23 Jul
2005
23 Jul
'05
10:11 p.m.
Hi all,
As some of you will be aware, I wrote the following article:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
After seeing this long thread on this list
(http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-July/025068.html),
I figured this poor schmuk should join up and share in some
discussion. :)
Let me be totally clear here - I am really keen to explore everyone's
viewpoints about this subject. Although my views still stand, I am
more than happy to debate them, and I figured it would be great to
hear your thoughts on the list.
In the article I clarify the position that feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
To direct the discussion further, I would be interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
- do you feel there is a seperation between a professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
As I say, I am keen to engage in some constructive discussion here,
and I look forward to your thoughts. :)
Cheers,
Jono
23 Jul
23 Jul
10:42 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 01:11:23AM +0100, Jono Bacon wrote:
To direct the discussion further, I would be
interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
That depends on your distribution and hardware. It can be, it can also be
a right pig.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
Yes, definatly, though I wouldn't use those terms. Someone who has a
PC set up for studio use is generally prepared to go to more extreme
lengths to get audio working (using patched kernels, running jackd etc.),
someone who just wants apps to be able to make bong noises doesnt have
to.
Obviously the ideal is that all audio systems should be zero-effort setup,
but relaisticly the RT systems we run have some impact on the rest of the
system, and are not going to be accepted by everyone. This is a continual
source of disagreement between audio developers and kernel maintainers.
Things are getting better though, we finally got ALSA as the standard
audio drivers, and the recent ulimit RT stuff is promising.
Thinking of the applications, yes, some of them are quite complicated, but
thats partly because its complicated problem, comparing Ardour to Cubase
itsn't really reasonable as Ardour is a lot more sophisitcated. Comparing
it to Protools is much more reasonable, and it compares reasonably, ie.
both are confusing at first, and logical when you understand them, but
protool's manual is more complete.
Also you talked about the difficulty of multiple audio backends, but we
only use JACK round 'ere :)
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
Running a dedicated disto (eg. Demudi, Planet CCRMA) makes a lot of
difference.
- Steve
24 Jul
24 Jul
12:08 a.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 01:42 +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
comparing Ardour to Cubase
itsn't really reasonable as Ardour is a lot more sophisitcated
Are there people who consider Cubase user friendly? I guess it's
reasonable for MIDI people, but if you just want to do audio it's a
baffling ordeal.
Lee
8:47 a.m.
Hi Lee and Jono
This is a point that I brought up in your article re Cubase ( spelt
wrong I see!! ;-) )
I never really got Cubase to record multitrack at all.
Sonar was easeir to start with but unexplainable dropouts were always
blamed on
1 Me!
2 windows
3 RME drivers
4 get the next upgrade ar $199.00
Ardour/Jack runs the same hardware fine.
Well done Jono for joning the list and welcome.
Cheers
Bob
Lee Revell wrote:
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 01:42 +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
comparing Ardour to Cubase
itsn't really reasonable as Ardour is a lot more sophisitcated
Are there people who consider Cubase user friendly? I guess it's
reasonable for MIDI people, but if you just want to do audio it's a
baffling ordeal.
Lee
12:06 p.m.
On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 10:08:47 -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 01:42 +0100, Steve Harris
wrote:
Yeah, I always thought so, but then I often find windows baffling. But
that bings up another point, people sometimes forget how much they had to
learn to use thier "natural" apps :)
- Steve
comparing Ardour to Cubase
itsn't really reasonable as Ardour is a lot more sophisitcated
Are there people who consider Cubase user friendly? I guess it's
reasonable for MIDI people, but if you just want to do audio it's a
baffling ordeal. 
12:46 p.m.
Steve Harris wrote:
On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 10:08:47 -0400, Lee Revell
wrote:
Amen. I like to think that I'm a savvy computer user, but whenever I
have to fix Ivy's machine I end up swearing like a sailor because I
can't figure where things are under WinXP. But I must add that XP is
certainly the nicest-looking OS I've seen yet from Redmond, and it's a
heck of a lot more stable than any previous version of Windows that
we've run here.
I'll ask Ivy if she'll let me run some Windows music apps on her spiffy
new Dell laptop. Might be interesting to see how it all "just works" for
a naive user. :)
Best,
dp
Are there people who consider Cubase user
friendly? I guess it's
reasonable for MIDI people, but if you just want to do audio it's a
baffling ordeal.
Yeah, I always thought so, but then I often find windows baffling. But
that bings up another point, people sometimes forget how much they had to
learn to use thier "natural" apps :)
1:46 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 11:26:54 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
Amen. I like to think that I'm a savvy computer user, but whenever I
have to fix Ivy's machine I end up swearing like a sailor because I
can't figure where things are under WinXP. But I must add that XP is
certainly the nicest-looking OS I've seen yet from Redmond, and it's a
heck of a lot more stable than any previous version of Windows that
we've run here.
So I've heard, but in the time it took me to patch my laptop (half a dozen
MS patches), download a fedora iso and burn it I managed to crash XP
twice. I think I have the touch of death though, because some of my
collegues get along with it fine... well, they complain a lot, but who
doesnt complain about thier OS :)
- Steve
Are there people who consider Cubase user friendly? I
guess it's
reasonable for MIDI people, but if you just want to do audio it's a
baffling ordeal.
Yeah, I always thought so, but then I often find windows baffling. But
that bings up another point, people sometimes forget how much they had to
learn to use thier "natural" apps :)
3:45 p.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 11:26 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
I'll ask Ivy if she'll let me run some Windows
music apps on her spiffy
new Dell laptop. Might be interesting to see how it all "just works" for
a naive user. :)
Remember to buy to software first! :)
--
Sampo Savolainen <v2(a)iki.fi>
25 Jul
25 Jul
2:28 a.m.
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Dave Phillips wrote:
I'll ask Ivy if she'll let me run some Windows
music apps on her spiffy
new Dell laptop. Might be interesting to see how it all "just works" for
a naive user. :)
Hmmm - from where would you get them? And the dongles? Naaah, not for me
- - too much effort which gives too much credibility to theses guys in
Redmond. Read: IMHO, it's not worth it...
cheers,
wjl
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24 Jul
24 Jul
2:32 p.m.
Steve Harris wrote:
On Sat, Jul 23, 2005 at 10:08:47 -0400, Lee Revell
wrote:
Agreed. As I implied under the "Poor Schmuck" thread, learning any type
of specialized application takes a bit of time. When you have a couple
of popular audio applications under your belt the next might be a bit
easier. The time it takes to learn the next audio app is usually
dependent on previous acquired knowledge. If the new app is similar and
the user can use past knowledge, the user will usually declare that it
is "easy" to use. Put another way, the vast majority of applications are
"easy" to use -- the learning curve is what we are really talking about.
Documentation is just a means to and end.
I separate application usage from system usage -- patching linux
kernels, tuning windows drivers, etc. -- is different can of worms all
together.
--
Brad Fuller
(408) 799-6124
** Sonaural Audio Studios **
(408) 799-6123 West San Jose
(408) 799-6124 Cambrian
________________________________
Hear us online: www.Sonaural.com
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 01:42 +0100, Steve Harris
wrote:
Yeah, I always thought so, but then I often find windows baffling. But
that bings up another point, people sometimes forget how much they had to
learn to use thier "natural" apps :)
comparing Ardour to Cubase
itsn't really reasonable as Ardour is a lot more sophisitcated
Are there people who consider Cubase user friendly? I guess it's
reasonable for MIDI people, but if you just want to do audio it's a
baffling ordeal.
23 Jul
23 Jul
10:50 p.m.
Jono Bacon wrote:
As some of you will be aware, I wrote the following
article:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
After seeing this long thread on this list
(http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-July/025068.html),
I figured this poor schmuk should join up and share in some
discussion. :)
You're a brave lad, and you're most welcome here. :)
Let me be totally clear here - I am really keen to
explore everyone's
viewpoints about this subject. Although my views still stand, I am
more than happy to debate them, and I figured it would be great to
hear your thoughts on the list.
Very cool. The way I see it, your POV is certainly valid: after all,
your experience is what you experienced, and no amount of cheerleading
here makes it different.
You'll definitely hear us make recommendations re: bundles and distros,
but even that leads me to wonder about a few things, such as why I have
to advise a new user to install a particular distribution. Should he not
be able to use just any distro ? I know that certain versions of Windows
are recommended for audio work, but the matter is a little more
complicated in Linux-land.
Planet CCRMA and AGNULA/Demudi are wonderful, but you can't buy 'em at
Wal-Mart. You *can* buy a Red Hat or Debian distro there, but those are
quite unlikely to be acceptable for pro-standards audio work. The kernel
needs patched, lots of other stuff needs done, and none of it is going
to be especially clear or "easy" to a new user. I don't know what we as
a group can do to alleviate this situation. I don't get the impression
that the kernel and distro folk are very eager to set their sights on
pro-audio performance tuning specs.
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
Indeed, see above. But in the absence of direct support from the
manufacturers we can only do what we can. Thank goodness for open-source. :)
To direct the discussion further, I would be interested
in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
It's simple enough for me, but I know exactly what I'm doing whenever I
install a new distro. Unless the user starts with a system such as
Demudi or PlanetC he's likely to be in for a rough ride. It's not
impossible to do it without the pre-formed systems, but it's certainly
easier to just go with the proven systems.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
I was thinking about it in terms of vehicles. You hop in your sedan, you
press buttons, push the shifter to D, and off you go. You hop in my 327
Chevy with four on the floor, no power steering, no power brakes...
well, it ain't gonna "just work", but I can demonstrate that it beats
the paint off your sedan. So perhaps the "just works" mantra is only
applicable within certain definitions.
Now, most folks might like the idea if driving that 327, thinking about
controlling that beast, but when they get inside and don't see the
familiar amenities, most will want their sedans back again. The ones who
learn to handle the Chevy do get something better for their efforts, but
real effort is involved.
Fortunately there's room on the road for both vehicles. :-)
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
I see good stuff happening, particularly with Christoph's training
videos, and the such neat additions as JP Mercury's AVIs demonstrating
how to use his FreeWheeling. More movement in that direction would be
helpful.
As I say, I am keen to engage in some constructive
discussion here,
and I look forward to your thoughts. :)
I'm happy to see you here, Jono, and I hope we can make your visit
worthwhile. Please let me know if you have any specific questions, and
feel free to write either on-list or off.
Best regards,
Dave Phillips
11:32 p.m.
Just wanted to post my thoughts once again. I am a bona fide amateur
user, but serious enough to have a machine dedicated to my DAW. I have
been using PlanetCCRMA for a couple of years, with a delta 1010LT card
which worked out of the box. I loaded fedora core 2, followed the planet
instructions and had a completely functional DAW.
From my perspective, I have been able to build my DAW
without having to
sort through reams of documentation or sift through lists for
answers.
Everything is nicely packaged already with PlanetCCRMA.
-Joe Dell'Orfano
On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 21:31 -0400, Dave Phillips wrote:
Jono Bacon wrote:
--
Joseph Dell'Orfano <fullgo(a)dellorfano.net>
As some of you will be aware, I wrote the
following article:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
After seeing this long thread on this list
(http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-July/025068.html),
I figured this poor schmuk should join up and share in some
discussion. :)
You're a brave lad, and you're most welcome here. :)
Let me be totally clear here - I am really keen to
explore everyone's
viewpoints about this subject. Although my views still stand, I am
more than happy to debate them, and I figured it would be great to
hear your thoughts on the list.
Very cool. The way I see it, your POV is certainly valid: after all,
your experience is what you experienced, and no amount of cheerleading
here makes it different.
You'll definitely hear us make recommendations re: bundles and distros,
but even that leads me to wonder about a few things, such as why I have
to advise a new user to install a particular distribution. Should he not
be able to use just any distro ? I know that certain versions of Windows
are recommended for audio work, but the matter is a little more
complicated in Linux-land.
Planet CCRMA and AGNULA/Demudi are wonderful, but you can't buy 'em at
Wal-Mart. You *can* buy a Red Hat or Debian distro there, but those are
quite unlikely to be acceptable for pro-standards audio work. The kernel
needs patched, lots of other stuff needs done, and none of it is going
to be especially clear or "easy" to a new user. I don't know what we as
a group can do to alleviate this situation. I don't get the impression
that the kernel and distro folk are very eager to set their sights on
pro-audio performance tuning specs.
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
Indeed, see above. But in the absence of direct support from the
manufacturers we can only do what we can. Thank goodness for open-source. :)
To direct the discussion further, I would be
interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
It's simple enough for me, but I know exactly what I'm doing whenever I
install a new distro. Unless the user starts with a system such as
Demudi or PlanetC he's likely to be in for a rough ride. It's not
impossible to do it without the pre-formed systems, but it's certainly
easier to just go with the proven systems.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
I was thinking about it in terms of vehicles. You hop in your sedan, you
press buttons, push the shifter to D, and off you go. You hop in my 327
Chevy with four on the floor, no power steering, no power brakes...
well, it ain't gonna "just work", but I can demonstrate that it beats
the paint off your sedan. So perhaps the "just works" mantra is only
applicable within certain definitions.
Now, most folks might like the idea if driving that 327, thinking about
controlling that beast, but when they get inside and don't see the
familiar amenities, most will want their sedans back again. The ones who
learn to handle the Chevy do get something better for their efforts, but
real effort is involved.
Fortunately there's room on the road for both vehicles. :-)
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
I see good stuff happening, particularly with Christoph's training
videos, and the such neat additions as JP Mercury's AVIs demonstrating
how to use his FreeWheeling. More movement in that direction would be
helpful.
As I say, I am keen to engage in some constructive
discussion here,
and I look forward to your thoughts. :)
I'm happy to see you here, Jono, and I hope we can make your visit
worthwhile. Please let me know if you have any specific questions, and
feel free to write either on-list or off.
Best regards,
Dave Phillips
24 Jul
24 Jul
2:07 a.m.
"Joseph Dell'Orfano" <fullgo(a)dellorfano.net> writes:
serious enough to have a machine dedicated to my DAW
I would say you're ignorant enough to have a dedicated computer for
audio;). There is no need for this in this camp. If something disturbs
your processes, then there is something wrong with the kernel and it
needs to be fixed rather than trying to avoid it like this.
--
Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a
http://www. s t n m
irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact
[sip|iax]: e e
jid:b0ef@ n n
8:59 a.m.
Esben Stien wrote:
"Joseph Dell'Orfano"
<fullgo(a)dellorfano.net> writes:
There's nothing wrong with having a dedicated machine for a studio. I
do the same thing, one machine in my den for email, word processing,
etc., and another machine down in the studio for audio production.
