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Goodbye Apple, Hello Music Production On Ubuntu
Adam Wrzeski notes a piece up at Create Digital Music by musician Kim Cascone (artist's bio) on switching from Apple to Linux for audio production: "The [Apple] computer functioned as both sound design studio and stage instrument. I worked this way for ten years, faithfully following the upgrade path set forth by Apple and the various developers of the software I used. Continually upgrading required a substantial financial commitment on my part. ... I loaded up my Dell with a selection of Linux audio applications and brought it with me on tour as an emergency backup to my tottering PowerBook. The Mini 9 could play back four tracks of 24-bit/96 kHz audio with effects — not bad for a netbook. The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer — a far cry from the $3000 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple. After a couple of months of solid use, I have had no problems with my laptop or Ubuntu. Both have performed flawlessly, remaining stable and reliable."
Well, Apple DO encourage it...
nice to see a person that has the right tool for the job. BTW you wern't locked into Apple, you were locked into the software developers choice of OS and hardware.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I see why you posted as AC. The point of the article is he is a fairly well established musician breaking away from a well established platform for the music industry. I actually find it interesting, considering that a few years ago you often had to go through hell just to get anything to come out of the sound card using linux.
I love using linux for as much as I possibly can, but I have noticed a distinct difference in the audio quality between my old power book Ti and a 'business' grade dell. The audio out my mac mini is MUCH better than what I get out of Dell desktops I've used, too. My eeePC 901 does seem to sound pretty good, though.
I'm all for open-source, but trying to do any music production on linux has been a headache to say the least. I'm more than willing to give it another shot, but I've had very little if any problems on my mac. Actually, all the problems came from it being a "hackintosh" Mac OS X was designed for audio unlike other OS's. Between it's ultra-low latency audio subsytem and the industry standard Audio Units plugin archetecture, it'll take a hell of alot for Linux to beat that. Plus Logic owns any program I've ever tried and I can only run it on a mac. As much as I love open-source anything, I spent too much time just trying to figure out Linux technical issues and not enough time actually recording. If there were less competing standards on the platform and less buggy software I'd probably be running a Linux DAW right now. Until then I'm more than happy with my "Mac".
So what? I'm not trying to troll here (well, maybe a little) but honestly, who cares?
This whole mentality of "Us against the world" is kinda amusing to me. I guess it's because I'm not a developer, or something, I dunno.
But this is one artist saying "Software X is/was expensive, so I'm using a different and free solution." Ok, great, good for her. So now what?
Sent from your iPad.
Did the author manage to get anything other than a DAW and sound editor running under Ubuntu ? Max/MSP for instance ? Reason ? Ableton Live ?
I've given up trying to do anything musical with Ubuntu. Windows and OSX are still miles ahead in terms of compatible hardware and software that 'just works'.
Squirrel!
Anyone who believes this has never tried to record and mix multitrack audio on Linux
Audio support is fine. Music making support OTOH is abysmal. The article correctly points out that sound recording, editing and mixing is fine on Linux. The heavyweight music creation tools just don't exist and many of the top-end hardware interfaces simply don't have Linux drivers.
Squirrel!
I agree with the premise of this article: Linux is a perfectly good platform for digital audio creation and editing. It might even be better than a Mac, depending on how you weigh different pros and cons. But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
As someone who's done some published research on audio latency/jitter issues in a former life, I'm also somewhat annoyed by how much these sorts of articles focus on tech like JACK and low-latency kernel patches. This used to be a huge issue, but I suspect it shouldn't be nearly as high up anyone's priority list as it used to be--- back in the 2.4.x. series kernels, when the default kernel's clock tick used 10ms granularity and scheduling was flaky, it made a much bigger difference. Today, I suspect this sort of behind-the-scenes performance is only infrequently the bottleneck in anyone's audio performance; when I see actual glitches in performances, they can often be fixed by much more boring scheduling tweaks like "nice -19" on the processes that are bottlenecks in the audio path, or finding bugs in how you're setting up your callbacks.
In any case, these days I see JACK as useful mainly for being a reasonably well supported audio-app-interconnection bus; as he says, the Core Audio of the Linux world. But that doesn't make it hugely unique either.
So I guess I'm in the weird position where I agree with the article's conclusions, and some of its specific points, but overall if I didn't already agree with it, this article wouldn't have sold me on why Linux is great for audio editing. Sorry. :/
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've been using this for quite some time now. anyone else?
