11 Dec
2007
11 Dec
'07
10:04 a.m.
I don't know about the hardware issues because I've never had any
problems getting hardware to work under Linux. The hardest thing I
dealt with was my M-Audio external usb sound card which took all of an
hour to get sorted. Everything is plug-and-play with Windows? That
must be nice, but audio sounds better in Linux. Latency can be
incredibly low. Forget producing for a second: If you use the
low-latency kernel from CCRMA, it's like hearing your favorite songs
for the first time.
As for "quantizing the groove" -- I don't even know what that means,
but it probably has something to do with the fact that 99 percent of
commercial music sounds just like a clock that plays notes instead of
ticks and tocks. It ticks me off when I hear a song that would be
good if played by an actual human being, but to me it is unbearable
because it's... what? *too* perfect? James Brown didn't need to
quantize his grooves, and he was a hell of a lot groovier than the
punks comin' off the streets today. I'd rather hear Neil Young and
Crazy Horse (or any halfway decent garage band) rock out a sloppy set
than suffer through the saccharine drivel on the radio these days.
And, well, 'tis a poor carpenter who blames his tools. People are
making great music with Linux while in the commercial world engineers
ruin perfectly good songs through over-production. There's got to be
a happy medium where production enhances a song but doesn't turn it
into a clock tick. It's been said before, but the Beatles recorded
Sgt. Peppers on a four-track.
The fact is that Linux audio gives you all the tools you need to
record music and engineer the signals to your liking. In some ways
(low latency) Linux blows commercial products out of the water. In
other ways (GUIs, "quantizing the groove"), maybe it's not there.
Whatever. I like it, and I'm sticking with it until somebody gives me
a good reason to spend thousands of dollars for a nice GUI and the
ability to "quantize the groove."