-- Brett
--
Programmer by Day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
serious enough to have a machine dedicated to my
DAW
I would say you're ignorant enough to have a dedicated computer for
audio;). There is no need for this in this camp. If something disturbs
your processes, then there is something wrong with the kernel and it
needs to be fixed rather than trying to avoid it like this.
12:40 p.m.
Thanks, Brett. Kind of discouraging to be called ignorant immediately
after trying to get in on an important discussion thread. This is why I
spend most of my time lurking on these lists.
I appreciate your post defending me!!
-Joe D
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 06:58 -0400, Brett McCoy wrote:
Esben Stien wrote:
--
Joseph Dell'Orfano <fullgo(a)dellorfano.net>
"Joseph Dell'Orfano"
<fullgo(a)dellorfano.net> writes:
There's nothing wrong with having a dedicated machine for a studio. I
do the same thing, one machine in my den for email, word processing,
etc., and another machine down in the studio for audio production.
-- Brett serious enough to have a machine dedicated to my
DAW
I would say you're ignorant enough to have a dedicated computer for
audio;). There is no need for this in this camp. If something disturbs
your processes, then there is something wrong with the kernel and it
needs to be fixed rather than trying to avoid it like this.
3:50 p.m.
"Joseph Dell'Orfano" <fullgo(a)dellorfano.net> writes:
Kind of discouraging to be called ignorant immediately
after trying
to get in on an important discussion thread.
Please, Sir, I had no intent to discourage you from
posting;). Ignorant is not a really a bad word, it just means
unknowing (of the current issue), but it does have a bad kling to
it;).
This is why I spend most of my time lurking on these
lists.
Please, now I felt bad;).
--
Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a
http://www. s t n m
irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact
[sip|iax]: e e
jid:b0ef@ n n
26 Jul
26 Jul
12:35 a.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 10:39 -0400, Joseph Dell'Orfano wrote:
Thanks, Brett. Kind of discouraging to be called
ignorant immediately
after trying to get in on an important discussion thread. This is why I
spend most of my time lurking on these lists.
Keep in mind that a lot of folks here are not native English speakers.
Not sure if this applies to Esben in particular, but in general, these
folks might not even know they're insulting you.
Peace,
-Pete
24 Jul
24 Jul
3:53 p.m.
Brett McCoy <idragosani(a)chapelperilous.net> writes:
There's nothing wrong with having a dedicated
machine for a studio.
No, but it's not required in any way. It's better to look at the
problems with the kernel, if any, that makes you take this decision.
--
Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a
http://www. s t n m
irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact
[sip|iax]: e e
jid:b0ef@ n n
4:31 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Using a dedicated machine for audio (was: Opening up the discussion)
Esben Stien wrote:
Had nothing to do with kernel issues, it had to do with the fact I
didn't want my studio in my den, but in a larger space in my basement.
-- Brett
--
Programmer by Day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
There's
nothing wrong with having a dedicated machine for a studio.
No, but it's not required in any way. It's better to look at the
problems with the kernel, if any, that makes you take this decision. 
10:07 p.m.
On 24 July 2005 at 6:58, Brett McCoy <idragosani(a)chapelperilous.net> wrote:
There's nothing wrong with having a dedicated
machine for a studio. I
do the same thing, one machine in my den for email, word processing,
etc., and another machine down in the studio for audio production.
Your house must be bigger than mine to have all those computers. ;-)
--
Kevin
11 p.m.
Kevin Cosgrove wrote:
On 24 July 2005 at 6:58, Brett McCoy
<idragosani(a)chapelperilous.net> wrote:
Still doesn't seem big enough... :-|
-- Brett
--
Programmer by Day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
There's nothing wrong with having a dedicated
machine for a studio. I
do the same thing, one machine in my den for email, word processing,
etc., and another machine down in the studio for audio production.
Your house must be bigger than mine to have all those computers. ;-) 
25 Jul
25 Jul
2:58 a.m.
Esben Stien wrote:
"Joseph Dell'Orfano"
<fullgo(a)dellorfano.net> writes:
not sure if PC as a platform is up to the task, it seems that e.g.
heavy disk I/O can usually get in the way.
Plus of course, with different processes runnig you never know who's
gonna need enough memory for swap to be used...
all in all, no matter what you can only service so much load so if
you want to make sure that your realtime tasks are really realtime you
might want to look into how to limit the load, which is not really
possible on totally general-use machine (even less so if it has more users).
just imagine that fcheck kicks in and updatedb kicks in and few other
processes are started your disk is gonna run out of cycles and your
direct to disk recording is going to suffer and then you get slashdotted
so apache spawns 100s processes (or threads). So while having a
dedicated computer is not a strict requirement youd better watch what is
running and what else the computer is being used for.
erik
serious enough to have a machine dedicated to my
DAW
I would say you're ignorant enough to have a dedicated computer for
audio;). There is no need for this in this camp. If something disturbs
your processes, then there is something wrong with the kernel and it
needs to be fixed rather than trying to avoid it like this.
23 Jul
23 Jul
11:10 p.m.
Jono Bacon wrote:
Hey, thanks for joining in!
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
Ideally, yes, but even Cakewalk Home Studio, which is probably the
simplest DAW software to use, won't be immediately usable to someone who
is brand new to digital audio recording. It still requires the user to
know how to configure their audio hardware, configure their MIDI stuff
(if they are going to use it), and learn how to work in a multitrack
environment. When I was using Cakewalk a few years ago, and was on a
few mailing lists, many of the same beginner questions were asked on
those lists as I see on the Linux lists -- how to I tune my hardware to
prevent dropouts, how do I get my MIDI tracks to export to WAV files,
why do I get so many dropouts, what is the best plugin to use for such
and such effect... and so on.
Granted, the documentation for Ardour is a bit spotty, but documentation
for many other apps is much more complete (like for Jamin and especially
Rosegarden, for which a published book is now available). Hopefully
this issue will be alleviated soon as more people begin to use Ardour
and the Wiki manual gets more fleshed out.
To direct the discussion further, I would be
interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
Distribution dependent. If you use Agnula or Planet CCRMA, yes. If you
are more adventurous and want to roll your own patched kernel and build
a more customized environment, there is that also, but it's not for the
faint at heart or the newbie.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
The separation is in the their defined goals more than anything.
Software that "just works" is a lofty ideal, even in the Windows world
(and to a lesser degree the Mac world). High-end audio in general is a
complex environment, and to even be semi-professional some extra effort
and research is going to be required.
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
I think more effort into documentation for Linux audio is needed, and I
don't think many will disgree on this. High-end audio on Linux is still
very much in its infancy... but remember the days when high-end
graphics on Linux was at this same state? As more and more people start
taking Linux audio seriously, it will become more streamlined and well
documented.
-- Brett
--
Programmer by Day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
11:25 p.m.
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
What you are looking for then is a simple program that just about
anyone get figure out and doesn't require a bunch of interdependant
programs to work right. Something simple that may not be exactly best
for someone with more experience. You are looking for a program
called Audacity.
24 Jul
24 Jul
6:27 a.m.
What you are looking for then is a simple program that
just
about anyone get figure out and doesn't require a bunch of
interdependant programs to work right. Something simple
that may not be exactly best for someone with more
experience. You are looking for a program called Audacity.
there's a new effort called linux multimedia studio. It
doesn't depend on JACK etc., so it could become an
alternative for the not so skilled hobby musician:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=26306
Best regards
ce
6:54 a.m.
there's a new effort called linux multimedia
studio. It
doesn't depend on JACK etc., so it could become an
alternative for the not so skilled hobby musician:
why do you say not-so-skilled? theres very skilled musicians making great music with
Fruity Loops, of which LMMS is a verbatim ripoff of..
7:31 a.m.
why do you say not-so-skilled? theres very skilled
musicians making great music with Fruity Loops, of which
LMMS is a verbatim ripoff of..
without any doubt. I told it wrong (due to my bad english,
sorry :).
I wanted to say that lmms is easier to use than learning about
JACK, Ardour and a sequencer, so even beginners can get a
positive experience about linux audio.
Sorry for the confusion.
Best regards
ce
12:21 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 11:33:04 +0200, Christoph Eckert wrote:
The JACK thing is potentially a bad thing IMHO, not requiring jack is
fine, but it can/should be easy enough to make an app like that use JACK,
with the new auto-load stuff.
You still have ot have controls for hte buffer sizes and so on if you want
real-ish time support, so you may as well suport JACK.
- Steve
why do you say not-so-skilled? theres very
skilled
musicians making great music with Fruity Loops, of which
LMMS is a verbatim ripoff of..
without any doubt. I told it wrong (due to my bad english,
sorry :).
I wanted to say that lmms is easier to use than learning about
JACK, Ardour and a sequencer, so even beginners can get a
positive experience about linux audio.
1:02 p.m.
The JACK thing is potentially a bad thing IMHO, not
requiring jack is fine, but it can/should be easy enough to
make an app like that use JACK, with the new auto-load
stuff.
You still have ot have controls for hte buffer sizes and so
on if you want real-ish time support, so you may as well
suport JACK.
Yes, I already asked the programmer to optionally support
JACK.
lmms is in an very early state, so let's stay tuned what will
happen.
Best regards
ce
26 Jul
26 Jul
12:41 a.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 09:01 +0000, ix(a)replic.net wrote:
OMFG! Damned if that's not FruityLoops. Here's hopin' against
litigation.
Peace,
-Pete
there's a
new effort called linux multimedia studio. It
doesn't depend on JACK etc., so it could become an
alternative for the not so skilled hobby musician:
why do you say not-so-skilled? theres very skilled musicians making great music with
Fruity Loops, of which LMMS is a verbatim ripoff of..
>
> http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=26306
24 Jul
24 Jul
5:17 a.m.
On 24 July 2005 at 1:11, Jono Bacon <jonobacon(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
To direct the discussion further, I would be interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get started with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
If recording is plugging in a mic or a musical keyboard and recording
a bit for the family in the next time zone, then it is fairly easy.
Read the FAQ regarding "Q: I don't git no sound!? A: Unmute your
speakers in the mixer" then fire up Audacity. Like any recording,
computer based or otherwise, at that point you'll have to deal with
recording levels, etc.
If recording is bringing the band in and laying down your latest
hit on multitrack gear, then there is a lot more to attend to.
I'm running a fairly modern kernel, and it needed one patch to
get it to have low latency and avoid xruns. Recording and mixing
8 tracks at once barely makes my system breath hard. I can do
that with lots of app's open. I use jackd-realtime via qjackctl
as my audio subsystem. For recording in this way I use ardour.
For a MIDI sequencer I use Rosegarden, which also has a fair
notation editor. Noteedit is also a good notation editor.
If recording involves much MIDI gear, then fire up Rosegarden,
and plug in your MIDI gear. All the usual hardware MIDI
headaches will apply.
If you want easy, then turn-key might be a good way to go. There
are a few Linux distributions which are more turn-key than
others. My own distribution is Mandrake, which is a lot better
than some, but certainly not the best if only ease of audio is
considered. I think that Paul Davis', primary author of ardour,
"Linux Audio Systems" company packages turn-key Linux audio
hardware just right for use in a high featured audio environment,
what you might call "professional". Check the ardour.org website
for details.
I'm unqualified to answer the 2nd question. ;-)
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
Absolutely there's a difference between the tasks of wanting a
simple recording and wanting more flexibility and more tracks
at once. It's not really a pro/amateur split to me. I've been
semi-pro for many years now, and I still fire up the "amateur"
apps when I want quick and easy, get in & get out.
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
There are barriers on all three systems I've seen in use:
Windows, Mac & Linux. Hardware issues apply to all due to
routing of audio and MIDI, and all the complexities that might
arise there. This applies with a great range of degree depending
on how sophisticated the desired result is.
- I've been doing sound on Linux since before my kids were born!
;-) Seriously tho, I've been doing sound on Linux since before
the tools were good, up through now, when I think they're pretty
good, with room to improve into being outstanding. They're good
enough that I don't need to buy a dedicated DAW. In my own
experience once an application reaches maturity, then it's quite
solid in use, and stays that way for the life of my computer. I
don't have to worry about loading some new DLL and ruining some
aspect of my recording software or its stability. One friend of
mine had to reinstall Windows a few times because of this, and
he's had to reboot his machine between using applications with
DLLs that conflict.
- On a Mac I used E-magic's Logic. Wow! What a hard piece of
software to learn that was. The only thing that got me through
it was the gtr/key player in my band who worked at Apple as a
developer for years and also used Logic. It took me literally a
couple years to get everything set up the way I wanted to work.
Before that I was always compromising in some undesirable way,
and I ended up working more on the music tools than on the music.
At one point my Apple friend decided to go the PC route. That
lasted about 1 year until he and his family had had enough of
Windows and kicked the PCs out of the house. They now have a
fully Mac home. His 10 year old used iMovie recently to put
together a small movie, complete with special effects. I've been
tempted at times to go with a Mac again, but they're just so
expensive, and more so when adding something like Pro-Tools.
- On PCs all I can say is that three other bandmates tried to
run those. One was running Finale' on a very old computer that
he never connected to the net, nor ever upgraded. It's treated
him quite well. He is a DSP engineer by trade and does things
like programming his own convolution based filters, starting in
Mathcad. Another friend uses her computer for barebones MIDI
stuff, but uses a BOSS DAW for recording after trying for months
to get her PC to run music software well enough; it kept crashing
the system. The last friend who tried music software on a PC
also had quite a lot of trouble, and never got it working. He is
a sr. software developer for a company that makes hardware for
the video on demand industry.
As I say, I am keen to engage in some constructive
discussion
here, and I look forward to your thoughts. :)
Awesome idea. We can only improve things if we own up to the
weaknesses and fix them. Open source is really cool in this
respect for what it allows to happen, not that it will happen,
but that it can happen. If you have specifics, then clearly
articulating them, and getting them to the right eyes, is a
really good thing. I expect you do have specifics, but I didn't
read the thread to which you referred.
Cheers...
--
Kevin
7:07 a.m.
Hi,
After seeing this long thread on this list
(http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-
July/025068.html), I figured this poor schmuk should join up
and share in some discussion. :)
You're welcome ;-) .
[...]
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise,
audio production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the
issues that I was discussing were that some pre-requisite
knowledge is required before you can get started. It seems
that to record on Linux you need to have trawled through
documentation, the archives for this list and read up on
the intracies of getting the different parts of the system
working. To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering -
surely the user should be able to get up and running
straight away - they download their package of choice,
install and run. Would this not be better?
Of course, but still we aren't there yet.