Warning, the above comment may contain sarcasm. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I actually find it interesting, considering that a few years ago you often had to go through hell just to get anything to come out of the sound card using linux.
On the other hand, many still do have trouble getting anything to get out of their sound card on Linux. I agree that the story is "interesting," but those of us serious Linux users will have to admit that the audio situation here is far from ideal, to put it positively. Alsa.... pulse.... awful. Compound this with the noticeable lack of good software and drivers for audio production equipment, and I will have to admit that the vast majority of professional audio people are much better of staying with Apple at the moment.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
I stopped caring at this point.
I used to produce with Cubase VST/32 on OS9, which was an environment I enjoyed working in. When OS9 was abandoned and my mac died I continued with VST/32 on Windows2000, but it wasn't the same. Neither were the new versions of Cubase on OSX.
My biggest problem with this situation was my old projects were stuck in this archaic format with nowhere to go. Since then I've moved to Ardour on Ubuntu, I find the environment is even better than before and tools like Hydrogen are great. Best of all is Jack, there's nothing like it.
Linux audio is good and it's only going to get better, the price of the software isn't relevant in this assessment, only quality.
POKE 36879,8
...is that all his music creating can be summed up in him cutting and playing back audio samples with various effects on it - there is no actual sequencing or other advanced music creation involved.
Had there been, I'd say, with many years experience as a composer, that this article would not be.
I could certainly do it for under $500 with a good used MacBook. Does that make the $600 for the refurbished old-school Dell system "more expensive"?
If you're looking for a great alternative to expensive, bloated audio applications, check out Reaper. It's made from the guy who originally wrote Winamp. The licensing is very friendly and only costs $60 (discounted license). They're very responsive to user feedback and add features constantly (updates usually arrive every 2 weeks). I've used other tools in the past like Reason and Cubase, but ended up ditching them in favor of Reaper. Its built-in effects are quite good and it supports DX and VST plugin formats. Unfortunately it is only supported on Windows (32 and 64bit) and Mac OSX at the moment however
Seems like some enterprising individual could start putting together cheaper-than-dirt Ubuntu-based music machines by buying Dell Studio laptops (with Microsoft license rebate, naturally) and preloading everything necessary.
The complaint from non-geeks about Linux is you have to do it yourself. If you didn't have to do it yourself, and it really was that cheap, it becomes a lot more interesting.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This dude is not exactly producing musical scores using his Ubuntu rig. I mean, seriously... go check out some of the stuff on his store and you'll see why (examples):
Reaching Dark Stations
Recorded in Regina, Saskatchewan in 2007 at the Neutral Ground Gallery:::industrial factory sounds filtered through a turbine jet engine::Play loud, play often:::Statistically Improbable Phrases
30 minutes of sputtering modems and hacked sparking mainframes; the sound of technology gone awry mixed with submariner dark station dronescapes; briny chains scraping against the hulls of rusted ships. Recorded live in Paris at Instant Chavires
In short, he doesn't need the type of precision and accuracy provided by higher-end hardware and/or custom interfaces and plugins that one would need for 'serious' music (yes, I went there), so he can get away with using Ubuntu. After all, it's just 'bleepy shit' anyway.
Kim mentions the use of free audio production software, such as Audacity, as substitutes for commercial offerings. While an Audacity user is more than welcome to dive into the code base and make needed improvements, not every user has the time and/or ability to do such. In my estimation, neither Audacity 1.3.7 nor Audacity 1.2.6 are stable enough to be considered "professional-quality" software. I am not trying to insult the developers and their abilities -- they have a complex project on their hands. But Audacity's graphical interface has serious and repeatable bugs; Audacity's sound export facilities reliably adds spurious noise to sound. I admire Kim's decision to use Ubuntu as an audio workstation, but I don't think Kim has been forthcoming about sacrifices in software quality that a user must make to do so. Kim can easily translate most audio programming done in Max/MSP (the commercial environment he has worked with extensively) to the public domain environment "pd" -- but as an experienced user of both systems there are more functionality loses than gains moving from the commercial Max/MSP/Jitter environment to pd (Pure Data).
If the cost of an Apple system and the higher cost of outfitting it with professional quality audio production and performance software are bankrupting a musician, then I can see the logic of using an Ubuntu system at this time. Otherwise, I still believe the adage "you get what you pay for" applies. However, I believe with effort from open source audio developers an Ubuntu audio workstation with both cost and quality advantages is more than possible. The bugs I am seeing in Audacity today remind me of the bugs I saw in the comparable commercial application "Peak" ten years ago.
