On 03/30/2014 12:27 PM, Louigi Verona wrote:
What we can learn from Bitwig is that they base their work on
musician's needs. And their whole application is tailored towards a
musician getting his work done easier and more efficiently.
In Linux Audio very often the basis is a curious technical idea that
might have little to do with doing music. As a made-up example "why
not create a framework that will have all the midi connections in one
place and it will dynamically reassign those connections and plug them
using my new format that everyone will have to adapt because it is
such a great and efficient format".
This is a strictly technical passion. Commercial projects tend to
figure out what their users actually want.
Even right now in this thread I see people suggesting many cool
technical feats, but I see little interest in trying to understand
what musicians might want. As I usually write, sometimes getting
heated metaphors back at myself for that, often a musician needs some
basic stuff first.
I spoke about no Linux sampler supporting WAVE loops, although all
Windows DAWs do.
Or that no sf2 player has volume envelope, although most non-Linux sf2
players do.
And the reason for this is because people are doing software for
themselves and not necessarily for others. This is not good or bad,
this is just how it is. You decide whether you want to change this or not.
It's true, the attention to workflow and needs of musicians of Bitwig is
impressive.
I'm sure I'll be aware even more of it's possibilities if someone shows
me what you can do in Bitwig exactly.
On the other hand, looking at Bitwig I'm not sure whether I should be
more impressed by Biwtig or by the achievements of the linuxuadio
community, of what is possible with Floss Linuxaudio already. And yes
impressed also by the technical infrastructure. I mean, what you get
from Bitwig is portaudio, that's almost a shame for a 300 euro app from
a linuxaudio-user pov. Also it lacks OSC, LADSPA, LV2 and NSM support.
Stuff you'll find in Ardour for instance.
Also the quality in sound(instruments/samples) they give you for your
300 euro, is not impressive for me, don't get fooled. But this seems to
be cultural thing, the acceptance of low quality sound.
My conclusion so far is that Bitwig gives you what Linuxaudio lack too
often, smooth workflow and 'completeness' of features. This is a major
thing for people who want to make music!
On the other hand, apart from very sophisticated features for making
beats etc., a lot could be possible with Linuxaudio tools or is already
possible today.
The challenge today is to make Linuxaudio tools more friendly and
complete for musicians and integrate them better with each other. With
metadata in JACK, NSM, OSC it should be possible to improve this more
and more. It would be nice to launch Non-Timeline in a NSM session with
Carla and control Carla by Non-Timeline via OSC for instance.
\r
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