There are differences. A professional will spend more time in
learning the system and setting it up to fit his needs than a
hobbyist who wants to plug in the guitar, fire up a sequencer
and just have some fun, while a non-musician maybe wants to
convert some vinyl discs into ogg files, play the oggs and
watch some video.
I think that user 2 will have the most trouble. I for myself
needed a long time to find a distro I like for all purposes
(even audio), but setting it up was nont that easy (and I'm
not yet talking about kernel patching here ;-) .
Some things are simply usability issues, but I'm glad that
recently there have been some new applications like Hydrogen
which really addressed such issues.
Prob: Usability needs time to work on. So we're in need for
people working on it.
Feel free to visit http://sysexxer.sourceforge.net. There are
three tutorial videos to linux audio. Furthermore there are
two papers, one about linux for the digital musician (an
short overview over some important applications) and one
about linux audio usability issues. If you know a bunch of
open source hackers who have some spare time and do not know
what to do, feel free to forward the usability paper ;-) .
To answer your questions:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get
stated
with Linux and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
No for the first one :) .
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional
and an amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the
amateur, but the professional should really know the
specifics of the system and how to set it up.
If some existing applications could include some usability
rules and could get better preconfigured, both the amateur
and the professional can benefit.
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running
without reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the
barriers, both technical and socially? I am curious to see
whether these barriers could be solved.
The barriers could get technically solved, but there's not
enough manpower to do so. We had some really long threads
about "Linux Audio Should just work", and you started the
next one ;-) .
See the LAU and LAD archives for threads like
"What parts of Linux audio simply suck ?"
"Common linux audio layer"
"What Parts of Linux Audio Simply Work Great?"
so you can see that some of the problems already have been
addressed.
As I say, I am keen to engage in some constructive
discussion here, and I look forward to your thoughts. :)
There is documentation, but developers dislike reading
documentation, and users dislike reading documentation.
The solution is to design software which reduces the amount of
documentation needed :) .
Thanks a lot for your thoughts.
Best regards
ce
7:36 a.m.
On Sun, 24 Jul, 2005 at 01:11AM +0100, Jono Bacon spake thus:
<blah blah>
Excuse me for being lazy and not googling to find this out, but:
Are you Jono Bacon from Wolves that writes for LF?
If so, shame on you! You're surely teasing these people - you ought
to know that competing with Windows or Mac offerings is only a side
issue for Free people.
Things will get simpler, and if you use a distribution tailored to
this kind of thing, then it already is. Just like setting up a
machine running mail, web or whatever servers isn't straightforward
unless you use a distribution that's made it easy.
And that's the thing - choice. I use Linux for more reasons than I
care to list, but one of them is the amount of control I have over my
machine. Yes, my audio setup isn't something a newbie could put
together (patch this, compile that, fix the makefile over there) but
why should it be? A newbie can use demudi or one of the other audio
distros.
And if you are the Jono I'm guessing you are, then I live not far
away. If you get stuck, give me a shout. Because that's the other
thing that makes all the hard work worth it - the community. Often
I've had a problem or a query with an app and thanks to this and other
lists, I get to talk to a lot of people that really understand what's
happening under the bonnet. Sometimes you get help directly from the
creator.
While I have your attention... I'm a lecturer on a Creative Computing
degree course at a Uni not far from you. It's a new course and I'm
trying to push for extensive use of Free software. Any chance you
would like to come and give an invited talk at some point? We'd buy
you lunch, of course!
James
--
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated
Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)
8:29 a.m.
Last Sunday 24 July 2005 01:11, Jono Bacon was like:
I figured it would be great to hear your thoughts on
the list.
I'm shocked and surprised to learn that you're still using Cubase. I know that
you've been using Linux far longer than I have have, because it was one of
your articles that persuaded me to try out the audio capabilities of Linux. I
ditched Windows and haven't looked back. OK, lets get real, some of your
reservations are valid. I've been on a huge 3 year learning curve, but boy
was it ever worth it!
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
To direct the discussion further, I would be interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
As Steve says: running a dedicated audio distro makes life a lot easier. I'm
using A/DeMuDi - it's about as easy to set up a DAW with that distro as it is
to set up a desktop network client using Ubuntu. You must have higher
standards than me. I expect to have to read the documentation of the package
I want to use. I don't expect to _have_ to download and compile additional
software.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
No, not really in terms of Linux Audio. 'Professional' means making your
living from it. Very few Linux Audio users are actually doing that, however
many of us are producing what might be described as 'professional standard'
recordings or at least, aspiring to that. Either way the software should
'just work'. I know that a lot of effort has gone in to making A/DeMuDi 'just
work' and integration issues are being seriously considered. The target
audience is musicians, who mostly want to be able to *cough* plug'n'play. You
don't mention what distro you're basing your opinions on. It sounds like
you've been rolling your own. (Probably not crack then)
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
With my trusty A/DeMuDi-1.2.1 installer disk, I'm confident that I can get a
Linux DAW up and running on most machines in a couple of hours. Translate
that into a couple of days/weeks for the average newbie (whatever one of
those is). There is a trade off. DIY tools mean more work, I think it's
reasonable to expect to have to do a certain amount for oneself in this
situation, however I'm aware that people frequently get to defenestrating
levels of computer rage whilst trying to get their boxes to do exactly what
they want. It is by no means perfect.
Some things are clear. A/DeMuDi uses ALSA+JACK+LADSPA. You turn everything
else off. That sorts out the sound server issue. I've not found the issues
with mixers and drivers to be a particular problem. I simply don't agree with
your view of Ardour as unintuitive - I had to read books about Photoshop
before I learned how to use it, most large applications have an associated
learning curve. I think your concerns are valid, but that they are already
being addressed - Ardour-2.0 for example. Let's start looking at the detail -
I'd like all my music apps to have gtk2 interfaces with fan sliders. Actually
I want them all to look as cool as JAMin, I'd like them all to have html user
manuals and colourful icons, oh yes and I never, ever want to have to make
devices using the mknod command ;) How about you?
I think possibly one of the reasons I'm so happy making music on Linux is
because I never really got into it in my Windows using days, so I didn't
learn any bad habits. I have very much cut my suit to fit the cloth. Damn
fine cloth it is too!
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
8:38 a.m.
Hi Jono,
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get
stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
Surely to compare the Cubase to Linux is like comparing a drinks cup
holder, to a car. Although, it is an easy comparison to make, because
there is no clear comparable brand to put Cubase up against. People like
brands, and credibility creates expectation. The second Myth TV is
advertised on telly, most of my friends'll ditch Sky Plus.
The econonmy works on bundles; what you dont want pays for what you do.
It is easier to sell a brand than a concept. And so it is with audio
software.
I could sing the praises of any number of Linux audio distributions at
my local music shop, but the majority of the people will care little for
tech specs or architechtural concepts. They want to keep things simple,
and so they are interested in brand recognition. There is not much
mention of Linux audio in the music tech press at the moment is there?
It is easy to get started with Linux and recording, and crucially it is
getting easier every day. The pace of development in this community
amazes me. The speed at which the development of proof concept
applications become feedback orientated is just breath taking. So much
so that the audio distribution 'brands' AGNULA, CRMMA, etc.... struggle
to keep up. A position that whoever now owns Cubase, would surely
welcome. The measure of success is not the position you stand in, but
the direction you face.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
The distinction between pro and amateur probably comes down to a
dedication of learning how to use the tools. Therefore I would expect
any pro to be involved with the specifics of a system. As someone who
considers themselves an amateur yet one day hopes to be a pro, I
consider an open ended system worth more interest than a closed branded
system. It's kinda like a mechanical apprenticeship.
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
This is a really good question, and one I have been thinking about a lot
lately. As I am not a ninja programmer I think the biggest barriers are
not programming related. For all I know though it could be the case that
one chip set type or protocol is the real barrier. As a user I feel the
biggest barrier is the distribution of information. I am sure as the
community grows we will see more and more useful information available
to a wider audience, in an ever increasing variety of ways. This is all
just guesswork, but I expect sooner or later googling for a solution to
a problem will return blog entries, and then perhaps 'for user by user'
type pages, and then who knows, maybe a wiki, and very probably a
thousand other new and groovy things.
Cheers,
John
11:34 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion -> why it is hard in the beginning
Per aspera ad astra, jono.
The phenomena you have with Linux audio software are not restricted to audio
software. You have usually a longer time of getting to know the system, but
once you're in it, its fairly easy to keep things running.
I work as a developer for a software company, and from my experience I can
tell that stability is the least thing they care for. It needs to be
marketable, it needs to have new features, technical bugs can be fixed later,
or not at all, if they are not that serious. But wording, graphics, message
boxes, novice stuff, all this should be tuned up to the max so that many
people are being tricked into buying the product.
As a commercial software developer, you are the marketing departments tool.
I have been using audio software under Windows for a long time. It's symptoms
match the way of development described above: the software is easy to install
and learn, but it crashes often and wastes huge amounts of CPU.
Additionally, commercial competition creates an uncomfortable working
environment for musicians, because things do not work together as tightly as
they could. Any interface you get doesn't match the next one, because those
companies do not communicate. There is no common underlying system wide
library for a modular audio environment. You have to buy it indirectly
through one of Steinbergs products. I don't think I have to go on and on
about the disadvantages of the above mentioned development paradigm.
As an open source developer, you are more or less your own boss. Therefore,
what matters most to you is that the program is stable and efficient. That it
has been designed to be interoperable. That it fits well into its
environment. That a lot of things can be configured. Spare time developers do
not have much time. And I guess they enjoy having the control. There is no
marketing. A heavenly place.
The result is, that installation and learning can become a bit rough, as with
open source, you are usually entering the dark caves of infinite development.
Most things look barebone, but they work very well from a developers
perspective.
GNU is heaven if you are a programmer or know something about the insides of
development. There is lots of debug information. There is usually good
documentation about the insides of a program. There are tons of API's. There
is a bugtracker that responds to you. The popular GNU programs are a lot more
stable than what I'm used to, once they run.
And there is of course a good reason not to make programs in development too
easy to access: a point of view that I like to call "pragmatic elitism".
As it gets easier for untrained novices to enter the realms of an open source
program, the quality of participation descends. Bug reports become unhelpful.
Feature trackers become clogged with senseless ideas. Mailing lists burst
with incompetence. It doesn't have to be like this, but from my experience I
can tell that if you create software for simple minded people, you get simple
minded feedback. As a developer, you feel a lot of frustration if this
happens. It might stall or harm development tremendously.
Think of GNU software as a kind of cockaigne, where the entrance is blocked by
a big riddle. Once you have solved the riddle (and I am sure that you will
make a lot of friends this way, because you _must_ participiate in the
community in order to learn about something), you can enter the land of
plenty.
I hope that helps answering your questions.
--
-- leonard "paniq" ritter
-- http://www.paniq.org
-- http://www.mjoo.org
1:09 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion -> why it is hard in the beginning
And there is of course a good reason not to make
programs
in development too easy to access: a point of view that I
like to call "pragmatic elitism".
As it gets easier for untrained novices to enter the realms
of an open source program, the quality of participation
descends. Bug reports become unhelpful. Feature trackers
become clogged with senseless ideas. Mailing lists burst
with incompetence. It doesn't have to be like this, but
from my experience I can tell that if you create software
for simple minded people, you get simple minded feedback.
As a developer, you feel a lot of frustration if this
happens. It might stall or harm development tremendously.
Intersting POV, and you're right.
So how can those people be kept away from bugtrackers and
devel mailing lists?
I really hope that as many people as possible can use and
benefit from free software, but yes, you're right, the above
points are valid.
I think it's great if "normal users" enter the free software
world, but those should perhaps use the software only and
shut up ;-) ?
Best regards
ce
3:04 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion -> why it is hard in the beginning
On Sunday 24 July 2005 17:11, Christoph Eckert wrote:
So how can those people be kept away from bugtrackers
and
devel mailing lists?
i think that bugtrackers and devmls are already a good measure. you need to
register. you have to fill out a few things. you need to be able to grasp the
concept of double-opt-in... usually when it comes to this, people who are not
reading manuals fail ;)
otherwise i'd suppose that it is impossible to avoid the sheep. you could try
to write a manual that sounds professional and logical to programmers but
isn't too appealing to beginners.
or you could teach them some manners. or ignore them. or tell them to go back
to windows. there are lots of possibilities.
i needed about 7 years until i was ready to switch the platform and accept the
gnu paradigm.
I really hope that as many people as possible can use
and
benefit from free software, but yes, you're right, the above
points are valid.
i think there should be no newbie-appealing improvements before the software
isn't rock-stable and making reasonable use of cpu power. after that, why
not?
I think it's great if "normal users"
enter the free software
world, but those should perhaps use the software only and
shut up ;-) ?
or file helpful bug reports. most of them come from an operating system that
was claiming to be their bitch. with gnu software, its a symbiosis. we are
each others bitch. ;)
--
-- leonard "paniq" ritter
-- http://www.paniq.org
-- http://www.mjoo.org
5:28 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion -> why it is hard in the beginning
I think
it's great if "normal users" enter the free
software world, but those should perhaps use the software
only and shut up ;-) ?
or file helpful bug reports. most of them come from an
operating system that was claiming to be their bitch. with
gnu software, its a symbiosis. we are each others bitch. ;)
6:33 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion -> why it is hard in the beginning
On Sunday 24 July 2005 21:30, Christoph Eckert wrote:
Filing bugreports is a difficult task. Not every user is able
to file valuable reports.
in the beginning. when we introduced a bugtracker in my company, people were
initially crapping in our bugtracker as if we might have a magical third eye
that allows us to read their minds.
i used to append a link to
http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html to the bug report,
which improved the quality of bug reports drastically.
--
-- leonard "paniq" ritter
-- http://www.paniq.org
-- http://www.mjoo.org
I think it's great if "normal users"
enter the free
software world, but those should perhaps use the software
only and shut up ;-) ?
or file helpful bug reports. most of them come from an
operating system that was claiming to be their bitch. with
gnu software, its a symbiosis. we are each others bitch. ;) 
1:03 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 01:11:23AM +0100, Jono Bacon wrote:
As some of you will be aware, I wrote the following
article:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
Hello Jono-- Here are some excerpts from your article, and my own
thoughts regarding them.
Despite the fact that pretty much all of my computers
run Linux, the
studio box is running Windows 2000 so I can use my sound recording tool
of choice; Cubase.
I used to use Apple's MacOS and Opcode's great Studio Vision Pro MIDI
sequencer and digital-audio recorder, before Gibson (of Gibson guitar
fame) bought Opcode, then fired all but one of the developers, then
finally ran him off as well and destroyed Studio Vision Pro.
