Hey Ralf!

Thanks a lot for your feedback, it is very valuable.

I am writing dub and ambient music, as can be seen from my site. For 7 months I tried to do music the Linux way, having no more possibility to use Windows. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, it did not work. Perhaps, you did not work in electronic genres - they are very different from hardrock and jazz in exactly the way I described in the article. In electronic music you have to use lots of effects, especially in ambient. If you want to seriously transform sound, a LADSPA chorus and LADSPA flanger will not work - unfortunately. And I tried a lot. It is not a matter of audio engineering - effects in electronic music help you to construct sound, it is not a matter of mastering. By effects that "construct" sound I mean filter sweeps and vocoders and phasers and filter sequencers and such stuff. So perhaps you just misunderstood me.

In fact, this is very important. I know that many people in Linux Audio do not know very well electronic music that is strictly sound manipulation rather than putting together notes, since, as I've stated in the article, my observations show that atm most people on linux are the "acoustic" type. This is a generalization that may be incorrect, I am not holding to it, but I doubt I am mistaken.

As for hardware, I did not understand what you are trying to say. 19" rack equipment was more expensive? Okay. Maybe. But it doesn't take away the fact that buying hardware is expensive. And "cheap" synths back in the days were rare. In the 90s the amount of cheap affordable synths has increased. Also, cheap in terms of music hardware is still pretty expensive, to be honest.

But this is really not the point. I know for a fact that many popular electronic musicians of the 90s have used a limited amount of hardware per studio. It is bewildering to a modern composer who uses 12 various soft synths in one production that Squarepusher used TB-303, a drummachine and one more micro synth for his first two albums.

Cheers!

Louigi.

On Wed, Apr 28, 2010 at 1:16 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
Louigi Verona wrote:
Hey guys!

Read it here:
http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=linux_electronic <http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projects&s=writings&t=linux&a=linux_electronic>


Any comments are welcome.

Cheers!

L.V.

I don't agree completely. I'm doing several kinds of music, from hardrock and jazz playing guitars made of wood, to electronic music "constructed" by the sequencer. The only real annoying issue to me, is MIDI jitter when using the absolutely needed external equipment, as I often pointed out, there are no emulations, for no OS, for e.g. CME microchips used by Oberheim, Roland, Sequential etc.. Coders like Fons do say that this jitter shouldn't be audible, but it is, it's breaking every groove. Btw. jitter is a problem for other OS too, excepted of some very expensive solutions or for very oldish Computers such as the C64 or Atari ST.

I don't agree that electronic musicians do use overloaded effect chains. An experienced electronic musician should be an experienced audio engineer too. I do agree that for other OS there are "better" FX, but even for those OS there aren't effects that reach the quality of 19" rack FX. There's a limit for the quality of Linux FX at the moment, but OTOH listen to electronic productions, independent and mainstream, both are produced with "better" FX, but at the end most productions are in the bobo because of the idiotic usage of multi-band compressors. The disadvantages of Linux will give us the chance to focus to the more important things. Some time ago I pointed out, that music doesn't need automation for mixers, musicians need to control the dynamic etc. by playing OR BY EDITING the instruments.

Full ACK because of the GUIs, that's why I e.g. do use Qtractor instead of Ardour + Rosegarden and I'm always whining about basics like panning samples e.g. for fluidsynth. Today Linux audio lacks regarding to user friendliness OTOH other OS do lack because of ethics. Btw. I experienced that Linux do need much more resources, than other OS does, but IMO today this isn't a problem any more.

Rakarrack

A very good Linux app, unfortunately similar to Qtractor, Jconv(olver) and others, it has been treated as an orphan by distros, even by audio distros, while users bagged to include packages.
And again the GUI, a problem for e.g. Jconv, there is a GUI, but this GUI has disadvantages.

Btw. it's needed that FX can be synced to sequencers, when changing the tempo delay edited by ms is bad, it's needed that FX can be synced by notes, instead of ms.

"Some decade ago composers did not have a whole lot more toys to tinker with." This isn't true, 19" equipment was more expensive, but even today no OS do reach the possibilities of this equipment. "it can synthesize any sound you want" no real and no virtual synth is able to do this, you need several synth.

You are aware that you e.g. don't need to roll knobs, but that you instead could move the mouse up and down?

I agree, even a ping-pong delay is hard to do, or better completely impossible, if it should be a very clean and hard ping-pong delay.

"in the hardware world a composer could've had only one or two to use for several of his albums" No, sharing synth with friends, having one expensive, but in addition low cost synth, because not all sounds needs to be fat.

Aaaaargh, could you please add "Change theme to white" at top of your articles?

2 cents,
Ralf