Linux-audio-dev

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Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Nils Gey

So, now that this thread shifted into a hardware/driver discussion and the flood of answers has stopped: Have we learned anything from it? For my part the conclusion is make more music make it public make other people want to use the same tools as you Nils

13 years, 4 months

[LAD] Is Linux audio moving forward - some very personal notes

by Fons Adriaensen

It (see subject) is a good question. In general my answer would be 'yes', but maybe not at the speed one could hope for. The following is just from my perspective, which is 'minority', 'very specialised', or just 'irrelevant', take your choice. That perspective is: * Classical (including contemporary 'classical') music recording. * Spatial audio reproduction, in particular Ambisonics. * Acoustics research. * Audio forensics. I agree that is all quite different from the average musician's POV, so you will be forgiven for considering it irrelevant. In all of those fields Linux audio has served me well, and in particular Ardour has been a very dependable and flexible tool during the past five years or so. If I go back a bit more, it is very clear that things have improved immensely. I remember the second (IIRC) LAC where Paul demoed Jack and Ardour and had to use pkill every two minutes. Things have really gone forward since then, and by quite a distance. But that doesn't mean all is honey. The HW situation has been mentioned. Honestly, I wouldn't know where to go if RME went away. Almost everything I've been doing the last years has not only used their HW, but depended on it - no alternatives. That *is* scary. Things being like that may not be just a Linux problem. I agree with J. Liles that we should have the courage to review Jack. It has done a very good job, but (at least in my world) it is showing its limits, and I'm not at al convinced that these can be removed by 'incremental' improvements. Maybe we need something new and incompatible, with two systems existing during a transition period which could take several years. In particular: * It sould become a system level service, i.e. 'promiscuous'. I've been running modified versions like that for some time. It's a pain currently. Things will maybe improve once systemd becomes universal. * It should have 'persistent' ports or the equivalent. That is, you can start an app, and tell Jack to remember it and its ports even after the app is terminated. The point here is that others can then connect to it even if it doesn't (yet) run. This would simplify things like session management quite a lot. But it also requires cooperation from the apps - one like Ardour that creates and removes ports with arbitrary names at any time doesn't fit well into such a scheme. The solution is to use Jack ports more like audio hardware uses its interfaces: ports are a fixed set (as would be e.g. an ADAT or MADI interface on a HW mixer), but are assignable to any function *within the app*. Any notion of logical function can still be carried as metadata of the port. * All current hardware is SMP. If an audio app has a complex internal processing graph it will implement its own multithreaded scheduling system for audio processing units (as Ardour 3 does). But it's silly to repeat this in every app, and even more silly to schedule apps 'per process', i.e. run them only if *all* of the internal graph can run. This level of logic should move into Jack, or whatever replaces it. The plugin situation is deplorable. Let's face it, 90% of the available ones just don't work, or work for some value of 'work' but are still crap. LV2 has not delivered what was hoped for, IMHO as a result of focussing on the wrong things. Given that things are what they are, any plugin standard on Linux should have a documented and *stable* way to support *any* X11 based GUI, including having a GUI embedded into an app, *and* do that in a way that still works efficiently even if you have 100 plugins in an single app and 500 in your system. Focussing on the right things also means supporting developers who go for quality and are prepared for the effort instead of trying to make things as easy a possible for beginners. One of the reasons I'm not releasing anything as an LV2 plugin is that LV2 doesn't impose any quality standards, and doesn't care about its reputation. It's just bad company. Finally, and on a very personal level, you may have noticed that my output has decreased. But it hasn't. I've written more Linux audio SW during the last years than at any time before. I'm just less inclined to publish it. And I have been asking myself why that is so. One factor may be that much of it is rather specialised. But that is in itself no reason to keep it private, so that doesn't explain things. What has certainly played a role is that fact that I'm tired of the mostly useless discussions that arise whenever you propose something that challenges the status quo, and the need to reach a 'consensus' before anything happens. Which is more often that not just used to kill some idea rather than towards any productive end. -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Patrick Shirkey

