Re: [LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

On 02/06/2013 10:30 PM, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
> 2013/2/7 david <gnome@email-addr-hidden <mailto:gnome@email-addr-hidden>>
>
> On 02/06/2013 03:19 AM, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
>
> 2013/2/5 Dave Phillips
>
>
> Greetings,
>
> I've been reading a lot of negative (read: vitriolic)
> commentary
> about the world of Linux audio development and
> applications. I won't
> bother to say where, just "the usual places" will have to
> suffice.
> Of greater interest to me is the commentary itself - it
> seems to
> boil down to the following plaints and lamentations (in no
> particular order) :
>
> Too many distros.
> Too many audio-optimized distros.
> Not enough native plugins, esp. instruments.
> Inconsistent support for VST/VSTi plugins.
> Too many unstable/unfinished applications.
> Too many "standards" (esp. wrt plugins).
> Poor external/internal session management.
> Poor support for certain modes of composition (think
> Ableton Live).
> Lack of support for contemporary hardware.
> Confusion re: desktops, and GUI toolkits.
> Too difficult to set up audio system.
> JACK is a pain.
> Too much conflict/fragmentation within the development
> community.
>
> One could be a professional with/without skills and/or an hobbyist
> with/without skills, no matter who you are you need apps which
> doesn't
> turn sound engineer or a guitar player or composer into a *nix
> OS student.
>
>
> I'm sorry, but if you're a professional, *you know how to use your
> tools*. Would you hire a carpenter who didn't know which end of a
> hammer to use for driving a nail, or hauled out a chainsaw for doing
> some fine veneer work while building a cabinet? What would you think
> of a guitarist who never learned to set up their Fancy Big Stomp Box
> because of all those "technical" things like sustain or reverb, etc?
> "I just want to make sounds! Why do I have to know the difference
> between sustain and reverb? I should be able to get what I want
> without having to do anything!" ;-)
>
> Disagree, good musicians know or not how to use a fuzz box, a
> compressor, eq, delay or even learn the workflow of a console.

Because they've set out to learn it. They've learned to use their tools.

> On the opposite, the knowledge of these things doesn't turn you in a
> good guitarist, and many good ones don't need/use this stuff at all.
> Your carpenter is the equivalent of a bad musician... I would never get
> in touch with him, but he should learn music first (not an OS).
>
> There's absolutely no relation in being professional musician and the
> knowledge of the "standard" linux audio workflow (setup jack, understand
> the client/server thing, get rid of pulse, write .asoundrc, MIDI stuff...).

They're part of the tool set. Just like a Windows user might have to
learn to do some arcane non-music thing to make it work. A professional
learns how to do them. A smart professional learns how to do them in
such a way that they don't have to do them again. ;-)

A lot of that setup stuff is already dealt with by audio distributions
now. The only "setup" I had to do with Musix on my little effects box
was tell JACK which audio interface I wanted it to use. I fiddled with
period and such settings until I got a latency that works for me without
xruns. That was just experimenting a bit. Gave me an excuse to play with
stuff along the way. ;-)

> We must admit that win and mac "music-woriking-curve" is musch easier
> than our penguin.

Having watched my musically-capable but technologically-inept friend try
three times to get and keep professionally-setup Windows audio systems
working ... no. It's not easy on the other platforms, either.

-- 
David
gnome@email-addr-hidden
authenticity, honesty, community
http://clanjones.org/david/
http://dancing-treefrog.deviantart.com/
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