[LAD] LADI

[Adrian Knoth]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 08:53:02AM +0000, Bob Ham wrote:

> local sessions are a subset of the functionality provided by network
> sessions

If you want to have network transparency inside the audio framework,
this perspective might be true.

But you could also ignore network on the audio level and just treat
remote components as special plugins in local sessions, plugins that use
socket() to connect to another host.

With this perspective, getting local things done becomes more important.
You immediately want total recall in your plugin API. LV2 anyone? ;)

The LV2-remote-controller-plugin could then (re-)connect to the remote
host and launch stuff there. This stuff doesn't even need to know
anything about jack. If it's data-triggered, you don't need a clock.
Just send data, let remote end process it, receive it back in your local
LV2 plugin and feed it into local jackd. As long as the whole process is
fast enough, everything is fine.


As already said, this is all a question of perspective. To me, having
jamin (mastering-EQ/comp/limiter) as a stand alone application is a
mistake.  The mastering tool gets inserted in the project's master bus,
and every project has its own required jamin settings.

So when I open project A in Ardour, I want my mastering settings back.
LV2 could do the trick. When I open project B, a different setting might
be loaded.

>From today's point of view, I would completely ignore jamin (or any
other standalone jack application) and just use the LV2 version of the
calf plugins. Total recall, easy to handle.

The average music producer isn't interested in a bunch of single
applications which he can wire up to something special. We need to get
work done, and we need to save/recall work. On OSX and Win32, this is
achieved by a decent editor (Cubase, ProTools, Logic) and tons of
plugins. We have ardour as the decent editor, and we have LV2 plugins,
perhaps not enough, yet.

I wonder why Linux Audio always reinvents the wheel. Just look at the
Win32 side: VST-Instruments, then put your favourite EQ on the outputs
and your mastering compressor somewhere else. Still modular, but
provides total recall.

All we need is a decent plugin API, and LV2 seems to be the choice.
Total recall then comes for free from this API. LASH? Don't know why I
would want to use it, all my plugins get controlled via LV2 from the
Ardour project.

Looks like there are different stakeholders involved. The music
producer's focus is the editor which gets extended by plugins. I'm such
a representative. Whatever I do, I want to do it from ardour, inside
ardour, saved in ardour. Ardour is the most important tool to me, and
plugins are the salt to spice things up.

Call me ignorant, but I don't have a single use case for netjack. I load
a bunch of wav files, make some overdub recordings with mostly one
(vocal) to twelve (drums) tracks simultaneously, trim regions, move
snippets around, apply some FX, apply some parameter automation and mix
it all together.

Even a full-blown rock production won't exceed 150 channels. I can also
afford to freeze channels if processing power gets low - I'm not
constantly changing the drum EQs. Once setup correctly, I don't touch
them anymore. So scalability isn't really an issue, here.  I did 150
channels back in 2005 on a Quad-Xeon, it would surprise me if a modern
machine couldn't handle it.


And then, there seems to be people who'd constantly record the Vienna
symphony orchestra with its hundreds of tracks, with endless demand of
DSP processing power. Those who laugh at SSL, because their tiny 96
channel consoles cannot compete. I agree those people could benefit from
network scalability.

A third group is the signal processing coder/scientist who doesn't care
about anything already mentioned. He's happy to hack his DSP code into
some standalone app, manually/statically wire it via jack and that's it.


So when talking about Pro Audio, I mean the music producer and his
desire to have everything in his single editing software. Cubase,
Ardour, ProTools. You name it. Moderate IO capabilities (usually
somewhere between 16 and 64 channels), all available in a single box.
(ProTools-HD, RME MADI, RME Fireface).

So when Florian is talking about Pro Audio, he means large broadcasting
studios and linux-under-the-hood, where a 128 channel desk is magically
expanded by another 128 channel outboard I/O rack. Granted.


To draw the conclusion: in my world, things are already pretty good as
long as it's available as LV2. I haven't checked LV2 automation, yet,
and I'd like to see a ping-pong delay be able to query/obey the host
tempo. I'd like to see LV2 virtual instruments, that is, Linuxsampler
and Hydrogen. 

Given that, I shouldn't really be participating in a thread called
"LADI" ;) But perhaps I gave some insights on the everyday work of a
music producer.

And never forget: Hans Zimmer was able to win a Grammy with Logic on a
single Apple laptop. ;)


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