>Well, I'm about to crack open a can of worms, but let me just say that >I'm 100% not interested in starting any debates/fights/riots/states-of- >emergency. Well - I won't tear your head off, anyway. :D >But, and this what it's all about, when it comes to my personal reason >for living --- music --- I'm forced to admit that on technical merits >alone, I have a hard time arguing for Linux. . . . . . > But if you really need the best tool for the job, then I >don't see the justification for using the open source solution. That all depends on what the tools are that your require, and what your particular needs happen to be. > I really, really want >to get an album out --- and I also want it to be really, really good. So do we - that's why we are using Linux and Ardour. >I want to use the best tools for the job, and in my evaluation, those are >proprietary tools. >OTOH, with a little work, I think the LMMS + Ardour can actually be the >best, or at least good enough. Ardour is already on track to be the best, and in our opinion - and for our purposes - it already is. > But I don't think I'm going to see >anybody who's primary interest is making music --- although I'd love to >be proved wrong, and I certainly think that things will be different in >the future as the tools get better. Well, you said you'd love to be proved wrong - so - you *are* wrong! We are not developers, nor geeks. Learning to use Linux for audio production has, in fact, proven to be quite a challenge for us. We decided to do so, because we found that none of the proprietary solutions - Steinberg, etc, met our needs. We were not happy with the results of any of them. (I think it goes without saying that we were not happy with the cost either.) We are serious musicians, and totally committed to making music - the best music we possibly can. We are working hard on our next album, and it is precisely because of the extremely high standards we have set for the production quality, that we have committed ourselves to using Ardour - the only program we have ever found that has lived up to those standards. There are little bugs, but we always find a way to work around them, and the developers just keep making it better and better. Ardour meets our needs because of its transparency, its support for high resolution recording, and its simplicity, coupled with its power. We don't use midi, we don't use plugins, we don't need a lot of gadgets, bells or whistles. We just record acoustic and acoustic-electric instruments - and now vocals - and need the highest fidelity recordings we can achieve to preserve the integrity of the sound that we have worked so hard to create - and do justice to the music. Ardour has enabled us to achieve this in a way that no other proprietary program ever has. If you use a lot of software instrumentation, midi features, plugins, etc. and need a lot of gadgetry - then perhaps proprietary programs can offer you more for that type of production - but quite frankly, we are musical purists, and find that a lot of that kind of thing gets away from a focus on the music itself. But to each their own. Simply put: making music *is* our highest priority, and *why* we are using Linux and Ardour. >i can hack ardour part time while i work. i can hack ardour full time >while i live the rest of my life. but i know for sure that i definitely >can't get into philosophical debates with the recently deceased while i >work full time on ardour and live the rest of my life. :D :D -Maluvia