1 Feb
2008
1 Feb
'08
1:09 p.m.
On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 05:14:10PM +0100, Kjetil S. Matheussen wrote:
Don't say "pro user" when you actually
mean a person who very often
either has a very complicated jack setup, or someone who has connected
their monitors directly to their loudspeakers. I consider myself
a pro user, but don't do either of that (except for connecting
monitors directly to loudspeakers a few times when not having
a mixer available). But this was discussed two years ago, its
all in the archives, I think.
Well, for the record, I am a professional user in every sense
of the word you could imagine. I'm being paid to design and
develop audio systems running on Linux, and that is my main
source of income.
If the processing required to drive the speakers (be it crossover
for bi- or tri-amplification, AMB rendering, WFS rendering, any
other spatialisation method, room correction, or any combination)
is done in software, then it is quite normal that the audio card's
outputs are driving the power amps with nothing in between.
It's perfectly safe if you use the right equipment (that will not
produce heavy transients when switched on or off).
I invite you to come to Parma and design a 176-channel volume
control, to be put between the sound cards and the amps, that
I can turn down when starting an app that might autoconnect.
If it works, and if it doesn't make a mess of the calibrated
gains for each channel, and if you can convince the users of
this system that they need it, you will be paid very well and
then you can consider yourself a professional.
Well, I think popups are the most irritating thing
possible.
The simple solution is just to make jack aware, somehow, that
sometimes the client softwares wants to autoconnect, and that
there must be a way to turn that off.
Jack has no way at all to tell if any connection request is
legitimate or not. There are occasions when I want to connect
to the amps directly. The simple solution is that all clients
should be configurable to autoconnect or not, and if they
do, to which ports. A simple environment variable tested by
all apps will do (e.g. something similar to 'EDITOR' which
is used by most apps that need to start a text editor).
Any app that directly connects to the sound card, without
even offering the option not to do so, is like a musician
walking into a studio and plugging his synth directly in
the the control room's power amps. Even if he promises not
to do that again next time, there's a good chance he won't
be welcome anymore.
--
FA
Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica
Parma, Italia
Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.