Greetings,
Just a pointer to articles I've written to date for the Linux Weekly
News. Their policy is to reserve initial viewing for subscribers only,
but afterwards the articles are publicly accessible. So, for the
interested among ye :
A Brief Survey Of Linux Audio Session Managers (January 2013)
http://lwn.net/Articles/533594/
The Synthesizers Of Sean Bolton (December 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/527556/
21st Century Csound (November 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/523166/
A Tale Of Two Sequencers [harmonySeq and Softwerk] (October 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/520348/
Keeping Up With Kdenlive (September 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/516016/
The Linux Audio Workstation, parts 1 & 2 (August 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/509958/http://lwn.net/Articles/510046/
A Survey Of Linux Audio Plugins (June 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/502183/
A Report From LAC2012 (May 2012)
http://lwn.net/Articles/495612/
Interesting to note how quickly things evolve in the Linux world. Stuff
I wrote only a few months ago is already outdated by development trends.
Keep up the good work, devs !
Anyway, enjoy, and your comments are welcome.
Best,
dp
Greetings,
I've been reading a lot of negative (read: vitriolic) commentary about
the world of Linux audio development and applications. I won't bother to
say where, just "the usual places" will have to suffice. Of greater
interest to me is the commentary itself - it seems to boil down to the
following plaints and lamentations (in no particular order) :
Too many distros.
Too many audio-optimized distros.
Not enough native plugins, esp. instruments.
Inconsistent support for VST/VSTi plugins.
Too many unstable/unfinished applications.
Too many "standards" (esp. wrt plugins).
Poor external/internal session management.
Poor support for certain modes of composition (think Ableton Live).
Lack of support for contemporary hardware.
Confusion re: desktops, and GUI toolkits.
Too difficult to set up audio system.
JACK is a pain.
Too much conflict/fragmentation within the development community.
I'm not so interested in comments on the commentary, I have my own, but
say what you will about the list. I figure that most denizens of these
lists already have ready replies and responses to these and other
criticisms, many of which have been voiced here previously. What I'm
more interested in is what *you* think is missing most or just plain
wrong about the situation. Please, try to speak your piece without
flames or dissing other developers and/or their work. Frankly speaking,
I've had enough of that crap, and I'm most thankful these days for such
forum amenities as "mute user" and autodiscard, along with the standard
filters found in mail clients.
<aside>
I'm reminded of John Cage's comments regarding the behavior of the NY
Philharmonic when they destroyed his equipment during the premire of
Atlas Eclipticalis, something to the effect that his concerns had ceased
to be musical and had become social, i.e. that he had to figure a way to
allow people to be free yet behave themselves with respect towards the
common goal (e.g. Cage's music and property). I'm going to guess that he
was still working on that up to his death.
</aside>
So, in your honest and bold opinion as user and/or developer, what do we
lack most and what can we do without that we already have ? Please feel
free to expand your remarks as you like. I'm planning an article on the
topic and will likely use selected comments, subject to approval of course.
Best,
dp
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine <
alexandre.prokoudine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Charles Z Henry wrote:
>
> > I think that linux is much more well known and it's easier than ever to
> get
> > started. So--might I suggest to do something more for student outreach?
> > What do you think would make a difference?
>
> Off-top of my head, try to get involved with Google Summer of Code.
>
> The graphics folks are traditionally well represented there: Blender,
> GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Scribus, OpenCV et al. Less so for video, and
> even less for audio.
>
> Alexandre Prokoudine
How about sponsoring good ol fashioned senior projects? Big and visible
events like Google Summer of Code will be good for some students who want a
summer project on their resumes, but there's a comparatively larger number
of students who need to do a senior project every year. Likewise the art
and music students need to create some kind of senior year portfolio or
recital.
I'm sure many of you in academics can (and do) encourage your students to
work with Linux. We may not need funding like GSOC, just some way to get
more recognition of using linux as a platform for academic projects.
Chuck
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 5:05 PM, <gerald.mwangi(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> Auto mode for JACK latency is a good idea.
