On Thu, February 25, 2016 2:25 am, Jonathan Brickman wrote:
>> FYI, we are using on a very regular basis for a number of years now
>> numerous instances of JACK running on multiple hosts which communicate
>> via
>> netjack. So from our experience your goal of running multiple RPi's is
>> certainly achievable. You may need to get a few spare screens/keyboards
>> to
>> make things slightly easier for administration purposes.
>>
>> In our studio the building is the monolithic DAW.
> :-) Have been trying to find a wisecrack for that one, I am still
> smiling.
>> One of the benefits of this approach is that NONE of our computing
>> hardware ever gets 'end of life'd' and we can add in additional
>> processing
>> power any time we need to without having to completely rebuild the
>> entire
>> operation for every new work station.
>>
>> We literally save hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to our
>> colleagues who insist on running monolithic solutions at their studios.
>>
>> The result is that every dollar we spend is expanding the capacity of
>> our
>> system without sacrificing the progress we have already made. The only
>> things we have to be concerned with is the cost of electricity and
>> keeping
>> an eye on the increasingly unusual and extreme weather patterns.
>>
>> We can leverage the power of the swarm in ways far beyond that of a
>> monolithic setup. However it probably takes a masters degree or two to
>> make this kind of thing work well so it is not going to be everyone's
>> cup
>> of tea.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Patrick Shirkey
>> Boost Hardware Ltd
> Patrick, that is really something. Sounds like my daydreams many years
> ago. Can you tell us a bit about what kinds of applications you use
> this ("cluster" perhaps, or "building" *grin*) for? And what kind of
> latency options do you have available? I'd love to know as much as you
> might care to share!
>
We use this system for a variety of multimedia processing and creation
tasks including music creation, video processing, 3d graphics generation
among other things. Netjack and jack/alsa midi enable us to stream
audio/midi from one machine to another in "realtime". We try not to over
stress the latency settings too much in this context however we generally
run at very low latency on our main audio devices which can handle that
kind of load.
YMMV, with regards to passing video and 3d data around too.
The main concern with this kind of setup is that it takes a little bit of
effort to get into the right headspace to work with it. Once you are up
and running it is a powerful system but if you step away for a few
days/weeks you need some time to refresh on the more difficult tasks.
When the system is running at full clock it is not much different from
being at the helm of a busy cruiseliner or aircraft cockpit. And yes, the
weather is a major concern.
I think your solution to the session issue is a pretty elegant way of
handling the problem. It's similar to how we run our systems too. When we
are on we are on all the way. The main difference is that we can bring up
and take down additional processing power without having a detrimental
effect on the rest of the system.
--
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd
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