LMMS (formerly Linux MultiMedia Studio) is a

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for Sound recording and reproduction, recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software pro ...

application program Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

. It allows music to be produced by arranging samples, synthesizing sounds, playing on a

MIDI keyboard A MIDI keyboard or controller keyboard is typically a piano-style electronic musical keyboard, often with other buttons, wheels and sliders, used for sending MIDI signals or commands over a USB or MIDI 5-pin cable to other musical devi ...

, and combining the features of trackers and sequencers. It supports the Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API (

LADSPA LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API. It is an application programming interface (API) standard for handling audio filters and audio signal processing effects, licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later. It was originally de ...

LV2 LV2 (LADSPA Version 2) is a set of royalty-free open standards for plug-in (computing), plug-ins and matching host applications. It includes support for the audio synthesis, synthesis and digital signal processing, processing of digital audio and ...

(only master branch
since 24.05.2020
and

Virtual Studio Technology Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional rec ...

(VST) plug-ins (on Win32, Win64, or Wine32). It is

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

software, written in Qt and released under GPL-2.0-or-later.

Overview

System requirements

LMMS is available for multiple

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

s, including

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project em ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. It requires a 1 GHz CPU, 512 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

and a two-channel

sound card A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio i ...

Program features

LMMS accepts

soundfont SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology that uses sample-based synthesis to play MIDI files. It was first used on the Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card for its General MIDI support. SoundFon ...

s and

GUS Gus is a masculine name, often a diminutive for Angus, August, Augustine, or Augustus, and other names (e.g. Aengus, Argus, Fergus, Ghassan, Gustav, Gustave, Gustafson, Gustavo, Gussie). It can also be used as the adaptation into English of ...

patches. It can import Musical Instrument Digital Interface (

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and re ...

) and

Hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...

files. It can read and write customized presets and themes. Audio can be exported in the

Ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

, and

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

file format A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

s, and the projects can be saved in the compressed MMPZ file format or the uncompressed MMP file format. It can use

VST VST may refer to: * Vancouver School of Theology, a theological graduate school in British Columbia, Canada * VST, Stockholm Västerås Airport in Sweden (IATA airport code) * Vehicle safety technology * Virtual Studio Technology, Steinberg's stand ...

plug-ins on Win32, Win64, or Wine32, though currently the macOS port doesn't support them.

Editors

* ''Song Editor'' – for arranging instruments, samples, groups of notes, automation, and more * ''Beat+Bassline Editor'' – for quickly sequencing rhythms * ''FX mixer'' – for sending multiple audio inputs through groups of effects and sending them to other mixer channels, infinite channels are supported * ''Piano Roll'' – edit patterns and melodies * ''Automation Editor'' – move almost any knob or widget over the course of the song

Synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...
s

* ''BitInvader'' – wavetable-lookup synthesis * ''FreeBoy'' –

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

Game Boy The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same ...

audio processing unit A sound card (also known as an audio card) is an internal expansion card that provides input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. The term ''sound card'' is also applied to external audio ...

(APU) * ''Kicker'' – bass drum synthesizer * ''LB302'' – imitation of the

Roland TB-303 The Roland TB-303 Bass Line (also known as the 303) is a bass synthesizer released by Roland Corporation in 1981. Designed to simulate bass guitars, it was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1984. However, cheap second-hand units were ...

* ''Mallets'' – tuneful percussion synthesizer * ''Monstro'' – 3-oscillator synthesizer with modulation matrix * ''Nescaline'' – NES-like synthesizer * ''OpulenZ'' – 2-operator FM synthesizer * ''Organic'' – organ-like synthesizer * ''Sf2 Player'' – a

Fluidsynth FluidSynth, formerly named iiwusynth, is a free open source software synthesizer which converts MIDI note data into an audio signal using SoundFont technology without need for a SoundFont-compatible soundcard. FluidSynth can act as a virtual MID ...

-based Soundfont player * '' SID'' – emulator of the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

chips * ''TripleOscillator –'' 3-oscillator synthesizer with 5 modulation modes: MIX, SYNC, PM, FM, and AM * ''Vibed'' – vibrating string modeler * ''Watsyn'' – 4-oscillator wavetable synthesizer * ''

ZynAddSubFX ZynAddSubFX (also now called Zyn-Fusion) is a free and open-source software synthesizer for Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. As of version 3, the completely new user interface is being released under proprietary terms with an open-source-ev ...

Samplers

* ''AudioFileProcessor (AFP)'' – sampler with trimming and looping abilities

Standards

* Musical Instrument Digital Interface (

) *

SoundFont SoundFont is a brand name that collectively refers to a file format and associated technology that uses sample-based synthesis to play MIDI files. It was first used on the Sound Blaster AWE32 sound card for its General MIDI support. SoundFon ...

(SF2) *

(VST) * Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API (

) *

(only master branch
since 24.05.2020
* Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) patches (PatMan) *

JACK Audio Connection Kit JACK Audio Connection Kit (or JACK; a recursive acronym) is a professional sound server Application programming interface, API and pair of daemon (computing), daemon implementations to provide real-time, low-latency connections for both audio and ...

(JACK) *

References

* *

External links

LMMS website
Audio editing software for Linux Audio editing software that uses Qt

Digital audio editors for Linux Digital audio workstation software Free audio editors Free educational software Free music software Free software programmed in C++ Linux software Open source software synthesizers Software drum machines {{Music-software-stub