I became disgusted with proprietary software (and hardware) at that
point, in 1997, and decided to sell my Apple G4, build a generic PC with
cheap off-the-shelf parts with the help of a friend and begin to learn
and use Linux.
At that time, support for sound, MIDI, and digital-audio on Linux was
problematic (for me) at best. Things have changed *tremendously* since
then.
I currently use the AGNULA/DeMuDi Linux distribution, and this recent
latest release, version 1.2.1, has been the easiest Linux distribution
I have ever installed, and all of the audio/MIDI programs and the
infrastructure to support those programs were automatically installed
and configured. The whole system and all its programs (that I have used
so far) worked excellently from immediately after installation. I was
extremely impressed.
[...] When people are recording music, this mode is
creative, and
technology is typically relegated to unimportance - it should just
work. When I am making music, I don't care for technology. [...] I
just want to plug in and record. [...]
The usefulness and power of any tool is directly proportional to the
knowledge and skill of the person using the tool.
That said, I have found several tools in Linux that work amazingly well
with almost no prior knowledge or configuration. Audacity is almost a
point-and-click digital-audio recorder. Even Ardour, once you get past
the irrational dread of its complex, daunting interface, can be used as
a simple, straightforward digital-audio recorder with very little
knowledge of its many powerful and flexible features. Those can be
learned later, they are not *required* to be learned beforehand. This
has been my own experience with Ardour, as a *musician* like you, not a
technically-minded person: I was afraid of it, then I tried
it, then I said to myself, "This is easy! I want to learn more--LADSPA
plugins, routing possibilities, using Jamin with Ardour--"
[...] of a song and getting it down on disk must be
short - the
creative mind is hampered tiny technical issues, and these issues are
unacceptable.
I can see your point and agree with you to a great extent, and your
statement would have some weight if it reflected the current state of
MIDI and audio applications on Linux. But it doesn't, or more
accurately, doesn't have to. Thanks to the great work of the folks who
create custom-tailored multimedia Linux distributions like DeMuDi and
Planet CCRMA, MIDI and digital-audio on Linux is very rapidly becoming
an idiot-simple process, where technical issues do *not* get in the way
(much or very often) of the creative process.
Computers and the interactions of the OS and various programs are
complex however. I remember how much research and asking for help I had
to do on the Internet to get Studio Vision Pro on the Apple Macintosh
configured and running smoothly. Even then some technical issues would
crop up every once in a while, and I would have to learn something (darn
it!).
However, with Linux, in its current state, it is a lot easier to be a
musician and creative type person than I found it to be when I was using
proprietary hardware and software from Opcode and Mark of the Unicorn.
Things have come a long way--
[...] Not only that, but I want to be able to
configure the sound card
from within my application. If you have a simple single channel sound
card, the audio mixer will suffice, but if you have a complex card with
10 ins and 10 outs and multiple recording modes, you need an application
to manage this. This is where cards such as the M-Audio Delta range fly
on Windows - they come with a little control application to manage these
parameters. You can certainly control levels with the ALSA mixer, but it
will not allow you to deal with the many other options for the card.
It sounds like you were unaware of the envy24control program--
I use one of those M-Audio Delta cards you refer to: a Delta 1010. The
envy24control program controls the hardware mixer of the card as well as
the many other features. It is included in the alsa-tools package or, in
DeMuDi, in the alsa-tools-gui package.
[...] With some experience behind me of using Cubase,
Cakewalk and
Magix Audio Studio, I suspected Ardour with be a cinch to pick up -
unfortunately I found it impossible to be productive straight away. If
I can't use it, how is someone with no knowledge of audio recording
supposed to use it? Ardour is certainly not the only offender here
[...]
You gave up too quickly. I put off learning anything about Ardour for a
long time because it just *looked* so complex. However, I didn't have to
learn much at all in order to begin to use it effectively. Just less
than an hour's worth of reading the Ardour manual at it's website,
learning a little about how to start a session, some basic signal
routing, and how to use the mouse and computer keyboard with Ardour, and
I was up and running and eager to learn more about this great program.
In summary, your article raised some valid points, but seems out of
date. It doesn't reflect the current state of Linux and multimedia
applications, in my non-technical, musician's view.
Best wishes,
Steve D
New Mexico, US
1:23 p.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 09:02 -0600, Steve D wrote:
On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 01:11:23AM +0100, Jono Bacon
wrote:
Paul Davis also did a nice demo of Ardour at LAC2005, there's a video
recording of it here:
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/contrib/zkm_meeting_2005/video/paul_davis-…
(Theora video and Vorbis sound)
--
Lars Luthman
PGP key: http://www.d.kth.se/~d00-llu/pgp_key.php
Fingerprint: FCA7 C790 19B9 322D EB7A E1B3 4371 4650 04C7 7E2E
[...] With some experience behind me of using
Cubase, Cakewalk and
Magix Audio Studio, I suspected Ardour with be a cinch to pick up -
unfortunately I found it impossible to be productive straight away. If
I can't use it, how is someone with no knowledge of audio recording
supposed to use it? Ardour is certainly not the only offender here
[...]
You gave up too quickly. I put off learning anything about Ardour for a
long time because it just *looked* so complex. However, I didn't have to
learn much at all in order to begin to use it effectively. Just less
than an hour's worth of reading the Ardour manual at it's website,
learning a little about how to start a session, some basic signal
routing, and how to use the mouse and computer keyboard with Ardour, and
I was up and running and eager to learn more about this great program.
2:07 p.m.
Paul Davis also did a nice demo of Ardour at LAC2005,
there's a video recording of it here:
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/contrib/zkm_meeting_2005/v
ideo/paul_davis-ardour.theora.ogg
(Theora video and Vorbis sound)
VLC can play it for sure, just in case it doesn't work on your
favorite player.
Best regards
ce
28 Jul
28 Jul
11:59 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Ardour (was: Opening up the discussion)
On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 06:09:18PM +0200, Christoph Eckert wrote:
[Quoting Lars Luthman:]
--- ---
Both vlc and xine played it fine on this DeMuDi 1.2.1 machine.
It was great to finally see and hear the elusive Paul Davis (just
kidding) describe and discuss Ardour's features and the direction Ardour
development is heading.
The recent complaints about Ardour on this list (about how Ardour looks,
key bindings, being required to create a session (tell Ardour where to
put the files) first, whether a person who knows nothing about the
program can instantly put it to great use) all seem trivial to me
now that I have spent just a little time with Ardour and the online
manual.
It is easy to use Ardour and does not require much foreknowledge, and it
has all kinds of flexibility and power. Thank you so much, Paul and
other Ardour developers/contributors.
Steve D
New Mexico US
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
History from a 10 year old: "Ancient Egypt was old. It was
inhabited by gypsies and mummies who all wrote in hydraulics.
They lived in the Sarah Desseret. The climate of the Sarah is
such that all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere."
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Davis also did a nice demo of Ardour at
LAC2005,
there's a video recording of it here:
http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/contrib/zkm_meeting_2005/video/paul_davis-…
(Theora video and Vorbis sound)
VLC can play it for sure, just in case it doesn't work on your
favorite player.
Best regards
ce 
24 Jul
24 Jul
1:42 p.m.
On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 19:11, Jono Bacon wrote:
Hi all,
As some of you will be aware, I wrote the following article:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
After seeing this long thread on this list
(http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-July/025068.html),
I figured this poor schmuk should join up and share in some
discussion. :)
Welcome! You're a brave man to step into the lion's den ;-)
I'm not going to address all of your points because that has already
been done much more effectively than I could do it. I just want to
touch on three issues.
I think that the point that keeps coming up in this discussion, and
that you also highlighted in your article, is the lack of
documentation. I got started in the community doing documentation for
installing Ardour (as you can see from my way out-of-date page
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/ALSA_JACK_ARDOUR.html). I also did
a few little docs for using Ardour (also out-of-date ;-) Ardour
documentation has been held up a bit because that's the way Paul Davis
wanted it. It has opened up a lot lately but is still not where it
should be. Other applications have much more extensive documentation
(JAMin for instance ;-) We, as a community, do need to continue to
write better documentation. Although, as someone else pointed out, most
people don't want to read it.
Secondly, applications that just work right out of the box. As you
can see from my web page, I used to do everything the hard way. This
was mostly because I am a system administrator and programmer where I
work. I always want to do things the hard way ;-) When I set up my
daughter's computer for college I decided to give Planet CCRMA a try.
I'll never go back to doing it the old-fashioned way. Using the CCRMA
distro allows me to concentrate on only those things that I'm working on
- Ardour as a beta tester and JAMin as a programmer. Everything else
just works right out of the box. I would recommend to anyone who wants
to do Linux audio to use either AGNULA/Demudi or Planet CCRMA. My
apologies to any other user-friendly Linux audio distribution ;-)
Third, a point in favor of using Linux audio. Do you know of anyone
who has asked for a new feature in, for example, T-RackS that has
received a new version of the software with the feature installed in
less than 24 hours? I seriously doubt it. We've done that with JAMin
and I've seen it happen with Ardour repeatedly. Also, if we so choose,
our applications can work seamlessly with each other because they are
open and we can see how to develop them to assist each other in
processing audio. JAMin was designed to allow it to work with any JACK
aware application but mostly to serve as the audio mastering backend to
Ardour. It is really nice to be able to run Ardour with the output
going to JAMin, the output of JAMin going back to a stereo track on
Ardour, and to be able to both mix and master at the same time. In the
proprietary world you can usually only do this if the packages come from
the same company. In our world, when someone writes something better
than JAMin for mastering, the user can just switch to that application.
The fact that the code (and data format) is open allows the user great
freedom.
One other minor point, my system is up 24/7/365. I have no viruses,
no adware, no spyware, no problems. You may have the same experience
with a Mac (now that they've switched to a decent OS) but I'd be willing
to bet you won't see that with Windoze anytime soon.
Once again, welcome to the community.
--
Jan "Evil Twin" Depner
The Fuzzy Dice
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html
"As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this
we should do freely and generously."
Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of
Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744
10:06 p.m.
On 24 July 2005 at 5:53, Jan Depner <eviltwin69(a)cableone.net> wrote:
Third, a point in favor of using Linux audio. Do
you know of anyone
who has asked for a new feature in, for example, T-RackS that has
received a new version of the software with the feature installed in
less than 24 hours? I seriously doubt it. We've done that with JAMin
and I've seen it happen with Ardour repeatedly.
It's not just asking for a feature. I created bank definitions for
my Alesis QS8 keyboard for the Rosegarden sequencer. I let its list
know about that and a developer took my bank definition for inclusion
in version 1.0, which started its release cycle a few days later. I
know of user groups for other app's that let users share amongst each
other, but I've not heard of developers actually taking "code" from
users and folding it into the main product -- OK I haven't been
listening either. Examples to enlighten me would be enjoyable.
Cheers...
--
Kevin
10:15 p.m.
Hi all,
Firstly, thanks so very much for such a warm welcome. I know some of
you said I was a brave chap to grit my teeth and join up, but I think
its important not only for my own understanding to discuss the
different issues, but to also dig in and get to know people who know a
lot more about the subject. Thanks for such constructive discussion
and a very warm welcome. :)
With over 35 emails already to this thread, I don't have time to
respond to everyone's post individually, but there do seem to be some
recurring themes that I will respond to:
-> Cubase is not actually that easy to use, and some of you found it
quite difficult.
Something that some people have been referring to is whether existing
knowledge can make other systems more difficult to use. I am not going
to deny that people approach 'ease of use' in different ways.
Personally, Cubase works very easily for me, and Ardour seems pretty
complex. I think the key question is about usability from the first
minute the application is loaded. Sure, I can go away and read copious
amounts of documentation about either Cubase or Ardour, but if an
application is intuitive, it means less reading and more recording.
In some application domains, there seems to be a view that research
and pre-reading is required. This has typically been applied to
graphics as well as audio. As much I think that you need to research
the topic to do anything vaguely complex in your recording, the target
for usability should be to limit the required research to a minimum.
When I started out, I used to use Magix on Windows for my recording. I
was astounded to discover that I could not figure out how to simply
cut a wave into parts - simple editing. This operation is intuitive in
Cooledit, Audacity and even video editing tools such as Premiere. To
me, this is a real flaw in usability. When I switched to Cubase, the
entire interface was far more intuitive. I still need to look things
up, but the 'looking up' process is far less than with other
applications. I think Linux applications just need some usability love
to make this happen.
-> The integration issue is solved or at least reduced if you use
DeMuDi, Planet CCRMA, AGNULA etc.
This is an interesting point. One side of me thinks, "awesome, this
solves the problem", but another side of me feels a little weird about
requiring an entire customised OS to run audio software. Now,
personally, I use my studio box just for audio, but I know some other
posters on the list said that it should not be a requirement to use a
computer just for audio stuff. I do agree here.
To me, the integration issue seems largely a distribution problem.
Issues such as making sound servers, LADSPA, Ardour and Jack talk
together still seem difficult to solve. As I said before, the
canonical test is to simply install Ardour and Jack and get it to
work. Making this work and then using LADSPA and other bits still
requires some knowledge of the infrastructure.
What has been interesting in this discussion has been that onlookers
outside of this list seem very critical of Linux and audio. This
article was linked on GNOME footnotes, LinuxToday, OSNews and
elsewhere, and the comments posted and mails I have had have been
supportive of the view that it is difficult to get started to an equal
level of capability on competing systems such as Cubase and
GarageBand. This seems like a real problem to me, and although I
accept that audio production is always going to be a complex science,
there seems to be a slight undercurrent of RTFM from some sides of the
audio production in Linux community.
-> New users and pro users are a different breed
I do agree that the needs for a new user and pro user are different,
but the only real difference is that the pro user goes into a far
deeper level of detail. As such, I don't see how usability necessarily
has to be different. If you look at a different type of application
such as a word processor, the tool can be as useful for my dad writing
a letter as it can for a writer who writes a book. The key point is
that the application scales to the differing requirements of the user.
This can certainly apply to audio production.
It seems to me that applications such as Ardour simply need some
usability discussion, testing and implementation. Even cursory glances
at Ardour reveal a range of usability flaws - even simple issues such
as dialog design, right up to structural issues. These problems could
be fixed with some very straightforward design changes, and I am more
than happy to consult with the Ardour team about some of these
changes. Some of you mentioned that the great thing about Open Source
is that changes *can* be made. Hell, I completely agree. I have been
an Open Source contributor and developer since 1998, and I work as a
full time consultant helping people learn and use Open Source in a
variety of different areas. I know that the community is central to
how we can move forward. The purpose of my article was not to slag off
audio in Linux, but to open up interesting discussion such as is
occurring here that will help to better refine how this great
technology is interacted with.
