Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] read it and drool
From: Kai Vehmanen (kaiv_AT_wakkanet.fi)
Date: Mon Dec 04 2000 - 14:59:45 EET
On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Paul Barton-Davis wrote:
>> 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
> 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
Actually I didn't want to emphasize the price issue. I was thinking more
about the different roles: studio engineer <-> musician. In our (a)
scenario, the important thing is to provide a stable (no delay),
high-quality recording environment. You need have a rock-solid punch-in
feature, because you really don't want to be asking ... "... could we take
that last solo again, our X98 machine seems to have frozen altogether and
we need to reboot [ or there were few drop-outs ]". Just what a rock band
expects from a studio.
When you're both the engineer and the musician, you still expect to have
rock solid apps, but you are ready to make compromises. If some task takes
a day to go through, you might be ok with it, if you think the result is
worth it. The key thing is that you are making the decisions. I guess a
good example would be using a soft synth that sounds very good, but sucks
in realtime use (dropouts all the time). As a musician, you stil might
want to use it. You are aware of its bad sides, so you just try to live
with the poor performance. It it may very well take a whole day to record
a clean take with it. Ok, hopefully you get the picture.
> 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
Hmm, I don't think I have ever mentioned anything about my budget
nor my home studio-setup... ;)
> 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.
Uhm, my comments weren't aimed at all GUI apps. Although I am constantly
marketing my apps, no, I don't think ecasound's CLI-interface is the
musician's interface of tomorrow. :) I do like to use many GUI-based audio
apps. But not something like Reason. I guess Acid would be a good
example of an interface I'm much more comfortable using.
>>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
> 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
The perfect example! :) Microsoft Word. That's the feeling I get when I am
using apps like Reason, when I think I should be getting the latex
feel! :)
> 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
And just to make sure, my comments weren't aimed at all GUIs. That'd would
have been foolish. But there's a big difference between a usable GUI and
one that just looks pretty. Some things that always annoy me:
- Knobs. Just to add to the discussion, why not show the real numerical
value beside the knob. This is difficult with hw knobs, but very easy
to add to a sw-knob. (I know your apps already do this, but look
at Reason!)
- Mouse. If you are doing tasks that are not repeative, you just can't
beat using a mouse. Something like marking areas and other
cut©&paste functions are really difficult to implement with
other input devices. But for repeative tasks, using a mouse is just
too slow! No matter how handy sw-knobs you have at your use, it
always takes time to move the pointer over the right knob. Now
all computer users have this over 100-key mega controller in front
of them, but for some reason many apps just use the 2(3) keys and a
pointer combination.
-- . http://www.eca.cx ... [ audio software for linux ] /\ . . http://www.eca.cx/aivastus ... [ aivastus net radio ] /\ .
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