Re: [LAD] Experience driven design and Linux Audio

On Thu, 2 Oct 2014, gordonjcp(a)gjcp.net wrote: Good, I have tried it a number of times (every release I install and try it) and for me it always ends up being more keystrokes to do anything more than use the browser. I know someone who uses the new gnome shell as well for music and loves it. However, I have heard more complaints about both of them than praise. Both require an up to date reasonably powerful machine to run. (My P4 box will not even start gnome screen and unity barely moves, my 3 year old netbook doesn't like either of them either) As such, even something that runs these ok may not be able to do the same lowlatency audio that other DEs can do on the same machine. In trying to help people do so I have seen more people switch than not. Now obviously I won't have tried to help those for whom unity has just worked so my POV is bound to be one sided. There does need to be a balance. However, part of the problem is user mindset, and here I am talking linux hobby mindset. Many people who use linux expect to get away with a lesser machine. The same person will spend twice what their computer is worth for an audio IF. Really, if someone is serious about music, they need to have reasonable gear. But they shouldn't have to have a server class box just so the display can look pretty either. If we were truely worried about cpu cycles we would all be using NAMA as our DAW with no X running. One of the things I heard from one of the videos mentioned was that the UI can influence the music that comes out of it. Limitations in the UI can shape the way the music is made. So here is another place there needs to be balance. I don't know how this relates, but It may be interesting to note that I have tried LMMS and Bitwig both of which are supposed to be very easy to use, but I found them hard to get noise out of at all. Yet I was able to use Ardour and have it act as expected from my first use. So obviously my head does not work the same as the average musician... and as such maybe I should stay as far away from developing anything as I can. I think even the 32 setups on the DX7 were more than needed, yet there are people who have played with them for years who comment they are still learning new things on them. I do not know if two more operators who have helped, but having 6 still seems to be better than 4... though 4 with more than just sine wave in may be a different story. The dx21 only has 8 because it only has 4 operators. This is math related rather than usablity related. I suspect it had something to do with production cost as well. I have a 4 operator synth (even cheaper version than the 21) and I do not like the sound as much as the DX7 (I have one of those too). However the usability angle really shows well here. The DX7 was not at all easy to program and it showed, it was easy to recognize the DX7 in popular music becasue everyone just used the factory defaults... good thing they were reasonable defaults for the DX7 would have been dead as soon as it came out. Having more operator controls may have helped, but the cost would have been a lot more too (the DX1 for example). The manufacturers have learned from this all and most new synths just have presets that eveyone uses. No one creates new sounds on them but rather buys them for the sounds that they come with. In the end it has led to less experimental music, but there are a lot of other factors that pointed that way anyway. The big labels are not interested in music at all, just profit. They hire the same producers who use the same sounds that have worked before... A live drummer may play his own drums, but the producers will remove his sound and replace it with a sampled drum kit in time with what would have been the drumkit. One has to look for experimenting in music or just something different. thanks to Internet people can self release what the record company is not interested in. Some is awful, but there is a lot of really good stuff too. Yes and no. That would be like watching some one play the guitar and deciding we only need the bottom 5 frets because the player never used any bar chords (it would be easy to find a group of 1000 professional musicians who played this way). The tool can define the music as already stated by a few people. Ease of use is not king... otherwise we would use the auto-harp instead of the guitar (there are some people who do amazing things with the auto harp, but there are a lot more that just push the buttons). Adding more UI than the working musician uses is not bad, it means that new styles can be conceived and what is never done now can become normal. See my comment above about different DAWs. The ones I find hard to use are the "Cats meow" for some of the people who have started their DAW experience having never recorded music with all hardware. (there are also some people who are just more adaptable than I am too) I am often amazed at the new ways of making sound on physical instruments, some that have been around for 100s of years. It is easy to make sw more restricting than that. Maybe for the "average working musician" that is ok, it pays the bills and the asier the better. Maybe Linux developers should cater to these people more. On the other hand, maybe tomorrows closed SW will be based on tricks that the experimenter figured out using a more open aproach. FM synthisis was a very hard sell. No one wanted it. Yamaha took it only because one of their people was a tinkerer and messed with it enough to get it in the door. What other ideas are waiting to be used that will only be discovered by someone with tools that are open enough to allow it? SHould Linux target those who only see a comodity? WHo are only looking to have what their "idol" uses? Or who want the cheapest one that works? The stuff already out there will be what gets bought. Developing HW with Linux is like developing with any other OS, it requires innovation and lots of support. The linux HW has to have what nothing else does and the something has to be seen as needed. Lets see how the mod duo does. -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net