Re: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion

On Sat, 2005-07-23 at 19:11, Jono Bacon wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As some of you will be aware, I wrote the following article:
>
> http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7421
>
> After seeing this long thread on this list
> (http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/2005-July/025068.html),
> I figured this poor schmuk should join up and share in some
> discussion. :)
>

    Welcome! You're a brave man to step into the lion's den ;-)

    I'm not going to address all of your points because that has already
been done much more effectively than I could do it. I just want to
touch on three issues.

    I think that the point that keeps coming up in this discussion, and
that you also highlighted in your article, is the lack of
documentation. I got started in the community doing documentation for
installing Ardour (as you can see from my way out-of-date page
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/ALSA_JACK_ARDOUR.html). I also did
a few little docs for using Ardour (also out-of-date ;-) Ardour
documentation has been held up a bit because that's the way Paul Davis
wanted it. It has opened up a lot lately but is still not where it
should be. Other applications have much more extensive documentation
(JAMin for instance ;-) We, as a community, do need to continue to
write better documentation. Although, as someone else pointed out, most
people don't want to read it.

    Secondly, applications that just work right out of the box. As you
can see from my web page, I used to do everything the hard way. This
was mostly because I am a system administrator and programmer where I
work. I always want to do things the hard way ;-) When I set up my
daughter's computer for college I decided to give Planet CCRMA a try.
I'll never go back to doing it the old-fashioned way. Using the CCRMA
distro allows me to concentrate on only those things that I'm working on
- Ardour as a beta tester and JAMin as a programmer. Everything else
just works right out of the box. I would recommend to anyone who wants
to do Linux audio to use either AGNULA/Demudi or Planet CCRMA. My
apologies to any other user-friendly Linux audio distribution ;-)

    Third, a point in favor of using Linux audio. Do you know of anyone
who has asked for a new feature in, for example, T-RackS that has
received a new version of the software with the feature installed in
less than 24 hours? I seriously doubt it. We've done that with JAMin
and I've seen it happen with Ardour repeatedly. Also, if we so choose,
our applications can work seamlessly with each other because they are
open and we can see how to develop them to assist each other in
processing audio. JAMin was designed to allow it to work with any JACK
aware application but mostly to serve as the audio mastering backend to
Ardour. It is really nice to be able to run Ardour with the output
going to JAMin, the output of JAMin going back to a stereo track on
Ardour, and to be able to both mix and master at the same time. In the
proprietary world you can usually only do this if the packages come from
the same company. In our world, when someone writes something better
than JAMin for mastering, the user can just switch to that application.
The fact that the code (and data format) is open allows the user great
freedom.

    One other minor point, my system is up 24/7/365. I have no viruses,
no adware, no spyware, no problems. You may have the same experience
with a Mac (now that they've switched to a decent OS) but I'd be willing
to bet you won't see that with Windoze anytime soon.

    Once again, welcome to the community.

-- 
Jan "Evil Twin" Depner
The Fuzzy Dice
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html
"As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this
we should do freely and generously."
Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of
Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744