The heavyweight music creation tools don't exist because a) there's not much of a market for them on Linux because; b) Audio support is most definitely not fine.
I wonder how the vendors are going to support another OS when they can't even get their stuff working properly with different hardware configurations on TWO operating systems (Windows/OS X). I can't tell you how many problems I've had with FireWire audio interfaces.
Once this hurdle has been reached, I am all for whatever open source audio stuff comes my way. I use currently Audacity for editing samples and quick n' dirty recording. Audacity WORKS but it's interface is mediocre at best and if you want ASIO support you have to download an unsupported patch to get it.
I have had nothing but a NIGHTMARE with sound in Ubuntu forcing me to go through hell to find the problem at each upgrade. And each upgrade from 8.04 (to 8.10 and now 9.04) have caused me to have to figure out why I get NO SOUND each time. Unfortunately each of the 3 versions caused a different problem so it wasn't as simple as just replicating what I did previously to resolve the issue.
they don't want to shepherd some high-maintenance bird around that has to be hacked ...
Shepherding birds?
Flocking hell. Forget beowulf clusters, imagine a bevy of quails! ;-)
Many people have problems with sound in Linux. The situation is certainly less than ideal. However, on most computers, sound in Linux works flawlessly. If you have problem with sound in Linux, you are part of the exception, rather than the rule.
The only problem I have is that on Linux, when I hear about this fantastic package that supposedly runs on the distro du jour, I usually find that I have to download 5 or more different pieces of kit like libraries or audio driver special patches and low latency kernel patches then re-compile all of these with this switch set and hold my nose a certain way while tweaking this driver then recompile the kernel on Tuesday with my hair on fire then do it again Wednesday standing in a freezer. And when I finally get all that done I find that no one mentioned the package that already existed with half of it done for me but the other half is written in perl and then I have to update perl modules from some depository to the latest and greatest. Then the PHP modules required by the web interface aren't loaded by default and the PHP version is too advanced i have to install the old one but if I switch to this other distro all this other stuff is done then when I finally get all these ducks in a row my sound card isn't fully supported by any distro in existence so I switch to a USB sound card that is supposed to be universally supported except that the drivers are proprietary so they weren't actually included in my distro cause that gave somebody heartburn.
By the time I get it running I have to update the kernel again and that broke the drivers all over again.
So Sorry I'm saving up and buying the tools that have already been proven to work.
Why bother
But I unfortunately don't really feel I learned much from this article about why Linux is a good choice. All the apps he mentioned (Audacity, Ardour, etc.) are available for both platforms. And his reasons for switching, like the lack of a tree view in the OS X finder, strike me as weirdly trivial and not music related.
Yes, that's all he mentions. Never once does he mention price. Nope. Well, perhaps vaguely here:
A quick back-of-a-napkin estimate came to approximately $3,000, not including the time it would take tweaking and testing to make it work for the tour. If the netbook revolution hadn't come along and spawn a price-wars on laptops, I might have proceeded to increase my credit card debt.
But he certainly doesn't mention it here:
The solution to my financial constraint became clear, and I bought a refurbished Dell Studio 15, installed Ubuntu on it, and set it up for sound production and business administration. The total cost was around $600 for the laptop plus a donation to a software developer -- a far cry from the $3000.00 price tag and weeks of my time it would have cost me to stay locked-in to Apple.
Or here:
Not only was the expense of owning and maintaining Apple hardware a key factor in my switch, but the operating system had become a frustration to me.
Yeah, that's fair. I suppose what I really wanted to read was an argument about why Linux is particularly well-suited to audio, which I think it is. But an argument that it's "good enough, and cheap" is, as you point out, also legit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Agreed. Driver support amongst studio quality interfaces is severely lacking and limits your options significantly.
Oh, I dunno...I think there are several professional musicians using linux...they just don't know it!
http://digitalmedia.oreilly.com/2005/11/09/inside-the-korg-oasys.html
http://www.4front-tech.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=12200#12200
It fixed all my problems with sound, anyway.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I've tried for ages to get jackd working properly on a bunch of different distros, on various hardware, always without much success. Finally, the other day I got it working beautifully in Debian testing. Of course, it may break without notice when I update, but I am cautiously optimistic that I too may finally stop rebooting into OS X to do my recording and production work.