On Thu, October 11, 2012 6:52 am, Louigi Verona wrote: > @Folderol: > > "While it is nice to have lots of different apps, plugins, whatever, I > think you > find most musicians quickly settle on a very small range which they get to > know > extremely well." > > This is true. However, before you settle, you do need to have a choice. > And > there is > very little right now. > > @Dan: > > "He made a number of valid points but I have to agree it was a bit overly > negative. Linux audio has come a long way in the last few years- if still > trailing some way behind commercial offerings in some areas but its > unrealistic to expect otherwise when the big boys have large teams working > full time on development plus some of the apps (Cubase etc.) effectively > pre-date Linux back to the 80's." > > You point out the reason why things are as they are. I did not speak about > the reasons, I tried to capture how I see the state of things, independent > of the reasons. Noting that Linux has come a long way and that we cannot > expect hobbyists to do as well as professionals has nothing to do with a > completely independent statement that Linux has few plugins compared not > even to Windows but to some musicians' needs. ;) > > > I think sometimes it is useful to take such perhaps a slightly negative > look. As long as it is not desperate, this kind of reflection can be > useful > to always be realistic about one's achievements or about state of things. > > Also, I have a hidden hope that someone disproves my view and shows that > in > reality everything is not so bad ;) The problem with that approach is that it tends to feed the negative attitude towards Linux and that is exactly what the "competition" want. So by "trashing" the platform to gather informed responses it can do more harm than good from a marketing and promotional angle. However that method works very well for Fox and The Register so it's definitely a valid approach. After years of trash talk or being ignored what we really need is a dedicated effort to "bigging up" all the things that can be done. Which reminds me, if anyone has any tutorials they want to share on the quicktoots website please send them my way. We get about 500 views a month on that site at the moment and as it has been online for almost 10 years that means almost 50,000 people have viewed tutorials on that site. The toots don't have to be recent or cutting edge. Just useful and informative :-) BTW, for the professional companies out there that is 50,000 very attractive sales prospects that you could have been marketing to for the past 10 years. So if you are a company and want to increase your sales potential it makes sense to be providing professional tutorials for inclusion on the quicktoots site on a regular basis. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

13 years, 4 months

[LAD] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Louigi Verona

Hey fellas! Would like to present an article I've written. Mostly wrote it to start a conversation and hear what others have to say on the subject. http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=linux_progre… You can comment here or on my textboard (which does not require registration). -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Patrick Shirkey

On Wed, October 10, 2012 11:33 pm, Ben Loftis wrote: > > I'd pose a different question: > > Is OSX/Win Audio moving _backward_? > > If OSX continues to move towards iOS, and Win continues to move towards > Metro, and Thunderbolt stalls, and screens get smaller, and expansion > ports get scarcer, then Linux might become the de-facto "pro" multimedia > platform simply because the other choices have become too dumbed down. > > Of course _most_ users will be happy with the ease and power of the > tools that will be available on iOS/Metro. And _most_ users is where > the money is, so Apple/Microsoft are chasing the right users. But there > will be some serious users that need a powerful production system with > big screens and big peripherals, and for these users, Linux might > become the standard. > Looking at the recent trade shows it seems that Linux/Unix is the already the hardware standard. I didn't spot hardware running on Apple or M$ OS's but plenty of Linux and Unix platforms. Unfortunately it costs $4000 for a booth here so I probably won't be able to do any promotions at the next event. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Patrick Shirkey

On Thu, October 11, 2012 5:41 am, Dan MacDonald wrote: > Patrick wrote: > >> >> Looking at the recent trade shows it seems that Linux/Unix is the >> already >> the hardware standard. I didn't spot hardware running on Apple or M$ >> OS's >> but plenty of Linux and Unix platforms. >> >> > Which trade show was this? "Integrate" is the biggest A/V trade show in Australia. It's just a baby compared to US or EU offerings though. > I'm unaware of any hardware vendors advertising > or even officially supporting Linux other than RME kinda but their support > seems little more than half-hearted as they apparently don't provide any > support for their drivers which they say on their website are 3rd party so > did they even have any involvement in them at all? Focusrite provide specs > but no Linux drivers or support so I wouldn't count them either. > Just walking around you can see who is using Unix/Linux and who is not. Granted most of it is embedded or SoC but they are definitely not Apple or Mac OS's on the clear majority of the hardware solutions. Unfortunately for us in the proprietary world it's not "cool" to talk about where you get your firmware/software from so no one is promoting that information. When it comes to desktop solutions no one is representing Linux at the trade shows here. Afaik noone is doing anything explicit for Linux Multimedia solutions at any of the US or EU trade shows either. Given that there are several companies on these lists who do go to the trade shows it seems that we are all missing a big opportunity for promotion of the general platform by not capitalising on the "We heart Linux" bandwagon. > I know its not audio related but even HP who's support for Linux is > arguably better or at least on a par with their support for the other two > OS still don't advertise or claim to officially support Linux - even > though > they do. Sad state of affairs - even now in 2012 when we can all safely > say > Linux isn't going away the big corps still like to pretend it doesn't > exist. > Valve just announced that the Linux port for Steam will go live with 15 titles. Intel, AMD and ARM all promote Linux heavily. The entire top level of the movie industry runs on Linux. Harrison is building Linux Hardware Solutions. RME provides Linux support or standards compliant devices. What is missing is a concerted effort to advertise and promote the advances that have been made. We can't rely on the magazine and mainstream news media publishers to do it for us as they are clearly not interested. So we have to do it ourselves which either means paying the publishers for space or blanketing the web with information. Given that we are unlikely to crowd fund advertising the latter is more viable. Considering that we have several thousand LAU people who also just happen to be handy with a computer and the internet that actually works in our favour. Marketing companies spend millions of client dollars on SEO and manage to get a lot done with just a few dedicated people. We have thousands of users and each one of us can build a website or post links in forums and social media to the landing pages that we want to promote. Our sites all link up to each other anyway so it just needs some effort from people around here to spread the links and evangelise the platform. Having some killer content won't go amiss either. Perhaps the professional companies round here have some AV content that they would like to share more widely for promotional purposes? We are actually looking for some content we can turn into a show reel. So if you know of anything that would be suitable please let us know. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Louigi Verona

