Is it possible?
At what cost?
tia

Jose Lopez wrote:

Is it possible?

Yes, but there are some difficulties in terms of setup etc.

http://ardour.org/

Unless you know Unix and are willing to get your hands dirty recompiling
Linux kernels etc its not ready yet. There are however people using this
for real work (after spending a lot of time setting it up).

However, one of the main developers of Ardour is working towards turnkey
solutions when Ardour itself stabilizes sufficiently.

At what cost?

If you set it up yourself, its only costs you for your own time.

Erik
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Erik de Castro Lopo (Yes it's valid)
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
"Some people don't want genitalia shoved down their throats."
-- Rex Mossop, Australian football commentator and morals crusader

In article ,
Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

Jose Lopez wrote:

Is it possible?

Yes, but there are some difficulties in terms of setup etc.

http://ardour.org/

Unless you know Unix and are willing to get your hands dirty recompiling
Linux kernels etc its not ready yet. There are however people using this
for real work (after spending a lot of time setting it up).

However, one of the main developers of Ardour is working towards turnkey
solutions when Ardour itself stabilizes sufficiently.

At what cost?

If you set it up yourself, its only costs you for your own time.

Erik

and then you are incompatible with 99.9% of the rest of the production
world.

--
Iron Butt Assoc., WATR 4X, BL3 paparazzi, E.O.B.
R1100RT, R75/5
"If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience;
if brusque, your character." - Jonathon Swift

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 21:32:36 -0500, Jose Lopez wrote:

Is it possible?

Yes.
The main sticking point is that Ardour is not reliable yet. Well, let me
rephrase that. For basic recording and mixing it will run all day without
a problem, but get into automation and moderately complex editing and you
*will* turn up bugs.

I use Linux mainly for synthesis and effects, as there are many mature
apps. Most of them are very powerful if you enjoy creating your own
sounds, but are a long way from providing the instant gratification of
something like 'Fruityloops'.

BTW, if you are using some of Rolands Video products, or a VST host like
Plugzilla or Receptor, then you are already using Linux in the studio...

At what cost?

Depends on your requirements.
If you don't need low latency (25ms) then almost any recent distro will
do, and it's just a case of getting recent packages of the major apps.
If you need rock solid low latency, then you either compile a kernel and
the supporting apps yourself, or use a collection of packages as described
below.

The best discussion I've read on the subject, with some comments by
developers who are writing the software was recently on the tape op forum:

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=23359

It includes a post from Dave Phillips, which I hope he does not mind if I
repost he

"Please, everyone: Don't bother doing the Linux distribution tango.
Install either Planet CCRMA or AGNULA/Demudi and be done with it. These
are *complete* systems, and with AGNULA/Demudi it's an 'out-of-the-box'
solution (no mucking about with the kernel, no manually installing ALSA
and JACK). I fear that many musicians who wander into Linux wind up
discovering that patching the kernel, installing ALSA and JACK, and
configuring the whole shebang is just a complete pain in the butt and a
serious waste of their time. Yes, there are similar packages available
for Mandrake and SlackWare systems, but I'll be blunt he I've yet to
meet a self-styled Windows "power user" who handled the transition to
Linux without a major self-reevaluation of just what constitutes being a
"power user", so you might as well make it as easy as possible for
yourself and go with A/Demudi or Planet C.

Btw, since starting with Linux in 1995 I've used SlackWare, Mandrake,
Debian, and Red Hat. The functional differences between distros are
perhaps negligible, but when you're learning the system you should take
the least resistant path. You can always switch distros later if the urge
hits you.

I've lost track of the number of computer "wizzes" who were completely
baffled by Linux, and they often end up blaming the complexity of the
system instead of their own ignorance. Linux is indeed an extremely
powerful and wonderful system, but like all powerful things it requires
some willingness to learn how to handle it. Modern Linux distros are
easier than ever to install and configure, but setting up a Linux
audio/music system is a few steps beyond that stage, and the process is
still tricky. Let the experts do that work for you: install A/Demudi or
Planet C.

OTOH, if you've already installed Mandrake or SlackWare, be sure to check
out Thac's packages at http://rpm.nyvalls.se/ or Luke Yelavich's
AudioSlack at http://www.audioslack.com/. They have what you need to turn
your system into a screaming Linux music machine. SuSE
(http://www.novell.com/de-de/linux/suse/) is also an excellent system,
but I confess ignorance regarding its out-of-the-box audio support. I do
know that some of the finest Linux audio minds work for the company so I
expect it to be a solid contender. (Some of the top ALSA people work for
SuSE).

These are my opinions. I don't work for Red Hat or AGNULA. I'm
self-employed, and I'm 100% Linux-based. My desktop machine currently
runs Planet C and Demudi. My laptop runs Planet C Red Hat 9, but I'm
planning to switch it to Demudi soon.

