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Linux Audio Developers Conference
paulbd writes "This weekend sees the first Linux audio developers
conference at
ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. Gathering together many members of the
Linux Audio Developers mailing list and others, the conference will feature 2 days of in-depth technical presentations and demonstrations of many
cutting
edge Linux
audio and
MIDI
applications." Desktoplinux.com has a related story about using Linux in a professional recording studio.
The other possibility is a plugin for alsa recently mentioned on the jack mailing lists, which allows arbitrary alsa-aware programs to be linked into jack.
An easy to use jack-aware soundfile editor/recorder is still missing, it seems.
Linux audio is still hellish.
/dev/dsp is no good, lets have a standard api that can do proper positional mixing, fading, and whatnot.
It reminds me of the DOS days when you had to pick your soundcard from a list of 6 for each and every app/game you'd install.
I dont want to configure each seperate app for my hardware. This is the 21st century for crying out loud! So make some rules about how linux makes noise. Just writing to
I know such libraries/sound servers exist. Just pick one that works and run with it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If that's what you are waiting on for more drivers... good luck. Apple's purchase of EMagic shows they are serious about pro-audio dominance to continue on the Mac.
Most comments here are discussing the lack of quality professional sound apps for Linux.
Well fuck that. I just want to be able to listen to my MP3s and still be able to know when I get an e-mail or IM like I did when I was in Win2k.
OK, I CAN do that right now, using ESD, but it's a kludge that I'd like to see going away.
I'm looking forward to see the kind of sound quality we'll have at kernel level on 2.6.
Yes, I'm a happy user of a desktop Linux, after years using it on servers. But boy did I have lots of trouble trying to get the same desktop experience I had with Win2k...
The biggest problem for desktop users, IMHO:
Conflicts between sound servers. Under Windows and MacOS, I have no idea what the counterparts to Arts, OSS and ESD are, no idea whether there's a single one or if different servers can easily be run concurrently. And there's no reason why I should have to have any idea.
It's absurd that there should be work involved if I want to play MP3's or streams with xmms AND CD's with the KDE player.
No doubt someone is going to tell me that if I don't know the fine points of sound servers, I don't deserve to have sound on my computer. Let me save you same time and preemptively reject that notion.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I'd be happy with ANY sound! You gotta walk before you can run, and in my experience, Linux is still in the pre-walk stage when it comes to sound. How about something that, when I install a Linux distro, makes whatever sound card I have actually work without having to play around with wierd downloads, configuring text files, etc.? I know that's a bit advanced for 2003, and maybe I'm asking for too much, but it's something that I'd really like to see.
Great -- I love when I preview something and it comes out formatted differently than in my original statement :-(
No only the purchase of Emagic, but the development of CoreAudio and CoreMidi at the kernal levels augmented by a simple to develop for interface in the form of AudioUnits, means Apple's OS is more than ready for pro-audio dominance.
Hell I was bitching about this over on my forum just today --
Sonikmatter Emagic Forums
I love Linux and I run a box in my own studio, but it won't be running ANY audio applications for a LONG time. Right now, its a file server to pass info between Studio A and B (ok, Studio B just happens to be my bedroom -- but since I remodeled my bathroom and put in marble flooring in there, its been a perfect vocal or acoustic guitar booth for mixing without synth effects :-)
Linux has a ways to go before anyone is using any of these applications from a standard musicians perspective. I know a lot of geeks that can grok this stuff, but not standard musicians. That and my time ain't worthless...I'd rather spend 3 minutes doing something on my Mac or PC and get the job done efficiently than to waste an hour getting something configured to do what it is supposed to do and loose all musicial motivation (if you are simply a music TECH then this doesn't really matter, now does it).
Clif Marsiglio
Sonikmatter.com
I think having a conference dedicated to audio issues on Linux is great for the platform. Linux is going gang-bisters on the server - it's on the desktop that the next surge will take place. If compelling video and audio applications are produced that push the envelope in terms of performance and features can that take advantage of the cost savings of Intel hardware, then Linux may be able to carve out a niche from some of SGI and Apple's customers. This will certainly be of benefit to the end user and will help increase Linux mindshare.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
I love to hear linux success stories -- especially ones about Mandrake, don't get me wrong. The article, however, mentions that this person paid $69 for a Mandrake powerpack and installed it on three machines. He claims that this made the cost $23 per machine. Don't the commecial pay-for-media distributions usually have a caveat that the license is for one machine only and that additional machines require separate licenses?
His claim is kind of like me going to BestBuy and buying one copy of XP, installing it on 165 machines and claiming I reduced our licensing fees to $1 per machine.
Trust me, I'm not a licensing nazi or anything like that but, being a software developer myself, I strongly believe that if you like a certain piece of software, you should pay for it. Even more so in this case because this is in a corporate environment and because Mandrake is having financial difficulties.
If everyone in the corporate world adopts this attitude that "just because it's linux, we don't need to pay our licensing fees", theres not going to be much commercial linux left after awhile.
If I were this guy, I'd run over to MandrakeStore.com and buy another two powerpack licenses just to help out the company that cut his costs so much.
Shameless plug - especially since it's not Free Software.
OK, this may in fact be a "professional recording studio", but in the author's own words, he uses the machines for archiving audio, burning discs and making CD's for distribution.