> I have another proposition: a dedicated graphical front-end for jack
> session. It could help users setup their workflow , by providing a list of
> all the jack aware programs installed, categorized by type (sampler, daw,
> synth). The program should aid in setting up a project , eg firing up
> ardour with several tracks, firing up synths (lv2 instruments/hosts incl)
> with presets selectable from the front-end with a preview sound. The
> front-end could trigger the synth in question with a midi note when
> selecting a preset. Lv2 plugins, that is pure audio effects, could also
> listed with the ability to directly send a signal from the audio interface
> through the selected plugin to quickly hear what it does. One could then
> associate the selected plugin with, say a track in ardour, and another
> plugin with a track in hydrogen or so.
>
what you are describing is basically the "monolithic app" experience (from
a user perspective) but created using a set of independent applications and
processes.
speaking personally, i think there are better things to do with our time.
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 5:48 PM, <gerald.mwangi(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi
>
>
>
>
> -- Sent from my HP TouchPad
> ------------------------------
> On 10.02.2013 23:30, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 5:05 PM, <gerald.mwangi(a)gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> Auto mode for JACK latency is a good idea.
>> I have another proposition: a dedicated graphical front-end for jack
>> session. It could help users setup their workflow , by providing a list of
>> all the jack aware programs installed, categorized by type (sampler, daw,
>> synth). The program should aid in setting up a project , eg firing up
>> ardour with several tracks, firing up synths (lv2 instruments/hosts incl)
>> with presets selectable from the front-end with a preview sound. The
>> front-end could trigger the synth in question with a midi note when
>> selecting a preset. Lv2 plugins, that is pure audio effects, could also
>> listed with the ability to directly send a signal from the audio interface
>> through the selected plugin to quickly hear what it does. One could then
>> associate the selected plugin with, say a track in ardour, and another
>> plugin with a track in hydrogen or so.
>>
>
> what you are describing is basically the "monolithic app" experience (from
> a user perspective) but created using a set of independent applications and
> processes.
>
> speaking personally, i think there are better things to do with our time.
>
>
> Well just for the initialization of the project. The diversity experience
> of the multiple programs , ecosystem shall still be preserved
>
(1) your HTTP-only email confuses even gmail, and is probably inappropriate
for a technically oriented mailing list like this one.
(2) i'm not really that interested in preserving the "diversity
experience". i think it is much more valuable for developers, who get to
work on their own custom, standalone apps rather than being forced into a
framework as happens with plugin developers. there are a LOT of "linux
audio apps" that would be much more useful as plugins than they are as
standalone JACK clients. but this is only helpful for users, and puts
limitations on developers. look around you to see the result ....
William Light:
> it's interesting to me that free (source and/or beer) music software
> on
> OSX and windows has come further than it has on Linux. off the top of
> my head:
>
> http://psycle.pastnotecut.org/portal.php
> http://www.buzzmachines.com/
I'm very interested in knowing what you're missing from Psycle and
Buzzmachines
that Radium doesn't have...
Oops, mistakenly replied direct instead of to list. Forwarding.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: drew Roberts <zotzbro(a)gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 8:55 AM
Subject: Re: [LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?
To: Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net>
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Ralf Mardorf
<ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 2013-02-10 at 12:17 +0100, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
>> On 02/10/2013 01:59 AM, gerald.mwangi(a)gmx.de wrote:
>>
snip
>
> Using Linux, keeping the workflow can become a PITA, just by updating
> the DE ;), there are no updates for a 8 track analog recorder.
So just buy an already setup, tested, and warranted computer from
someone who knows what they are doing. Then, ***do not update it
yourself*** - use it as is just like a dedicated piece of equipment.
Down the road, get that same person who knows what they are doing to
update it for you or build you a new one.
I am not saying that these problems do not exist, and things can get
better for those who don't mind knowing a bit. I am saying thought
that for the person who does not want to know anything, they can avoid
the knowing somewhat if they will take an approach along the lines
mentioned.
>
> IMO the issue is "stand alone" vs "computer".
>
> Regards,
> Ralf
all the best,
drew
--
http://freemusicpush.blogspot.com/