Re: [linux-audio-user] This criticism of jackd valid?

Chris Metzler wrote: <Achtung! Grumpy Sunday morning rant!> AFAIC, any mention of Linux audio on /. is a troll. I wrote a reply to the original post but didn't send it (see below). "Slashdot + Linux audio" is a non-starter. I couldn't even get the service to announce the Linux Audio Conference decently (two years ago). I'm still astonished by the utter lack of support for Linux audio from within the Linux community itself. It's as though it never occurs to users that their precious music is made with non-free tools on non-free systems. I guess as long as they can play it on a free platform, it's all okay. Slashdot is not a good place to go for accurate information. Nice for some things, sucks for others. Linux audio is one of its others. The Coward writes : "You *can* still get Jack to work perfectly with 2ms latency (and hundreds of people do), but only with extreme care about what applications you're running and with the use of fast top-end audio hardware, no Internet access, and no random commands invoked from xterms." Right, and pros routinely use less powerful hardware and are thoughtless about their software selection, while they surf the Web and run random commands during paid sessions. WTF?! That post is filled with contradictions. This is ripe : "In contrast, the thousands of other people running Jack with realtime-lsm on their general-purpose Linux box still get the occasional XRUN at the best of times despite running with a load average of 0.01, and for professional work, even 1 XRUN per week is 1 XRUN too many." Does anyone else notice how adroitly he confutes normal desktop use with pro audio ? He acknowledges it's possible to get sub 2ms latency for pro work, but normal users typically get xruns from general-purpose (not pro-audio) systems, but pro-audio people (who we can safely assume are *not* using unmodified systems) can't tolerate even a single xrun. I'm sure Paul and the JACK crew will find this statement interesting: "it requires *HARD* realtime to work" His numbers are interestingly suspect: "hundreds of people do" "thousands of other people running Jack" "a million Jack clients" Even allowing for hyperbole the article reads like it's written by a troll. According to his title, Jack is broken, but in his discourse he makes it clear that people can and do successfully run it. So is this a troll or just poor reasoning and writing ? You decide. Here's my unposted response: "I'm curius to read your explanation for the following scenario: Yesterday I ran ImproSculpt, a massive Csound + FLTK program with extensive GUI controls, for more than three hours, running under JACK (set for sub 6ms latency), processing multiple input streams in realtime, with not one xrun. I surfed the Web and wrote an article while ImproSculpt did its thing. I do similar stuff with Ardour. Your assertions don't hold up here at Studio Dave. Machine is an AMD64 3200. Yes, it's fast, but none of my Mac and Win audio buddies use anything less. You are bound to use power hardware if you intend to do serious audio, as I'm sure you know. Btw, Linux distro is 64Studio." Also btw: None of my Windows-based music friends like the OS at all. Some still run Cubase on Win98, citing better performance than with XP. Those fellows have absolutely 0 intention to purchase Vista for their music purposes. My friends running Pro Tools *never* run anything else during a session with that software. They are also unhappy about being so completely locked into a commercial scheme. Nevertheless, their innate conservatism and their heavy investment into the Win/Mac world saps their incentive to step out of it. Anyone else remember the days when Mozilla received the same treatment from naysayers ? Anyone using Firefox these days ? I need more coffee. </rant> Best, dp