Re: [LAU] Audigy too

Y-ellow Dave, Leigh 'n' all.
         Thanks once again. I'm not entirely ready to give up it would seem
I'll try the fedora 14 CCRMA mix. I never really considered a fedora based
system because I cut my linux teeth as it were, on redhat. And I pretty
much hated it at the time. My weapon of choice for many years has been
slackware but it really doesn't lend it self well to this kind of thing.
There is an RT variant of slackware but it's far from ready.

I'm sorry to all that I'm not asking the right questions here. I'm just not
sure at this point what those questions should be. And I'm obviously not
making my point clear either. This is probably neither here nor there at
this point but I feel the need to point out that there is good reason for this.

I need to see Linux sampler/fluid synth, etc, working. It doesn't matter to
me upon what distro. The reason is that I need to know that they are going
to work in this situation. There's not much point pouring time and resource
into something only to find that it's design philosophy is anathema to the
limitations of my methodology. On the other hand, I might find a
workaround. Or even a better way of doing things. I just don't know till I
can see it working. And then I'd know if it's worth putting in the hard
work of nailing a system down. That's all I'm saying.

 From what I'd been reading there seems to be a couple of big flaws in the
design of both fluid and LSP. But I can't tell from just reading about it.
On the other hand they seem tantalizingly comprehensive. I really need to
see that for myself. That's really the only point I'm making about that.
It's actually a small point and I'm sorry to have had to labor it so. What
I was asking is if there was any sure fire way I can get to that point so I
can audition them. What's the quickest path? However you want to phrase that.

Once I can see it's efficacy, once I can evaluate the behavior, then I can
invest time in the nuts and bolts. With a view to honing it into a
semi-embedded system perhaps.

The thing is that everybody seems to be concerned with recording. And to a
slightly lesser extent, sequencing. Sampling and soft-synths are seen as
add-ons and plug-ins to those things. This philosophy presents us with a
conundrum. Those solutions work well in the short term. However in the long
term they are redundant. I need an instrument that is independent of those
things and yet completely controllable. Future proof to an extent. Because
once I start composing with this instrument, there's no going back. If I
want to play the same song in 10 years time, I have to know that the
instrument that makes the sounds is going to be there. Even if everything
else changes around it. And that's just one issue.

That's enough orthodoxy for one evening I'm sure. Except to thank everyone
once again for your advice. And move right along.

At 11:37 PM 3/16/2011 -1000, david <gnome@email-addr-hidden> wrote:

>Over the next year of his use of it, they had to walk him through
>reimaging the system and reconfiguring things because Windows wouldn't
>boot, or some other thing failed. Finally the hardware failed completely
>and they sent him a whole new computer system to replace. He still
>didn't get his "works out of the box" experience.

This is why we use linux isn't it?

In actual fact, windows can be nailed down pretty well these days. Use
TinyXP or now, Tiny7. These "unofficial" versions allow you to pre-install
windows (AKA BOSH AKA Bastard Operating System from Hell) without all the
M$-centric crap. IE, Outlook, WiMP and DotNet. Once you get rid of all the
virus magnets, it's actually half decent and runs about 3 times faster.
Since these things are where 99% of all the hooks for malicious code
reside, you have to purposefully install something to get stung. Replace IE
with FireFox. Or better yet, Opera. Replace WiMP with VLC. Who needs WiMP
when you've got VLC anyway? And Outlook, What can I say. Virus anyone? And
anything that requires DotNet Framework or VB script shouldn't be in your
system anyway. No matter how tantalizingly bling it may appear. It's not
enough to just disable these things. You have to rip their still beating
hearts out from the system. The beauty is that Tiny does it all for you
from the get go.

The sad irony of all this is that I tend to learn far more about fixing and
butchering BOSH systems simply because the bloody things break so readily.
I don't get those kinds of opportunities with linux because the damn things
never die. I've got a SlackServer here that ran for 5 years, 24/7. And
even then all we did was jack it up and put another Mo-Bo under it. That
was 2 years ago.

But having said that, every system I've run up with TinyXP seems to be
getting the same kind of mileage. Except for the guy who blamed his kids
for installing a firefox tool bar which eventually snagged his machine. Was
a bit embarrassing when I discovered that it was a porn toolbar and he,
himself had installed it. You think your friend is dumb as a rock?

Then there's ReactOS. http://www.reactos.org An open source version of
windows which seems to be coming along quite nicely these days. I'll likely
use that if I have to install this CreatiFlabs card under Windows.

>I don't think he's tried a Mac yet. Maybe he should.
>
>I booted his first machine off a Linux audio distro's live CD. The sound
>worked. (Other stuff didn't, I think the system had a bunch of
>Windows-only hardware in it.) So I didn't recommend that he use Linux on it.

That's not been an issue since the days of WinModems. Perhaps there's no
driver but even BIOS shouldn't be an issue with linux because once the
kernel takes over, the BIOS becomes irrelevant.

>While he's much younger than you or I, he has the technical knowledge
>and understanding of a rock. You don't have that limitation to deal with!

Heh. This maybe true. Though I have one big limitation. Whilst I can
program in machine code on embedded systems, I completely missed the boat
with bloatware. I have a vague understanding of TinyC on embedded systems
but that's about my limit. There is a threshold I reach with large complex
OSes that just gives me a headache. But I'm sure I'm not alone and there's
probably clinics all across the globe that treat the condition.

>Anyway, I've tried a number of Linux audio distros. Some were
>surprisingly poorly-setup for audio use! Such as some of the Ubuntu 10
>derivatives that didn't include an RT kernel. Or the ones that had RT
>kernels but hadn't set up the permissions right. Or the one that refused
>to recognize any form of audio hardware except the Intel stuff built-in
>to the motherboard. Aptosid is the first distro I've encountered that
>didn't need tweaking for audio - and it's a general purpose distro ...
>
>I liked the last beta version of Musix 2.0 - it worked very nicely
>running from the live CD, is very well setup for audio work. (Their
>audio demos are really slick!) So I downloaded the release and tried it,
>and the release version wouldn't work with the bog-standard Intel video
>hardware in the laptop I use for music stuff!

I had some issues with Musix but I can't remember what they were now. I'll
go back and investigate. Hadn't come across Aptosid. So thanks for that.
I've now got fedora down and I'll see if I can get CCRMA working. Never
really got along with ubuntu but I'm slowly making peace with it.

I agree about KDE. It use to be just fine in slackware for some reason. But
I'm assuming that the systems in question must be still running KDE3. I'm
not sure if I ever bothered upgrading any of these local slackware boxes.
You know how it is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Once again thanks. I have much to go on. I would rather prefer to have a
linux based system at the end of the day but I'll hedge my bets. As long as
I don't end up running something like PropellerHeads Reason, I can live
with running the CreatiFlabs card under BOSH I guess. And it just dawned on
me that I can still transfer the SF2 files over to Fluid or LSP at some
later stage should I get either working.

Thanks again. Most appreciated.

Be absolutely icebox.

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Received on Thu Mar 17 16:15:02 2011