Reborn 1.0 And The State of Linux Audio

Eugenia writes "This is great news for the Linux audio users! Reborn, a clone of the legendary ReBirth, has just been released. It provides software emulation for three of Roland Corporation's most famous electronic musical instruments. Also thrown in are four audio effects, individual mixers, a programmable sequencer and is fully compatible with the ReBirth .rbs song file format. To celebrate this release, OSNews runs an article presenting the most advanced professional, or semi-professional audio applications available today for the Linux platform." Most of the article consists of a list of audio software that can currently run on GNU/Linux systems. It's a pretty good list, but things like Cubase aren't there yet.

Comments

Lousy interface design

[theonomist]

The problem with ReBirth, and with any clone thereof, is that the user gains nothing from a flashy raster imitation of a 303's physical interface (or that of any real gear), while losing a great deal of usability.

A physical knob isn't so bad out here in the physical world, but you're manipulating it with your fingers. A mouse pointer is not a pair of fingers. I've played with ReBirth, and while there's some great functionality in there, it's just hell trying to get at it through all those tiny, poorly-labeled knobs. That interface makes sense on a plastic box. It's got real drawbacks, but it is what it is because of simple necessity. It's the best you can do with a thing made out of plastic. Okay, that's fine when plastic is the medium you're stuck with, but you can do considerably better if you're making your interface out of zeroes and ones instead.

By all means, let us duplicate the functionality of analog gear in software. That's a noble undertaking. But let's not fuck up the GUI with gratuitously flashy nonsense at the expense of clarity and usability. It's a gimmick. The Microsoft Paper Clip is a gimmick.

If your software is actually meant to be used, gimmicks are bad.

Re:Lousy interface design

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry but your wrong, in the real world we musicians just use a midi controller with knobs to get the effect that you say is lost. yea its not perfect, but it works in many situation. FYI, this post is another great example of someone knowing just enough to put some bullshitty opinion out there that seems credible without cosidering all of the facts.

Re:Jmax? PD? They're not on the list why?

[stew77]

Programs of this kind are often forgotten in lists of "professional" music software. I guess that's primarily because MAX, PD, SuperCollider or CSound require that you're not only a musician but also a programmer.

UI Polish is hard to acheive

[Paul Carver]

I'm not a musician so I'm not familiar with all the hardware tools. I've been looking at Windows and Linux audio software to get started with. Programs on both platforms are complex, but the user interfaces on the shareware/demoware Windows programs are vastly more polished and visually appealing that the UIs on the open source programs.

The Windows programs are at least accesible to the beginner musician, while the Linux programs are only an option for an experienced musician. The problem is, most experienced musicians probably already have a substantial investment in Windows software that the Linux software can't match.

It comes back to the old observation that the open source community has lots of good programmers, but few people who have the talent and time to design an efficient and attractive GUI. (That's not to say there aren't any, just that there aren't nearly enough.)

The program I've been playing with most (since I'm not able to tackle the serious music creation programs yet) is CoolEdit Pro. It's amazing how much functionality has been packed into such an attractive, efficient, and most importantly easy to use interface. There are Linux apps with some of the same functionality, but the GUIs are years behind and may never catch up.