There was a discussion recently on andraudio regarding Linux audio and the Google platform. The going response was that Linux is Linux, Android is blahblah blah. In short, the teams felt that never the twain should meet. Personally I found that not just a bit black and white, but worse that Linuxaudio which has lived a life in a corner of a far of field was missing out on the chance to ride on the crest of a wave that android is continuing to bring home. There is plenty to lament in what Android brings to audio but at the sametime it has an immensity to offer to the audio isolate that is Linux audio. It is a shame that LAD/LAU has not jumped on the Andriod bandwagon, or even bothered to hi-jack it for their own needs. This is probably the only chancethat any kind of Linux audio can become mainstream. I think Paul has a perspective on this although he has not expressed an opinion.My personal feeling is that Linux audio is a dynamic, open and very capableenvironment but that it might never break out into mainstream without embracing a major platform such as Android now is. There are ~500,000 systemsbeing sparked up every day, and it is almost greenfield for audio development. Kind regards, nick.

You make very relevant points here and they are hard to argue against. There is a bigger picture though. The performance of device such as the ASUS and Lenovo quad core tablets means android does not need to be relegated to remotecontrol. I still fully acknowledge the issues of android's masters and audio creation. The thing is that the same issues never stopped Linux audio from developing,LAD/LAU laid the grounds for things that the kernel developers are finally embracingand that the Android people will also be forced to address. Perhaps Android will remain another world but I don't see any other development thatreally puts linux so close to mainstream, and it is being ignored by pretty much the wholeof LAD/LAU. It is fast becoming a missed opportunity - as soon as Android resolves itsissues of real-time then the commercial audio companies will invade the space, they havealready expressed that desire and that will leave Linux audio in even more of a niche. Regards, nick.

to be fair ... as a *control* device, these things have lots of very nice possibilities. that's why the AC7 thing is appealing to me. this sort of thing can and "should" be done with android. i'm not trying to sound prescriptive - just noting that android is very capable of being a platform for this kind of thing. there are some very cool synths starting to appear for the iPad too, but this is precisely the market that *cannot* (for technical reasons) be catered to on Android. its very sad. would i consider an Ardour port to an Android that had a reasonable audio subsystem? i would definitely look into it. but on android as is: why would anyone bother to build synths, whether historical replicas or things like supercollider, or DAWs or FX units etc. on this platform? there just isn't any reason.

On Sat, Feb 4, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Nick Copeland <nickycopeland(a)hotmail.com> wrote: i actually don't consider having a work korg ms-20 on an ipad to be a toy, at least no more than a toy than an actual ms-20. ditto for some of the other synths that have started appearing on iOS. there is some very useful work in the re-creation realm, and some really cool stuff in the "wierd-ass synthesis model" realm. none of these can be played live sensibly on android. seems more likely and more useful if someone managed to port "actual linux" to the iPad.

this is what *CANNOT* be done sensibly on android: TC-11: http://www.bitshapesoftware.com/instruments/tc-11/ Orphion: http://vimeo.com/35131490 watch them both, and prepare to weep. Orphion doesn't have the most interesting synthesis, alas.

On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 7:02 PM, Renato <rennabh(a)gmail.com> wrote: perhaps, yes, although driving physical synthesis models with MIDI is like driving a lamborghini with 8 pairs of ski gloves on each hand and concrete overshoes on your feet. you can do it, but ... its just not the same.

imo Android for Samsung is a pragmatic choice based on volume. much like their fabbing/sale of chips for Apple samsung has recently dropped an entire OS worth of source as'Tizen' which is basically the desktop linux stack (xorg+Enlightenment) adapted for Mobile with an additional webOS like API for 'apps' in HTML5. it remains to be seen whether Tizen devices are ever released, and whether non-JS apps will be relegated to jailbreaky enthusiast-tweakerness only or allowed into the app stores. but between that, HP still showing some interest in WebOS, and Nokia apparently still working on "Meltemi" their own take on the age-old maemo/moblin/meego linux-mobile thing ,i think we can hope for more devices in the future anywyas i think with commoditization we'll be able to purchase fully functional ARM tablet or phone-sized devices from AliExpress/Ebay/DealExtreme within a few years that are fully functional in vanilla-linux and Debian for quite cheap, even if those more recognizable brands never release any Tizen/Meltemi devices

