Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] read it and drool
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbd_AT_Op.Net)
Date: Mon Dec 04 2000 - 05:29:50 EET
>Ah, the task at hand, now this is something I think we are often
>forgetting. Or not actually forgetting the task itself, but forgetting to
>mention about it. For instance, there's a big difference between tasks a)
>"you're a studio engineer, and you need to record a rock band that has
>bought recording time from your studio", and b) "you are a musician doing
>everything from recording to production in your home studio, and well, you
>are going to make some grooves :)" This affects lots of things, especially
>the requirements that an audio app must fulfil.
i don't agree here, kai. the reason that the "home studio" setup is
considered differently to the "profit making commercial studio" is
just a hangover from the realities of the cost of physical
equipment. if you had an unlimited budget, i can't see why you
wouldn't be quite happy with a Sony 48 track digital mixing desk,
and/or a high end protools setup, a dozen $10K mic preamps and a
100x100 patch bay, etc. But you don't have an unlimited budget (or
space, for that matter! :), almost nobody does for a home studio. so
you've figured out ways to work with a system that works for you but
doesn't have that kind of capital expenditure.
it turns out that you have also decided that you *like* it, and thats
great. but i suspect that if someone had given you whatever studio
gear you might have asked for at some point in the past, ecasound
would not exist now, were it not for some philosophical issues
srrounding the use of linux that may or may not be important for you.
of course, i may be wrong.
>Ok, talking from musician's point of view, imitating HW user-interfaces in
>computer software, as someone already said, just combines the bad sides.
>One nice thing in audio hardware is that it's quite easy to understand how
>it works. This again opens up unlimited possibilities for experimenting.
> .... It is not the same when you imitate these
>interfaces in software. You don't exactly know how the thing works under
>the hood,
but thats not a function of the HW-style user-interface, its a
function of (1) the internal design being fundamentally different from
the dedicated h/w (which might be necessary, or might not) and (2) poor
documentation. i *do* think that the UI should reflect the internal
design, but that leaves it open whether the internals of the s/w
should try to follow the h/w internals, or if the UI should be changed
to reflect a distinct architecture for s/w "versions" of h/w.
>You could compare this to for instance using csound. Once you learn how it
>works, you're ready to start experimenting, and more you do it, the better
>you'll get at it. And you really don't have to understand every little
>detail about csound's implementation. Just like I don't have to be an
>electrician to understand how a hw mixer works.
i totally agree. its one of the reasons i still love latex and to some
extent tex as well. however, i don't see why i have to choose between
this kind of "under the hood" power and flexibility and nice GUIs. its
still a design goal for quasimodo (one day, hah!) to offer both these
things, and i think the same principle can apply to many other bits of
audio/midi s/w, though i can't prove it. its primarily a matter of
having powerful text-based languages at the core, with GUI's playing a
wrapper-role around them, as far as i can tell.
--p
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