[LAU] The age old question... open source vs the other...

Hi folks,

As briefly mentioned in another post by myself, I have started a
business. Among the the services offered, we are providing demo
production and recording services. In a couple of small projects, and
also getting reacquainted with my DAW stuff, it has dawned on me that
Sonar Producer 8 (x64) and Windows Vista (x64) has become very
complicated for what I want to do. While it's great to claim the
availability of all those bells n whistles, they dont serve the purpose,
art or business necessarily other than to make it cumbersome and
complicated to use. I am running a Delta 1010LT, which is hardly a pro
card, yet capable of reasonable sound and flexibility. The box is an AMD
x64 3ghz dual core, ASUS mobo with 2g RAM and Nvidia graphics card. Not
exactly a heavy weight pro DAW either but also, not without balls!

The thought has entered my mind that maybe I go full Open source. I'm
reminded from my time with Ardour that the routing layout is a LOT more
conducive to how I like to work, as is JACK. I have the need for solid
midi playback and flexible editing also and Muse was my preference
because of the layout. I'm eager to see how Ardour 3 unfolds on this
end...but the main focus is to try and simplify things and focus on
better work flow and less learning curve, more art! I have spent a
reasonable amount of time with Linux and open source as some of you
know. I'm a single, small gradient above "basic user", not a dev of any
kind. While I expect to have bugs and issues, I need it to be a reliable
platform just the same. If you have a recommendation, tell me what
distro and version you have Ardour, Jack, etc running on that you can
trust your art to! What version of Ardour / JACK is running stable...do
you have Wine / VST working reliably? If you had a single shot at
recording an all time super hit piece of ART, would you trust your
platform to capture it safely and recreate it cleanly?

There is a chance this business may seek a grant based on an educational
foundation...to teach kids, etc how to record, produce, etc. It would be
a nice thought to tell them "We use Open source platforms". It is a
noble gesture if nothing else, but help me to see if it's reasonable to
make it a reality. If this part of the business is successful, I assure
you the proceeds get shared in the donation buckets of those who put all
the effort into writing and improving the applications that even make
this conversation possible!

thanks for your thoughts and input.

Russell
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Received on Mon Sep 14 04:15:05 2009