On Friday 05 August 2005 21:27, Lee Revell wrote: Absolutely. WINE is very useful for crossover environments and the work that has been done in this area is awesome, but IMO a potential distraction. Native GNU/Linux tools using common protocols and standards (like ALSA/JACK/LADSPA) are the way to go, otherwise we will simply maintain our reliance on proprietary vendors. The day I can afford this entry-level Windows software, I shall be sending my money to the LADs with feature requests instead. I find it a much better investment of my time and energy right now. Obviously YMMV, but it does have to be said. cheers, tim hall http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim

HI I'm so glad I didnt get into the Soanr/windows stuff so much!! As for VST's I dindt realy use all that many and Ardour seems to have rooms full of effects. It just a matter of learning a few really nice ones and changing them to suit. Some of the vst eq's were nice but there are more on Linux. I actually forgot that my HDa has XP on it, wonder if it will still boot up??? It's only there for the bits of video to sound I do, and I get the feeling thats being worked on now in Linux!! Cheers Bob Shayne O'Connor wrote:

Brad Fuller wrote: hmmm .... i find it astonishing that you're using linux! ;) shayne

Brad Fuller wrote: I've also noted that many of the freely available VST plugins are nice but not especially nicer than some of the LADSPA plugins or some of the native Linux standalone synths. The commercial stuff tends to be better for all the obvious reasons. Quantity is of course no very useful criterion here. Me, I'm happy to be able to use LADSPA, VST/VSTi, and DSSI plugins on the same system. Can't do that elsewheres, I think. As Chris Cannam said, now all we need is for more people to write more DSSI plugins. :) From my POV it's just the opposite, but that's because I use sound and music software with which you may have little or no familiarity (I'll be happy if I'm wrong). Every piece of software you've mentioned so far has been a commercial package, but some of the most powerful software I use has no commercial counterparts. Much as the progams you've mentioned are nice and all, none has the depth of Csound5 or the compositional flexibility of Common Music, and I note that the Windows versions of those programs are not nearly so well-developed as their Linux versions. It's likely to happen, but it'll be a slow transition. And of course all the disadvantages that come with commercial software will arrive here too, e.g., odious licenses, closed-sources, proprietary attitudes towards development, insensitivity to users, updates only at the company's leisure, and of the complete disappearance of support and even product when the company decides to terminate. Well, you do get what you pay for, and what you pay for includes all that crap. Weird, isn't it ? You don't actually own the stuff you pay for, but you do own the free stuff. Frankly, this ought to be anyone's bottom line (unless you're RMS of course). I happen to like the Crystal VSTi synth and I'm quite pleased to be able to use it under Linux. As many of you know, my favorite MIDI sequencer is Voyetra's Sequencer Plus, which runs beautifully under DOSemu. I also love the JACK Rack, Holborn's midirgui, QJackCtl, Ardour, Hydrogen, and many other native Linux soundapps. So the environment here at Studio Dave is somewhat hybrid, because that's how I can get my work done to best effect. Indeed. Sometimes I think that Kjetil, Paul, and Torben were all just having a lark at making such a thing possible, *because in Linux you can do that sort of thing*. They may have even been a bit surprised at the reactions prompted by their little utilities, but the cat is definitely out of the bag now. Personally, I look forward to continued development of the VST -> Linux bridge, it's certainly of value to me in my own music production. Btw, I only recently got around to testing the dssi-vst software. It worked perfectly under Demudi 1.2.1, kudos to Chris C and all the RG crew. Best, dp

Brad Fuller wrote: I feel better already. ;) Very cool, I'll have to check out Squeak again soon. Smalltalk is nice, but of course Lisp rules. ;-)) Yes, therein lies the crux. A lot more users are coming into Linux who are not the average "Windows power user" (could that be an oxymoron?). They do know about computer operating systems, they may or may not be interested in OS politics, and what they really want is stability and the ability to use familiar software. Alas, the impetus for the commercial vendors to port their wares to Linux is not likely to come from the FOSS community. Quite seriously I suggest that anyone wanting Win/Mac software to run on Linux should contact the developers of that software. I would definitely *not* wait for WINE to accommodate Acid or Reason or any other larger gun, that domain is just not really on their radar. Heheh, yeh, you got that right. It's an aging lament. We all know that there's a need for increased attention to usability and documentation issues. We just need more participants. Wikis are nice, as are independent documentation projects, but there's a lot of ground to cover. I also think Christoph Eckert's AVIs are a terrific idea, ditto for JP Mercury's video tutorials for his Freewheeling. Hydrogen comes with some excellent demos, as do some other apps, and I'd love to see more developers put some effort in those directions. Absolutely. Thanks for your comments and point of view ! :) Best, dp

Hi, Yes it's true that is what it does, but it sounds amazingly well, and IMHO no softsynth in linux *yet* approaches its quality of sound, and the evolving sounds it can create with it envelope manipulation interface. Andres On Sat, 2005-08-06 at 13:25, Lee Revell wrote:

On Friday 05 August 2005 22:46, Paul Davis wrote: to support your point, paul (which i find amusing), i wonder why someone would insist on using VST binaries. most of them are unstable and each one has its own interpretation of what the standard looks like. the result is a lot of hacked win32 hosts that most of the time only run 80% of all available plugins. i'd rather want to use plugins where i can make the developer fix a bug when it comes up - and where the developer is actually willing to do so. because we both want to hurt commercial software developers. that makes us brothers :P -- -- leonard "paniq" ritter -- http://www.paniq.org -- http://www.mjoo.org