My main music
software is Cubase,
although I've used
tons of other music software over the years.
First, I'd ask you to go slow with moving your music to linux.
You _are_ going
to have problems, probably lots of problems. In my opinion it is worth it
though, just for the freedom.
When I answered Chris last night I didn't want to be the first to say this,
but Robert is right. Go slow and make sure you invest your time
appropriately and in the right areas. I started out last September to do
pretty much what you are suggesting. I use Pro Tools. I never have enough
tracks. Their closed spec hardware solutions are expensive, so I wanted to
move to Linux. Great idea, but I had two major problems:
1) I chose the wrong hardware for my time schedule. After 3 months playing
around with motherboard sound chips and running Alsa, I decided on RME
hardware since it would be a great solution if I fell back to Nuendo or
Cubase SX. The Linux driver development guys said the HDSP 9652 wasn't
supported, but it would be easy to support. I got that card in December
2002. I am happy to report that as of this last weekend, yes fully 7 months
later, I finally have a working driver and a mixer that works with the card!
(Ta da!!!!) The point being, make *very* sure your hardware is REALLY
supported, and that there is a developer that is ACTIVELY supporting it,
meaning he's using it daily and depends on the card. If you don't have that,
then you have nothing much IMO.
2) I am a user of BOTH MIDI and audio. Rosegarden is pretty much MIDI only.
Their audio solution won't begin to match what you are used to on the PC
side. Ardour is completely audio. It has no MIDI solution. The main point is
that this has not changed much since last September, so I don't expect it to
change very quickly. I could be wrong, but I don't expect it. Linux
developers are generally unpaid and things don't move as fast as the $$$
world.
I think that Muse is a very capable program, and really the only solution
today IF you depend on BOTH audio and MIDI. It's interface isn't too bad,
although I always feel like I'm in an Excel spreadsheet trying to make music
when I use it, but it's a well designed program for what it is.
On my side I've given up completely, for the foreseeable future, using Linux
as the main creative platform. I need Pro Tools or Cubase SX/SL to do what I
want to do. However, I am using Linux as an amazingly wonderful audio
routing and mixing platform between all my sound sources and PCs, as well as
utilizing a lot of really great little processing apps (freqtweak, tapiir
and Jamin) along with Linux soft synths.
As Robert said, go slow, don't set your immediate goals too high, and make
sure the tools are really designed to do what you need them to do. The good
Linux tools are really great!
Cheers,
Mark
