Subject: [linux-audio-dev] linux audio demonstrability: NOT!
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: ke syys 29 1999 - 19:45:50 EDT
>> On the other hand, running, say, 3 RME Hammerfalls (3 x 3 ADAT = 72
>> channels), with the DAC(s) in some hardware digital console, and Linux
>> as the raw HDR seems pretty feasible.
>Yes. However, you're still in for reliability problems here, if we're
>talking about the live situations mentioned earlier. Or perhaps an
>uptime of at least a few months is enough, after all?
\begin{rant}
Yesterday, one of the Creamware US guys wrote me for some advice about
Linux audio stuff. In writing a reply, I got the feeling that David's
comment above highlights an almost laughable situation. Here we are
worrying about reliability problems on digital audio cards, and
latency questions etc.
Can you suggest an even vaguely exciting and believable demo of
anything to do with audio under Linux ? Something that would get a guy
from a company like Steinberg or Creamware or Digidesign excited ?
Yes, we (and particularly *I*) can talk all day about plugin API
design, but the simple fact right now is that the emperor has no
clothes! I have a meeting with the east coast Creamware rep next week,
and although its not the purpose of our meeting, I may get to do
a little Linux demo for him. What would I show him ? Some
half-finished, buggy sequencer projects ? A TB303 emulator like
freebirth, with cool sounds and completely incomprehensible graphics ?
A superb, extensible soundfile editor with guile + C available for
plugins, but that crashes when I use it with a free version of Motif ?
A partially complete analog synth/rack application that crashes fairly
regularly ?
OK, alsaplayer is a nice one. grip and gcombust are both robust, and
excellent, but they are about CD technology, essentially. The set of
examples to show someone who is seriously interested in the future of
computer based audio is, frankly, pathetic.
Its one thing to know that we have the infrastructure for some amazing
stuff. But ALSA is not finished yet (Jaroslav is now ripping up the
PCM interface), there are still no MIDI+audio sequencers worth paying
attention to, let alone money for, and most of the soundfile editors
don't do some of what even the most basic Windows programs do. Most
of us are still not even using GNOME or KDE, and if we want to, we're
not sure which one to use. People are still writing applications for
the OSS sequencer, the biggest piece of crap I ever saw that had the
name "sequencer" on it. There are still no pro-audio cards properly
supported. You can't do 96KHz recording on anything yet, and its not
even clear if 24bit will work on those cards that can do it. To make
things work properly, you need root priviledges to use SCHED_FIFO.
I mean, come on ! Who am I fooling ? Who are we fooling ?
\end{rant}
We now return to our regularly published schedule ...
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