When I can slap a pair of DigiDesign TDM cards into a linux box, run ProTools, and then use them to mix a 32 or 48 track mix for a band I'm recording... well, THEN it'll be ready for profesional audio use.
Frankly, the only UNIX doing that kind of audio right now is MacOS X. Native multi-channel 32 bit audio is pretty sweet, yes... but it's not something linux sports in a usable fashion right now.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
I used to just use linux for sequencing and mixing down to digital, but now I have been playing with Ardour, JACK, LADSPA, and it's a whole new ball game. I can't wait to try the latest RoseGarden; it looks like it has come a long way. With JACK I can use my Delta 1010 sound card, and it sounds like a million bucks, and has fair support, including a mixer control panel very like the one it has under windows. I haven't tried recording under Windows since 3.1, but the software is all very expensive. I love software like Vision, but it's just not worth it to me anymore.
I tried Be, which was supposed to be low-latency this and multimedia that, but nothing I recorded with it ever turned out very well. At the time, one couldn't even purchase a decent sequencing or multitrack recording app, even if you had the money.
Lots of work has been done in the Linux kernel to address latency. It still is jerky sometimes, but a multi-processor system might help address that.
He never mentioned what hardware, what software he was running.
I would GLADLY build a home studio around Linux if I could figure out which distro, which sound card, and which EASY TO USE APPs to use to do the same kind of Cubase VST stuff I've previously done.
Some package from some obscure German FTP site with a command line interface that doesn't even compile doesn't rate as "easy to use".
If you're going to say how great your system is, please let some of us in on what it was you eventually used?
Maybe the reason for the complete absence of detail is he didn't want to go into the endless kernel recompiles, header file and package searches (no no no you need ALSA_dev_package_weirdo_tool_support.h, that's available from ftp.godknowswhere.com) the frustrating incompatibilities with the top-end hardware, the latencies, etc.
Much more rah-rah to say he installed Mandrake and suddenly he had no support costs.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Bull Fucking Shit.
/. profess to enjoy their Macs quite often and vocally.
You don't know what you are talking about. Thats as plain stated as I can make this.
The Mac is designed for folks that don't have the time or desire to deal with computers as anything but the tools they are -- they get their work done and get on with life.
Linux is designed for computer enthusiasists that want to know intimate details about their computer -- which you really have no choice under most of the popular distributions to do otherwise.
Linux is NEVER going to hit the #2 spot among those that need a professionally design GUI and consistancy and ease of use. Apple on the other hand is taking great steps to make certain they ARE the top of the list for usability by folks that need this purpose.
Past that, whats the entire purpose of OSS? Software that doesn't suck. The Mac can run with some modifications a good deal of the software that doesn't suck from the Linux / BSD worlds. In such, they are taking over a good portion of mind share from those that would have otherwise used a pure unix workstation. The leaders of
What does Linux have going for it? Its a GREAT server environment. Its not 'enterprise' software by the definition of a lot of tech managers, but IMHO, its FAR more stable in most aspects than some of the Enterprise Ready crap I have to deal with day in and out (yeah, I program Windows Apps....unfortunately...as well as administering some of these boxes). Its cheap and its efficient. No OS Tax and I can take out to pasture Windows machines and turn them into powerhouse servers.
What doesn't it have for it? Quite a bit that the common user needs -- and especially in the music realm.
What doesn't Apple have? Cheap Servers. Who the hell cares...I have Intel for this...and when I need to develop for that Intel box, I can pull out my iBook and have ALL the same tools on it that I need. I have Perl, PHP, Apache, Sendmail, MySQL. The developer that cares about having a decent working environment will be running Macs. Heck, I even have VPC running Redhat 8.0 on my iBook incase I need to try out compiled stuff that I occasionally have to deal with when speed becomes and issue and I can't patch things with a scripted language (though the Bluecurve desktop is pretty slow on the 'book...I generally simply SSH into the VPC from the Mac side anyways and do everything in Terminal).
Macs and Linux have NOTHING in common from a common users perspective and as such, Linux will never take over their mindshare. This is Apples Advantage.
Macs and Linux have quite a bit in common when you get into the Sysadmin minds. Mac Users can now use Linux servers with exceeding ease and connectivity without having to install and configure Appletalk on the server side of things. This is a plus for the Linux Admin.
Macs and Linux also have a lot in common for the Developers. No Mac Developer is going to pick up a Unix box to develop against. A Linux Developer will feel at home on a Mac with X11 or Terminal as well as the semi-standard unix directory system. Advantage Apple.
The way I see it, servers are increasingly going Linux. Thats bad for M$. Desktops will stay Apple or M$. Developers will migrate SOMEWHAT to Apple -- though I wouldn't predict droves, thus your argument is simplistic and again bullshit.
This is NOT a troll -- Mod me down if you so desire, but don't mod this as a troll.
Clif Marsiglio
Sonikmatter.com
(The domains are only shown in-line when they're part of the comments, not stories).
- With a high resolution display, you can barely see the pixel or two gap between the underscores. It just looks like one big long link.
- To find out what each link is for I need to mouse-over each one individually. But Slashdot doesn't even make of the TITLE attribute of A tags, so I need to look at some cryptic URL in the status bar to figure out where it will take me!
- The Related Links section is automatically generated from the links within a submission. But it's now rendered useless since it contains link titles such as 'many' and 'cutting'.
A longer more-descriptive sentence would allow easier embedding of links, even though it may sound awkward when read aloud.