Caveat Utilitor
There's lots of software that is pretty much exactly like GarageBand.
Cakewalk - Sonar
Propellerhead - Reason
Steinberg - Cubase
Magix - Samplitude
Image-Line - FL Studio ... can even do most, if not all of what GarageBand does.
You could buy a used (aka EBAY, craigs list, apple.com) macbook (which would blow the doors off of the mini) to replace your 5-7 year old powerbook for about $700. It would (or at least should) include the latest iLife bits. You'd be way ahead. Linux is a helluvalot better than OSX for stuff like databases and web servers, but there is no way that video or audio applications (or most any desktop app) are anywhere close. I used linux exclusively on my notebooks from 98-06 and I can tell you about 1000s of hours wasted (although I enjoyed it) getting everything to run. With OSX everything just runs. Plus, using the media apps is a breeze.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
I wish the article's server hadn't been slashdotted, because I would love to know which professional digital audio adapter he's using, where he got the drivers, and whether he uses jack or not.
Every time a new Ubuntu studio comes out, I install it on a PC workstation in my studio to see if finally I can use Linux for digital music production, and every time I am disappointed by the way Linux talks to my audio gear. In Windows, I can use ASIO or WDM drivers and get professional-quality results, low latency, etc in Reaper. Apple uses SoundDriver for Logic. But Linux? All I've been able to find is jack, and for a professional, it doesn't do jack. There always seems to be problems with my MIDI gear, too, but that's gotten better in the past year.
Still, Reaper, using its ReMote technology allows me to offload certain things on to a Linux box via ethernet, such as rendering and effects processing, and that's a huge help, allowing me to use more real-time effects on more tracks. And, of course, my Linux box is absolutely key for streaming samples and other stored data to my digital audio workstation.
But using Linux as a main machine for music production? Not yet as of February. I plan on reading this article, though, as soon as you slashdotters give the server a breather, to find out what this guy's doing. Maybe it's finally time. I may not yet be ready to give up my Mac Pro and custom-built windows workstation for music production yet, but I look forward to being able to use Linux on a music project, start-to-finish.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's nothing that suggests these problems are caused by release compatibility issues. This does suggest that you are groping for reasons to justify your choice of distribution, however.
Jackd also crashes at the drop of a hat.
Also, it would be nice if you didn't have to dedicate a machine specifically to recording. Unfortunately, Jack is required for doing any real audio work, and yet it gets in the way of running anything else.
I used to run brutefir as a digital crossover, which I ran to my subs, woofers, and tweeters individually.
It's really awesome that you can do stuff like that, but unfortunately, application support was pretty weak. I had to run pulse's jack-sink module to make certain apps work, Native jack plugins for others, alsa's jack plugins for some.
It was so cumbersome that I eventually gave up.
Me, I'd feel a lot better about that, because paying money for proprietary software.. it seems like it's just going into some black hole. For code that will be Free some day? That strikes me as more palatable. Like it's an investment in something bigger than just 1's and 0's on my own machine. Makes it seem more worth it, to me.
...you must be kiddin'!
First of all, Linux is not the guilty one for not providing software for musicians. It is the developers of the software, like Apple, Steinberg, Propellerheads and Native Instruments, to name a few big ones.
Second, without all that Software. And I mean specifically that software, it is literally impossible to create the wanted sound on a Linux platform.
My setup is nearly 100% software (with a set of MIDI devices and a powerful sound card), and includes Cubase, Reason, Reaktor, Absynth, DR-008, and pretty much every Software from Native Instruments. And that is only the base. You also have to add a ton of specific plug-ins. E.g. for reverbs using impulse responses, or very specific filters to create the sound of a vintage synth.
You can not ever possibly recreate this under Linux, without it becoming a main platform for music production, so that those companies port their software. Which of course is a vicious circle.
But if Steinberg alone would port their VST platform Cubase onto Linux (Don't tell me about using it in Wine. I tried it. For real songs with dozens of tracks. It's a total joke. And I don't even mean the latency.), the circle could be broken.
So please stop with your dreamy dreams from wannabe professional musicians telling me how they were able to create a simple four-track audio song with some amateur FX plugged in. Because it has nothing to do with even my semi-professional work.