This moves me onto another point, and I would love to hear your
thoughts on this. I have heard a few loose comments around different
parts of the net that Ardour is not quite the same as other Open
Source projects. I have heard that development occurs between a fairly
limited set of developers, and only a few developers drive the
direction of development. I also read somewhere that the testing team
is restricted to a specific group of people and that the author may
even charge for accessing the development version in the future. Is
any of this true? How have you found the development of Ardour to be?
I have not really looked into it, so these points I have heard may be
rubbish, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks so much for the great feedback everyone. :)
Jono
10:43 p.m.
On Sun, 2005-07-24 at 19:15, Jono Bacon wrote:
-> The integration issue is solved or at least
reduced if you use
DeMuDi, Planet CCRMA, AGNULA etc.
This is an interesting point. One side of me thinks, "awesome, this
solves the problem", but another side of me feels a little weird about
requiring an entire customised OS to run audio software. Now,
personally, I use my studio box just for audio, but I know some other
posters on the list said that it should not be a requirement to use a
computer just for audio stuff. I do agree here.
As I said in my earlier post, I used to do all of the configuration
by hand and now I use CCRMA. I'm not sure that you understand what
CCRMA is. I load Fedora Core Whatever on my system and configure it the
way I want. I then download the applications from CCRMA. I also
download a tweaked kernel (which I used to do myself) which will give me
low latency. None of this precludes using all of the standard FC
packages. Unlike some here, my studio system is also my email, web, etc
system.
To me, the integration issue seems largely a distribution problem.
Issues such as making sound servers, LADSPA, Ardour and Jack talk
together still seem difficult to solve. As I said before, the
canonical test is to simply install Ardour and Jack and get it to
work. Making this work and then using LADSPA and other bits still
requires some knowledge of the infrastructure.
Yep, if you do it by hand and don't use one of the packages it can
be a real PITA.
What has been interesting in this discussion has been
that onlookers
outside of this list seem very critical of Linux and audio. This
article was linked on GNOME footnotes, LinuxToday, OSNews and
elsewhere, and the comments posted and mails I have had have been
supportive of the view that it is difficult to get started to an equal
level of capability on competing systems such as Cubase and
GarageBand. This seems like a real problem to me, and although I
accept that audio production is always going to be a complex science,
there seems to be a slight undercurrent of RTFM from some sides of the
audio production in Linux community.
You have to realize that Ardour is not meant to be a replacement for
Cubase or GarageBand. It is a Pro Tools competitor. And I'm not
talking about the little PT Lite editions, I'm talking about the 10-15K
Pro Tools. How many Pro Tools users complained about how complex Ardour
was?
This moves me onto another point, and I would love to
hear your
thoughts on this. I have heard a few loose comments around different
parts of the net that Ardour is not quite the same as other Open
Source projects. I have heard that development occurs between a fairly
limited set of developers, and only a few developers drive the
direction of development. I also read somewhere that the testing team
is restricted to a specific group of people and that the author may
even charge for accessing the development version in the future. Is
any of this true? How have you found the development of Ardour to be?
I have not really looked into it, so these points I have heard may be
rubbish, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
When I first looked at Ardour I thought that I would be able to help
with the programming. I have made a few suggestions and maybe a couple
of my earlier tiny fixes got in. I have been programming scientific
graphics applications for 27 years (that's right, I used to work on
Tektronix 4014s). I have worked in FORTRAN, C, Java, C++, COBOL, Basic,
Pascal, and a couple or three assembly languages. When I dived into
Ardour's code it was obvious to me why there is only a limited set of
developers - you have to either be extremely good at wrapping your head
around very complicated code or you need to devote a *lot* of time to
the project. I didn't have the time ;-) So instead I work on JAMin.
As far as charging for the development version is concerned you'd
have to check the GPL. Yes, Paul can charge for it but the minute he
releases it he has to provide source code. Once the source code is out
anyone can distribute it. If Paul does decide to charge for it I'll
gladly pay. For the amount of work he's put into it he deserves
something back.
--
Jan "Evil Twin" Depner
The Fuzzy Dice
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html
"As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this
we should do freely and generously."
Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of
Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744
10:45 p.m.
On Monday 25 July 2005 02:15, Jono Bacon wrote:
I also read somewhere that the testing team
is restricted to a specific group of people and that the author may
even charge for accessing the development version in the future. Is
any of this true? How have you found the development of Ardour to be?
WHAT? I MUST PUNCH THEM IN THE CROTCH!
--
-- leonard "paniq" ritter
-- http://www.paniq.org
-- http://www.mjoo.org
25 Jul
25 Jul
12:19 a.m.
Jono Bacon wrote:
This moves me onto another point, and I would love to
hear your
thoughts on this. I have heard a few loose comments around different
parts of the net that Ardour is not quite the same as other Open
Source projects. I have heard that development occurs between a fairly
limited set of developers, and only a few developers drive the
direction of development. I also read somewhere that the testing team
is restricted to a specific group of people and that the author may
even charge for accessing the development version in the future. Is
any of this true? How have you found the development of Ardour to be?
I have not really looked into it, so these points I have heard may be
rubbish, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
I've been an on-again/off-again lightweight tester for a while, but I'll
try to address those concerns.
I don't believe "restrictive" is the right term. CVS write access is of
limited to the core development and testing crews, and direct download
from CVS by a normal user requires Paul's permission. For those who
don't want/need immediate CVS access, a nightly CVS snapshot is
available in a tarball. I'd say Paul is as "restrictive" as Linus Torvalds.
I doubt Paul would charge for the devel version. I've heard various
scenarios for making Ardour pay off in hard currency, but I think its
developers closer concern is to get 1.0 out the door in creditable shape.
Btw, you can check out Ardour development in realtime on its IRC
channel, #ardour on freenet. :)
Best,
dp
6:12 a.m.
I think the key question is about usability from
the first minute the application is loaded.
[...]
As much I think
that you need to research the topic to do anything vaguely
complex in your recording, the target for usability should
be to limit the required research to a minimum.
[...]
This operation is intuitive in Cooledit, Audacity
and even video editing tools such as Premiere. To me, this
is a real flaw in usability.
[...]
I think Linux applications
just need some usability love to make this happen.
[...]
I do agree that the needs for a new user and pro user
are
different, but the only real difference is that the pro
user goes into a far deeper level of detail. As such, I
don't see how usability necessarily has to be different.
[...]
It seems to me that applications such as Ardour simply
need
some usability discussion, testing and implementation.
[...]
Even
cursory glances at Ardour reveal a range of usability flaws
- even simple issues such as dialog design, right up to
structural issues.
[...]
Because you have used the term »usability« a lot, I'd like to
add that i also think that addressing usability could help a
lot, especially in the Linux audio world. It cannot solve all
issues, but a lot.
Unfortunately, usability needs time and resources. And I
understand well that a programmer of free software is more
interested in doing research and write new features than care
about usability issues.
I have held a talk about usability issues on Linux audio on
this years LAC:
http://sysexxer.sourceforge.net/files/lac2005-Linux-audio-usability.pdf
I often got very positive feedback when filing usability
feature requests for various projects, but sometimes I even
got told »The user should read the documentation« ;-) .
I agree with you that usability could reduce the amount of
documentation needed a lot.
Best regards
ce
7:48 a.m.
Jono said:
"Hi all,
Firstly, thanks so very much for such a warm welcome."
You are very welcome, hope you stick around when you have the time.
I saw your article when it first came out and I also had some issues with what you said.
I waited a bit, and checked here to see what the response would be. When I checked at
first, nothing. The next time checking email I had to put off reading all of the messages
here until I had the time. Most of what I had issues with have been covered here by
others, but I would like to make a few of my own comments here.
I've seen programs that were really easy to pick up, and those that I ran in circles
trying to get them to work the way I wanted. This has happened in both linux and windoze.
I have also tried to get midi hardware devices setup many times where the manuals where
impossible to understand where they were coming from. In the end I just learned how most
of it fit all together and most of the time can decipher the manual, help, or whatever.
Is this a distinction between being an amateur or a pro? I dunno, it's more a matter
of experience.
I have installed newer linux distributions and have seen that the audio and video hardware
was found and set up at install time(right out of the box, so to speak). This was a nice
surprise, considering the box is being used to measure temperature and turn various solid
state relays on and off. If I want a good audio setup on a machine I will go to the
trouble of installing the extra apts. That's the freedom of linux that I like. I
need to put together a router/firewall box and I don't expect to see instant setup on
install there either. I'll just add what's needed and adjust the system to do
what I need it to do.
I'm writing this message in an editor(gedit) before I paste it into email later.
I'm not using open office just because it works for everything. I use vi, joe, gedit,
abiword, and open office depending on the situation. When I have to do something on a
windoze machine I use the text editor for setup files and uSoft word or office for more
complex things. Can you imagine using something like open office to edit rc.sysinit or
xorg.conf? I use audacity for simple recording, and ardour where it's needed. Ardour
is harder to learn then audacity, but I get so much more out of the first one that I will
not get upset by the learning curve. Can you imagine someone who has never seen a word
processor trying to use word/OO for this message instead of gedit?
We use fedora on most of the x86 boxes here, although there are a few winXp boxes that I
don't care to look at. There are a few macs around too, like the one next to my feet
that I hardly ever turn on because it just doesn't do what this linux box does(they
share the apple 23" monitor I use here). I find a richness in a full linux install
that I don't find in a mac or windoze. I also find that the linux boxes are very nice
to be able to get under the hood and configure the way a want/need; much like when in the
music room I use the rack and all of those knobs instead of assuming it will all work when
I hit the power switch.
We use the planet ccrma on top of fedora because the combo gives us everything we need out
of the box after the installs. The planet is painless to install and keep updated, and
getting started is well explained on it's web page. I like to get the install out of
the way quickly so I can get down to tweaking the way I want it. Linux is very good for
that.
Tracey
9:48 a.m.
"/much like when in the Studio/music room I use the rack and all of those knobs
instead of assuming it will all work when I hit the power switch/."
Hi
I think the line above says it all.
You buy a reverb unit and it should just work. well it will out of the
box, but the next time you hear
a really nice reverb on some vocals and you realise they use the same
box, you'll be hunting for the manual!!
Cheers
Bob
Tracey Hytry wrote:
Jono said:
"Hi all,
Firstly, thanks so very much for such a warm welcome."
You are very welcome, hope you stick around when you have the time.
I saw your article when it first came out and I also had some issues with what you said.
I waited a bit, and checked here to see what the response would be. When I checked at
first, nothing. The next time checking email I had to put off reading all of the messages
here until I had the time. Most of what I had issues with have been covered here by
others, but I would like to make a few of my own comments here.
I've seen programs that were really easy to pick up, and those that I ran in circles
trying to get them to work the way I wanted. This has happened in both linux and windoze.
I have also tried to get midi hardware devices setup many times where the manuals where
impossible to understand where they were coming from. In the end I just learned how most
of it fit all together and most of the time can decipher the manual, help, or whatever.
Is this a distinction between being an amateur or a pro? I dunno, it's more a matter
of experience.
I have installed newer linux distributions and have seen that the audio and video hardware
was found and set up at install time(right out of the box, so to speak). This was a nice
surprise, considering the box is being used to measure temperature and turn various solid
state relays on and off. If I want a good audio setup on a machine I will go to the
trouble of installing the extra apts. That's the freedom of linux that I like. I
need to put together a router/firewall box and I don't expect to see instant setup on
install there either. I'll just add what's needed and adjust the system to do
what I need it to do.
I'm writing this message in an editor(gedit) before I paste it into email later.
I'm not using open office just because it works for everything. I use vi, joe, gedit,
abiword, and open office depending on the situation. When I have to do something on a
windoze machine I use the text editor for setup files and uSoft word or office for more
complex things. Can you imagine using something like open office to edit rc.sysinit or
xorg.conf? I use audacity for simple recording, and ardour where it's needed. Ardour
is harder to learn then audacity, but I get so much more out of the first one that I will
not get upset by the learning curve. Can you imagine someone who has never seen a word
processor trying to use word/OO for this message instead of gedit?
We use fedora on most of the x86 boxes here, although there are a few winXp boxes that I
don't care to look at. There are a few macs around too, like the one next to my feet
that I hardly ever turn on because it just doesn't do what this linux box does(they
share the apple 23" monitor I use here). I find a richness in a full linux install
that I don't find in a mac or windoze. I also find that the linux boxes are very nice
to be able to get under the hood and configure the way a want/need; much like when in the
music room I use the rack and all of those knobs instead of assuming it will all work when
I hit the power switch.
We use the planet ccrma on top of fedora because the combo gives us everything we need out
of the box after the installs. The planet is painless to install and keep updated, and
getting started is well explained on it's web page. I like to get the install out of
the way quickly so I can get down to tweaking the way I want it. Linux is very good for
that.
Tracey
5:39 p.m.
On Mon, Jul 25, 2005 at 01:15:45AM +0100, Jono Bacon wrote:
Hi all,
This is an interesting point. One side of me thinks, "awesome, this
solves the problem", but another side of me feels a little weird about
requiring an entire customised OS to run audio software. Now,
personally, I use my studio box just for audio, but I know some other
posters on the list said that it should not be a requirement to use a
computer just for audio stuff. I do agree here.
To me, the integration issue seems largely a distribution problem.
Issues such as making sound servers, LADSPA, Ardour and Jack talk
together still seem difficult to solve. As I said before, the
canonical test is to simply install Ardour and Jack and get it to
work. Making this work and then using LADSPA and other bits still
requires some knowledge of the infrastructure.
Demudi is a Custom Debian Distribution. In part that means that the
efforts made within demudi are intended to be fed back into the main
distro. Demudi could/should be seen as the testing and proving ground
for figuring out how to make all that stuff "just work" within the
larger Debian framework. Much of the work done on demudi has already
led to improvements on the audio front in mainstream debian.
Thanks so much for the great feedback everyone. :)
likewise.
--
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki | Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division | Radio Free Asia
2025 M Street, NW | Washington, DC 20036 | 202-530-4900
CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
This e-mail message is intended only for the use of the addressee and
may contain information that is privileged and confidential. Any
unauthorized dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly
prohibited. If you receive this transmission in error, please contact
network(a)rfa.org.
8:17 p.m.
Back on Sunday 24 July 2005 07:15 pm, Jono Bacon was like:
-> Cubase is not actually that easy to use, and
some of you found it
quite difficult.
Something that some people have been referring to is whether existing
knowledge can make other systems more difficult to use. I am not going
to deny that people approach 'ease of use' in different ways.