Now that I am a little less zealous about free software (which is a different discussion anyway), I might just try Renoise out. I am rather tired of tracker interface. Does Renoise have a piano roll? On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:11 PM, James Mckernon <jmckernon(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:24 AM, Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hey fellas! > > > > Would like to present an article I've written. Mostly wrote it to start a > > conversation and hear what others have to say on the subject. > > > > > http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=linux_progre… > > > > You can comment here or on my textboard (which does not require > > registration). > > > > > > -- > > Louigi Verona > > http://www.louigiverona.ru/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Linux-audio-user mailing list > > Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org > > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user > > > > A smart article - as another 'electronic musician' (by your > definition) using Linux, I'm always interested in your thoughts and > essays on the topic. I agree that things can sometimes look a little > bleak for those hoping to create highly sequenced, > synth-and-effects-based music on Linux, but there are ways and means. > > Incidentally, I wonder if you've ever used Renoise? Not F/OSS, but > runs perfectly well on Linux, and is in some respects sympathetic to > the F/OSS ideology (saves to a simple, open file format, for example). > Anyway, it's the strongest candidate I've found for making sequenced > electronic music per se in LInux. Right now I'm working towards a > workflow of using Renoise as a sequencer to drive simple synthdefs in > Supercollider. > > Cheers, > J > -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Louigi Verona

Hello Ben! I'd like to answer your question: Is OSX/Win Audio moving _backward_? In the most general sense my answer would be a no. It is like being in a process of building a house and looking at your neighbour who has already built a house and saying - "hm, his building process seems to be going backward." But I think it is more accurate to say that his building process simply stopped, because the house is already complete. Since day one I have always underlined that I do not think Linux can technically compete with Windows and Mac OS in that many things. Freedom is what gives Linux its benefits. But technical superiority is questionable. It strongly depends on what distro you use, what you do with it, etc. And even if in theory it can be shown that Windows and Mac OS are in many ways technically inferior, the number of users hammering at it surely made it work - not in theory, but in practice. Windows Audio, as opposed to Linux Audio, has all pieces in place - it has sequencers, it has tens of thousands of plugins, hundreds of them high quality, it has software for djs and live performers, just like Linux it has all sorts of very cool experimental applications, which continue to be developed and absolutely no problems with hardware. Mac OSX is even better in the realm of audio. I have many friends who are professional musicians and who use Mac, I've performed with them and I have seen great things that Mac Audio can do - it is incredible. And now, when these platforms have everything a modern musician requires and, while there is always room for improvement and new ideas, there are hardly any pressing needs, they can experiment with Metro, with small screens and with anything they want. They are on a firm base and if needed, all of it can be expanded to anything you want. This is my opinion. Why we stick with Linux? Each has his reasons. Linux is free. Linux surely has some unique workflows, possibilities and apps. But to me the problem is that I can do great ambient on Linux, but I have a difficult time putting together anything else. Doing a house tune, which is a pleasure on Windows, is a very difficult thing on Linux, I've written about it many times. So my dream is to see Linux fulfil the need of a non-experimental electronic musician. On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 4:33 PM, Ben Loftis <ben(a)harrisonconsoles.com>wrote: > > I'd pose a different question: > > Is OSX/Win Audio moving _backward_? > > If OSX continues to move towards iOS, and Win continues to move towards > Metro, and Thunderbolt stalls, and screens get smaller, and expansion > ports get scarcer, then Linux might become the de-facto "pro" multimedia > platform simply because the other choices have become too dumbed down. > > Of course _most_ users will be happy with the ease and power of the tools > that will be available on iOS/Metro. And _most_ users is where the money > is, so Apple/Microsoft are chasing the right users. But there will be some > serious users that need a powerful production system with big screens and > big peripherals, and for these users, Linux might become the standard. > > -Ben > > > > > ______________________________**_________________ > Linux-audio-user mailing list > Linux-audio-user(a)lists.**linuxaudio.org<Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org> > http://lists.linuxaudio.org/**listinfo/linux-audio-user<http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user> > -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Paul Davis

