[linux-audio-user] Preach it! [was: Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: Behringer etc.]

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 19:42:32 -0600, Ryan Gallagher
<ruinaudio at comcast.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 00:55 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 20:14, Ryan Gallagher wrote:
> > Linux users are still a minority and linux audio users
> > > an even smaller one, downright miniscule.  We should try to stay "real"
> > > in estimating our tiny presence in this huge industry.
> >
> > Ok let's get this straight.  ;)
> >
> > (why do we always underestimate ourselves)
> 
> Come on... reality check.  The mail lists for
> Avid->DigiDesign->Pro-Tools alone dwarf LAU.

I'm pretty sure that the PTLE list for only x86 hardware, which is
probably closer to what 90% of LAU users are trying to do, dwarfs LAU.
 Add in Mac PTLE users and it probably doubles or possibly triples. 
After that the big boys are incremental. There are certainly fewer of
them, but you can pretty much expect that there are 2 or 3 engineers
at least from every Pro Tools based studio out there, and there are a
lot of Pro Tools based studios.
> 
> The linux-audio market isn't a fly-fart in sulfur mine to these 2nd tier
> companies (m-audio et. al.).  They're competing for crumbs from the
> giant's (digidesign) lap anyway.
> 
> > Suppose that each city and perhaps a fairly large town in the US and
> > Europe has got at least *one* linux audio user.
> >
> > Likely? I think so :)
> >
> > How much users would that be? Hundreds? More?
> 
> Hundreds.  And the money we (LAU's) spend on audio gear in a year per
> company wouldn't pay the salary of the person who pushes "send" on the
> "we don't plan support" emails for a month.
> 
> > Now let's look at the "tiny" linux audio market. Ask everyone what unit
> > he has got. I bet it's going to be 2/3rd RME 1/3 Maudio.
> 
> I'd venture to guess that if EVERY LAU signed a petition to support only
> one company in return for drivers/support... it'd mean nothing.  To be
> honest, I'm grateful for any "support" official or otherwise we get.
> IMO it's a cheritible act for these profit driven (not meant in a
> negative way) manufacturers to spend/risk revenue on what is still
> largely a hobby OS (speaking of linux desktop/audio here only).
> 
> > > 1) second the validity of your statements regarding OS representation
> > > (LAU is a pretty insular community, sometimes it feels bigger than it
> > > is)
> >
> > Sadly it's exactly the opposite.
> 
> Bottom line, these companies are not stupid.  They know where the money
> is, and it ain't on LAU.  If it were, they'd be here too.
> 

Yep...however the smart ones look for ways to both incrementally
increase revenue, and then also to create revolutionary changes. I
keep thinking that one of these days Digi will come out with a closed
system that is Linux based and includes the PC itself. Incrementally
it wouldn't cost them all that much to add a PC to some unit like the
002 Rack. Most users would use external audio drives so internal
storage requiremments aren't that high. They'd have control of the OS
and it would be stable.

For the last 6 months PTLE users have been caught in a bind. No PTLE
versions run on XP Service Pack 2 so all PTLE systems have to stick
with a bad version of Windows that isn't getting updates. I'm scared
to do much on the net with my PTLE machine. I don't know why Digi
hasn't fixed this. I guess it's hard. The plugin vendors have told us
their plugins aren't stable on SP2 either, so it's a mess.

But before we totally discount the idea of LAU/Ardour type apps
failing in comparison to Digi I'm reminded of when I wrote a post
there and a couple of guys jumped up and started building Planet
machines to try it out. Problem was it was too hard to build and
Fernando wasn't supporting it yet. Today they would have a much easier
time. For fun I answered a year old question in that thread and popped
it back to the top of the list.

http://duc.digidesign.com

Look at the PTLE on Windows forum.

FYI - There are 48700 registered users of the DigiDesign forums...

- Mark