On Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Bent Bisballe Nyeng <deva(a)aasimon.org> wrote: It is a compile-time-only configuration parameter. It cannot be disabled at runtime if it was compiled into the program.

On 13/07/2015 14:33, Gene Heskett wrote: Paul, Ardour's author :-) And he announced it 5 years ago: http://lists.ardour.org/pipermail/ardour-users-ardour.org/2010-August/02383… What makes you think your privacy cannot be violated while using Linux or using FOSS? The value of FOSS is exactly that you can freely modify the code (in this case actually just a compile configuration option) if you don't like a feature.. I think we As said: it's FOSS, just compile it without that option ;-)

On Monday 13 July 2015 09:05:25 Lorenzo Sutton wrote: But what about the non-tech audio fan who couldn't compile a hello world, having no clue what the error messages from a missing build-essential would spit out? There should be an installable package with that turned off. As for privacy, yes I have a web page, hosted on this machine. It effectively runs in a user sandbox that no one has climbed out of in the several years its been running. DD-WRT stands between me and the net. Cell phones are a different kettle of fish. I bought one for outgoing only use when I am out of pocket, as occasionally happens to a broadcast engineer even 13 years after he has retired. It gets charged and shut off when I arrive back at the house. I had last used it about the last of May while driving across 2 states for services for my wifes older sister. It was charged and turned off when we got home, and laid on the far end of the desk for about 3 weeks. It was turned on remotely, and left on till the battery was so dead it took nearly half an hours charging before it would boot again, and all my stored contact numbers were erased. If NSA didn't do that, who did? Now its in that same spot, but I check it daily since none of the displays can be seen when its in the belt clip pouch. My .sig alone has put me on a 3 letter agency watch list, bet on it. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

On 07/13/2015 03:05 PM, Lorenzo Sutton wrote: You can also disable update notifications at runtime. The URL is in the config file. On GNU/Linux by default ~/.config/ardour4/config and/or /etc/ardour4/config Ardour transmits the current version, the OS and architecture via http (hence the IP address is available as side-effect). It's a service provided to to people who are interested in new version notifications. As the pingback page on ardour.org says: "Ardour.org has no idea who you are or what you are doing with Ardour (and we don't want to know either)." Heck, if you're worried about this, you can't even surf the web to begin with. A simple firefox http request sends a lot more private information about the user. See https://panopticlick.eff.org/ 2c, robin

Robin Gareus &lt;robin(a)gareus.org&gt; writes: [...] True -- I'd probably be digressing from Linux Audio to get into this, but I think the most privacy-invading thing on any modern desktop is any "thick" browsers like Firefox or Chrom(ium) that support AJAX, JavaScript, video-in-a-browser, and the whole nine yards that we've come to expect as part of our World Wide Web experience. (Basically, if it's fully functional on Facebook, it's "thick" enough for what I'm talking about.) Heavy browsers like this are basically poorly written OS's that run under your real OS desktop as an application. They have full read/write access to every file in your home directory, can launch their own programs, install their own packages, and have enough C++ code to hide elephants and giraffes. Heck, you can play video games inside them. In some cases, they may actually be bigger than your real OS. (These days, Firefox is enormous.) People used to complain that Emacs, as text editors go, was a rediculous monstrosity, because it featured basically a whole OS with a package system and an interpreted language inside your editor. Compared to Firefox and Chrome, Emacs is a well written, well behaved, very secure environment that uses very little memory and plays well with everything. Shows how far down the toilet we've gone that we can now say that about "Eight-Megs-Always-Constantly-Swapping" Emacs, and yearn for the days of its relative secure efficiency. When you browse the Internet with a heavy browser though, you take your life in your own hands, and most of us do it several times every day on our "secure" Linux desktops. That's the real exploitation path for most users. They don't need your root password. They don't need an obscure buffer overflow in some library you never think about. They just need you surfing the web in your big-as-a-whale web browser. -- + Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys + Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will + University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of + James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, + Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; writes: There's no securing any monolithic app of that size. You can audit the code, you can get assurances of good faith from Mozilla or whoever makes it, you can enable all the safety features, and in the end, you've still got a big slab of code that would make Bill Gates proud. The NSA has already said in one of their published documents that they don't even need to have known exploits for Firefox to accomplish a given arbitrary purpose -- the code base is so big that when they need something, they can simply find it. Just describe what you want the exploit to do and the targetted version of Firefox -- we'll find you an attack vector that does what you need from the existing code. It's simply too big and heavy to be secured by anyone, even with good intentions. Well, yeah. It'd be nice to be able to control the specifics of that though. Actually that digression is my fault. Robin mentioned that one has more to worry about as far as personal information exposure from Firefox's HTTP traffic than one does from Ardour. No one has said Ardour is like Firefox. It's my fault for digressing the subject into a general rant about browser security anyway, but that is a concern of mine, however tangentially related to the conversation. -- + Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys + Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will + University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of + James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, + Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky

