Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] stats please.
From: DAVID G MATTHEWS (dgm4+@pitt.edu)
Date: Sat Oct 13 2001 - 23:38:12 EEST
The facts are that stats alone are not going to convince people to go
Linux. You have to remember that musicians as a whole are an extremely
conservative bunch. Many of them out there still swear by 2-inch analog
tape! Stats about latency are quite honestly not going to convince
anyone, except a few geeks who are probably already running Linux for
non-music/audio apps. Most music/audio people will use what their friends
use and what they saw advertised in Electronic Musician or EM. To give
you a general idea, I recently bought some gear from a music dealer. The
salesperson was extremely nice, but was utterely confused when he asked my
platform of choice and I said Linux. I obviously know plenty of other
Linux audio users out there, and the numbers will certainly increase with
time. But to a lot of people, Linux isn't even a blip on the radar.
For my money, this has nothing to do with a lack of apps, let alone
technical inferiority. It's just that it's unfamiliar. Linux audio
people I know tend to fall into two camps: those who got into Linux as a
general platform first, and then started using it for music, and those
academic music people who were always into Unix (CSounders, CCRMA types,
IRCAMites, etc.)
So I don't think a massive propaganda campaign is going to do the trick.
The situation we're in is one that the IT people already faced a few years
back: namely, how do you convince a fundamentally conservative group of
people that something new is good, especially something free and new
(remember, a lot of musicians/studio engineers think nothing of paying 7
grand for a ProTools rig)? Also, and equally importantly, how do you
convince them that learning a new O/S, especially one with a forbidding
reputation, is worth their time? (Citing the virtues of open source does
not usually work.) Keep in mind that their are many people out there who
have never replaced their Atari ST or Amiga because they know one program
inside and out and do not want to learn another!
Linux is definitely the best OS out there technically, and the number of
good apps for audio is growing. I already think that we blow any other OS
out of the water in the realm of software synthesis, and once ardour
matures we're going to have a rocking DAW (JACK is going to help a lot
here.) But don't count on that, or on latency statistics, to convert the
masses.
-dgm
On Sat, 13 Oct 2001, Paul Davis wrote:
> >(gotta face the fact that we, at least in US, live in litigatious society --
> >Broadcast2000 being the living proof of that).
>
> a recently published book, whose author was interviewed on NPR, claims
> that this idea that the USA is particularly litigious is in fact
> false, and the result of the way the media covers certains kinds of
> litigation. specifically, she claimed that the US is, statistically
> speaking, no more or less litigious than most other "western"
> countries. we have a very large population, but the per-capita rate is
> actually about the same.
>
> the author of broadcast2000 has been utterly elliptical in his claims
> about litigation, has never (AFAIK) answered any questions about
> clarifying his concerns.
>
> >purpose. Believe me, if anyone from the commercial world even starts
> >considering Linux for a multimedia app port, they will give up real fast if
> >they won't be able to find one place on the net that will be capable of
> >answering all their multimedia questions in a fast and efficient fashion.
>
> That's not what i've heard when i've talked to steinberg. but perhaps
> it would be different for "smaller" companies. Heh. Yesterday, I was
> looking at a 1986 issue of Keyboard magazine. It had a small ad for
> "Steinberg Music Software", run by a US importer.
>
> >case. Thus, commercial software developers will suddenly realize that in
> >order to create software for Linux OS, they won't even have to worry about
> >licensing commercial ASIO or E-WDM drivers for their software to perform
> >well.
>
> Can you tell me one piece of commercial audio application software
> that licenses drivers? Or licenses anything, for that matter? The only
> thing I have heard of are companies that make h/w supplying different
> drivers (e.g. the giga api) to support applications better.
>
> They will have that already built into the OS for free! Just imagine
> >the repercussions of such developments! Running Sonar, or Cubase on Linux,
> >in combination with an already strong pool of existing high-quality free
> >audio apps. That would simply be incredible!
>
> Too bad none of them could talk to each other. Uh. Guess I should do
> some more work on JACK, right ?
>
> --p
>
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