I'd agree; there's no Blender-for-Audio yet. If you're familiar with 3D Graphics, you'd know that Blender's situation is different to that of, say, Inkscape. For much the same reason, it's different from Ardour's. Its suitability for the "industry" is just behind Cinelerra. The equation would be something like this: GIMP (raster) < Inkscape (vector) < Ardour (audio) < Cinelerra (film) < Blender (3D) So as we can see, Blender fairs well in its market. It's so capable that it's one of the choices for a _professional_ graphic designer. It's used in educational institutes, it's got certifications, it's got good level of marketing, a bigger following (majority of whom can't be bothered about open-source). In short, it is pragmatically well-equipped to serve in its field as a _major_ player. Consider that you have about a dozen other alternatives to 3D, pitted against the beasts like Maya and 3DSM. See? Most of us can only name 2 major products. Ardour needs to be able to put a pro-audio consumer into a dilemma. That has not happened yet. The market here is more saturated, hence tougher. A 15-year-old HipHop kid knows at least 5 products which he plans to torrent. To narrow down the scope, we can see that certain tools are definitely industry-ready. AMBdec for instance, is one of the few key players in Ambisonics. It is included as one of the recommendations on ambisonia.comand as such can hold its own.

On 08/27/2009 03:23 PM, Thomas Vecchione wrote: While I agree with you that we are not quite there yet in terms of Hollywood A grade production I find it hard to believe that a good quality feature length movie and soundtrack cannot be made right now using just Blender, Linux Sampler and Ardour-2.8 or 3.x dev. Add in jack-rack, seq24, zyn2, hydrogen, xwax, supercollider, pd, audacity and the now innumerous list of plugins and we have everything we need to create samples for any soundscape . IMO, this talk from Jan about not having access to the best sample libraries as an excuse for not using the excellent tools that are available needs to stop. It's more about the quality of the workmanship and the vision of the producers as well as the available time to make something happen. I'm surprised that there is not a way to generate a surround sound 5.1 track on Linux but if that is the final step that requires mastering in a different closed source program then it is a small price to pay. I see the problem as much more an issue of Jan not feeling comfortable to delegate some responsibility for the production of the soundtrack and work with the community to see it through / crack the whip than a case of not having the tools to do something cool. I have to say that to a degree I can understand why that barrier exists. Getting the Linux Audio Community as a group to willingly contribute to a project is an often painful, time consuming and challenging process. That's not to say that there aren't many people who can contribute but getting them to coordinate and be productive is a mighty task. For example, if we had a list of all the samples that Jan is missing in order to make his vision for the soundtrack happen and everyone could make a concerted effort to provide the samples (without having to go into a debate for every single one) then we might have a viable method to make some headway. However if it is case of Jan presenting his vision and then being forced to account for every possibility for the next three weeks ad infinitum then we will probably turn him off and he would find it more effective to continue going it alone. Another option would be for Jan to hand the project management of the sample collecting process over to someone else and keep his mind free of the hassle of the inevitable mailing list debate so he can get stuff done. Either way Jan would have to delegate some responsibility in order to work with the Linux Audio Community on this project. He should still be in charge of production and direction. In this way he would have a team of people who he could entrust some responsibility to and they would have to commit to coming through with the goods that they sign up for. *Hint. To get people to contribute requires a regular call out with details on what needs to be provided by the community and people will step up and make things happen. It has to be regular as people often forget and many times will only contribute if they are given a few weeks to digest an approach that will work for them and find some time to do the work (often at the last minute). Give between 3 to 6 weeks for each phase/cycle and make sure the deadline is solid. Make sure people are updated weekly and warned a few days out from the deadline as well as the day before. Patrick Shirkey Boost Hardware Ltd