Subject: [linux-audio-dev] AES report
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: su syys 26 1999 - 11:14:50 EDT
Well, AES this year seems full of new dedicated HDR's. Mackie's was
the best one I saw, but many other companies were making them.
It became clear to me wandering around the vast hall of gadgets,
blinking lights and men (for it was almost entirely populated with
men) who haven't quite outgrown their passion for toys with buttons
and dials that as fantastic as it is to be able to use a computer to
do all the audio stuff you could imagine, it seemed really worthwhile
being able to put your hands on a physical interface that included the
*right* physical elements to control a device.
I managed to talk to quite a few companies about Linux support. I
spent a while with the Creamware guys, which was actually pretty
pathetic in some senses, but there seems to be some possibility that
they might have me write a driver for the SCOPE/Pulsar. I told them
that if it could be open source, I would do it for free. They got
incredibly nervous when a guy from Be Inc. entered them room, and
ushered me out as fast as they could. The SCOPE system does look
incredibly cool, but I still worry about the SHARC's being redundant
in a couple of years, or less. As far as I could tell, the only things
you get from the SCOPE that you don't get from the Pulsar are (1) 15
SHARCs instead of 4 and (2) their GUI development environment for
creating new DSP control surfaces.
I talked to Steinberg for a little bit, gave them my 20 page "Linux ?
Why should we care?" information packet. Unfortunately, Wolfgang,
their lead programmer, was not at the booth, but they assured me he
would get the info. Nuendo looks very, very nice. They seem to have
abandoned the idea of an IRIX port, and are focusing on BeOS. I gave
them a brief argument why this might be a bad idea.
I also talked to two people from Cakewalk, gave them the packet. They
seemed genuinely stunned at what Linux could do, and totally awestruck
that it would run on a PC *and* a Mac, though I am not sure they
understood what that actually meant. I think they were thinking that
it was a program, not an operating system. Anyway, I encouraged them
to help fill the holes outlined by Dave Philips in some July mail to
the Csound-Unix development mailing list.
I talked to Lexicon about Linux support - they don't even imagine
themselves as a software-related company, so I had to explain how we
need drivers for some of their very nice soundcard/outboard ADAC
systems.
Dididesign didn't seem interested at all, but I think I got a bad
rep. I have a couple of inside contacts for them, so I'll mail them a
packet direct. Discussions with SEK'D I've already mentioned here.
Overall, there were less oppurtunities to evangelize than I had hoped
for, but I think I got some useful stuff done, and saw some extremely
cool looking racks of blinking LED's. It was also a beautiful day in
Manhattan yesterday, which helped. I have several info packets left
that I will send to various companies I didn't get to see.
--p
ps. best inquiry of the day, to me, repeated several times after
people looked at my badge: "Oh, you work for Linux ?" :)
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