On 13 July 2015 at 15:53, Robin Gareus &lt;robin(a)gareus.org&gt; wrote: On 13 July 2015 at 19:21, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote: I think you guys are missing the point. The announcement linked above says: " Why am I adding this to Ardour? -------------------------------------- * better data on how much Ardour is actually used * better idea of the balance between OS X and Linux platforms * a way to alert users that new versions are available " Being able to announce upgrades is a nice side effect, but I don't think it's the main goal. The far more valuable point is getting anonymous statistics about Ardour's usage to plan a better development. -- Emanuele Rusconi

On 14 July 2015 at 00:16, Paul Davis &lt;paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com&gt; wrote: :) It would be interesting to see some statistics, or maybe they're already somewhere and I missed them? -- Emanuele Rusconi

Nice, thank you Robin. -- Emanuele Rusconi

Hi list! Lately I've been interested in learning FM synthesis but I haven't found any good literature on the topic. My main objective is to be able to program sounds on the hexter dx7 clone and on my OPL3 computer (running adlibtracker 2). I can surely get some basic synthetic sounds, but I'd like to understand (at least from a pragmatic point of view) the way in which the algorithms in this kind of synths allow you to approximate one or another kind of timbre. I've been told once that the dx7 had a huge potential for physical modelling, but that most musicians didn't really know how to program it. Using only analog synth common sense, I've been able to get some clavinet kind of sound, but some other sounds such as a slap bass have proven to be much more complex. I've already downloaded some patch banks for hexter, and while they are illustrative, I still don't get the choice of algorithms. Thank you so much to all of you. Have a nice one! Fede

Thanks for all the answers. After reading a bit through some of your suggestions, specially the synth secrets articles on FM (which I had read sometime in the past) I know at least know what to expect when tweaking the tuning settings for the operators. Still, from your comments it seems it takes mostly experience to achieve a certain kind of sound, so I'll take that route for the time being. I did try dexed, but the vst ports from distrho seem more resource heavy than other older plugins such as hexter, so I'm sticking with the latter for the time being. I'm still open to any suggestions though. As always, have a good one!

On Thu, 16 Jul 2015, Fede Galland wrote: You could use dexed as the patch editor and then more than one hexter as players. I do like the patch editor in dexed. One of the things I found most annoying with my DX7 was the switching the function of the limited number of keys. hexter is better, but each operator is on a tab. dexed has all in front of me. The dx7 is still my controller, I like the feel. (no I am not a piano player) -- Len Ovens www.ovenwerks.net

Try to get an original DX7 user manual and/or "Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer - Yasuhiko Fukuda", Amsco Publications, Order No. AM 39371, ISBN 0.711.0653.X. It's from 1984 and in English. Unfortunately I don't own a scanner. Or fortunately, because copying is illegal? However, I can't email it to you, because I can't scan it. The original manual anyway is in German only. IIRC most you need to learn has to be done by trial and error. But I guess I also learned from Yasuhiko Fukuda's book. I don't remember correctly, it's around 30 years ago :).

On Tue, 14 Jul 2015 23:09:36 +0200 (CEST), F. Silvain wrote: That's the best suggestion anybody of us has given. I didn't think of that, because I see my DX7 each day. Without knowing the 32 algorithms it's impossible to have control over the DX7, or an DX7 emulator. An operator below another operator is modulated by the operator above. The pictures of the algorithms also show what operator(s) are affected by the feedback value. Knowing the algorithms anything else just needs practise by trail and error.