On , Renato <rennabh(a)gmail.com> wrote: Yeah, but that beats the purpose right? Not portable anymore, and if you have a computer handy, why use a crappy small interface? Just my opinion: I'm all about the interface, sure one can do some cool stuff and little tricks with mobile devices, but I'm rarely on the go that a laptop wouldnt be a possibility. It would seem pretty pointless to use such a small un-ergonomic interface to try be creative.. -Harry

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:15 AM, Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt;wrote;wrote: Nope :) But I did just now: Sure its cool stuff, but is this going to be the next stuff played on radio? Is this what society thinks is "good" and "creative" expression? Perhaps I'm going a bit OT, but I personally just don't relate with trying to make music using a tool that's so unpredictable. And when the composer / user can't reliably use a tool I feel that something gets lost, because the situation isn't progressing towards where the composer intends. It boils down to this: is <x> a better interface to create music? (Or an interface to create better music..?) My answer is no... -Harry

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 12:29 AM, Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt;wrote;wrote: Without having watched the videos you mention: I've had that "oh cooool" response to a lot of the mobile / tablet apps, I've never yet had the "wauw, that will be useful to me to create better music" response. Then again I own a normal phone, and no tablet. Maybe a bit more exposure would get me hooked. @Leigh: Point taken about the "played on the radio". In a sense what society thinks about the music I create doesn't really make a difference either: What matters is if it sounds like I want it to. If it does, I'm happy. If it doesn't, then I'll either work on it more, or get frustrated. My experience of touch-interfaces (bar hardware xy controllers) has been pretty frustrating, hence I don't want to use them :) Making music is the reason that I code, the reason that I use the interfaces I do, to try and achieve my goals. If the interface doesn't support me *creatively*, I'm not going to want to use it. That's actually the reason that I'm not currently using Ableton Live, its workflow doesn't match the way I would like to create music (although it's w/flow is much closer than most other software) Regarding the predictablity: I don't understand why somebody would use that tool to create the noises they did. So I did assume that the tool isn't providing the output they hoped for. Perhaps I should assume its *exactly* what they wanted. Either way the tool will reproduce the same output given the same input: I'm not doubting the software's capabilites. But I'm talking about interfaces here. Did the user have enough control while interacting to achieve what they wanted? I dont think so, but I could well be wrong. I'll try get some touchscreen time and see where that takes me :) -Harry

On 02/06/2012 02:22 PM, Harry van Haaren wrote: Bjork - Biophilia. All composed on an iPad, and they use iPads as controllers for performance. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On Tue, Feb 7, 2012 at 4:22 AM, Harry van Haaren wrote: You mean, is the next album by Dream Theater going to feature Rudess playing on iPad which he already does? Quite likely, yes. Oh, and he uses Haken Audio Continuum in live perfomances too. That must be such an abomination :) Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org

Am 09.02.2012 12:13, schrieb Alexandre Prokoudine: Indeed! Unthinkable abomination -- how dares this traitor to play anything, that is not in the book of good and standard instruments for rockbands?! This is an outrage! Very well then, I hope, I get Harrys intention correctly if I think, he refers to presetted sequences and the like. This is a point as long, as the presets cannot be made by the user him/herself. On the other hand: there are no restrictions for using anything, that makes a noise to play music. I saw Nick Cave playing a 20.000 Euro piano combined with a 10 Euro toy-keyboard that accompanied his piano with some preset-drumbeat taken with a vocals-mic from its very own speakers. And it was beautiful. It worked, most probably it was better and more interesting as it would have been if a real drummer would have played the beat on a vintage Ludwig. Software-instruments played on a pad-device may not be in the same league as guitars regarding opportunities for expression but there are many instruments that cannot rival a guitar or a Moog. And nobody would say: uuhhh that trumpet cannot play power-chords, not a real instrument! best regards