P.S.: I may sound angrier than I am. In fact I really *really* wish I could help with some big thing, like persuade Steinberg.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Apple has decided that they would write the JVM for OS X, citing better integration into OS X and making OS premium Java development platform at one point. Of course they back tracked on it and now Java on OS X is lagging behind 2-3 years behind major releases and versions on other OSes for which Sun and others are writing JVMs.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Out of curiosity, did you write up any documentation and put it online? I'm sure there are other people who might like to know about all the crazy tweaks you have to do...
There is a job on Ars posted where Canonical is wiling to hire someone to help change that situation.
I'm the editor of CDM and also run our servers. (apparently not terribly well, though I am in the middle of a migration to a new server config -- should've, uh, waited on this story!)
I'd like to get more data on hardware, too, and I'm curious what's been giving you trouble. I regularly see various problems on all three platforms, though I agree Linux is probably the least familiar and needs information dissemination most urgently (at least for music production).
While I'm waiting and restarting Apache (cough), some of the things folks are claiming here seem to be misinformed. That's not necessarily their fault; it illustrates that better documentation is needed, and simply pointing people to audio-centric distros I think is not enough.
For driver support -- RME fills the pro audio gap nicely if you're looking at the high end; they're the ones that are really doing it right. You'll also have good luck with any class-compliant USB audio interface. I'm getting good results out of a Cakewalk SPS-25 (basically equivalent to an Edirol UA-25). FireWire support is greatly improved, and you can check there at ffado.org. Most internal chipsets are also well-supported by ALSA - not a high-end option, true, but it means you can mix something on the road listening to the headphone jack without having to muck about with something like ASIO4ALL on PC.
Software: it's true there isn't much in the way of Linux-*only* software, but not that you don't have choices. Renoise and energyXT now both run natively, Renoise being a huge deal to fans of trackers. And many Windows apps can run better under WINE, with ALSA, WINEASIO, and JACK, than they do on Windows. That's the reason Native Instruments software can run on the MUSE Receptor, specialized hardware that runs Linux and WINE under the hood. It's solid enough that it winds up being preferable for people to buy that hardware over a laptop - yes, even over a Mac laptop. You probably won't get that kind of reliability out of a Linux setup out of the box, really, regardless of distro. But if you can set it up in a way that will be rock-solid, that could be worth the time for people.
I think that's the bottom line: a lot of people would be happy to invest a little extra time and effort to get an open system running. The problem is, they don't know how. The responses here demonstrate that people aren't aware of what some of their choices are, or have had (understandable) frustration because the distros ship out-of-box in a way that doesn't quite work, and there's not much clear documentation to tell you how to fix it.
ALSA isn't perfect, but neither is Core Audio, let alone ASIO. ALSA combined with JACK can be an exceptionally-terrific audio system for these applications.
So, I can make you a deal - I will put more of that information online, *and* fix our servers, too, so you can actually read it. ;)
Thank you. yes, the site is slashdotted so I can't get to it right now :/
On that first link on jackaudio.org there were resources for tons of things!
I am still curious how one might produce with it if there isn't much for pro-audio hardware that directly connects with linux... by that I mean multiple input channels analog/digital, etc.
I just finished recording and producing a jazz album using Project CCRMA hosted on Fedora. The recording through to the final mastering were all done using linux. Having read his article I was surprised to find he hadn't mastered his production using Jamin which, when used in combination with Ardour and Jack, gives the type of control over the production process I've not seen duplicated using a Mac (Windows is not capable at all in this regard). I suppose though that is the workflow he is used to.
The innovation is what it means to the production process. There is no mixdown to a 24bit 44.1Khz stereo track prior to mastering and you can render your tracks through the mastering software into the final tracks and tweak automation artifacts instead of compromising by using equalisation. Sure you still equalise but you end up doing less as you can refer back to the master if there is a problem and fix it there. Plus you have better control over (audio gain) compression to reduce transients and maintain dynamic range in the final product.
The bands that listen to my recording are amazed at the results (well my recording techniques *ahem* do play some part :-) and some asked me if it was done on analogue equipment - which is quite a compliment. The thing is sure, it's not perfect and sometimes frustrating because the your hardware is often pushed to it's limit, you find bugs you have to adjust your work flow around but simply put I don't think the capability *exists* anywhere else.
