[LAD] aBLETON lINK

Patrick Shirkey pshirkey at boosthardware.com
Tue Sep 20 14:46:33 UTC 2016


> The people who designedand wrote Link are entirely familiar with JACK (if
> only because I taught them about it).
>

We know that. So are the people at Google who used JACK as the basic
design reference for their attempt at low latency audio.

> I too was a bit disappointed when Link was announced (last Novemeber)
> because it seemed redundant given JACK transport. But once they released
> the SDK for iOS and later the code for all platforms, it became clear that
> the Link team has come up with something quite different, extremely useful
> and really rather clever. Even just their clear identification of
> different
> kinds of musical time sync is a huge contribution for those of us who
> think
> about such things.
>
> Ableton is actually full of quite a lot of software developers who are
> into
> open source. I don't know why there needs to be the level of disdain and
> skepticism for the company itself just because, like most other s/w
> development companies, they use a proprietary model.

Maybe it's because they explicitly stated that AL would *never* run on
Linux and then attempted to explain their justification for that decision
with a essay and speech at LAC (but that's just a guess).

> Their documentation
> for their Push2 surface is an exemplary example of how any company (even
> an
> open source one like Monome) should and could document a hardware device
> and how to interact with it. Likewise, their release of the Link SDK as
> GPL
> code for all platforms is a remarkably strong statement from a company
> whose core products are all released under proprietary licenses.
>

These are steps in the "left" direction but it's not hard to imagine their
marketing department getting veto over any actual attempts at integrating
with existing Open Source projects like ex. JACK simply because of the
branding opportunities of releasing software like Link as their own
standard.

Jack => Link .... hmmm, no similarity there.

IIUC, even with all your expert advice AL does not support JACK directly.
which seems a shame seeing as JACK is a "spec'ed out, cross-platform
reference implementation" that has *already* found its way into hardware.




>
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2016 at 1:03 AM, Patrick Shirkey
> <pshirkey at boosthardware.com
>> wrote:
>
>>
>> > On 09/19/2016 11:56 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> why?
>> >>>
>> >>> On Sat, Sep 17, 2016 at 5:44 PM, Tito Latini <tito.01beta at gmail.com>
>> >>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>> What is the content of the network packets ?
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Regardless, I'll ignore software with that technologogy.
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> The OP seems to be suggesting that whoever has access to the data
>> >> captured
>> >> by Ableton Link or the potential backdoor that link *might* enable
>> would
>> >> use it for nefarious purposes.
>> >
>> > Ableton link is used to synchronize software and devices on a *LAN*.
>> > It basically broadcasts BPM and song-position to the *local* network.
>> >
>>
>> Because netjack isn't good enough or cross platform enough or LGPL
>> enough
>> or adopted enough?
>>
>> > Link does not allow to synchronize devices on a WAN.
>> >
>> > The complete source code is free (GPLv2) you can read it, no strings
>> > attached.
>> >
>>
>> Be careful, apparently you might get brainwashed ;-)
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Shirkey
>> Boost Hardware Ltd
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Linux-audio-dev mailing list
>> Linux-audio-dev at lists.linuxaudio.org
>> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
>>
>


-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd



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