Personally, Cubase works very easily for me, and Ardour seems pretty
complex. I think the key question is about usability from the first
minute the application is loaded. Sure, I can go away and read copious
amounts of documentation about either Cubase or Ardour, but if an
application is intuitive, it means less reading and more recording.
In some application domains, there seems to be a view that research
and pre-reading is required. This has typically been applied to
graphics as well as audio. As much I think that you need to research
the topic to do anything vaguely complex in your recording, the target
for usability should be to limit the required research to a minimum.
When I started out, I used to use Magix on Windows for my recording. I
was astounded to discover that I could not figure out how to simply
cut a wave into parts - simple editing. This operation is intuitive in
Cooledit, Audacity and even video editing tools such as Premiere. To
me, this is a real flaw in usability. When I switched to Cubase, the
entire interface was far more intuitive. I still need to look things
up, but the 'looking up' process is far less than with other
applications. I think Linux applications just need some usability love
to make this happen.
I think one of the main problems with the comparisons being made here is the
lack of distinction between "pro" software and "pro-sumer" software.
Software like Cool Edit, Audacity, Garage Band and their ilk are geared
towards the pro-sumer who is a member of a local band, knows how to run his
Mackie mixer, and likes to record in his basement so he can give copies of
his CD to friends. This is not what Ardour/jack/jamin etc are aiming at. This
is more for the type who is willing to spend money on the full version of
Pro-Tools, has a good grasp on SSL, collects hardware with brand names like
Neve or Neumann, subscribes to TapeOP, and drools over brocures of Midas
consoles instead of porn.
If you are the pro-sumer type, I would always encourage you to expand your
horizons by trying to learn Ardour, but quite honestly, unless you are an
avid Linux fan, you will probably be much happier using a Mac.
The latter type is much more concerned with function than form, reguardless of
the complaints from the pro-sumer group. As most of the developers are a
member of this group, functionality has received much more attention than
polishing the looks.
I do agree that the needs for a new user and pro user
are different,
but the only real difference is that the pro user goes into a far
deeper level of detail. As such, I don't see how usability necessarily
has to be different. If you look at a different type of application
such as a word processor, the tool can be as useful for my dad writing
a letter as it can for a writer who writes a book. The key point is
that the application scales to the differing requirements of the user.
This can certainly apply to audio production.
I disagree here. I think you tend to confuse "pro-user" with "experienced
user". They are not necessarily the same. A "pro-user" would pass over the
word processor for writing a book and get to work using LaTex, even if they
are totally new to LaTex. They would take the time to lean LaTex because they
know the output will be much more elegant, and they will be able to focus on
writing as opposed to formatting. The "experienced user" would never touch
LaTex with a ten foot pole because 1) it does not fulfill the mental
presumptions they have formed about what is required of a writing
application, and 2) LaTex is a bit overkill for writing a letter.
-Reuben
11:02 p.m.
Last Monday 25 July 2005 01:15, Jono Bacon was like:
Something that some people have been referring to is
whether existing
knowledge can make other systems more difficult to use. I am not going
to deny that people approach 'ease of use' in different ways.
Personally, Cubase works very easily for me, and Ardour seems pretty
complex. I think the key question is about usability from the first
minute the application is loaded. Sure, I can go away and read copious
amounts of documentation about either Cubase or Ardour, but if an
application is intuitive, it means less reading and more recording.
I strongly believe that existing knowledge / habits do make learning new
systems more difficult. The people I have trouble introducing to Linux
generally are those who are used to using another OS. People who are new to
computers generally seem to learn Linux faster. So, I think it's the same for
me with Cubase. I must be one of the few computer literate musicians who has
never used Cubase in anger, in fact I thought it was a MIDI sequencer, so I
wouldn't have thought to compare it with Ardour at all. That aside I now wish
to pick holes in the semantic use of 'intuitive'. OK, it's a truism, but
applications are not intuitive, they are logical. What you're talking about
here is learned behaviour and expectation matching. I found the learning
curve for Ardour roughly equivalent to that of GIMP or Photoshop, which seems
about right to me. Perhaps my mind just works more like Paul Davis's than
yours does. (Now there's a scary thought ;)
-> The integration issue is solved or at least
reduced if you use
DeMuDi, Planet CCRMA, AGNULA etc.
This is an interesting point. One side of me thinks, "awesome, this
solves the problem", but another side of me feels a little weird about
requiring an entire customised OS to run audio software. Now,
personally, I use my studio box just for audio, but I know some other
posters on the list said that it should not be a requirement to use a
computer just for audio stuff. I do agree here.
It is taking some time for people to realise that you can have your cake and
eat it. Planet CCRMA works with Fedora, A/DeMuDi works with Debian. So,
"awesome, this solves the problem" is correct. Rah Rah Rah!
To me, the integration issue seems largely a
distribution problem.
Yes, this is also about choice. For me it is not so important that 'Linux' can
do everything that Windows & Mac can do, but better. What is important is
that it offers me a different set of choices and can be persuaded to do what
I want it do - one way or another.
-> New users and pro users are a different breed
I do agree that the needs for a new user and pro user are different,
but the only real difference is that the pro user goes into a far
deeper level of detail. As such, I don't see how usability necessarily
has to be different. If you look at a different type of application
such as a word processor, the tool can be as useful for my dad writing
a letter as it can for a writer who writes a book. The key point is
that the application scales to the differing requirements of the user.
This can certainly apply to audio production.
Agreed.
This moves me onto another point, and I would love to
hear your
thoughts on this. I have heard a few loose comments around different
parts of the net that Ardour is not quite the same as other Open
Source projects. I have heard that development occurs between a fairly
limited set of developers, and only a few developers drive the
direction of development. I also read somewhere that the testing team
is restricted to a specific group of people and that the author may
even charge for accessing the development version in the future. Is
any of this true? How have you found the development of Ardour to be?
I have not really looked into it, so these points I have heard may be
rubbish, but I would love to hear your thoughts.
I think Jackd is being developed in a similar manner. This is different from
other apps because there is a team of developers (plural) ?;] I think it is
different because it is driven by Paul Davis, not for the reasons you state
above, some of which could equally well apply to other audio apps. Actually,
Isn't that development model rather similar to Firefox? Rosegarden is also
developed by a relatively small group of people, but there is a fairly large
difference in approach. Rosegarden has one of the biggest learning curves for
an audio application and it's about as psychic as a house brick, but it has a
published manual and people rarely complain about it. So long as both
continue to release GPL versions, I shall continue to use both of them and be
grateful.
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
24 Jul
24 Jul
8:33 p.m.
Jono Bacon wrote:
Hi all,
As some of you will be aware, I wrote the following article:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
After seeing this long thread on this list
(http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-July/025068.html),
I figured this poor schmuk should join up and share in some
discussion. :)
Let me be totally clear here - I am really keen to explore everyone's
viewpoints about this subject. Although my views still stand, I am
more than happy to debate them, and I figured it would be great to
hear your thoughts on the list.
Welcome,
The cool thing about folks in this community is they generally
appreciate people that are willing to be forthright and genuinely open.
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
To direct the discussion further, I would be interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
It was no simpler than the years I spent learning the limitations of 6
different releases of Windows! The upside of the lengthy learning curve
in Linux is that it resulted in MUCH more control over the actual OS and
it's hosted applications. I would not bother to know such things about
M$ OS because it gains me little for my investment of time.
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur?
I hope so...otherwise there'd be no Pro industry??
So, the software would 'just work' for the
amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
This is the status quo IMHO anyway...for "the software should just work"
scenario, there is Demudi / Agnula, CCRMA, MDK w/thacs audio packages,
etc...these mostly just pretty much work> For the pro who wants nano
second latencies, glitch less and seamless audio production flow, etc,
he/she can tweak to their hearts content for efficiencies and hot rodded
performance. This is not going to cover all scenarios of course....Bad
drivers, crappy Bios IRQ management, etc. But of course Windows / Mac
NEVER has any of those issues right???
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both
technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers
could be solved.
The only tough part for me was I had to THINK and use my brain and ask
questions and read and test stuff and be ~patient~ (which I'm NOT very
good at). This as opposed to the M$ drone mentality (At least I call it
that) of years of mind numbing belief that there was "Nothing else out
there worth considering" that had the support, etc.
The investment in time on Linux Audio for me has been well worthwhile in
so many ways. I have been able to make use of lesser machines that would
have become doorstops...they can be if nothing else simple FX
processors. I have achieved latencies un approachable by any M$ system I
have ran. I have actually expanded my grey matter somewhat, and met some
really nice folks in this "community" to boot that just seem to get
along for whatever reason. The array of applications to use is very
expansive and oh, did I mention that it is all FREE~~~ :) And I dont
need to be concerned about the tinted, bullet proof window Surburban
pulling up next to my house when I mess with the code or tweak the OS, etc.
Soon you will believe! Resistance is futile...u will be assimilated! :)
Cheers
R
As I say, I am keen to engage in some constructive
discussion here,
and I look forward to your thoughts. :)
Cheers,
Jono
25 Jul
25 Jul
2:10 p.m.
Christoph Eckert <mchristoph.eckert(a)t-online.de> writes:
This one's great ;-) .
Here's another one: (I only use tarballs though)
we are apt of borg - rpm is futile - you will be dpkg'ed
--
Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a
http://www. s t n m
irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact
[sip|iax]: e e
jid:b0ef@ n n
6:46 a.m.
Jono Bacon <jonobacon(a)gmail.com> writes:
In the article I clarify the position that
feature-wise, audio
production on Linux is pretty good. Many of the issues that I was
discussing were that some pre-requisite knowledge is required before
you can get started. It seems that to record on Linux you need to have
trawled through documentation, the archives for this list and read up
on the intracies of getting the different parts of the system working.
To me, this seems like a flaw in the offering - surely the user should
be able to get up and running straight away - they download their
package of choice, install and run. Would this not be better?
How are they going to know the name of their package of choice
if they don't read documentation?
To direct the discussion further, I would be
interested in your
thoughts on the following things:
- do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux
and recording? Am I smoking crack? :)
Probably :-)
- do you feel there is a seperation between a
professional and an
amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the
professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to
set it up.
I don't think this separation is any good. This is linux,
and therefore should be very flexible. The level of expertice
of the user should only determine his ability to dive into the guts of
the system and customize it to his needs even further IMO.
- if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and
running without
reading up on all of this,
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about it"
attitude is childish.
--
CYa,
Mario
6:51 a.m.
On Mon, 25 Jul, 2005 at 10:46AM +0200, Mario Lang spake thus:
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up
on something
is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about it"
attitude is childish.
Seconded.
--
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated
Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)
7:21 a.m.
On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 10:04:00 +0100
james(a)dis-dot-dat.net wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jul, 2005 at 10:46AM +0200, Mario Lang
spake thus:
Yeah, i agree, too. But fact is that maybe linux apps still have
usability issues. If an interface is self explaining so the user has to
look _less_ into the manual, this is a good thing (tm). I agree that
there are things in professional applications that need further
explanations. But in every GUI the functionality should (at least to a
degree) offer itself to the user.
I like the wings3d approach (which is not an audio app, mind you), where
the status bar is used to communicate to the user what options the user
interface offers for the object that the mouse pointer is hovering over.
This would translate very well to ardour. Mouse hovers over the plugin
boxes in mixer strips, then the status bar would say:
right-click to get context menu
When hovering over a plugin in that box it would say:
shift-LClick to remove plugin|control-Leftclick to toggle on/off|etc..
I suppose the text could be made much shorter with some convention (S-LC
for shift-left-click, etc..). Well you get the basic idea.
Or make it hierarchic:
Still hovering over the plugin in the plugin box:
"Shift...|Control...|Dbl.Click: toggle on/off|etc.."
The "Shift..." means "press shift and you will see what operations you
can reach then":
Hovering over plugin with shift held down would then show:
"L.Click: remove plugin|R.Click: some other operation"
I found this extremely useful in wings3d (though i only once took a look
at it. i don't do any 3d modeling). I suppose this approach is also
useful in all apps where the screen estate is sparse enough so that
functionality is sort of hidden behind esoteric key/mouse combos, etc..
Regards,
Flo
--
Palimm Palimm!
http://affenbande.org/~tapas/
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading
up on something
is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about it"
attitude is childish.
Seconded.
7:56 a.m.
I like the wings3d approach (which is not an audio
app,
mind you), where the status bar is used to communicate to
the user what options the user interface offers for the
object that the mouse pointer is hovering over.
There are several ways to do so, maybe a status bar, tooltips
or what's this help.
I'd call this "Documentation on demand". It gives you the
right information just in time. A very good thing, IMHO, but
often such things are - even if there are some - more or less
useless, maybe a tooltip which shows "If checked, this option
takes effect" for a checkbox.
The problem is that it is a special challenge to create
reasonable entries for such help systems. Great the wings3d
people have spent the time for it.
Best regards
ce
9:36 a.m.
james(a)dis-dot-dat.net wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jul, 2005 at 10:46AM +0200, Mario Lang spake
thus:
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading
up on something
is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about it"
attitude is childish.
Seconded.
Thirded
1:48 p.m.
On Monday 25 July 2005 05:04 am, james(a)dis-dot-dat.net wrote:
I'd like to respectfully disagree, or at least put forth a different opinion.
I believe that, eventually, the level of computer and domain knowledge (for
various domains) and the simplicity of computer human interfaces should
converge such that a typical person with "non-computer" knowledge of a
specific domain, will be able to operate many computer programs without
reading a manual. In fact, I'd even suggest that as a goal or a criteria to
rate the human interface of programs. (Thus, in this case, a musician with
general computer knowledge and non-computer musical knowledge (or knowledge
of "tape recording").
Or, in a slightly different example, if a computer user understands how to use
one (mainstream) word processor, he should be able to quickly understand and
use at least the main features of other mainstream word processors (if there
are more than one). (And further, a goal or criteria of a word processor
human interface would include how many of the more subtle features of a
different word processor a newbie user can pick up without the manual.)
Are we there yet? Of course not.
Can we get there? I have to believe we can (or don't the Star Trek series
serve as good predictors of the future? ;-)
Randy Kramer
On Mon, 25 Jul, 2005 at 10:46AM +0200, Mario Lang
spake thus:
> That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
> is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
> a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
> buttons in the interface until "something" works.
I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about
it" attitude is childish.
Seconded.
2:01 p.m.
Randy Kramer wrote:
Or, in a slightly different example, if a computer
user understands how to use
one (mainstream) word processor, he should be able to quickly understand and
use at least the main features of other mainstream word processors (if there
are more than one). (And further, a goal or criteria of a word processor
human interface would include how many of the more subtle features of a
different word processor a newbie user can pick up without the manual.)
