On Thu, October 11, 2012 7:25 am, Louigi Verona wrote: There are plenty of competitors to Linux Audio as a platform. AVID is the most obvious competitor. Look at things from a professional business point of view and try again please. I'm not talking about Linux Multimedia for amateur users or even necessarily for artists/producers. I'm talking about businesses that use Linux as their revenue generating platform. What kind of music do they make that is so difficult to do on Linux? Don't you mean that because "insert favorite application/plugin" is not ported they will have to learn how to do something differently and that is too much to ask? If that is the case then they are probably not a good fit for a Linux desktop experience but I wonder how they managed to get anything done in the first place if they are averse to learning. And it's a good thing too. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On 10/10/2012 11:00 PM, Patrick Shirkey wrote: that's a bit like saying NASA is competing with the RC model helicopter community. i'm pretty sure the whole professional *non-embedded* linux audio market is a fraction of the size of AVID's _marketing_ budget. now under the hood, things look quite different, but that doesn't have much impact on the public opinion towards or perception of linux. i'm one such business, and despite my healthy illusions of grandeur i don't consider myself part of a relevant market for any major equipment or software manufacturer. besides the obvious technical benefits of using linux (for my particular kind of workflow), the main advantage to me is to be able to _ignore_ the rat race of the mainstream pro audio software market. that's not how marketing works, and that's not how the market works. the goal is to get kids to buy dsp cards with emulations of old UREIs that are great for snares and female vocals, and another emulation of an old fairchild which is great for male voices and kick drums, and the way to do it is to get fat old mixing gurus to advertise that kind of gear on youtube. the linux community doesn't have those dsp cards to sell, our plugins don't have the kind of bling, and people who give their stuff away are less inclined to bullshit kids out of their money. we have a few limiters with a bunch of parameters that give useful results on all kinds of program material, all they lack is the instant rocknroll credibility thing of a fat bearded guy with a metallica t-shirt at a 96-channel ssl who compares them to his obsolete analog treasures and praises them to high heaven. hence, in my view, the absence of a "market" like this is a good thing. the only time it hurts is when i cannot get hardware support for gear that i need. but these days, i can get linux drivers for everything from 2 to 128 channels of i/o (more if i'm prepared to gang cards), so what's the problem? intel and amd thankfully make dsp cards that will also deal with my email and run my browser (word processing on a sharc, anyone?), and they are well-supported by linux :) here i whole-heartedly agree! -- Jörn Nettingsmeier Lortzingstr. 11, 45128 Essen, Tel. +49 177 7937487 Meister für Veranstaltungstechnik (Bühne/Studio) Tonmeister VDT http://stackingdwarves.net

On Wednesday 10 October 2012 19:00:42 Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: It is a problem for me in finding workable options. (With a future) I have been a delta 1010 guy for years. But just the one. I had one, bought another but the first died before the second arrived iirc. But for years I have wanted to get something can can record a full 5 piece band to individual tracks in ardour. 4 vocalists, 2 guitars, 1 bass, 3 keyboards, and a drum kit on stage at once. I want to properly mic the drums, not just do a 2 mic / stereo overhead setup. Let's say I want at least 24 ins. What do I get? Where can I find a HOWTO on my options? For the ignorant, this info is hard to find even for non-linux setups. I have heard focusrite mentioned. Firewire. Fine, but a bit iffy considering reports of firewire being "put out to pasture" - is this something to worry about? So, what focusrite firewire setup will get me 24 ins at once and be linux compatible? Go to ffado: http://www.ffado.org/?q=devicesupport%2Flist&filter0=focusrite&filt… Focusrite Saffire PRO 40 Experimental Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56 Reported to work The models listed with full support don't seem to have the io needed and don't seem to be available anymore. What do I do? I have seen talk of RME firewire stuff not being well supported. Is that still the case if it ever was? Are there cards that are just in essence adat I/O cards (I am ignorant enough here not to know the correct term for what I am asking) that can handle 3(+) adat lightpipe connections? I guess this info may be all simple and second nature to some but I can usually find HOWTOs to get me places but not in this area in years. I taught myself to set up a dial up isp with 10s of modems in cages running to a single pci card, wrote the billing system, set up the mail server, dns server, ftp server, web server, firewalls, set up greylisting, virtual domains for the mail in a database.... etc. etc. etc. But I can't find what I need to know to feel comfortable buying some audio hardware to the point where I have put off the purchase for years. Something is odd... (Or I am being extra dense.) I figure it does not help that I live on a rock in the middle of the ocean where our ability to walk into stores and check things out is severely limited. I have the buying itch again but am putting it off because of not being able to get comfortable that what I buy will actually work. </rant|weak rant> all the best, drew

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 10:01:23PM -0400, drew Roberts wrote: Here's a HOWTO on using multiple Delta 1010s (which can also be adapted for other cards): http://www.jrigg.co.uk/linuxaudio/ice1712multi.html Note that the 1010 is still in production and there are so many of them out there that used replacements should be available for quite a while if new production ceases. Another cheap option is a used RME HDSP9652 (also still being made) with 3xADAT I/O. The PCIe alternative is the HDSPe RayDAT mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Going up the price scale there are RME MADI cards, both PCI and PCIe versions. I used an RME HDSPe MADI with an SSL Alpha-Link for a couple of years with excellent results, and I don't expect either of those to go out of production for a while yet. Future availability of PCI motherboards might be a concern, but there are still many new boards being made with PCI slots. John

On 10/11/12 13:42, John Rigg wrote: The Seraph series of PCIe interfaces from german manufacturer Marian will be officially supported soon. So far the M2 (dual MADI card) and Seraph 8 (8 channels analogue I/O) are working, the A3 (3x ADAT) is being added soon. If you do not need the matrix mixer from the RME cards, they are a cheaper alternative - and still offer german engineering (the best kind :). Flo -- Machines can do the work, so people have time to think. public key B3B9226C

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 05:31:19PM +0400, Louigi Verona wrote: If it's a popular device shouldn't it be possible to organise the programming equivalent of a "group buy" and get interested users to pay someone who knows the necessary voodoo to get it working? It might not be a case of "nobody cares", but that nobody can afford to drop their paid work for long enough to look at the problem. John

On Fri, October 12, 2012 12:31 am, Louigi Verona wrote: In this situation you will make progress by joining the alsa-devel mailing list and offering to Q/A, debug and report back on results of any code updates. If you are prepared to put in some effort it will not take too long to make some real progress. For driver development on "new" alsa drivers you have to be prepared to be actively involved. You can't expect the alsa developers to make updates if no one is giving them any useful feedback. Otherwise you could offer to send the device to someone on the list and have them work on it. But that takes out all the fun of the Q/A process and you'll probably get better results if you have two people debugging and testing than one. -- Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd

On 10/11/2012 07:25 AM, Louigi Verona wrote: nicely put Louigi and quite correct imho. Linux audio is never about windows anything. it's always about making music. and in Linux we can make music with elegance and accuracy. remember, the tools are just that - tools. i've heard plenty of shit albums produced in multi million dollar complexes. there are always many alternate ways to do the same job. too much emphasis is placed by too many on software solutions of all sorts.knowledge and experience is really what it is all about. and that can't be programmed - it has to be learned. BTW, have you tried mhwaveedit? very nice,compact and stlouable audio editor and converter. i use it all the time. best g