prebuilt tools [was: Re: [linux-audio-user] recording delay in Ardour...]

[Frank Barknecht]

Hallo,
Mark Knecht hat gesagt: // Mark Knecht wrote:

> That said, Reaktor Session comes with 35-40 prebuilt instruments, and each
> instrument has many sounds ready to go. 
[...]
> I'd love to see that happen with one or more of the Linux tools. 

I'm working on making exactly this happen with Pd. At least it is one
of my current goals. Technically Pd allows for a very interesting
thing with its graph-on-parent patches. Basically this is a Pd patch
that carries its own GUI. You can see some very early screenshots of
these in my angriff drum machine for Pd here:
http://footils.org/cgi-bin/cms/?show_article=13

What GOP allows is, that more experienced users could build real
easy-to-use instruments for the casual, musician type users.  I
already coined a marketing term for this: (drum roll...) 
   
   RRAD-ical Pd 
   
where RRAD stands for "Reusable and Rapid Audio Development". This is
only half joked. Even Max/MSP, which is far more complex than Reaktor,
has much more users than any Linux tool, and the main reason, the
secret is, that the many users of Max do build and share (or sell)
many useful instruments. The same applies to Csound.

I want to help build the same for open source software.  Pd is a
natural choice for me, because I like and use it a lot, but it is also
one of the more widely used "synth" applications available for Linux,
maybe because it also is crossplatform and available on Win and OS-X,
too. 

Pd might not be the prettiest software or have the cleanest app
design, but it is there, it works and - most importantly - it has a
community around it. 

As none of the open source audio tools really is backed by a company
which could force its employees to build patches, write docs or which
could sponsor musicians to use its products, the community is the main
and only 'selling' point. 

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht                               _ ______footils.org__