On Sun, Jul 24, 2005 at 01:11:23AM +0100, Jono Bacon wrote: > To direct the discussion further, I would be interested in your > thoughts on the following things: > > - do you all feel that it is fairly simple to get stated with Linux > and recording? Am I smoking crack? :) That depends on your distribution and hardware. It can be, it can also be a right pig. > - do you feel there is a seperation between a professional and an > amateur? So, the software would 'just work' for the amateur, but the > professional should really know the specifics of the system and how to > set it up. Yes, definatly, though I wouldn't use those terms. Someone who has a PC set up for studio use is generally prepared to go to more extreme lengths to get audio working (using patched kernels, running jackd etc.), someone who just wants apps to be able to make bong noises doesnt have to. Obviously the ideal is that all audio systems should be zero-effort setup, but relaisticly the RT systems we run have some impact on the rest of the system, and are not going to be accepted by everyone. This is a continual source of disagreement between audio developers and kernel maintainers. Things are getting better though, we finally got ALSA as the standard audio drivers, and the recent ulimit RT stuff is promising. Thinking of the applications, yes, some of them are quite complicated, but thats partly because its complicated problem, comparing Ardour to Cubase itsn't really reasonable as Ardour is a lot more sophisitcated. Comparing it to Protools is much more reasonable, and it compares reasonably, ie. both are confusing at first, and logical when you understand them, but protool's manual is more complete. Also you talked about the difficulty of multiple audio backends, but we only use JACK round 'ere :) > - if you do feel it is a bit tough to get up and running without > reading up on all of this, what do you feel are the barriers, both > technical and socially? I am curious to see whether these barriers > could be solved. Running a dedicated disto (eg. Demudi, Planet CCRMA) makes a lot of difference. - Steve