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/

http://www.agnula.org/

Best regards,

Dave Phillips"

In article writes:

http://ardour.org/

Unless you know Unix and are willing to get your hands dirty recompiling
Linux kernels etc its not ready yet. There are however people using this
for real work (after spending a lot of time setting it up).

Wow! This project has been going on for about five years now. And
people clomplain about products that they see advertised in magazines
not being available for several months.

I guess that's the way things go in the world of hobbyists - it's not
as important to finish the job as to keep making it better.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

philicorda wrote:

It includes a post from Dave Phillips, which I hope he does not mind if I
repost he

- -snip--

"... I'll be blunt he I've yet to
meet a self-styled Windows "power user" who handled the transition to
Linux without a major self-reevaluation of just what constitutes being a
"power user"

ROFLMAO

another viewer wrote:

and then you are incompatible with 99.9% of the rest of the production
world.


Wrong.

"another viewer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

Jose Lopez wrote:

Is it possible?

Yes, but there are some difficulties in terms of setup etc.

http://ardour.org/

Unless you know Unix and are willing to get your hands dirty recompiling
Linux kernels etc its not ready yet. There are however people using this
for real work (after spending a lot of time setting it up).

However, one of the main developers of Ardour is working towards turnkey
solutions when Ardour itself stabilizes sufficiently.

At what cost?

If you set it up yourself, its only costs you for your own time.

Erik

and then you are incompatible with 99.9% of the rest of the production
world.



You are as incompatible as anyone running a windows box and something other
than protools. Which is to say, you are more and more compatible every day.

Take this off rec.audio.pro, please.

jb

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 21:32:36 -0500, Jose Lopez wrote:
Is it possible?
At what cost?
tia

Audacity is free and works equally well on most any platform.

If you're starting out, you can do far worse than use it. It produces
either .wav or .mp3 files, depending on how you have it configured.

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 10:05:28 -0500, Mike Rivers wrote:


In article writes:

http://ardour.org/

Unless you know Unix and are willing to get your hands dirty recompiling
Linux kernels etc its not ready yet. There are however people using this
for real work (after spending a lot of time setting it up).

Wow! This project has been going on for about five years now. And
people clomplain about products that they see advertised in magazines
not being available for several months.

The bad part about Linux is that it is never done.
The good part about Linux is that it is never done.

I guess that's the way things go in the world of hobbyists - it's not
as important to finish the job as to keep making it better.

The problem with Linux and it's users as a whole is that they are
operating system centric instead of being applications centric.
These guys love to tweak kernels, play with different distributions and
screw with things for endless amounts of time in order to make things work.

Then when they have it all working, a new distribution comes out and they
start all over again.
IOW it's a never ending cycle that leads to loss of productivity.

Dave Phillips makes a point about this in the message posted by philcordia.

Linux is great for a server farm, reasonable for an internet desktop
system but overall a very poor choice for a digital audio platform IMHO.
Can it be done?
Sure, people are doing it as we speak.
However the learning curve is intense, the documentation is terrible and
outdated and it's just a mess at the moment.

Then again, given a turnkey system with say AGNULA/Demudi already set up
it can be a very inexpensive way to get into recording.
Just don't expect too much support at the professional level.

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 10:05:28 -0500, Mike Rivers wrote:


In article writes:

http://ardour.org/

Unless you know Unix and are willing to get your hands dirty recompiling
Linux kernels etc its not ready yet. There are however people using this
for real work (after spending a lot of time setting it up).

Wow! This project has been going on for about five years now. And
people clomplain about products that they see advertised in magazines
not being available for several months.

The bad part about Linux is that it is never done.
The good part about Linux is that it is never done.

I guess that's the way things go in the world of hobbyists - it's not
as important to finish the job as to keep making it better.

The problem with Linux and it's users as a whole is that they are
operating system centric instead of being applications centric.
These guys love to tweak kernels, play with different distributions and
screw with things for endless amounts of time in order to make things work.

Then when they have it all working, a new distribution comes out and they
start all over again.
IOW it's a never ending cycle that leads to loss of productivity.

Dave Phillips makes a point about this in the message posted by philcordia.

Linux is great for a server farm, reasonable for an internet desktop
system but overall a very poor choice for a digital audio platform IMHO.
Can it be done?
Sure, people are doing it as we speak.
However the learning curve is intense, the documentation is terrible and
outdated and it's just a mess at the moment.

Then again, given a turnkey system with say AGNULA/Demudi already set up
it can be a very inexpensive way to get into recording.
Just don't expect too much support at the professional level.

On 2005-01-02, Mike Rivers wrote:

[Ardour]

Wow! This project has been going on for about five years now.
And people clomplain about products that they see advertised
in magazines not being available for several months.

