Subject: Re: [alsa-devel] Re: [linux-audio-dev] laaga, round 2
From: David G Matthews (dgm4+@pitt.edu)
Date: Mon May 14 2001 - 05:22:06 EEST
My $0.02 on the buss vs. patchbay debate:
The buss approach is the way to go. It might be a little more difficult to
setup, but its flexibility more than makes up for this. The ability to
route audio to and from multiple sources ("multing" in studio jargon) is
kind of the point of a sound server in the first place, isnt't it? I _do_
think a plugin should be able to send its output simultaneously to
different sources. So what if this isn't the normal paradigm for
analog-based studios? IMHO, it's about time software based digital
recording/mixing/processing/what-have-you stopped trying to pretend to act
like hardware (analog or digital). I love real faders as much as anyone
else, and it certainly makes life simpler for all of us to have a
familiar frame of reference, but added flexibility is what software-based
recording and editing is all about. To get back to the buss/patchbay
argument, it would be very easy for a UI to make a buss look like a
patchbay to the user, but very difficult vice versa. (Or at least it
seems that way to me.)
Now, I hope I didn't just add to the flamewar. Sorry if I offended
anyone.
-dgm
On Sun, 13 May 2001, Tom Pincince wrote:
> > For what it's worth. I know Paul doesn't seem to understand how much
> > difficulty his bus model is going to cause the user, so I don't expect
> > much movement here unless Almighty-God-On-High intervenes with a
> > miracle.
>
> While the buss model may or may not be the best for an all encompassing
> server, it is the most accurate model for representing the functionality
> of a physical mixer. AES/ardour is a mixer/recorder/editor, so it makes
> sense that it would evolve to this form to provide mixer functionality.
> For comparison to physical mixers, take a simple mackie 1604 vlz. It
> has 26 inputs, 25 outputs, 18 inserts, and 16 busses. More advanced
> mixers have even more busses. A user who is familiar with the buss
> architecture within a traditional mixer will probably find this model
> quite easy to understand and a pleasure to use. You favor a patchbay
> model. Interestingly, the patchbay configuration that many users find
> to be the most useful is the half normal configuration which adds
> limited buss functionality to the patchbay concept. One could design a
> gui that allows some busses to look like a patchbay, a buss with only
> one input. Busses are very generic and can be used in many ways,
> including all of the ways that a patchbay can be used. Patchbays can
> not provide all of the functionality of busses. AES has 32 busses, and
> the connection to them can be made to look like anything; a channel
> strip, an aux send, a patchbay, or whatever (paul, maybe you should bump
> this back up to 64 busses). The fact that paul realized that the buss
> architecture of the mixer can be opened up to be accessible to other
> apps should not be seen as a problem.
>
> Tom
>
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