[linux-audio-dev] Re: image problem [was Re: [Alsa-devel] help for a levelmeter]

[Richard Bown]

On Friday 18 October 2002 15:49, Steve Harris wrote:

> Notice the future tense. I dont think its a good idea now, better to
> wait 'til we have a nice bunch of jack'd (+ alsa midi/whatever),
> stable, documented apps, all playing well together than put people
> off with the kind of stuff we're prepared to use.

Well, there's a line at which you have to decide if you're ready. Our 
demo of RG last week sufficiently convinced me that we're just about 
ready and a lot of the other stuff is ready too.  Out of the box 
ALSA/LADPSA support in SuSE and Mandrake helps a lot, JACK aside (not a 
big packaging problem) what else do you need?

> Something I think is important is mouse launched applications

We launched RG from a desktop icon all last week.  It now has 
Logic-style status messages on the splash screen while you're waiting 
for it to start and (while they can be a little naff) touches like that 
are give it a professional air if nothing else.  I was also showing off 
Sweep (because you have to) and Audacity (again..) and indeed RG was 
launching both those too.  I was recording random punters playing the 
guitar, editing what they'd played, cutting it up, bunging it through a 
plugin and adding a drum track etc.and then burning it onto CD.  The 
average person with money to spend on music tech doesn't really want to 
do too much more than that.  In fact if they can get that far then 
they're really chuffed.

It's probably up to the bread and butter products to drive the bespoke, 
studio-end products.  The complete, finished solution that does both 
ends sufficiently well will take a while to arrive (ardour releasing 
tarballs may be a start).  Perhaps you can't really apply the logic 
that we see in the rest of the music-tech industry to Linux.  Once 
again we'll get there in the end but we'll probably end up doing it our 
own way.  I've was canvassing people's opinions last week and asking 
them how they could see us progressing from here - it pretty much seems 
that there is no One True Path, it'll take something to start it all 
off.  I'm pretty convinced it is going to go somewhere too.

> That said, I think Patrick is right to start thinking about this now.

I think he's completely right - I'm not sure about this bank account 
thing but I do think that now is the time to be demoing, talking up and 
generally approaching people and companies about Linux music software.  
I wrote us up (and mentioned a few other apps) in the latest edition of 
Linux User - John at mstation.org has been very kind so far as well.  
Now is the right time to be talking to people and getting the "products" 
out there.  If it works - why not tell people about it?

B