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 6:09 AM, Dan MacDonald <allcoms(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi LV! > > Nice and interesting write up of your experiences and opinions there. I > agree with most all of it except: > > "Saving projects is still a huge problem. In addition to LADISH we do now > have NSM, the Non-Session Manager, which seems like a workable solution, so > we'll see how this works out in the long run. > LMMS seems to be the only game in town for those who want to save full > projects by just clicking "Save" and not having to install and configure a > "session manager". I must admit, by the way, that I have not followed LMMS > recently." > > Saving projects is only tricky if you use the modular approach versus > instrument plugins hence this isn't really a problem for A3 and qtractor. > Aside from LMMS, MusE and sunvox have a few integrated instruments so they > don't have this problem either (if you stick to the built-in synths for > Muse only - sunvox doesn't handle plugins) and pretty soon MusE should gain > native VST support to further improve this situation. > > Your article has reminded me of my one and only JACK complaint/ feature > (yep - just one!!!) request which I filed a couple of years ago now but is > still to be addressed: > > http://trac.jackaudio.org/ticket/202 > > I'm surprised others haven't been asking for more descriptive 'device > busy' error messages from JACK as for many years this has been my only > issue with JACK - it doesn't start and you don't know what process is > preventing it doing so. Quite often I'll not bother doing the detective > work and just reboot but that is hardly ideal so I think this small > addition would make JACK (and qjackctl) and as a result Linux audio much > more user friendly. > > Your thoughts Mr Davis? > current jack1 (released months or years ago): if (snd_pcm_open (&driver->playback_handle, playback_alsa_device, SND_PCM_STREAM_PLAYBACK, SND_PCM_NONBLOCK) < 0) { switch (errno) { case EBUSY: current_apps = discover_alsa_using_apps (); if (current_apps) { jack_error ("\n\nATTENTION: The playback device \"%s\" is " "already in use. The following applications " " are using your soundcard(s) so you should " " check them and stop them as necessary before " " trying to start JACK again:\n\n%s", playback_alsa_device, current_apps); free (current_apps);

13 years, 4 months

Re: [LAD] [LAU] Linux Audio 2012: Is Linux Audio moving forward?

by Louigi Verona

Hey Dan! "Saving projects is only tricky if you use the modular approach versus instrument plugins hence this isn't really a problem for A3 and qtractor." True, but since there are very few plugins, most power of Linux Audio today is not in its plugin collection ;) On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 2:09 PM, Dan MacDonald <allcoms(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi LV! > > Nice and interesting write up of your experiences and opinions there. I > agree with most all of it except: > > "Saving projects is still a huge problem. In addition to LADISH we do now > have NSM, the Non-Session Manager, which seems like a workable solution, so > we'll see how this works out in the long run. > LMMS seems to be the only game in town for those who want to save full > projects by just clicking "Save" and not having to install and configure a > "session manager". I must admit, by the way, that I have not followed LMMS > recently." > > Saving projects is only tricky if you use the modular approach versus > instrument plugins hence this isn't really a problem for A3 and qtractor. > Aside from LMMS, MusE and sunvox have a few integrated instruments so they > don't have this problem either (if you stick to the built-in synths for > Muse only - sunvox doesn't handle plugins) and pretty soon MusE should gain > native VST support to further improve this situation. > > Your article has reminded me of my one and only JACK complaint/ feature > (yep - just one!!!) request which I filed a couple of years ago now but is > still to be addressed: > > http://trac.jackaudio.org/ticket/202 > > I'm surprised others haven't been asking for more descriptive 'device > busy' error messages from JACK as for many years this has been my only > issue with JACK - it doesn't start and you don't know what process is > preventing it doing so. Quite often I'll not bother doing the detective > work and just reboot but that is hardly ideal so I think this small > addition would make JACK (and qjackctl) and as a result Linux audio much > more user friendly. > > Your thoughts Mr Davis? > > On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:24 AM, Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com>wrote: > >> Hey fellas! >> >> Would like to present an article I've written. Mostly wrote it to start a >> conversation and hear what others have to say on the subject. >> >> >> http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=linux_progre… >> >> You can comment here or on my textboard (which does not require >> registration). >> >> >> -- >> Louigi Verona >> http://www.louigiverona.ru/ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Linux-audio-user mailing list >> Linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org >> http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user >> >> > -- Louigi Verona http://www.louigiverona.ru/

13 years, 4 months

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