Re: [LAU] off topic (was: Re: ableton live in vmware)

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 11:30 PM, Niklas Klügel &lt;niklas.kluegel(a)mytum.de <mailto:niklas.kluegel@mytum.de>> wrote: cunnilinux himself schrieb: application for linux. just to add my 2 cents... regarding monolithic vs. modular (across applications): while the latter (theoretically) allows for more flexibility of processing, akin to the proven unix-concepts of pipelining (and therefore the development of something jack-alike for audio/video etc became an obvious evolution for -primarily- LAU/D), it does not allow for certain common concepts in the workflow of composition and dsp. technically - or at least _without hassle_. those include nearly all operations that: 1a) allow you to temporarily bounce (aka freezing) parts of the signal chain (tracks, single processed clips, subchannels) - thus saving cpu cycles in rather complex arrangements. This could happen if programs could be smart enough not to do audio processing if there is no input signal and programs are able to trace the signal path(s) till it(they) terminate(s) (either has no output connections, makes itself to the system output connections (speakers), or back into the application itself. The application could then connect the terminating output(s) to the program input - do a synchronised record (already possible), close off the signal path for the processing version of the track and playback the recorded audio instead. 1b) keep sequencing and time-information on processed/bounced/re-recorded material if the solution for 1 is enabled then this should also be possible. 1c) saving disk-space and processing time by recording only the necessary parts of the bounce while still being a proper/correct bounce. this should also be possible. for inter application stuff this would just require some form of dead air detection. Or am I missing something here.

2) modifying a group of modules in the signal chain and the sequence data e.g. cloning, deleting, replacing etc. Cloning would be an interesting feature to have at the connection and application management layer. But providing that the applications are smart enough not to do processing and that groups of applications could be saved and loaded by the application that replaces Lash (LADI?)... All this should be possible. 3) exchange meta-information such as the set of notes in a track to e.g. allow samplers to efficiently just load the samples needed to play the track, prefetching large chunks of audio-data or sub-track tempi for sync'd f/x. This could potentially be done through dbus... and/or as an extension to LV2 etc. 4) limit the amount of organization in 1x) and mixing units (pre-/post-fx or mixer or sub-channels and modulation sources across tracks) I am sure you can come up with some more. Those are all points taken care of in halfway sane, up-to-date DAWs that are monolithic and points like 1 & 2 are basic editing operations that - for me - increase the efficiency by a factor of 4 in time spent fiddling with the arrangement. The early versions of Ableton didnt do 1) for example and my time spent on organizing heavy arrangements (30-50 tracks with lots of automated f/x) was unbearable, not to mention that the quality of execution of the sequencing and composition itself suffered due to that. 5) of course easy recall of chains(+sequence data) etc These points are of conceptual nature. This I understand is the point of having something like LASH (LADI?)... Anyways I am glad you brought up those points... It is something severely lacking in the current modular implementation that we have. Doing things in a modular way through jackd has a lot of potential but really requires some application managment features to really compete with proprietory workflows. I would love to see a control application that 1) lets you group applications.... 2) the ability to remove/restore connections going in or out of a group. 3) the ability to clone a group. 4) the ability to save/restore groups of applications.