[Consortium] Sounds Expo report

Hello all, Linuxaudio.org enjoyed a very successful three days at the Sounds Expo trade show in London last week. The organisation was represented by Chris Cannam and Richard Bown of Fervent Software, Free Ekanayaka and Tim Hall from AGNULA/DeMuDi and myself. Here's a summary of what happened: 1. AMD sponsorship Despite a considerable discount from the organisers of Sounds Expo because we were running a not-for-profit stand, our participation was only made possible due to generous and significant sponsorship from AMD. Per Bahr from AMD joined us on the stand, where we gave out promotional material featuring AMD's artist sponsorship programme and the Opteron architecture, as well as pens, keyrings and so on. I demonstrated a prototype of the '64 Studio' distribution running natively on an Athlon 64 laptop, featuring JACK and Ardour. 2. Stand visitors There was an obvious increase from last year in the number of stand visitors who said they were already running Linux, if mostly for non-audio tasks such as web development. For many of these users, the questions were "why should I use a customised distribution?" and "which applications do you reccomend?" rather than "what is Linux?". However, there were still a great number of show visitors who had not seen Linux before, even though most of them had heard of it. 3. Education A number of stand visitors were from UK educational institutions who were actively considering replacing Windows and Mac OS with Linux for music and multimedia courses. These institutions need both software and consultancy services, so if Linuxaudio.org members are interested in following up with these contacts, please let me know. 4. FireWire support Due to the immature state of FireWire audio interface support on Linux, we paid special attention to this area when speaking to exhibitors in other booths. We now have new contacts with Focusrite, M-Audio, RME and Yamaha in order to follow this up. We also enquired about the fine print of mLAN licensing, and whether there is a way we can get control node specifications for Linux audio developers. If members are interested in forming a specialist FireWire group within Linuxaudio.org, please let me know. 5. Behringer One of the most positive exhibitors regarding support for Linux developers was Behringer, which has offered to help make sure that Linux works well with its products - particularly its range of control surfaces. These already work with Linux applications to a certain extent, but the interaction could benefit from some polish. If you need a contact within the company, please let me know. 6. Emission This company makes a dedicated hardware controller for DJs: http://www.emissionuk.com/prod_dac.asp They are interested in getting Linux support for it, and we suggested that they consider working with the developer community to JACK-enable it, possibly based around the jackEQ software mixer. If you are interested in this project, just let me know and I will put you in touch with the company. 7. Embedded devices There were several Linux-based products on other stands, with the Korg Oasys perhaps the star of the show. Although these embedded systems usually run a proprietary application on top of a Linux distribution, they seem to be rasing the profile of Linux in the audio industry. I believe instruments like the Oasys had a noticeable effect on the other exhibitors at Sounds Expo, particularly on the issue of hardware support for Linux. 8. Linux presentation At short notice, I prepared and delivered a presentation in the Sound on Sound theatre entitled 'Linux in the recording studio - myths and realities". This covers the history of free and proprietary software, leading up to a brief discussion and demonstration of Linux audio applications. If anyone would like the slides or speaker notes from this presentation for reuse, please ask. Cheers! Daniel James Director http://linuxaudio.org