I guess that's the way things go in the world of hobbyists - it's not
as important to finish the job as to keep making it better.

There are several contributors to Ardour but, last time I
looked, only one person was working full time on it. I would
estimate that the effective staff is less than two. Getting that
much done in 10 man years is in fact pretty good. The
productivity isn't any better in commercial shops.

--
André Majorel URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/
Todos, todos me miran mal
Salvo los ciegos, es natural

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 21:32:36 -0500, Jose Lopez
wrote:

Is it possible?

Yes. Sort of.

At what cost?

At the cost of lacking reliable software.
You'll be making a political statement and doing lots of hacking, not
getting work done.



CubaseFAQ www.laurencepayne.co.uk/CubaseFAQ.htm
"Possibly the world's least impressive web site": George Perfect

In article writes:

There are several contributors to Ardour but, last time I
looked, only one person was working full time on it. I would
estimate that the effective staff is less than two. Getting that
much done in 10 man years is in fact pretty good. The
productivity isn't any better in commercial shops.

That may be true but there have been a lot of commercial DAW programs
that have come and gone in five years that have made a lot of Windoze
and Mac users happy (or frustrated).

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Yeah it's not bad at all. It's 80% there, sooo close to being a good
production system. But there are a few things missing or buggy that
make it useless for me which is too bad. It's not a true multitrack, no
punch ins, every time you record it's a new track, no TRT timer, lag
between audio and waveform diplay. The developers do a great job but
might not be audio pro's.


Charles Krug wrote:
On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 21:32:36 -0500, Jose Lopez
wrote:
Is it possible?
At what cost?
tia

Audacity is free and works equally well on most any platform.

If you're starting out, you can do far worse than use it. It
produces
either .wav or .mp3 files, depending on how you have it configured.

On Mon, 03 Jan 2005 08:01:41 -0500, Mike Rivers wrote:


In article writes:

There are several contributors to Ardour but, last time I
looked, only one person was working full time on it. I would
estimate that the effective staff is less than two. Getting that
much done in 10 man years is in fact pretty good. The
productivity isn't any better in commercial shops.

That may be true but there have been a lot of commercial DAW programs
that have come and gone in five years that have made a lot of Windoze
and Mac users happy (or frustrated).

I think the reason it's all taking so long is that to create
professional audio programs the developers had to throw out most of the
audio stack on Linux.

OSS drivers were replaced with ALSA, and the JACK sound server had to be
made as no callback based 32bit sound server existed.
The skills required for low latency thread safe programming appear pretty
high, and most of the software+drivers had not been written with it in
mind.

The same thing happened on Windows some time ago, when we had ASIO, GSIF,
EASI drivers, all methods of working around the limitations of MME and
directsound that existed at the time. Thankfully, Microsoft eventually
listened to the developers, and WDM appeared.

Most of the work has been 'behind the scenes' to provide a solid and
extendable base to work from. The kernel had to be modified as well, to
provide preemption, and to remove most of the remaining BKLs. The latest
2.6.10 is good in this regard, with reports of sustainable 1.33ms latency.
And that's with the generic Linux kernel, not requiring patches.

So, they take their time, but only from the desire to really get it right.

On 2005-01-03, Mike Rivers wrote:

In article
writes:

There are several contributors to Ardour but, last time I
looked, only one person was working full time on it. I would
estimate that the effective staff is less than two. Getting that
much done in 10 man years is in fact pretty good. The
productivity isn't any better in commercial shops.

That may be true but there have been a lot of commercial DAW programs
that have come and gone in five years that have made a lot of Windoze
and Mac users happy (or frustrated).

But were they designed and written by just one (or two) people ?
That's the difference between "years" and "man years".

--
André Majorel URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/
Todos, todos me miran mal
Salvo los ciegos, es natural

Mike Rivers wrote:

I guess that's the way things go in the world of hobbyists - it's not
as important to finish the job as to keep making it better.

Beautiful summary of Linux.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

In article writes:

That may be true but there have been a lot of commercial DAW programs
that have come and gone in five years that have made a lot of Windoze
and Mac users happy (or frustrated).

But were they designed and written by just one (or two) people ?
That's the difference between "years" and "man years".

My point is that they WERE designed, debugged, and released. Somebody
saw to it that the job got done. It may be fun to follow the progress
of a hobbyist, but until he has a functional and stable (as in "not
changing it every week or so) product, it's still a hobby.

--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On 2005-01-04, Mike Rivers wrote:

In article
writes:

That may be true but there have been a lot of commercial DAW programs
that have come and gone in five years that have made a lot of Windoze
and Mac users happy (or frustrated).

But were they designed and written by just one (or two) people ?
That's the difference between "years" and "man years".

