If we were talking about recording a band, mixing it and mastering it, then I'd say we are pretty much ready: Ardour + ladspa + jamin and off you go.
Of course, an equivalent project to Durain should help improving a lot of the software (and even there is still room for improvement, let's be honest). The "Open Movie Project" of the Blender Foundation is designed with that in mind: they tackle specific production problems they KNOW are in blender, and use a real production (with a high quality standard and real deadlines, that it's going to be distributed "in the real world") to work them out and test the solutions.
And even though I thnk Free Software is ready for a "professional recording, mixing and mastering", the situation is far behind from Blender.
I work a little in 3D and, in that Field, Blender is not just about the enthusiastic, or the "open source advocates": it's a tool people consider alongside any other. Everybody knows about it. They complain a little bit about the interface but it doesn't seem to be a major problem. OK, it's not the most widley used, but everyone knows it and a lot of people had at least played around with it. And some people is actually using it for the day jobs.
If I talk about Ardour, Ladspa, Rosegarden, LV2 or Jamin in the "professional audio world", then 99% of the people I'd talk with wouldn't have any idea what I was talking about.
It'd be a good idea to see what's the difference between the free audio software and Blender AND between the audio and the 3D community that leads to this two scenarios.
The other thing to consider is what I said earlier, the kind of job we are talking about:
The Blender Open Movie projects require this ridiculous Hollywood type of score:
- Fake but HUGE orchestral sound (may I remark HUGE?).
- A lot of mood and tempo changes.
- Perfect Sync wiht video.
- The possibility to mix down the same work to stereo AND different multichannel outputs (5.1, 7.1, etc).
I'm really no expert and never intended to make THAT kind of work, but I think we'll encounter some technical issues if we try to do that with free audio software under linux.
For starters, it should require a lot of Library Stacking. Do we have a LOT of different great quality orchestral free sample libraries?
Do we have software that would allow, in a comfortable workflow, to work wiht this different stacks of sample material. Could we sequence that by midi in a way we can have tempo and mood swings all around the place while syncing it in video?
And that's just the things I can think of, not ever being even nearly interested with that kind of job. I'm pretty sure someone that's more "in the know" would find a lot more things to consider.
If we were thinking of another kind of score (wiht a more synthetic sound, for starters) then form some reason I have the feeling we can pull it off. We wouldn't be 100%, but we could pull it off and improve the software while at it.
But are we in the same situation that Blender is in the 3d field?
I don't think so.
But hey, that's not exactly a bad thing. Actually, is what makes me so excited about free audio software in the first place: there's a lot to be done, I feel like I grow WITH the tools.
There's a great future, but I think it's a good thing we start to think seriously about this stuff...
-francisco
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