Rewire & Audacity

[alanomaly]

So, Audacity doesn't work with Rewire because Rewire is proprietary and you can't use proprietary code in open source software. As I understand it (I could be wrong), the proprietors (Propellerhead) wouldn't charge for their code to be used, they'd just insist that the terms of the open source licence didn't apply to their bit of code, and open source licenses have to apply to everything.

Maybe I'm being naive and missing something but isn't this very similar in practice (if not in detail) to the problem with MP3s that LAME solves? Would it not be possible to develop something like a closed-code Rewire plugin that isn't a part of Audacity and is kept on a seperate server etc etc but which, on installation, does something to enable Audacity to use (for example) a closed-code proprietary library that enables it to work with Rewire?

Has anyone made anything like this?

I know that I'm probably underestimating the engineering challenge that would be. It's just a thought.

[kozikowski]

I believe you would have to write code that didn't step on the old code and only produced a similar result.

I own a program with a Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft MP3 license and I've never been able to get that and lame to produce the same show from the same sound file. Neither one necessarily better, but different.

Koz

[steve]

Would it not be possible to develop something like a closed-code Rewire plugin that isn't a part of Audacity and is kept on a seperate server etc etc but which, on installation, does something to enable Audacity to use (for example) a closed-code proprietary library that enables it to work with Rewire?

Has anyone made anything like this?

On Linux there is something called "JACK" which allows multiple audio applications to be wired together in any way that the user likes. JACK is still in beta development and unfortunately not all audio programs work well with JACK, and that includes Audacity. When using compatible software (of which there is a lot on Linux), it is fantastic, providing very high performance and versatility.

There is also a Windows version of JACK that is being developed, but it is at very early stages so is not yet usable.

JACK is open source software, and is demonstrating a huge amount of promise for the future, but I think that for Windows users there's going to be a long wait.