[LAU] A sound decision

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/36698-from-windows-to-linux-a-sound-decision

From Windows to Linux: a sound decision

Some excerpts:

Five years ago, when Geoff Beasley decided to move his sound studio
business from a Windows-based one to a Linux-based setup, he had one
simple bit of logic driving him: things could not be worse under
Linux.
...
"There's a great difference between working with commercial software
and Linux," says Beasley. "One is the speed at which things get fixed
- it is simply amazing. Another thing is that though I am always
running software which is in a constant state of development, it is
incredibly stable. It is not possible to get fixes at this speed from
commercial vendors - the guys I work with are driven by the sheer
elegance of their software and its flexibility. And I am constantly
amazed at what I can do with my limited knowledge."
...
Beasley's set-up:

SYSTEM SOFTWARE

All 5 of the production machines have the following subsystem:

Arch Linux system custom 2.6.31,6-rt19 kernel with RT preemption
(essential for Xrun avoidance - click and pops) Desktop consisting of
openbox, Adeskbar and pypanel. Display manager is Slim
AUDIO
jack2-svn (contains netone; which is netjack1 within jack2)
Qjackctl-svn
Rtirq (RT pci priorities for sound cards; also essential for Xrun avoidance)

LinAS
LinAS is the audio master machine. It hosts 4 Hoontech C-Ports
(ice1712-based chipset) in an Alsa multi-array providing 40 channels
of audio to the other machines via 'netone'. jack is running with 2
periods @ 48kH and 64 frames giving a 'round-trip' latency (in and
out) of 2.66 ms . Can be run @ 32 frames (half the latency) but the
samplers struggle at this low a frame rate.

Uses Gjacktransport to control the jack transport here and therefore
the netone slaves via jack transport.

LinDAW
The Digital Audio Workstation hosts 'Ardour' as the main DAW software
and also Mhwaveedit and Audacity for audio editing, Qjadeo for
synchronous video playback with Ardour, K3b & GDC Master for CD
mastering.

LinSeq
The midi sequencer machine. Runs MusE 1.01-svn and Linuxsampler with
the Fantasia (java) frontend. Magic. Mscore is the Linux music scoring
program, started by the creator of MusE, Werner Schweer.

LinSampler
Uses the program fst (free software studio) by Torben Hohn to run
vsti's (virtual studio technology instruments) under wine. The two I
run are Kontakt 2 and Sampletank 2. Both work 100 percent maybe better
than under Wine.

LinVS
This is the 'Video Server" This one specialises in distributing video
throughout the complex via webcams using 'Cheese' to mount them.
Kdenlive and capture cards are used to take interviews of Composers
and Performers for web-based content enhancement. Qjadeo is used to
playback vision also piped throughout.

LinFX
Essentially hosts the Jc_Gui front end for Fons Adriaensen's
Jconvolver. Using open source Impulse Responses. Gives reverbs to the
mixing desk.

-- 
A. C. Censi
accensi [em] gmail [ponto] com
accensi [em] montreal [ponto] com [ponto] br
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