i'd like to chime in here, just to give a completely
different perspective, and the problems i have encountered. this is
long personal history, feel free to delete (those not on digest!)
first thing that is majorly different is that i am a
macintosh user, and have been for some 15 years now. that's not where
i started in computers, but it is in computers used for music. i have
always enjoyed the usability and abaility to individually configure
the platform and, for a long time, felt like the attitude of the
software makers and users of this platform was in line with my own
attitudes on computers and music; which is to say: an ideal of
futurism and creativity, extending from xerox PARC to the 21st
century.
of course things changed. apple has become a very strange
company (and slightly greedy - though now i hear they are below 3% of
the market share, so maybe i would be too...) and MS windows has
become ubiquitous as a non-business platform simply by virtue of the
fact that once so many people were indoctrinated into its use via
work-related computing it was easier for them to move to a home PC in
that same realm.
luckily for me, working in california in music and film
production, i have been able to stay in the macintosh arena - despite
what the european music software manufacturers would have us believe,
most film and cd media manufactured and sold around the world during
the 1990s was ultimately made, assembled, mixed or produced in its
entirety in some combination of avid-controlled software running on
macs.
i say luckily, because i came to really dislike working in
any microsoft software: it seems opaque to me, and the organization
is diffcult. plus it's so obvious that the window interface is a poor
copy of the macintosh's direct descendent of the dynabook ideal. like
the start-from-below as opposed to from-above. (plus i like a command
key under my thumb..) so it's not about GUI (though i am partial now
to mac after much accustomization) so much as organization.
anyway, that's just where MY brain is at. several years ago i
split the full time entertainment industry for academia and the avant
garde (back to my roots! although i am still a professional musician
and tour and record several months out of a year.) so i finally took
the time to reeducate myself in the computer world, to get beyond
sequencers and digital-audio workstations. that brought me back to
synthesis, which for the intervening years--post buchla-and-moog--had
been rack-mount yamaha or emu items. (although it should be noted
that when i was working on film sound design i did use maany
manipualation tools like soundhack or metasynth...)
my present main arsenal for making music on mac, both for
studio and live performance, shows: max/msp, supercollider (2 and 3),
reaktor (see reviews i have written for MIT CMJ) and protools. as
well, there are several other apps of course, but less usage on the
whole. i run mac os X almost exclusively (unless i need to do
something in supercollider 2). i like OS X. really! sadly, the gui is
taking more cpu and causing things like max/msp to have timing
problems! things like this are being ironed out slowly, and with new
computers, we hope we get the chance to have things work properly.
more sadly than that, however, is the wholesale abandonment of the
platform by various manufacturers - clavia's synth patch editor for
example, has no OS X version, nor is there one planned. so if i need
to edit patches in the hardware, i need another OS. and RME, well,
they're just so self righteously anti-macintosh that i feel bad for
having bought the multiface.
so... linux. why, you may ask? there are several reason for
me. one is that i like computers. a lot. it seems like linux users do
too. another is that the aformentioned "idealistic attitude" of
futurism, creativity and also cooperativity exists in the linux
community, where it is becoming lost elsewhere. this attitude, as it
were, is extremely important to me in choosing what i work with,
perhaps despite difficulties in doing so. still another reason is
that i fear the macintosh being put out of business by microsoft (or
apple shooting themselves in the foot), in which case i want an
alternative. as for the price, well. that seems less important. a
cheap system is cheap, but a good system is still expensive. the
points about market-driven development of software are well taken -
if you want to use the same thing as everybody else. i have some itch
to make my own patches in modular synths (though i really appreciate
looking at other people's code/patches to learn how to. great thanks
to ssm and ams - especially after i found out about the
/usr/share/ams folder was and what it contained, for example.)
so i started by converting old ppcs to yellowdog. i
immediately realized that the makers of the linux desktop gui
environments were coming from PC backgrounds! almost all remind me of
windows parodies. and while PD is probably beautiful and powerful, it
sure is ugly compared to max/msp (sorry if that is offensive to
anyone). anyway, i moved from there to a debian-ppc system, which i
liked better, got alsa to work (!) and it made noise so i finally
bought a pieced together pentium system and installed planet-ccrma.
