On 10 Feb, 15:58, "Mogens V." wrote:
philicorda wrote:
On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:52:20 +0100, Mogens V. wrote:
Soundhaspriority wrote:
wrote in message
But... as a misic recordong/production platform...
Lotsa work getting intimately familiar with alsa, integrating alsa nas
stuff like jackd, not to speak about no professional music apps.
Drivers for (semi) pro soundcards? Well, a few, like RME.
Another myth. But it is completely understandable how, if you haven't been a
programmer, that you don't understand it. You can be a very intelligent
person, and still not understand.
??? Have you actually tried implementing a sound studio on Linux?
If so, you may have been based on Debian.. I believe it's the only
distro having those audio parts available in a repository (though I
mostly work with Redhat, Centos, Slackware ((and FreeBSD, Solaris))
Most popular distros have audio apps.
And oh yeah, I was a systems programmer back in the late 80's to early
90's, later went into systems integration, sysadm, network and security.
I work with *nix every day as a sysadmin.
It's exactly because of my teck background I wouldn't dream of spending
month setting up a Linux studio system.
While I'm sure you have great experience of Linux as a server OS, you
probably know as much about the audio side as someone who has used
Windows/OSX as a server OS knows about audio apps on Windows/OSX.
Only been using linux on the desktop for 8+ years, including audio.
A couple of times tried downloading audio apps beyond replaying music,
always the same: Alsa and jack integration problems.
ALSA is powerful, but complicated to setup if you want to do something
different from the default. OTOH, once your soundcard is supported it
will work out of the box without installing drivers, and with ANY
linux distro. That if you ask me is a _great_ benefit, and a warranty
on your hardware purchase. I have soo bad experiences with closed
source drivers (namely gadgetlabs wave 824 and opcode studio64) that I
won't put my hard-earned money anymore into a peripheral that doesn't
have an open source driver.
Jack and realtime operation is even more demanding since it needs a
patched kernel to achieve the best performance for the lowest latency.
As noted below, this wasn't on Debian.
I have no problem admitting that almost no companies I've worked for
have been using Linux on the desktop, and overtime as a sysadmin didn't
make me wan't to spend the time back home, so my comments may be biased.
Do give me a couple of pointers to the late progression using Linux for
a DAW installation, i.e. distro, apps, audio routing deamon et al, and
I'll take a fresh look.
The most "audio friendly" and up to date debian based distro is
64studio:
http://www.64studio.com
They have both 64 bit and 32 bit versions.
Use qjackctl to control jackd daemon and audio routing. Ardour as DAW.
Rosegarden or muse as sequencer (synced via jack_transport),
linuxsampler to play GIG files, zynaddsubfx as synth, jamin for
mastering, audacity or rezound as audio editors.
Need to do audio in batches? Try ecasound, sox, timidity, lame,
oggenc, ...
Then if you want to go experimental, try csound, puredata,
supercollider.
Apps are really not as mature as the windows commercial apps, but they
do their work fairly well. Ardour has been rock solid for me, and more
powerful than I ever needed.
LADSPA plugins do not have the eye candy (in fact, they don't have a
fixed GUI at all) but some are good sounding, and there are plenty of
them.
Tell me, where can I buy supported studio audio apps for Linux?
I don't think any linux vendor do offer this kind of support for audio
(maybe 64studio will)
Those audio apps that can be downloaded free from freshmeat and
sourceforge, do they integrate with Protools, Reason, Cubase, Logic...?
Those four programs are completely incompatible with eachother, as none
of them can open projects in any of the other's native formats.
Yes, what I meant is, using a Linux DAW setup, will I be able to share
and work with other musicians and studios?
Open formats are one of the main advantages of free software, as you
probably know. Ardour uses 32 bit broadcast wave files, and human
readable XML for the project file. Moreover, the app is free so
everyone can legally install it (it's also available for mac OS X) and
use your projects without problems, including effects, automation, and
so on. No windows version so far, though.
Speaking of other session interchange formats, Paul Davis (ardour's
author) said:
"We are slowly working on support for AAF, which is about the only
standard for session files worth paying attention to (OMF is
widespread because of ProTools but its also proprietary and is hard
for us to support)."
Without having checked further lately, I think not, but things may've
changed. Only, if Linux _is_ suitable, I fail to see much evidence of
musicians/studios using it. I may be halfblind, though 
Check
http://ardour.org forums. They are plenty of people using
ardour... maybe they're not high end professionals, but the community
is growing, and the app in my opinion is well worth to keep an eye on.
Ardour on Linux is as compatible with Cubase as Cubase is with Logic.
Outside WAV files and the occasional success with AAF/OMS, there are no
standards to integrate with. Steinberg have enough trouble maintaining
compatability between the different versions of their own software, let
alone with other DAWs.
Don't get me wrong. I love working with *nix, but when it comes to
music, I look at the tech side as a musician. Prefer twangin' strings,
and actually make music.
Assuming it takes me a couple of hours to set up a Linux DAW, exactly what
tech stuff is required after I've done an initial test recording to make
sure everything is working properly?
A couple of hours? On which distro? To be fair, I haven't tried setting
up on Debian as a workstation, and hence also not for audio.
Try 64studio. You might be surprised :-)
The secret to audio happiness is the same on Linux as on any other OS, get
it working, then leave it alone and don't fiddle.
You, basic audio works out of the box on most distros now, but moving on
from there isn't nessesarily straightforward.
In three to five years maybe, who knows. When We've gotten rid of the
two competing GUI's (Gnome and KDE) and have one official GUI with one
API and one set of libs. And when users can install all the stuff
without havng to perform post-config requiring tech knowledge. Yes, a
distro like debian-based Ubuntu has made real good steps WRT enduser
useability, but when do you suppose the GPL will allow us to see VST or
the other standard whats-its-name plugin's?
When Steinberg change their licence to the VST header file. To be fair
they never anticipated people using GPL'd audio software when the licence
was written, so it's not really their fault.
You're right about that.
There are plenty of other live music distros, but they all feel a bit
messy to me, though Jacklab looks promising.
I'll take a fresh look.
Best regards, and sorry for my english
--
Emiliano Grilli
Linux user #209089
http://www.emillo.net