Very sorry for the incomplete description of what I want to end up doing. By the way, my time frame is a couple months.
This is eventually for control and management of "live" music as in running PA sound for a live concert (eg musicians playing back through our PA system and monitors to a "live" audience -- well at least I hope the audience is "live"!).. I am concerned that Linux tools aren't ready for prime time to replace analog equipment when it comes to hundreds or thousands of hollering concert goers.
We are not digitizing the music currently rather this is for eventual playback to the audience through a PA system (upwards of 10KW) through our house and monitor speakers. we currently do this all in analog (analog mixers, eq's, compression, limiters, crossovers etc). I'm investigating if linux components can be dependable and robust enough (eventually as I gain experience with it) to be considered a replacement for any of our analog equipment.
From what I've seen thus far, the Linux distros focused on sound are powerful and flexible but are "bleeding edge" and are more geared toward postprocessing and studio mixing/remixing tasks, digital audio mastering etc than to replace analog mixer boards and other analog equipment in live concert situations.
Out of the several music-focused linux distros, I've only found Suse 10.1/2 to recognize my SATA drives upon installation. I've got a HP pavillion 7170n PC with a Pentium D chip. As a Linux user with knowledge circa 15 years ago and at that time it was early slackware, my hope in this latest endeavor was to find an audio-focused distro that would upon installation and as I upgrade it recognize most of my peripherals (my PC is nearly 1.5 years old). I also need to use a RT kernel.
My first task is to get a simple WAV file to playback through a Jack-aware WAV file player (jack enabled audacity, or ardour2 etc) -- to become familiar with routing signals through jack and to know more about the stability of the software. Then as I become more confident in myself and in the software, substitute pieces of our analog equipment (eg start with a mixer) with Jack compatible Linux apps/tools (maybe Jamin, BruteFIR, etc).
Yes I have a long ways to go. that's why I'm starting with my inbuilt sound card prior to purchasing an expensive RME card -- I figure I should be able to make the onboard Intel HDA audio card work for basic tasks.
Today after having installed OpenSuse 10.2 and following all of the instructions in "3 steps to JAD for beginners" ( http://wiki.jacklab.net/index.php/3_Steps_to_JAD_for_Beginners ) -- this seemed to be a good starting point for someone as new to the recent Linuxes and digital audio as myself; I found I could run jack server and even jamin - and with the jack connection panel I could route a WAV file using "alsaplayer -o jack" as source through jamin and eventually to the external loudspeakers; and it appears there is audio going throuh jamin, however, no audio output to my ears.
I'll keep struggling with this. I realize I need to know alot more about digital audio and Linux before even approaching an evaluation of Linux distros, but if you have any thoughts on my current plan (to continue to use OpenSuse 10.2 + JAD and experiment) -- I'd appreciate it. Until I figure out what kernel driver I need to add to the other audio kernels (like Gentoo, PlanetCRMA, Studio64 so upon install it recognizes my SATA drives, I'll continue with Suse and JAD.
Thanks again
Ronan
PS if all of my visions for pro-sound / live audio / concert management fails, I hope to at least use Linux to put my LP's on CD and to do some remixing....
On 1/24/07, Bill Unruh <unruh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Johan De Groote wrote:
>>
>> Are any of these distros any better with managing and processing "live"
>> sound (not a Live CD -- but an Installed Linux) ? EG, I want to
>> signal-process live audio as in live concerts as well as use something like
>> bruteFIR for home-hifi and home theater (eg to implement digital crossovers,
>> filters, acoustic analysis, etc). Most of the folks I've discussed this
>> with use Linux audio tools for creating/modifying/mastering studio music not
>> "live" sound.
>
> Never tried to do live sound with it. I'm one of the recording/messing around
> types :)
No idea what you mean by "live" vs studio. Both are the same -- and input
of music. It is obviously best to simply record the "live sound" and later
process it, since errors can be corrected. If you switch of the recorder in
the midst of a "live" because you pushed the wrong button, y ou cannot
correct that mistake. But perhaps if you told us what you see as the
difference between "live" and studio, someone could better halp you.
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