I don't think a word processor is a good comparison -- it is meant to
emulate a piece of paper in a typewriter (and I have met people who find
even this had to tackle). Most people can deal with this metaphor and
pick it up quickly, especially for the basics of typing a letter.
Now, to take this one step further, high-end publishing/layout
applications like PageMaker or QuarkXPress (or, heh, LaTeX) are not as
intuitive to a new user who has no knowledge of publishing and layout,
and require some training or at least going through a few tutorials to
pick up the basics.
Yes, it's good for some things to run out of the box... it depends on
what the user's goals are (which is how I earlier defined the separation
between professional and amateur). If a user wants something simple
analogous to a consumer-grade tape deck to record on, there is software
for it and it basically works without much effort. If a user wants
something that is the equivalent of a multitrack mixer and tape deck
environment, the requirements for understanding how to use it are higher
and working 'out of the box' doesn't even make sense for this... you can
turn the equipment on and see that the power indicators are on, but
unless you have a clue about the equipment, it is useless to you.
-- Brett
-----------
Programmer by day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
2:33 p.m.
i think, somewhat, that we're talking about taking a computer and
turning it into a musical instrument.
when was the last time you ever required someone to read the manual
for their 6-string before they could play it? or their bass? or a
flute? or the violin?
sure, it takes skill to play an instrument.. but its the doing that
makes the skill, not the reading.
users should -never- be -required- to get trained before the
instrument will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by
default, anyway..
--
;
Jay Vaughan
3:04 p.m.
Jay Vaughan wrote:
i think, somewhat, that we're talking about taking
a computer and
turning it into a musical instrument.
when was the last time you ever required someone to read the manual for
their 6-string before they could play it? or their bass? or a flute?
or the violin?
sure, it takes skill to play an instrument.. but its the doing that
makes the skill, not the reading.
users should -never- be -required- to get trained before the instrument
will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by default, anyway..
I think we're comparing the wrong things. And there is a big difference
between a guitar player who learns a couple of chords and strums along
and sings over the chords and writes a couple of tunes and plays at open
mike coffeehouses and the guitar player who spends many years studying
music theory and various techniques, works with a metronome on a daily
basis and ends up becoming the guitarist for Dream Theater or Yes.
Again, it is the intended goal that should determine the level of effort
to learn how something works, whether it's a musical instrument, a piece
of software or a pile of hardware.
-- Brett
-----------
Programmer by day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
8:12 p.m.
Brett McCoy wrote:
And there is a big difference
between a guitar player who learns a couple of chords
and strums along
and sings over the chords and writes a couple of tunes and plays at open
mike coffeehouses and the guitar player who spends many years studying
music theory and various techniques, works with a metronome on a daily
basis and ends up becoming the guitarist for Dream Theater or Yes.
not really - they both suck :)
shayne
9:06 p.m.
Shayne O'Connor wrote:
Brett McCoy wrote:
And there is a big difference
Eh? I think you missed the point I was making...
-- Brett
--
Programmer by Day, Guitarist by Night
http://www.chapelperilous.net
http://www.alhazred.com
http://www.revelmoon.com
between a guitar player who learns a couple of
chords and strums along
and sings over the chords and writes a couple of tunes and plays at
open mike coffeehouses and the guitar player who spends many years
studying music theory and various techniques, works with a metronome
on a daily basis and ends up becoming the guitarist for Dream Theater
or Yes.
not really - they both suck :)
9:54 p.m.
Brett McCoy wrote:
Shayne O'Connor wrote:
nah - i just ignored it for the sake of facetiousness :)
sorry.
shayne
Brett McCoy wrote:
And there is a big difference
Eh? I think you missed the point I was making... between a guitar player who learns a couple of
chords and strums
along and sings over the chords and writes a couple of tunes and
plays at open mike coffeehouses and the guitar player who spends many
years studying music theory and various techniques, works with a
metronome on a daily basis and ends up becoming the guitarist for
Dream Theater or Yes.
not really - they both suck :)
5:17 p.m.
Jay Vaughan wrote:
i think, somewhat, that we're talking about taking
a computer and
turning it into a musical instrument.
Umm, that's exactly how I approach the thing. Ditto for guys like Paul
Lansky and a host of other musicians who use the computer to compose,
record, and produce music. Otherwise computers aren't really very
interesting things for me.
when was the last time you ever required someone to
read the manual
for their 6-string before they could play it? or their bass? or a
flute? or the violin?
They don't usually come with extensive manuals anyway, but at the first
lesson I do describe the instrument to the student so they know what to
ask for or say when they take it in for repairs or even a simple
restringing ("Which E string did you need replaced, sonny ?"). I don't
make them memorize the details, they'll "get it" if they stay with the
study.
sure, it takes skill to play an instrument.. but its
the doing that
makes the skill, not the reading.
Pardon me, but a sh*tload of study (aka "reading and thinking") needs to
be undertaken when a player ventures into a domain like classical or
jazz guitar. Performance practice details make a difference, unless you
don't care that your treatment of Villa-Lobos sounds exactly like your
Dowland. To do the job right requires both doing and reading. Frankly,
since the advent of players like Steve Vai, even rock guitar playing has
raised its entrance bar.
One of my students has had some problems understanding aspects of rhythm
that were bound to dance forms. I suggested he take dance lessons, he
did so, and his rhythmic sense has greatly improved. That's a study re:
musicianship, it wasn't directly involving his instrument, and it made
all the difference in the world to his playing.
users should -never- be -required- to get trained
before the
instrument will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by
default, anyway..
I'll speak here as a professional instrumental teacher.
The only context in which "the instrument should work, by itself"
applies is whether it's actually playable, i.e., it isn't a broken or
otherwise flawed or unplayable instrument.
The statement that "users should -never- be -required- to get trained
before the instrument will work" is too weird for me to comprehend. How
exactly does a guitar "work" by itself ? It can sit there, look good,
and do nothing, and that's all it can do before someone who knows how to
play it (i.e., they are trained, either by self or other) picks it up
and plays it.
Much of my discomfort for the "it should just work" mantra comes from
knowing that it takes real effort to acquire any degree of performance
skill. I happen to like the fact that the arts are still non-democratic,
i.e., you *must* be able to put up, or you should shut up. Don't get me
wrong, I'm most happy that the arts are open for anyone's involvement,
and computers have made it possible for more people to try their hands
at making music *without having to master an instrument*.
I don't believe that everyone needs to learn how to read standard music
notation or study music theory. In fact, my first goal is to get the
student *playing* something as soon as possible (I follow Francois
Couperin's advice here). Inspired by this achievement, the student more
easily acquires the harder stuff, but always with the concrete goal of
performance. However, if a student wants to learn to play classical
guitar, then indeed they do need to learn how to read standard notation
(tablature sucks at representing counterpoint and polyphonic rhythm),
and if they want to become sight-readers then they are compelled to
study theory (and I advise composition studies for more advanced
players: there's nothing like writing a sonata yourself to get into the
depths of playing one).
Or maybe I'm not understanding your POV ? :)
Best,
dp
11:54 p.m.
Last Monday 25 July 2005 17:32, Jay Vaughan was like:
when was the last time you ever required someone to
read the manual
for their 6-string before they could play it? or their bass? or a
flute? or the violin?
sure, it takes skill to play an instrument.. but its the doing that
makes the skill, not the reading.
users should -never- be -required- to get trained before the
instrument will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by
default, anyway..
I've tried everything, coercion, heavy irony, psychological violence, even
sexual favours and my bass still completely refuses to play itself. It
doesn't make a sound, it just sits in the corner of my room and looks strung
up. What am I doing wrong? Please help!!!
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
26 Jul
26 Jul
12:15 a.m.
users should
-never- be -required- to get trained before the
instrument will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by
default, anyway..
I've tried everything, coercion, heavy irony, psychological violence, even
sexual favours and my bass still completely refuses to play itself. It
doesn't make a sound, it just sits in the corner of my room and looks
strung up. What am I doing wrong? Please help!!! 
6:58 a.m.
put some strings to it!! (;P) and transmit A440 via IR near it!!!
(plain old morning trauma, sorry D)
2005/7/26, tim hall <tech(a)glastonburymusic.org.uk>uk>:
Last Monday 25 July 2005 17:32, Jay Vaughan was like:
--
Daniel Payno _-_ a.k.a. _-_ Pay
http://dpayno.webhop.net http://pqs.is.dreaming.org
when was the last time you ever required someone
to read the manual
for their 6-string before they could play it? or their bass? or a
flute? or the violin?
sure, it takes skill to play an instrument.. but its the doing that
makes the skill, not the reading.
users should -never- be -required- to get trained before the
instrument will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by
default, anyway..
I've tried everything, coercion, heavy irony, psychological violence, even
sexual favours and my bass still completely refuses to play itself. It
doesn't make a sound, it just sits in the corner of my room and looks strung
up. What am I doing wrong? Please help!!!
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
8:33 p.m.
HI Yep
My strat insisted that I read some chord books before I get it to make a
chord sound.And as for lead guitar!!
well it just wouldn't make a sound till that book with scales appeared!!
I even thought of buying an upgrade ( new mexican strat to see if they
had uploaded ' lead guitar solo's r us'!)
It all started here:
www.hearmymusic.co.uk
It's all gone downhill now!!!
Cheers
Bob
Daniel Payno wrote:
put some strings to it!! (;P) and transmit A440 via IR
near it!!!
(plain old morning trauma, sorry D)
2005/7/26, tim hall <tech(a)glastonburymusic.org.uk>uk>:
Last Monday 25 July 2005 17:32, Jay Vaughan was
like:
when was the last time you ever required someone
to read the manual
for their 6-string before they could play it? or their bass? or a
flute? or the violin?
sure, it takes skill to play an instrument.. but its the doing that
makes the skill, not the reading.
users should -never- be -required- to get trained before the
instrument will work. the instrument should work, by itself, by
default, anyway..
I've tried everything, coercion, heavy irony, psychological violence, even
sexual favours and my bass still completely refuses to play itself. It
doesn't make a sound, it just sits in the corner of my room and looks strung
up. What am I doing wrong? Please help!!!
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
25 Jul
25 Jul
3:58 p.m.
Randy Kramer wrote:
On Monday 25 July 2005 05:04 am, james(a)dis-dot-dat.net
wrote:
I'd like to respectfully disagree, or at least put forth a different opinion.
I believe that, eventually, the level of computer and domain knowledge (for
various domains) and the simplicity of computer human interfaces should
converge such that a typical person with "non-computer" knowledge of a
specific domain, will be able to operate many computer programs without
reading a manual. In fact, I'd even suggest that as a goal or a criteria to
rate the human interface of programs. (Thus, in this case, a musician with
general computer knowledge and non-computer musical knowledge (or knowledge
of "tape recording").
it's not possible, not in computers, not in other domains. How long
does it take to learn to walk? To talk? To play piano? Can you give me a
better editor than vi?
newbie-friendliness is not the same as user-friendliness and if I use
something day to day I probably have different preferences than somebody
who just started to use it - and that's same for computers and anything
else.
On Mon, 25 Jul, 2005 at 10:46AM +0200, Mario Lang
spake thus:
>That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
>is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
>a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
>buttons in the interface until "something" works.
I do feel
this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything about
it" attitude is childish.
Seconded. Or, in a slightly different example, if a computer
user understands how to use
one (mainstream) word processor, he should be able to quickly understand and
use at least the main features of other mainstream word processors (if there
are more than one). (And further, a goal or criteria of a word processor
human interface would include how many of the more subtle features of a
different word processor a newbie user can pick up without the manual.)
yeah, sit a newbie in front of vi:-) Yet there's a LOT of people who
wouldn't use other editor...
repeat: user friendliness and newbie friendliness are not the same.
erik
7:50 a.m.
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up
on
something is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if
I watch a typical no-clue windows user more or less
randomly hitting buttons in the interface until "something"
works. I do feel this "it has to work out of the box
without me having to know anything about it" attitude is
childish.
There are two different things we should divide. There are
users who simply have no idea what they want to do. This is
the type you mentioned above and you're right.
OTOH, there are users who already have knowledge about a
certain task. These users will first try explore the UI
before reading docs.
Be honest: Do you read documentation when trying out a new
webbrowser or text processor? Certainly not. You know what
these tools are for, and you know how to deal with text
processors or web browsers.
The latter one is the target group we're discussing. Users who
already know about audio, audio synthesis and audio
processing.
Best regards
ce
8:54 a.m.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Christoph Eckert wrote:
The latter one is the target group we're
discussing. Users who
already know about audio, audio synthesis and audio
processing.
Hi Christoph,
so this includes *me*? As I explained in an earlier post, I did MIDI
when we were still using DOS, but audio was (at that time) far without
reach - with *any* operating system. Audio was still pre-ADAT, so we're
talking 24-track tape machines...
Coming back now and learning about USB-MIDI and kernel latencies seems
harder than I thought, because nowadays' machines are way faster than
these in the old days (I started with a 286 and later had a P1). Now I'm
reading since days, and still I don't really figure out basics like: are
you guys still on kernel 2.4.x? Is it my attempt to use 2.6 which gets
me into trouble?
The first versions of Cubase (on Atari and later on PC) I saw *were*
somewhat fire&forget, so I see the point of the whole discussion (I
think). Is it easier nowadays? If we speak only Linux, then maybe (with
regards to DeMuDi and the planet), but if we see the big picture and
think about the time in between and the demand of a "simple" musician
who wants to plug & play, then there maybe is a point to that article on
O'Reilly.
Note that I *don't* want Windoze back. I'm a sysadmin, and my life would
be much easier without it ;-)
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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9:24 a.m.
Coming back now and learning about USB-MIDI and
kernel
latencies seems harder than I thought, because nowadays'
machines are way faster than these in the old days (I
started with a 286 and later had a P1). Now I'm reading
since days, and still I don't really figure out basics
like: are you guys still on kernel 2.4.x? Is it my attempt
to use 2.6 which gets me into trouble?
Certainly not. I currently run a 1.6GHz P4 notebook with a
2.6.10 vanilla kernel with the RT-LSM-Module configured
(distro is Gentoo). I use a cheap Terratec USB card. I get
latencies about 16msecs. This is not first choice, but enough
for my personal needs (of course I'd prefer less
latency ;-) .
If you have any further problems, let us know, I guess we can
help you setting up your box.
Best regards
ce
10:44 a.m.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Christoph Eckert wrote:
I currently run a 1.6GHz P4 notebook with a
2.6.10 vanilla kernel with the RT-LSM-Module configured
(distro is Gentoo). I use a cheap Terratec USB card. I get
latencies about 16msecs. This is not first choice, but enough
for my personal needs (of course I'd prefer less
latency ;-) .
