[LAU] The age old question... open source vs the other...

[Russell Hanaghan]

Hi folks,

As briefly mentioned in another post by myself, I have started a 
business. Among the the services offered, we are providing demo 
production and recording services. In a couple of small projects, and 
also getting reacquainted with my DAW stuff, it has dawned on me that 
Sonar Producer 8 (x64) and Windows Vista (x64) has become very 
complicated for what I want to do. While it's great to claim the 
availability of all those bells n whistles, they dont serve the purpose, 
art or business necessarily other than to make it cumbersome and 
complicated to use. I am running a Delta 1010LT, which is hardly a pro 
card, yet capable of reasonable sound and flexibility. The box is an AMD 
x64 3ghz dual core, ASUS mobo with 2g RAM and Nvidia graphics card. Not 
exactly a heavy weight pro DAW either but also, not without balls!

The thought has entered my mind that maybe I go full Open source. I'm 
reminded from my time with Ardour that the routing layout is a LOT more 
conducive to how I like to work, as is JACK.  I have the need for solid 
midi playback and flexible editing also and Muse was my preference 
because of the layout. I'm eager to see how Ardour 3 unfolds on this 
end...but the main focus is to try and simplify things and focus on 
better work flow and less learning curve, more art!  I have spent a 
reasonable amount of time with Linux and open source as some of you 
know. I'm a single, small gradient above "basic user", not a dev of any 
kind. While I expect to have bugs and issues, I need it to be a reliable 
platform just the same. If you have a recommendation, tell me what 
distro and version you have Ardour, Jack, etc running on that you can 
trust your art to! What version of Ardour / JACK is running stable...do 
you have Wine / VST working reliably? If you had a single shot at 
recording an all time super hit piece of ART, would you trust your 
platform to capture it safely and recreate it cleanly?

There is a chance this business may seek a grant based on an educational 
foundation...to teach kids, etc how to record, produce, etc. It would be 
a nice thought to tell them "We use Open source platforms". It is a 
noble gesture if nothing else, but help me to see if it's reasonable to 
make it a reality. If this part of the business is successful, I assure 
you the proceeds get shared in the donation buckets of those who put all 
the effort into writing and improving the applications that even make 
this conversation possible!

thanks for your thoughts and input.

Russell