easy install, difficult to make it work with its built in sound chip
- still haven't made sound without digital clicks (the final problem:
can't change the IRQ of the VIA82xx snd card from it's position where
it lives with a usb hci and eth0 -- is this really information that a
studio user/musician needs to be aware of...?*), but at least i am
now much more familiar with what's available and what applications i
will use. next time i have several hours, i'm going to reread the
archives of this list to figure out how to reconfigure my system for
the rme multiface. -anybody write up the final how-to?
(to the above list i should mention that i burned a july '03 iso of
knoppix-ppc to check on my powerbook and it's really good! very
impressive interface and immediate hardware and file system
accessibility. very nice. still having a hard time with getting the
ccrma-redhat networked to see the hfs+ files..)
so, i can see that the massive amounts of configuration
needed to make a linux system work in a studio environment will be
daunting to most users. i don't think anybody in *my* immediate
working environment (band, studio, college) would be able to do it**.
that combined with learning the new structure of the file system
(where is this app? where are its libraries? where are the
files/patches for it kept? how do i make it work?) make it a daunting
task for any lay user of the more popular windows/mac
softsynths/sequencers etc. to navigate. i really don't see how this
could be made any easier immediately. the result is that it is going
to take determined individuals to use the audio applications for the
time being. but this means people that actually care enough to use
them and help out other to do so as well! and hopefully that attitude
will gather more users, but the people on the inside have got to
realize how far they are from the people on the outside in terms of
familiarity with the system in general. even i take some of these
things for granted, once they are learned. zero-conf is probably the
only way to get the masses to do anything!
anyway, so here you have another perspective of somebody burrowing
into linux audio from another route. thanks for reading and
considering another's perspective.
-jonathan
*this is rhetorical of course, but...
** when i mentioned that i had a linux computer at home in my studio,
a student asked me "isn't that only black and white?" so you can
guess where the general populace is at.. of course, this is the same
state that keepes electing actors to be politicians, so on the whole
we ain't that smart.
--
_________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Segel -- MAGNETIC -- PO Box 460816 S.F. CA. 94146-0816
4014 Brookdale Ave. Oakland, CA 94619
jsegel(a)magneticmotorworks.com <-----> magsatellite(a)yahoo.com
http://www.MagneticMotorworks.com
tel (510) 534 7825 cell (510) 484 7415 fax (425) 955 4495
Hello All
I'm thinking of buying an M-Audio Revolution for a gaming PC, I've had
great luck with ALSA and my Delta44 in the studio so I'd like to get
another M-Audio. Is anybody using this card? Does the digital speaker
output work? What's the word on the current state of surround sound in
Linux?
Thanks - JB
// John Bleichert
// syborg(a)earthlink.net
I recently had some problems with static while playing back some wav files with Winamp3 on my W98 partition, and after reading this thread, tried Winamp2.91 (I think, 2.9x anyway). It seems to be working alright so far, thoough I haven't tested it with the problem files yet.
What's wrong with Winamp3? Is it the same kind of static problems that I encountered, or something else?
Oh, and BTW, Winamp2.x for the last couple of releases supports Ogg Vorbis without needing a plug-in.
Thanks,
Barton
Need a new email address that people can remember
Check out the new EudoraMail at
http://www.eudoramail.com
>i don't think anybody in *my* immediate
>working environment (band, studio, college) would be able to do it**.
>that combined with learning the new structure of the file system
>(where is this app? where are its libraries? where are the
>files/patches for it kept? how do i make it work?) make it a daunting
>task for any lay user of the more popular windows/mac
>softsynths/sequencers etc. to navigate.
