[wellylug] re: music

[pete at marchingcubes.com]

Well, i still tinker around with stuff I used ardour to record a bit of
multitrack guitar/bass about a month ago to see how it was progressing -
The last time i tried to sit down and create a track with seq24 and some
softsynths under Linux was about a year ago.

I feel the biggest problems are threefold:

1) Linux is the only free *NIX that has a modern and useful audio
infrastructure  - however, none of the desktop environment projects can
support it because they need to be cross-platform. So a JACK control panel
or an ALSA MIDI control panel can't go into KDE or GNOME because there is
no JACK on NetBSD or Solaris, for example. This means that any 'audio
plumbing' must be managed by a mish-mash of external applications, all in
state of constant flux, and without any kind of integration with the
desktop, media players etc. This means that a 'global' audio server isn't
really possible , device management and routing is non-standard, and an
absolute pain in the ass. One only has to take a look at MacOS's audio
control panels to see where Linux suffers in comparison.

2) Simple lack of mature applications - Ardour is the biggest, baddest app
in Linux audio, but now that the devs have just about got it to being
'done', hopefully more people can look at it and use it as a template for
what level of capability should be provided. Most of the other apps are
either very minimal 'toys', are based on antiquated code and APIS like
Motif and have been shoehorned into the JACK paradigm, or are just plain
unfinished.

3) Expectation that the user should understand everything from patching
the kernel for timer imnterrupt frequency and low latency to understanding
why they cant use a certain filesystem on their audio machine to compiling
and installing new versions of ALSA to knowing which modules do what with
no documentation to why GSynth will run on their sytem but is more or less
useless without QJackCtl which needs another 50MB of dependencies to run
to why if KDE is started JACK can't run and if JACK runs then xmms stops
working and what the numbers next to the midi ports in the alsa MIDI
Registry mean and etc. etc. etc. etc. I personally dont have such a
problem with this, but I'd really hate to be a newbie.

Linux audio for music production purposes is just way, way too complex on
most standard Linux distros at the moment.

Also, w/regard to WINE - No you do not need a Windows installation to run
Wine, but it helps since WINE's builtin API support is incomplete and you
may have more success if WINE is able to 'fall back' on actual Windows DLL
functions where it's native support is crappy.

That being said I can run lots of games and applications including World
of Warcraft on a Linux machine without any Windows in sight, so there is
no absolute requirement for a Windows install.

You should be able to use the 'USB stick' method assuming the app doesnt
install needed components into the windows system folder or the registry
(which is a reasonable assumption for audio apps) but it is likely that
WINEs audio support will screw you up when you want to use these audio
apps unless you compile it to support ALSA/JACK etc.

Now that I have finished this overlong ranting email, I encourage you to
give all these things a go, and feel free to ask me for help on specific
issues if you do encounter any trouble, since I have probably bashed my
head against whatever wall you are encountering at some point.

-Pete





> hi pete
>  that sounds a little depressing cause i really need something that works,
> how long ago were you playing around with linux audio apps? recently or a
> while ago? maybe for a desktop user like me i should have waited a few
> more years, but i'll try anyway, steep learning curve all this.  one
> thing though linux is futureproof whereas all the commercial apps for mac
> and win will one day have licenses you can't cheat with, and require an
> endless stream of money.
>
>  another question, I need to use a specific piece of software that is only
> ported for Windows, in order to run in through WINE do i need to actually
> have windows on my laptop (i already got rid of it) or does it just need
> to be in a DOS partition, and if so can i create a small one in linux,
> alternately and this may be easier, i could get a USB stick, install the
> software on a windows computer and then just plug it into my linux laptop
> when i needed to use it...this may work if windows is not actually
> needed...
>
>  peace
>
>
>
>
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