[LAU] [RFC] A “poor man’s”, yet professional level studio setup

[Len Ovens]

On Mon, 22 Feb 2021, Francesco Napoleoni wrote:

> Aaahhh, this is the kind of discussion I wanted... :-)
>
>
>> There seem to be few proprietary tools that allow interoperability between
>> anything (os, machines, applications), it seems most tools are monolythic
>
> Well, I wouldn’t say this anymore: looking at the current market, we have an 
> increasing offer of techonlogies aimed at distributing the different parts of 
> a/v processing. We have ReWire being around since many years, just to name 
> one, but I’m thinking more of Dante Network, which I believe to be the future 
> standard for studio connectivity. Just have a look at

dante was what I was thinking of when I made my comment about "why use 
network and mic cables" because dante seems to be about using network to 
join DAW to preamps/analog audio. For what you describe below, netjack, 
rtpmidi are probably the best open and available right now options. The 
only dante options currently available for Linux seem to be get a dante 
audio card ($$$$$) or use the linux AES67 driver and use some other device 
(windows or mac computer) to set up connections. This is aside from the 
cost of dante hardware. (in my book a mac computer is not a poor man's 
anything) Many people have a windows computer hanging around (I don't) or 
maybe there are android/ios solutions for this. So from my perspective, A 
USB 18 i/o audio device is about half the cost of getting the same thing 
with dante. Dante works great for a big studio with lots of mics and 
recording booths, but unless your synths have Dante out maybe not much use 
in your case.

> As an example, in my studio I have a 16 channels audio mixer, which I found to 
> be of little use over time, since I dropped my old bands in favor of composing 
> activities. Now I find myself using more and more MIDI synths and virtual 
> instruments, which I can easily mix in Ardour. By now I barely use 4-6 
> channels, while my gear is getting older and noisier.
>
> At this point I could get rid of this mixer, and all of the cabling, 
> patchbays, hardware synths and effects, buy a smaller one just to have the 
> analog inputs for a couple of microphones and a bass amp. It would be directly 
> connected to the audio interface, and that would be all for my needs. Less 
> noise, less clutter, less dust...

Ok, so you wish to use many (for some definition of many) soft synths, one 
or two per computer to be easy on cpu use and use network instead of audio 
cabling. These softsynths would not need any physical audio card or midi 
interface using the network instead. Assuming you already have the 
machines networked on their own switch, netjack should work fine. Dante 
would require buying at least one dante box or one dante audio card and 
probably require having at least one computer run an OS dante supported 
for connection manager. As AES67 drivers seem to be a thing, an AES67 
network may be a possiblilty to mixed with rtpmidi or ipmidi (using Rui's 
excelent utility). There is someone doing something like this with four 
computers using netjack but I forget his name and webpage. At least one of 
his boxes is a windows box and the rest are Linux. (my failing, this 
forgetting thing not his)

> Even for a small project I end up having at least 50-60 tracks (audio and 
> MIDI), which grow far over 100 with orchestra. This is a non trivial load for 
> a single workstation, and even if it can handle them, I would find myself 
> using many applications on the same machine, with all the fiddling between 
> windows, upgrade or crash nightmares involved. Such a setup would only 
> transfer the clutter inside the PC.

Orchestral stuff is like that to do it well.

>> I would add the zita tools in here. In particular zita-njbridge. You may
>> wish to look at sonobus as well for slightly wider networks.
>> [...]
>
> Yep, another interesting tool. Actually a quite orthogonal setup which makes 
> use of zita-njbridge is MultiJACK

Yes that could be done... the same thought had crossed my mind, though I 
am not sure why two jacks per machine (or more) would be better than one. 
Jack2 already uses all the cores/threads it can find if it can (routing 
allows).

> This seems to be the current trend among professionals, as the budget for 
> music gets lower and lower. Why hire an orchestra, a studio, a conductor, one 
> or more arrangers, and so on, when a composer and a Pro Tools and Kontakt nerd 
> (even better if the two coincide) could do (apparently) the same with a 
> fraction of the budget? Personally I loathe this trend, but I (and many 
> others) must be ready to face it. And let’s remember that my choice of using 
> mostly free software makes me an outsider...

For those in advertizing out there... I have a word for this kind of 
music: "channel changer" If anyone reading this advertizes on a radio 
station playing computer generated music with the teenager of the week 
singing karaoke over top, maybe find a different radio station to 
advertize on. This is about "popular" (pop) music but unfortunately that 
is my first thought when I see the last paragraph. One hopes you are 
creating something better.

With current marketing trends that are individualized where each view or 
listen is counted, our choice of what we deign to watch or listen to can 
push things one way or the other.


--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net