2 Feb
2004
2 Feb
'04
12:47 p.m.
On Monday 02 Feb 2004 2:02 am, Marek Peteraj wrote:
Linux Audio.
You can't have a better promotion than having a domain name with
exactly that name - Linux Audio.
Well, you see, I'm not so convinced that it is such an obvious name as
you think.
I think the apparent obviousness of it is a projection of the fact
that as developers or engineers we mostly seem to think of what we do
as "audio". I'm not so sure that "audio" is going to be the
obvious
defining word to any user who is not an audio engineer by trade.
For example, look at the website for the Sounds Expo trade show:
http://www.sounds-expo.co.uk/index2.php
To us this is obviously an audio industry trade show, but the word
"audio" does not feature in the description on that site at all.
Similarly I have copies of the latest Sound on Sound and Future Music
magazines in front of me, and the word "audio" is nowhere on the
cover of either. All of these exclusively use words like "sound",
"recording", "music". "Audio" describes a particular domain
that has
to do with frequencies and samples: it's something that engineers use
to make music products, not something that musicians use. (The
crossover between studio engineers and home studio users does muddy
this one, of course.)
Still, to me this seems like a pretty obvious distinction -- I've been
developing Linux music software for nearly a decade now, but I'm only
tangentially a Linux audio developer. And I see the "linuxaudio.org"
consortium as having a name that suggests it's targeted at the audio
industry, or at least to developers and sound engineers, not so much
the average end user. I'm not persuaded that the musician with an
interest in music software for Linux would ever think of going to
linuxaudio.org at all.
(Caveat: it's possible that the word "audio" gets more general use in
the US?)
Chris