To be quite honest, unless you have a technical background you probably won't ever get very involved in Linux as an OS of choice for media production. I was a computer science major before I changed to a digital media major, so I have somewhat of a background to fall back on when using Linux. (Not enough of a background to contribute as a developer, but enough to at least understand what is going on... at least _most of the time_)
Even though Linux has made great strides in becoming an end-user OS for server and office use lately, it is still a hobby OS as far as audio, video, graphics etc are concerned. You're not going to have much success convincing people to use it for media purposes unless they are eager to get their hands dirty. Many of the DM students argue constantly over Win vs. Mac and when I tell them I use Linux I just get this really weird look. (At least from the ones who even know what Linux is.) I would never convince any of them to try Linux and I'm not going to try. It has to be something you're already interested in.
BTW: I would personally recommend giving Gentoo a try. It takes some work, but the end result is a system that is _much_ more responsive when doing audio work. Even when compared with something like planet-ccrma. Plus the Gentoo community is amazing.
Reguards,
-Reuben
well, as my subject line says, I'm wondering about sysex dumping and receiving
- I always used to do it in Cakewalk to save synth setups or dump patches to
the synths, etc.
now I'm not seeing such a function in rosegarden (which is the only program
I've got to run so far - oh I haven't tried kmidi I'll do that)
is sysex implemented in any sequencers, or is there a stand alone?
thanks! :)
--
--------------
Aaron Trumm
NQuit
www.nquit.com
--------------
> isn't this a linux list? ;-)
True, but it's handy to be able to give .ogg files to Windows using friends,
and they do enquire how they're supposed to play 'em.
Winamp (2.x is better than 3.x), FooBar 2000, there's quite a few.
You can get Windows Media Player to play ogg files too(as long as they're actual files, not ogg streams) if you install a Direct Show filter for them. http://tobias.everwicked.com/oggds.htm
Reguards,
-Reuben
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Knecht [mailto:mknecht@controlnet.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 9:07 AM
To: Linux-Audio-User
Subject: [linux-audio-user] ogg player for Windows?
Hi,
Windows Media Player doesn't handle ogg files. Is there a Windows app
that would allow my to listen to ogg files?
(That other hijacked thread has an ogg link, but I couldn't bear to
hijack the thread in yet another direction!) ;-)
Thanks,
Mark
An interesting discussion on a filesystem "shootout":
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/10/08/2348224.shtml?tid=106&tid=185
The benchmarks themselves:
http://fsbench.netnation.com/
Looks like I may be switching filesystems on the studio machine soon!
--
======================================================================
Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh(a)brainiac.com
129 Petta. Lake Rd, Saunderstown, RI 02874 - vox 401.338.9214
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
Hi,
I can record from the analogue inputs on my audiophile 24/96 using:
ecasound -i alsawh,0,0 -o whatever.wav
Is it possible to record from the spdif input? I've been googling quite
a bit, and I don't understand if or how I can relate device or subdevice
numbers to the spdif input.
(btw, using the latest alsa release).
Thanks, Jordan.
The amsynth guy accepts contributions. I've sent him some settings which he distributes along with amsynth now.
Taybin
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Knecht <mknecht(a)controlnet.com>
Sent: Oct 8, 2003 9:40 AM
To: linux-audio-user(a)music.columbia.edu
Subject: RE: [linux-audio-user] recording delay in Ardour...
> >> I think we Linux soft synth users should try to make that happen.
> >
> Reaktor users == thousands
>
> Linux softsynth users == dozens
>
> Umm, maybe it's a numbers thing ??
>
> == dp
>
I think you're probably right, although of the thousands I wouldn't venture
a guess as to how many of those are warez types. More than NI might want to
admit.
That said, Reaktor Session comes with 35-40 prebuilt instruments, and each
instrument has many sounds ready to go. It comes with a large library of
wave files built into the instruments, but they can be extracted and reused
elsewhere. I think the method to that madness is that NI creates enough
usability out of the box to get users really turned on to create more. Then
the library comes, which benefits all the users again.
I'd love to see that happen with one or more of the Linux tools. I simple
don't have the time or interest to become a programmer. When I turn on my PC
and try to write music I need tools that get me there faster. I don't want
to spend an hour grabbing blocks and wiring them together. By the time I get
that done I've lost my inspiration for making music.
I may be the odd man out around here. I'm not sure...
- Mark