Wow - I'm dreaming about that; I have some 40-50ms...
If you have any further problems, let us know, I guess
we can
help you setting up your box.
That would be nice - I just answered (a bit belayed) to Tim with the
topic 'latencies'. Tho things have to wait until I'm home and until I've
brought our seven-months-old sweetie to bed ;-)
Best regards
ce
the same back,
and btw: I like your videos! Thx a lot for them - good for beginners (I
consider myself a newbie here)
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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11:22 a.m.
Wow - I'm dreaming about that; I have some
40-50ms...
the same for me some time ago. I was told that latency on USB
devices isn't limited by the card. I followed the following
hint to load the snd-usb-audio-module:
modprobe snd-usb-audio nrpacks=1
This reduced my latencies from 46msecs to something around
15msecs.
Before you do so, ensure that the following two kernel
settings are switched off for your kernel:
[ ] Enforce USB bandwidth allocation (EXPERIMENTAL)
[ ] Dynamic USB minor allocation (EXPERIMENTAL)
If not, happy kernel building ;-) .
If you have
any further problems, let us know, I guess we
can help you setting up your box.
That would be nice - I just answered (a bit belayed) to Tim
with the topic 'latencies'. Tho things have to wait until
I'm home and until I've brought our seven-months-old
sweetie to bed ;-)
Best regards
ce
the same back,
and btw: I like your videos! Thx a lot for them - good for
beginners (I consider myself a newbie here)
11:54 a.m.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Christoph Eckert wrote:
Cool - I will surely try this. Thx a lot :-)
Wow - I'm
dreaming about that; I have some 40-50ms...
the same for me some time ago. I was told that latency on USB
devices isn't limited by the card. I followed the following
hint to load the snd-usb-audio-module:
modprobe snd-usb-audio nrpacks=1
This reduced my latencies from 46msecs to something around
15msecs. Before you do so, ensure that the following two kernel
settings are switched off for your kernel:
[ ] Enforce USB bandwidth allocation (EXPERIMENTAL)
[ ] Dynamic USB minor allocation (EXPERIMENTAL)
If not, happy kernel building ;-) .
Oha. I knew there would be some *but* ;-) (joking; this wouldn't be the
first kernel I have to build)...
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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11:46 a.m.
Christoph Eckert <mchristoph.eckert(a)t-online.de> writes:
When I learned Emacs, the first thing I did was launch the
interactive tutorial, so yes, I do read docs, and it pays off later when
I am getting really productive with a tool.
That is the
point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on
something is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if
I watch a typical no-clue windows user more or less
randomly hitting buttons in the interface until "something"
works. I do feel this "it has to work out of the box
without me having to know anything about it" attitude is
childish.
There are two different things we should divide. There are
users who simply have no idea what they want to do. This is
the type you mentioned above and you're right.
OTOH, there are users who already have knowledge about a
certain task. These users will first try explore the UI
before reading docs.
Be honest: Do you read documentation when trying out a new
webbrowser or text processor? Certainly not. You know what
these tools are for, and you know how to deal with text
processors or web browsers.
But many tools have a certain viewpoint on things, and
reading the provided documentation actually helps to get that
viewpoint into the users head. The alternative is that the user
has a slightly diffrerent idea of things than the program, which leads
to pain in the users ass for (supposed) unknown reasons.
IMO, the day computers went strange was the days someone came up with
the idea of having a GUI on screen which shows all the features available
to the user at a glance. This day, users started to assume they dont need to
know a thing about the computer, which is flat out wrong. Would you
want people to drive cars without knowing a thing about driving a car? Or at
least about the rules on driving cars? No, we dont.
But if a computer user sits down and wants to get stuff done without any
mental preparation, we assume the software engineer was at fault. Thats flat
nonsense IMHO.
That said, if I honestly look at what I had to go through to get stable
audio on Linux with the tools I use, I can see that
there is currently a problem for those who are not really
interested in the nitty gritty details. Without realtime-preempt,
the xruns I am getting on my chipset are extreme, even though
I have a 2.2GHz CPU and use NO GUI AT ALL. This is obviously
a problem, and a good reason for newbies to start of with a
distribution that has been optimized for audio from the start on.
I guess we are all waiting for acceptable low latency performance
in standard kernels, but until that happens, we have a dillema.
Users will assume standard distros should actually work with low latency
audio, which simply is not the case currently.
--
CYa,
Mario
12:27 p.m.
This day, users started to assume they dont need to
know a thing about the computer, which is flat out wrong.
Certainly.
But if a computer user sits
down and wants to get stuff done without any mental
preparation, we assume the software engineer was at fault.
Thats flat nonsense IMHO.
This depends. A user needs to be prepared to learn things. But
there are also ways to reduce the amount of things the user
needs to know.
GUI interfaces do not automagically do so. I use many command
line tools which do a great job as well as I know malformed
UIs. wget comes to my mind. I never saw a good GUI for it.
wget -c URL is simple and does a great job :) .
Best regards
ce
4:15 p.m.
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Mario Lang wrote:
Without realtime-preempt,
the xruns I am getting on my chipset are extreme, even though
I have a 2.2GHz CPU and use NO GUI AT ALL. This is obviously
a problem, and a good reason for newbies to start of with a
distribution that has been optimized for audio from the start on.
Hmmm hmmm - I don't find any realtime-preempt-packages in Debian/DeMuDi,
except for kernel 2.4.
Could someone pls help me on this - because Christophs tip with
nrpacks=1 didn't change anything for me?
TIA and cheers,
wjl
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26 Jul
26 Jul
7:21 a.m.
Wolfgang Lonien <wolfgang(a)lonien.de> writes:
Mario Lang wrote:
Well, my trust in USB soundcards is virtually zero. Maybe
realtime-preempt will help you, maybe the device is the limit, I dont know.
You'll have to try.
IIRC, the -multimedia kernel from DeMuDi does have some
LL patches, but that is a wild guess since I dont actually use DeMuDi.
If the -multimedia kernel does not have RP patched in, you'll
have to patch a kernel with RP yourself to see if it helps.
--
CYa,
Mario
Without realtime-preempt,
the xruns I am getting on my chipset are extreme, even though
I have a 2.2GHz CPU and use NO GUI AT ALL. This is obviously
a problem, and a good reason for newbies to start of with a
distribution that has been optimized for audio from the start on.
Hmmm hmmm - I don't find any realtime-preempt-packages in Debian/DeMuDi,
except for kernel 2.4.
Could someone pls help me on this - because Christophs tip with
nrpacks=1 didn't change anything for me?
2:27 p.m.
> Could someone pls help me on this - because
Christophs
> tip with nrpacks=1 didn't change anything for me?
Hm, gave me a third of the latency before (46 vs. 16 msecs).
Well, my trust in USB soundcards is virtually zero.
Maybe
realtime-preempt will help you, maybe the device is the
limit, I dont know. You'll have to try.
I've heard that people have achieved 4 msecs on USB devices,
though I didn't get it.
Best regards
ce
27 Jul
27 Jul
2:44 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] latencies
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Christoph Eckert wrote:
Hmmm - still no luck here (neither on the older Asus laptop, nor on the
Asus nforce2 board, so it *must* be anything wrong with my setups).
>Could
someone pls help me on this - because Christophs
>tip with nrpacks=1 didn't change anything for me?
Hm, gave me a third of the latency before (46 vs. 16 msecs). >Well, my trust in USB soundcards is virtually zero.
Maybe
>realtime-preempt will help you, maybe the device is the
>limit, I dont know. You'll have to try.
I checked - the kernel distributed by A/DeMuDi *does* use
realtime-preempt. So that's not the point...
I've heard that people have achieved 4 msecs on
USB devices,
though I didn't get it.
Sigh - I cannot change anything to lower than 42 or 46 msecs (depending
if I use 44.1 or 48kHz)... btw can I switch off the whole audio in/out
and try MIDI only for a start?
changed the topic of this one to 'latencies'...
cheers,
wjl
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9:09 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] latencies
>Could someone pls help me on this - because
Christophs
>tip with nrpacks=1 didn't change anything for me?
Hm, gave me a third of the latency before (46 vs. 16
msecs). I've heard
that people have achieved 4 msecs on USB
devices, though I didn't get it.
Sigh - I cannot change anything to lower than 42 or 46
msecs (depending if I use 44.1 or 48kHz)... btw can I
switch off the whole audio in/out and try MIDI only for a
start?
10:55 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] latencies
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Christoph Eckert wrote:
Try choosing 3 periods/buffer. I was told that this is
reasonable for USB devices.
Ok, I'll try that, too - thx!
For MIDI only, run JACK regardless of the latency
(MIDI isn't
handled by JACK, but e.g. MusE needs JACK running regardless
that you only use it for MIDI).
Hmmm so the fact that I see xruns in jack and that I hear lags in MIDI
recording are not related to each other? Wow, interesting. Then what
handles MIDI - is that Alsa then?
Still beginner questions, I assume. Sorry for that...
cheers,
wjl
- --
Key ID 0x728d9bd0 - public key available at wwwkeys.de.pgp.net
Honda NTV '94 still running on fuel - everything else here runs Debian
GNU/Linux
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11:39 a.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] latencies
Hmmm so the fact that I see xruns in jack and that I
hear
lags in MIDI recording are not related to each other? Wow,
interesting. Then what handles MIDI - is that Alsa then?
Yes, it's the ALSA sequencer.
It's a bit confusing: qjackctl offers a MIDI connection
patchbay, but currently this has nothing to do with JACK.
Still beginner questions, I assume. Sorry for that...
You're welcome.
Best regards
ce
25 Jul
25 Jul
4:34 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 10:46 +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up
on something
is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything
about it" attitude is childish.
I disagree violently with this line of reasoning. Software should
ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless there is a DAMN GOOD
REASON, for example if you are offering a much more powerful interface
than the user is used to.
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use "Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'.
Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.
Lee
5:17 p.m.
On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:34:41 -0400
Lee Revell <rlrevell(a)joe-job.com> wrote:
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use
"Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'.
Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.
One could argue that since search in Emacs has been ^s for ages, that
those who use ^f are the ones who have broken convention for no good
reason.
That's the nice thing about standards - there are so many of them to
choose from!
--
======================================================================
Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh(a)brainiac.com
Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa
5:32 p.m.
On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 15:17 -0400, Joe Hartley wrote:
On Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:34:41 -0400
Lee Revell <rlrevell(a)joe-job.com> wrote:
True, but the Emacs people should have put a stop to it years ago before
IE and Mozilla and Firefox made Ctrl-F the de facto standard. Nowadays
if you want to integrate with the rest of the modern GUI desktop you'd
better play ball.
Lee
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use
"Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'.
Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.
One could argue that since search in Emacs has been ^s for ages, that
those who use ^f are the ones who have broken convention for no good
reason.
8:30 p.m.
Lee Revell wrote:
On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 10:46 +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
what are you talking about? '/' is the search key, in vi as well as
in mozilla/firefox. This ctrl-whatever nonsense is unintuitive and needs
to be stopped. before it ruins computer usability completely.
And btw what you're saying is not directly related to what you're
responding to. Yes, the interface should be consistent and adhere to
standards (or reasonable expectations) whereever possible but that does
not mean that you will immediately be able to work with program. Take
pretty much any program that's not trivial and you'll have to spend time
to learn what it does, regardless of how good the interface is. E.g.
blender has IMO pretty good interface but I still went through tutorial
to be able to do anything remotely resembling computer graphics (even
though I was able to control it immediately).
there's no such thing as 'the way user expects' IN GENERAL. There are
cases where you can predict expectations but number of cases where it
makes no sense and number of cases where user expectations should NOT be
followed (intuition is not always the best indicator to follow) but
instead user should _learn_.
erik
That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading
up on something
is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
"it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything
about it" attitude is childish.
I disagree violently with this line of reasoning. Software should
ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless there is a DAMN GOOD
REASON, for example if you are offering a much more powerful interface
than the user is used to.
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use "Ctrl-F" to 'Find in
page'.
Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.
26 Jul
26 Jul
12:46 a.m.
Last Monday 25 July 2005 19:34, Lee Revell was like:
On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 10:46 +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
> That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
> is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
> a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
> buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
> "it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything
> about it" attitude is childish.
Yes it's childish. However this is what the vast majority of 'normal' users
do. My son (who is himself, a child) does this with most new games for about
10 minutes and then turns round and says "Dad, how does this work?". To which
I answer calmly and patiently that I don't have a sweet Danny La Rue. Does he
ever read the manual? does he even go to the setup tab to find out how the
keybindings are set? Of course not.
I disagree violently with this line of reasoning.
Software should
ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless there is a DAMN GOOD
REASON, for example if you are offering a much more powerful interface
than the user is used to.
Yeah, the spacebar should ALWAYS fire the big gun.
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use
"Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'.
Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.
Do you find that the developers respond well to being told this?-]
Most things that aren't understandable to a child are usually nonsense. It
follows that we must only send them to school for indoctrination purposes.
cheers,
tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
2:34 p.m.
I disagree violently with this line of reasoning.
Software
should ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless
there is a DAMN GOOD REASON, for example if you are
offering a much more powerful interface than the user is
used to.
Agreed. It's called the 'user model' vs. the 'software model'.
As soon as the software model doesn't fit the user model it
should be changed - exept there's a very good reason for
keeping the model.
For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use
"Ctrl-F" to
'Find in page'. Except Evolution, which forces you to use
"Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in page', because they have
already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing
it the normal way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability
purposes.
Ctrl - F doesn't search in the german open office. It sets
characters as Bold ("Fett" in german). Most other
applications use Ctrl - F, so I often want to search and
accidentally set characters to bold :( .
Best regards
ce
7061
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linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
98 comments
35 participants
participants (35)
-
Bob -
Brad Fuller -
Brett McCoy -
Christoph Eckert -
Daniel Payno -
Dave Phillips -
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki -
Erik Steffl -
Esben Stien -
Florian Schmidt -
ix＠replic.net -
james＠dis-dot-dat.net -
Jan Depner -
Jay Vaughan -
Joe Hartley -
John Mulholland -
Jono Bacon -
Joseph Dell'Orfano -
Kevin Cosgrove -
Lars Luthman -
Lee Revell -
Leonard "paniq" Ritter -
Mario Lang -
Noah Roberts -
Pete Bessman -
Randy Kramer -
Reuben Martin -
Russell Hanaghan -
Sampo Savolainen -
Shayne O'Connor -
Steve D -
Steve Harris -
tim hall -
Tracey Hytry -
Wolfgang Lonien