On 02/07/2012 12:21 AM, Paul Davis wrote: watched, prepared, and wept. granted, the orphion base sound is limited, but what an instrument! let them make a few well-earned bucks in the app store, and when apple has screwed them over once too often by breaking compatibility or changing the terms of the app store in weird ways, we'll have two more highly skilled and motivated linux developers :-D

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:59:12 +0000 James Morris &lt;jwm.art.net(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: wow, this looks very interesting. I'd like to understand how the sensors work, but his site doesn't seem to go much in depth on this... it says the sensors register the sounds of the undercutaneous muscles. But are those even in the audio frequency realm? And how would you capture them, with a piezo contact mic? renato

On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:53:37 +0000 Fons Adriaensen &lt;fons(a)linuxaudio.org&gt; wrote: again, thanks Fons. For the lazy, the actual sensor device is described at page 160 (170 of the pdf) of the proceedings pdf [1]. It's basically an electret condenser microphone, kept in place by a silicon case that should also filter out external noise. So he's (knowingly) leaving out part of the spectrum, since as he describes earlier in the article muscle sounds are in the 4-45hz range and those mics go down to only about 20. I must say I'm quite surprised to learn muscles make loud enough sounds to be used this way... and this project of his looks freaking cool IMO. renato [1] http://lac.linuxaudio.org/2011/download/lac2011_proceedings.pdf

On 02/19/2012 07:57 PM, Robin Gareus wrote: coincidence? http://www.gtcmt.gatech.edu/news/marco-donnarumma%E2%80%99s-xth-sense-named… Congrats, Marco! robin

Only if you're right over an artery.

On Fri, 2012-02-03 at 22:45 +0100, Nick Copeland wrote: Hi Nick, this leads me to the issue how much people use tablet computers and for what usage? A friend said that lot's of her workmates don't use their PCs and Laptops anymore, but an iPad instead. None of them is using an Android tablet computer. Personally I don't know anybody who owns a tablet computer, neither Android based, nor an Apple. Only one friend is exited that I won such a thingy, the others advice me to play a little bit with the iPad and then I should sell it. Are those tablet computers just a fashion or are they forerunners of what we all will use in the future? Stability? Hazardous waste? I guess to much people will through away their tablet computers and get a new one, much before the batteries are dead. PCs and Laptops IMO are used a while longer. Some friends and I already stopped using mobile phones. There's nothing wrong with using a mobile phone. I just want to say that there's not only a trend pro such tools. Some people don't like to be interconnected all the time. Regards, Ralf

"Linux is Linux, Android is blahblah blah ... never the twain should meet." Maemo, a 'fork' of debian is closest "mobile" OS to normal linux + userspace shipped so far (by NOKIA, now abandoned for WindowsMobile) despite 'mostly' open, it's a birds nest of interdependencies with the proprietary bits, eg blobs for hardware decoding of mp3 implemented as a gstreamer plugin, an old kernel you cant upgrade without losing significant 'fence drop' drivers and firmwares that arent in vanilla linux, forget about upgrading your pulseaudio so you can stream audio to a real set of speakers (the version it uses is too old to talk to the one in Debian/Ubuntu/Arch/Gentoo/Fedora). even if you install a debian chroot, apps will magically 'poof' since the xorg versions are about 3 years seperated and maybe its just me but i always find X unstable with mismatched client/server versions. your microSD cards are formatted on post-2.6.30 btrfs? good luck.. so theres enough annoyances just as a user who wants to compile/run 2 decades worth of linux audio software on this device due to it being a frozen-in-the-past fork mainly due to the driver situation, that when looking at Android, which threw out everything above the kernel in favor of a quasi-java, and doesnt even have a standard libc, let alone the likelihood of being able to run jackd, pulse, Xorg for apps written in GTK/QT/Tk/FLTK/WX...sure people using chroots to debian and Android VNC-clients to virtual-desktop X servers running without a physical display.. but thats too much tweaking and indirection and hacking around the real problem for my tastes wel you can hopefully see why i'd never vote with my dollars for an Android device. i fully welcome you chasing after users and $2.99 app sales and struggling with a fence-drop NIMBY/NIH OS's limitations if that's you thing though