On 03/04/2011 10:30 AM, Thomas Vecchione wrote:

On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 1:26 PM, Renato <rennabh@gmail.com> wrote:

but pro level has nothing to do with user friendliness. I mean of
course we want the linux audio environment to improve, but that has
nothing to do with a pretty DE where you don't need to use the terminal
or tweak one or two .conf files

Actually I would disagree. Yes whether a tool can be sued for professional projects is one thing, but the difference is in speed.

this was the main drawback to SynthBuilder which was a product I worked with/on while I was Director of Content at Staccato Systems back in the late 90's

we tried to interest the game sound community in using SynthBuilder for algorithmic event synthesis for use in their games but the UI (which was very much like Max/MSP or Pd) was WAY too geek-ware for them. After laughing us out of the room we went back to the drawing board and designed a dumbed down UI for them to use.

Trust me when I say that in a pro-audio environment Linux command line tweaking and chasing down xruns will not fly. Even laptop electronica producers and studio owners will shun the command line. Can you imagine having a client sitting in the studio watching as an engineer minimizes a sudden flock of xruns by dicking around on the command line? Dunno about you but if I were a client I'd run, not walk, out of that studio.

These days a professional level tool is one that allows you to accomplish your task as quickly as possible with as few distractions as possible. This is generally also inferred to be user friendliness, but not necessarily, it does however mean that you shouldn't need to spend time doing extra things that could be done for you, like configure your OS just so you can work;)

I watched a product demo of the new version of Ableton Live and Max for Live in Barcelona last year and the main emphasis was 'making a tune in real-time' & 'not letting the app get in the way of workflow' etc etc. These are pro needs in a pro environment that don't apply to sitting in a bedroom and uploading your pieces to Soundcloud which allows one to tweak around on the command line and groom .conf files.

Other than Mixbus which is an amazing leap forward in light years for Linux audio most other apps are NOT ready for a serious pro environment. Case in point: Linux Sampler.

Seablade

Who has used and continues to use Linux for professional projects.

same here - Ardour and Pd are my weapons of choice as an electro-acoustic music composer!