>> I don't know... maybe I'm always thinking in terms of being able to set >> up "audio studios" for other People. The irony is that I haven't set up >> one computer for a friend yet (I've offered though). > I feel very much the same and would love to see some sort of > "reference" system evolve where out of all the fine apps that > are becoming highly usable, by mere mortals, that some guide > as to which ones are most suitable would really help new users. I've been working with Linux/Audio for about 4 years and I am still working out the "complete" studio. And it's always in My mind that it will be the "template" for other studios. I've gone a long way by avoiding a lot of "middle men" by using MuSE which allows both Audio and Midi to be synced. This also eliminates the need to deal with the snags (and extra work) that Jack introduces (even though i really respect what Jack does). I hit another delay because the new version of MuSE requires so many upgrades to my system that I just ordered SuSE 9.0 instead of trying to find all these files. Anyways, If I find that the new version of MuSE will *record* audio then I've eliminated *yet* another "middle man". Obvious, I believe in keeping it simple. I've managed to get it down to just a couple of easy to use (and effective) programs. Now there's less "stuff" to install, maintain, upgrade, learn, master. I included the term "master" because look how complex *every* program is, and how much time one *could* put in *any* one of these programs. Keep in mind that as soon as You learn one, there's (usually) an upgrade and then new features to install/set-up/learn. And if I'm really going to be able to contribute to the Linux/Audio community (by setting up computers for People), then it would be too much to be doing this with a lot of programs. And I've spent a lot of time testing programs until I came to choose what I've choosen. Well, so far, I have it down to ecasound, MuSE, Timidity and Smurf (sound font edior). I probly missed a few. But these are the main ones. And as much as I *love* ecasound, if MuSE can record a "live" track, then I will be down to 3 main programs that are (to Me) a "complete studio" (I still say ecasound and Jack are great programs though). > My thoughts are to try and create a reasonable piece of music > that *I* find listenable and not too embarrasing, mainly so there > are no copyright issues, and create some oggs then write up > (heh, sure pal) a HOWTO and how I created the end result (that > will never be "ended" because it could always be reused and > re-released as another version). If You're referring to explaining the software and tecniques You used, I've kind of resigned Myself to adding what I can (when I can) on this list (and other places). But I guess I wont ever really be able to contribute *completly* until I'm actually setting up (and possibly maintaining) systems for People. Unfortunatly, I'm more "creative minded" than I am "technical minded" so I will choose hardware that works and that will be the "template". This way, I could use "dd" to create an exact copy of My drive, put it in the same hardware as I have then the rest of the time can be spent on teaching People how to use the software. I was working with a (hardware) guy a few towns over but He moved away. Actually, there's much more to it than the above stuff. Of course, there's the ongoing building of soundfonts and the extra stuff like that. In fact, there's a lot of things like that I'm doing in along with the above to keep inproving the situation. But aren't we all (-: Rocco