Re: [LAU] A sound decision

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/36698-from-windows-to… From Windows to Linux: a sound decision Some excerpts: Five years ago, when Geoff Beasley decided to move his sound studio business from a Windows-based one to a Linux-based setup, he had one simple bit of logic driving him: things could not be worse under Linux. ... "There's a great difference between working with commercial software and Linux," says Beasley. "One is the speed at which things get fixed - it is simply amazing. Another thing is that though I am always running software which is in a constant state of development, it is incredibly stable. It is not possible to get fixes at this speed from commercial vendors - the guys I work with are driven by the sheer elegance of their software and its flexibility. And I am constantly amazed at what I can do with my limited knowledge." ... Beasley's set-up: SYSTEM SOFTWARE All 5 of the production machines have the following subsystem: Arch Linux system custom 2.6.31,6-rt19 kernel with RT preemption (essential for Xrun avoidance - click and pops) Desktop consisting of openbox, Adeskbar and pypanel. Display manager is Slim AUDIO jack2-svn (contains netone; which is netjack1 within jack2) Qjackctl-svn Rtirq (RT pci priorities for sound cards; also essential for Xrun avoidance) LinAS LinAS is the audio master machine. It hosts 4 Hoontech C-Ports (ice1712-based chipset) in an Alsa multi-array providing 40 channels of audio to the other machines via 'netone'. jack is running with 2 periods @ 48kH and 64 frames giving a 'round-trip' latency (in and out) of 2.66 ms . Can be run @ 32 frames (half the latency) but the samplers struggle at this low a frame rate. Uses Gjacktransport to control the jack transport here and therefore the netone slaves via jack transport. LinDAW The Digital Audio Workstation hosts 'Ardour' as the main DAW software and also Mhwaveedit and Audacity for audio editing, Qjadeo for synchronous video playback with Ardour, K3b& GDC Master for CD mastering. LinSeq The midi sequencer machine. Runs MusE 1.01-svn and Linuxsampler with the Fantasia (java) frontend. Magic. Mscore is the Linux music scoring program, started by the creator of MusE, Werner Schweer. LinSampler Uses the program fst (free software studio) by Torben Hohn to run vsti's (virtual studio technology instruments) under wine. The two I run are Kontakt 2 and Sampletank 2. Both work 100 percent maybe better than under Wine. LinVS This is the 'Video Server" This one specialises in distributing video throughout the complex via webcams using 'Cheese' to mount them. Kdenlive and capture cards are used to take interviews of Composers and Performers for web-based content enhancement. Qjadeo is used to playback vision also piped throughout. LinFX Essentially hosts the Jc_Gui front end for Fons Adriaensen's Jconvolver. Using open source Impulse Responses. Gives reverbs to the mixing desk.