17 Mar
2011
17 Mar
'11
10:37 a.m.
Dave Phillips wrote:
Leigh Dyer wrote:
I have a 20-something friend who's pursuing a career in writing and
performing pop music. He was seeking a "just works out of the box"
setup, too.
He bought a Windows-based pro audio computer system from Sweetwater.com
- Delta 1010LT, multicore processor, gobs of disk space, ProTools and
suchlike software installed, etc, etc, etc. All professionally set up. I
tried to help him hook his Korg keyboard up to it. I got it physically
hooked up, and we finally figured out how to make Protools see it and
work with it (sort of). But there were still problems we couldn't figure
out. So he called Sweetwater's support techs, and they poked and prodded
things until they finally got it all working the way it should have from
the beginning.
Over the next year of his use of it, they had to walk him through
reimaging the system and reconfiguring things because Windows wouldn't
boot, or some other thing failed. Finally the hardware failed completely
and they sent him a whole new computer system to replace. He still
didn't get his "works out of the box" experience.
I don't think he's tried a Mac yet. Maybe he should.
I booted his first machine off a Linux audio distro's live CD. The sound
worked. (Other stuff didn't, I think the system had a bunch of
Windows-only hardware in it.) So I didn't recommend that he use Linux on it.
While he's much younger than you or I, he has the technical knowledge
and understanding of a rock. You don't have that limitation to deal with!
Anyway, I've tried a number of Linux audio distros. Some were
surprisingly poorly-setup for audio use! Such as some of the Ubuntu 10
derivatives that didn't include an RT kernel. Or the ones that had RT
kernels but hadn't set up the permissions right. Or the one that refused
to recognize any form of audio hardware except the Intel stuff built-in
to the motherboard. Aptosid is the first distro I've encountered that
didn't need tweaking for audio - and it's a general purpose distro ...
I liked the last beta version of Musix 2.0 - it worked very nicely
running from the live CD, is very well setup for audio work. (Their
audio demos are really slick!) So I downloaded the release and tried it,
and the release version wouldn't work with the bog-standard Intel video
hardware in the laptop I use for music stuff!
Anyway, all part of the fun, I'm sure ...
--
David
gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community
You need to take a step back, learn the OS, and learn some of the
tools before you can step forward again and start making music. If you
don't have the time to do that (and it's certainly no mark against you
if you don't -- it's a big investment), then you might as well move on
now.
Hi Baz,
And with Leigh's note I'll jump and suggest you simply move on. It's
obvious you've made a game attempt at working with Linux, and you have
my respect for that. But at my age I don't have the patience either, so
I sincerely suggest you use what gets your work done most efficiently.
I'm sorry Linux audio isn't working out for you - unfortunately that's
an all too-common experience, and I certainly don't blame the interested
user. The plain fact is, as your experience tells, that there is no
perfect Linux audio distro. OTOH, Windows, for its users, is just that -
a perfect audio distro. You don't try umpteen of them to find which one
works, you don't have to compile anything, and all your apps have a
single dedicated distribution target. Sweet. I don't need to rehearse the
Microsoft negatives here - I'm sure you've already found some, which I
assume was at least one motivating factor for your Linux trials - but
unfortunately you've also discovered a bunch of the negative aspects of
the Linux audio world.