I've been using it since 2003 and have seen the foundation laid down by Alsa and Jack projects continually refined. Often the criticism is made that 'linux copies this or that' but after comparing it to existing processes it seems to me that audio production under Linux is on the leading edge of technology as the framework for innovation in music production.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Sounds like you didn't read the article. The author has a problem with "vendor lock-in," so he migrated away from Macs. That's his higher vision - he walks a different path than you do, with a different priorities. For all we know, maybe your higher vision is being the best consumer you can be. This guy was uncomfortable, made a switch, and is getting the word out to benefit others like him.
ReNoise is clever, and fun, but not a pro tracker. If I'm going to have to use Wine, why wouldn't I just use the operating system that those apps work in natively?
I'm not sure how you can compare ALSA with ASIO. I don't know all the under the hood stuff, but I have never had a problem with ASIO. I've never had to fiddle to get it working, and the performance is terrific. I go back to the days when I'd have to shift entire tracks to the left after recording just to line up the beats. I don't have to do that any more, thanks to technologies like ASIO, WDM, etc.
I use RME hardware since the Hammerfall v1.0, and whenever I've tried Ubuntu, it's always been with RME hardware. Mostly because there just aren't any drivers for most of my other audio hardware. I've got an old MOTU box around here somewhere, adn I've heard that they've released Linux drivers, too. I know there's no drivers for my Apogee gear.
Finally, as you know, when you're using a digital audio workstation, the main app is key. Programs like Logic, Digital Performer, Pro Tools, Sonar, and the others are much more than just "trackers". They're multi-track digital recorders, mixing matrices, virtual instrument platforms, digital audio editors, mastering suites and more, besides being "trackers". I am encouraged by Cockos' Reaper and their very decent port to Linux, but beyond that, there simply isn't a professional-quality application available that runs natively in Linux. Did I mention effects? I've got a palette of effects, virtual instruments and more that use Steinberg's VST or DirectX or Apple's AudioUnits. Without those, I'm hamstrung. I bet there's a way to use wine for VST or maybe even DirectX, and someday when I have lots of free time, I might decide that taking the time to learn to use those effects and VIs in Wine instead of the OS for which they were written is time well spent. I have to balance the desire to see Linux become a useful platform for soup to nuts music production with the desire to be productive right now. Life is short, unfortunately, and inspiration is fleeting, by its nature.
I am constantly writing letters of encouragement to both audio hardware and software manufacturers trying to get them to port their products to Linux. I guess enough time has passed since my last attempt with Ubuntu Studio that I ought to give it another go. I want it to work. I'll make sure to read the article on your server before I get started. Thanks for working hard to get it back up after what must have been a deluge of Slashdot readers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Heheh, well, in fairness, I'm dealing with some odd FreeBSD + Apache issues and moving the whole thing over to a better-tested Linux + nginx + FPM setup, so our server wasn't running so well to begin with. This has certainly encouraged me to get that process moving faster. ;)
I definitely hear your thoughts. I won't argue that you have the same range of choice on Linux; clearly, it's behind. I think the reason you'd run under WINE is people aren't running into the crud of Windows, they can use whatever hardware they want, and with the right configuration and hardware setup, you can get exceptional low-latency audio performance, even over a cheap USB interface that might not do as well as on Windows, and on a free operating system over which you have greater control. That's not to say *everyone* will want to do that, but that's definitely the answer to "why" you might!
Using VSTs in WINE turns out to be very, very easy - that's again the reason why people would consider this solution, and why the MUSE Receptor works.
I'm not sure why Reaper isn't a "pro" tracker. It seems to me to be a very effective combination of more modern DAW-style features with tracker editing, and it has native JACK support.
Now, don't get me wrong. If you've got your software running happily on Windows or Mac, and then you look at some additional configuration work on Linux *and* giving up some software, I can see why that wouldn't immediately appeal. But that's part of why I ran this story on Kim - you know, ultimately he's not using a whole lot of tools, but he found just the right set of tools that he needed for his job, and got everything else out of the way.
I think if the community could attack some of the problems you're describing -- even better documenting it -- that kind of scenario could apply to a widening circle of people.
yes linux is for a select group of people: those who can use computers. typing in commands is part of using a computer. fact is, a lot of time it is possible to do everything you want to do in linux via GUI, but doing it in a terminal is EASIER. especially when you are looking for help. take the following example:
ok open your home folder, right click the $foo file and go to the permissions tab, then click the executable box and close. then double click that same file. oh wait, you arent using GNOME, well lemme figure out how to do that in KDE, the menus might be different.....etc...etc
OR
copy/paste this into terminal: $ chmod +x ~/$foo
$ ~/$foo
Configuring audio on Linux can be tricky, but that mostly affects casual users. If you're a professional audio user, you need to fiddle around a lot to set things up on any platform, and Linux is no harder than other platforms.
I think the point is that this kind of work has gone from "hard" to "feasible" on Linux. And in some areas, Linux actually has significant advantages of OS X, so that Linux now is a platform worth considering.
(Personally, I wouldn't dream of doing any kind of audio work on OS X anymore.)
I know Linux has its appeal, but this is frankly ridiculous. At best it is a stunt. At worst it is a complete waste of time.
It's like recommending Windows for a Web server. Yes, you can get a Web server up and running on Windows. But why? You can get a free modern Linux or BSD for the same hardware and it is not only 98% set up for you already, but when you deploy it to the Web it will do the job much better. Thousands or perhaps millions of people were there in Linux or BSD land before you, optimizing those systems in innumerable ways to be a better Web server. When you set up a Web server on Linux, you stand on the shoulders of giants from the first moment. It's that way also when you set up a music and audio workstation using a Mac. It's not just that the hardware and software is optimized for the task over years and decades, it's that the relevant community is there now and has been there for many years. There are a million benefits to that. Enough music and audio -related technical problems have been solved already on the Mac that you can work on your musical problems and audio problems without having to stop to do technical or I-T work.
If you buy any stock Mac and add no 3rd party hardware and software, you already have a better music and audio system than anything you can build with Linux. You will get all these for free with the Mac, already setup and working: GarageBand (music and audio workstation based on Logic), CoreAudio (multichannel pro audio subsystem that supports simultaneous use of multiple 32-bit/192kHz audio hardware as well as multiple pro audio software apps), CoreMIDI (ultra low-latency MIDI subsystem with compatibility with all MIDI devices), QuickTime (backbone of digital media production for 20 years now and the basis of the MPEG-4 standard that replaced the CD and DVD), and iTunes (which is scriptable on the Mac, so you can, for example, create a script that stamps arbitrary tracks with all of your own artist info). The software you get with the Mac is worth the price of the Mac; the hardware is free. If you try and replicate this functionality on another system, you will spend the price of the Mac just attempting to do it. Further, every Mac except MacBook Air has built-in 24-bit optical digital audio in and out, as well as analog audio in and out. So you don't even have to buy audio hardware to make a decent 24-bit recording. A Mac mini is $599 and it has all of this already setup and working to very high specifications and can share the Linux system's display if you already have a Linux system. It's small enough to travel. It has a FireWire 800 port to hook onto an audio interface or fast hard disk. It backs up all your work automatically, including versioning, if you just give it access to a second disk. It can play 24-bit audio in any context, even within 3rd party apps such as MS Word that are not audio-related.
If you do want to add hardware or software to the Mac, there are about 10 digital audio workstations for the Mac, some of which go back to the 1980's (e.g. Logic Pro used to be called Notator back then) and you can run 2 or more simultaneously and share hardware also. You can not only plug in pretty much any pro audio interface, you can plug in 10 of them at once if you want and they will all work simultaneously. You can plug in any MIDI instrument. There are dozens of highly creative Mac-only music and audio apps like MetaSynth which simply don't exist on other platforms. And if you are doing any soundtrack work, the fact that the Mac is the best video editing platform will benefit you in many small and large ways.
Even the iPod can do better than this Linux system when it comes to music. You can buy an iPod touch for $229, and an app called "FourTrack" for $9.99 more and you have a 4-track recorder and player with multitouch transport controls, pan pots, and faders. A key thing is that with multitouch, you are essentially working with a little hardware mixer. You can drag 2 sliders down at once, for example, so you can do an awful lot on stage with
OK, Peter Kirn, I now have Ubuntu Studio running on this 3 year old Dell Workstation, and ALSA and Jack and ReNoise. It wasn't tricky at all to set up, although I did have some trouble getting the mappings straight from my MIDI controller (although that happens on Windows a lot, too). I'm having some serious fun at the moment getting to know the ReNoise interface, and I just wanted you to know that I credit you with an assist. I'm planning a music project that's going to be written, recorded, mixed, rendered and mastered all in Linux.
Thanks, friend.
You are welcome on my lawn.