Thread: Welcome aboard Robotobon!

Thank you kindly Chris!

This is going to be alot of fun!

-robot

well this is going to be interesting!!! I guess I'm going to have to start playing around with Linux then to keep up!!! Welcome to the DAW world Robotobon!!
Opus

Alright Opus2000 great to meet you!

Don't worry about keeping up. But definately break out your ANSI C book and get ready to dig in ;]

I have alot of subjects in mind for this forum, and I'd love to make one of our goals a very sleek and powerful Linux Audio Distribution.

We'll work up to that, as well as coding device drivers and patching the kernel for lower latency.

Hardware modding is something I am getting into now, so I'd like to dig into all the diferent DSP kits and ADC/DAC chips, clocks, you name it for DIY and experimentation!

-robot

Have you heard of
Demudi?

http://www.demudi.org

Based on Debian, will come with low latency patched kernel, and audio/video/graphic apps...
It's still in Alpha, I haven't tried it yet.

ljp

Yes I do know of Demudi but the impression I got from it was that it was still a bit large, since it just apps including with a normal Debian distro.

I am hoping to create a very small distro without 40 window managers and useless apps. Or perhaps code a new basic multitrack application to boot right into, and pretend we all have brand new RADAR's? Of course have the option to exit it's shell and go into X... Lots of planning and discussion!

Perhaps a democratic vote on each app that is incuded and what distro we base it off? I'm getting BSD this comming week and I'm gonna run it though the paces.

I am currently researching real time FFT scopes and phase metering accelerated by the video hardware in the pc, like a Geforce 3.

Cheers to the future~

-robot

Ya, personally, I don't use Debian. Right now, I prefer SuSE. I also use Mandrake, but not very much as it's got that damned broken gcc.
Small and light makes me think about using peanut linux, or the like, but I haven't used that.

I'd suggest maybe one or two wm's, say blackbox, or icewm, and maybe something bigger like window maker.

As far as programs go, there's some very useful already out there. Broadcast is still GPL'd, Ardour isn't very relavant yet, as it's in rapid development, and only available in cvs (and good luck hunting down all the libs it depends on). SLab is very good and useful NOW, it doesn't come with source. But it works.

I kinda updated khdrec to use JUST qt (2.3), but stopped working on it. Cubase is just too good, and besides, no one else was helping me hack on it, so I lost interest. It's at http://sourceforge.net/projects/khdrec2
but that code there is old. I was trying to update the back. I'd like to find some other way or lib to handle the buffers I/O.

I dunno, maybe I'll start hacking on it again.
I'm not a GPL zealot, and don't mind using software that isn't open source.

ljp

I'm not a GPL zealot either. It's not necessary at all for coding in Linux, but it's a feature. You're not strapped to GCC.

That's something that amuses me about bigger companies not releasing code on Linux, they hide behind the GPL myth. They know better

You're right about Cubase being way beyond the apps currently in Linux land right now, but there was a time when it really sucked! Everything takes time to mature.

Nuendo started out on SGI remember?

I think it's totally awesome you've put forth the effort to work on KHDRec2. I don't think you should give up on coding.

That's something I hope we can adress in this forum, coding our own apps under our own distro! It's not so daunting if you have a group of people contributing to make a basic recorder, and we can use CSound or Pd for processing! Set small goals, and work to meet them.

No need to re-invent the wheel. Let's just contort, convolute and transmogrify it!

-robot

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by bigtree:
[QB]Linux and the Future of Audio? I think we're in for a learning curve or a reality check. <hr></blockquote>

Actually a learning curve AND a reality check!

Reality check: I've been following the linux audio world closely for about 4 years. Honestly I think it's still "not there yet". Four years ago I could tell it might get there someday. Today, I think it WILL get there soon. But "soon" might be six months or a year or never, depending on where you think "there" is.

Here's my take on the situation...
What we have now:

An OS that can run under heavy load with low latency (approx. 3 ms.) without crashing. And apps can't crash each other.

A standard plugin API, roughly equivalent to VST 1.0. It's called LADSPA and lots of apps are currently using it.

Some cool soft-synths: SpiralSynth Modular, RTSynth, etc.

Some decent editors: Snd is my favorite. But none of them would really impress a working pro engineer.

A big pile of interesting and weird compositional / synthesis systems from the academic world: PD, jMax, csound, SAOL, KeyKit ... (learning curve alert!!)

Support for some pro-level hardware. The choices are currently very limited, but most (all?) of the RME interfaces work well; so do the M-audio Delta series (I guess that'd be more "semipro"?).

Much of the above is currently non-trivial to get working. Did I mention a learning curve? That's why a project like DeMudi could be very helpful - a central source for easy packages of all the essentials.

What we lack:

A truly professional-quality, non-linear mulitrack editing/mixing/recording system... a contender in the Pro Tools / Logic / Paris / etc. world. Ardour fits the bill but is currently tricky to compile, let alone run. The author estimates 1.0 release by year's end. I'm inclined to believe him - he's been working on it full-time for 2 years, so this is not another over-ambitious part-time hacker's toy. There are other projects in this area but IMHO none of them would be at home in a pro studio.Ecasound is very flexible but very weird to use. SLab has IMHO a very cluttered, busy interface, plus I was told years ago by the author that some parts of the internal bus are (were?) 16-bit integer for efficiency - Bleah!. Broadcast 2000, last time I checked (a year ago), would crash if you breathed on it. I gather it's improved some.

A "Rewire" equivalent for connecting apps. This is also in process; the API is still being debated, but the issues have been hashed over pretty thoroughly and it looks like we'll have something workable soon.

A standard GUI system for our LADSPA plugins, like VST has. Even audio engineers care what things look like, and currently LADSPA plugins just have generic, bland interfaces built by the host app.
Well, that's enough of one man's opinion...