADSPA).
• Disposable Soft Synth Interface (DSSI), a virtual instrument (software synthesizer) plug-in architecture.
• Sound eXchange (SoX), the audio Swiss Army knife.
• LV2, is the new audio Linux standard for plug-ins.

Format transcoding

• OggConvert
• Sound eXchange (SoX)

Radio broadcasting

• Airtime, an automation system for radio stations.
• Campcaster (discontinued), an automation system for radio stations.
• Icecast, free server software for streaming multimedia.
• OpenBroadcaster, Media Asset Management.

Radio listening

• Streamtuner, browse and listen to hundreds of streamed radio stations.

Tablature software

• TuxGuitar, a tabulature editor, score writer and player oriented for guitarists.

See also

• Comparison of free software for audio
• List of music software

References

1. "Audacious home page".
2. Rosegarden is a music composition and editing environment based around a MIDI sequencer that features a rich understanding of music notation and includes basic support for digital audio.

External links

• Linux Audio and Sound – A8pplication^[1] and Software Index at linuxaudio.org
• Linux Musicians - Making music on Linux linuxmusician.eu.pn
• Consortium of free Linux audio software makers