My point is that they WERE designed, debugged, and released. Somebody
saw to it that the job got done. It may be fun to follow the progress
of a hobbyist, but until he has a functional and stable (as in "not
changing it every week or so) product, it's still a hobby.

Ardour is not a hobby project. The primary author quit his day
job years ago and has been working on it full time ever since.

--
André Majorel URL:http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/
It's a good life, bowing to a tyrant.

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 08:17:30 -0500, Mike Rivers wrote:


In article writes:

That may be true but there have been a lot of commercial DAW programs
that have come and gone in five years that have made a lot of Windoze
and Mac users happy (or frustrated).

But were they designed and written by just one (or two) people ?
That's the difference between "years" and "man years".

My point is that they WERE designed, debugged, and released. Somebody
saw to it that the job got done. It may be fun to follow the progress
of a hobbyist, but until he has a functional and stable (as in "not
changing it every week or so) product, it's still a hobby.

I've paid a great deal of cash for software less stable than Ardour, even
in it's current state. Nuendo 1.0, first decided to change the position of
all the tracks in a project if you worked at 48K, then sent full scale
noise through the speakers and blew up a pair of NS10s. Took months to get
a fix for working at 48k. Also, corrupted sessions.. You name it.

I know, I should not have been doing a project on 1.0 software (esp
Steinberg), but it was so shiny, new, expensive and 'professional'. And
the problems did not show up with tests at 44.1k.

At least with Ardour, if there is a crash, you can carry on from where you
left off. It even lets you pull the plug while recording, and still have
the recorded audio in the session up till the moment the power was cut. I
don't know any other sequencer that does that.

Little things like that are sometimes more important that getting the
product out the door to coincide with the magazine advertising space
you've booked.

In article writes:

Ardour is not a hobby project. The primary author quit his day
job years ago and has been working on it full time ever since.

A hobby is something that you may eventually derive some income from,
but it's not what you live on. Someone who quit work and is working on
a software program full time sounds like a retired hobbyist to me.

I realize that it's counter to the spirit of the Linux world to
actually charge money for your work, so I guess he can't justify
hiring a few others to share the workload. Does he even have a set of
specifications so that he'll know when he's reached a finished state?
Or do those keep changing and expanding as he goes along?

I don't mean to put down the efforts of this guy, it just seems like
he doesn't have anything worth talking about in professional audio
circles yet. Let him and the handful of his followers have fun with
their ever changing DAW. Me, I'm happy turning on my Mackie HDR24/96
and recording whenever I want to.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 18:01:10 -0500, Mike Rivers wrote:


In article writes:

Ardour is not a hobby project. The primary author quit his day
job years ago and has been working on it full time ever since.

A hobby is something that you may eventually derive some income from,
but it's not what you live on. Someone who quit work and is working on
a software program full time sounds like a retired hobbyist to me.

I realize that it's counter to the spirit of the Linux world to
actually charge money for your work, so I guess he can't justify
hiring a few others to share the workload. Does he even have a set of
specifications so that he'll know when he's reached a finished state?
Or do those keep changing and expanding as he goes along?

It's in feature freeze for 1.0 at the moment.

Check http://ardour.org/status.html for the roadmap.


I don't mean to put down the efforts of this guy, it just seems like
he doesn't have anything worth talking about in professional audio
circles yet. Let him and the handful of his followers have fun with
their ever changing DAW. Me, I'm happy turning on my Mackie HDR24/96
and recording whenever I want to.

Personally, I think they should have branched a stable version once it
reached the capabilities of something like a HDR24/96. (The original
versions of the program were quite similar). Not doing so has cost the
author at lot of users and potential income IMHO.

Mike Rivers wrote:

A hobby is something that you may eventually derive some income from,
but it's not what you live on. Someone who quit work and is working on
a software program full time sounds like a retired hobbyist to me.

How times have changed. In the early '80s he was called an
entrepenuer. Before the heyday of venture capital many
startups and a couple I witnessed up close were started by
guys that went off salary to their basements to work on
until they had actually made something they could sell.

That's what I'm attempting and I would seriously object to
being called a retired hobbyist.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

In article writes:

A hobby is something that you may eventually derive some income from,
but it's not what you live on. Someone who quit work and is working on
a software program full time sounds like a retired hobbyist to me.

How times have changed. In the early '80s he was called an
entrepenuer.

But in the early '80s, if he didn't finish a project within a
reasonable amount of time (like however long it took for his cash
reserves to run out) to the point where it was saleable, he'd get a
job.

That's what I'm attempting and I would seriously object to
being called a retired hobbyist.

I know what you've been writing about and it sure sounds useful. We're
waiting to see your product, hopefully before you starve. g



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Mike Rivers wrote:

I know what you've been writing about and it sure sounds useful. We're
waiting to see your product, hopefully before you starve. g

LOL! Me too.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein