[linux-audio-user] Newcomer to the list

[Daniel James]

> Sweep has a great interface, but it still has one significant
> downside: all the audio is loaded into memory.  This prevents
> the effective editing of large soundfiles or sessions unless you
> have a ton of memory (or it will swap all over you).

I wouldn't regard this as a downside - it's just a consequence of the 
in-RAM design. Sweep and Audacity (which is a hard disk recorder) 
complement each other very well.

You wouldn't use Audacity for real-time scratching effects, or 
scrubbing through a file to find an edit point by ear. You wouldn't 
use Sweep for recording four channels of 32-bit float audio for half 
an hour or longer. But I've done these things with the other program, 
with great sucess.

A killer feature of free software is that you don't have to choose a 
single proprietary 'solution', which will usually be a design 
compromise - you get to use both Sweep and Audacity, and many other 
programs, depending on what you need at that moment. 

Cheers

Daniel