On Feb 4, 5:57*pm, Mike Rivers <mriv...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> Where's the review of Ardour in Electronic Musician or Recording?

What do you think the response from their existing advertisers would
be if they reviewed a piece of software that is available at no cost
and said "even though its design is a little different, and the
documentation is lacking, this is a solid tool for those of you doing
traditional tracking+editing work, and could easily be used instead
of ...." ?


> So what might distinguish a Linux distribution that I might like better
> than
> others, that would cause me toward using it? And more important, how
> might I find that out without trying one, then another, then another, and
> try to remember the good and bad of each?

They might do a better job of tracking new releases of the kind of
software you are primarily interested in.
They might do a better job of providing kernels customized for the
kind of work you are interested in.
They might do a better job of providing a system that is ready "out of
the box" for the kind of work you are interested in.
They might do a better job of NOT screwing up the system for the kind
of work you are interested in.
They might do a better job of convincing you that they do these
things.

But yes, there isn't a good way for you to discover this in the
general sense. And worse, for people interested in pro-audio and music
creation, there really aren't too many (if any) good choices that get
all of this right anyway. There are some though that get a lot closer
than most ... PlanetCCRMA, AVLinux ...

> I suppose one could argue "Why make a replacement for something that
> already exists? Why not make something that does different things, or
> things differently, that people will find valuable?" *

DAWs are commodities now. That's why.

There are dozens of immensely cool programs to do very, very different
things with audio (and MIDI) than a commodity DAW. Yet whenever such
tools are mentioned in a group like this one, they tend to be
dismissed as "that's not part of my workflow", or something
equivalent. Pro-audio folk have co-evolved a workflow with the tools
they have, and challenges to that workflow model generally require
generational change. Most of the different stuff falls into the realm
of compositional tools.

> Ideally, neither. I want to buy software from a developer who knows what
> users do and need, and implements them in a sensible way, one that's
> easy to adapt to. I'm not going to tell a developer that this button
> should be
> yellow instead of orange, but if an important button is missing, it makes
> me wonder what kind of experience the developer really has, and I'm likely
> to not spend too much time trying to figure it out, but look elsewhere for
> my dream application.

where's the auto-input button on ProTools? there's no auto-input
button? but all my digital recorders have an auto-input button! how
can anyone use protools without an auto-input button? what kind of
experience do the digidesign guys have? how could anyone have written
nuendo without an auto-input button?

or more seriously, look at the bussing architecture of most DAWs
(including ardour 2.X) ....

dawhead wrote:
> On Feb 4, 5:57 pm, Mike Rivers <mriv...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
>> Where's the review of Ardour in Electronic Musician or Recording?
>
> What do you think the response from their existing advertisers would
> be if they reviewed a piece of software that is available at no cost
> and said "even though its design is a little different, and the
> documentation is lacking, this is a solid tool for those of you doing
> traditional tracking+editing work, and could easily be used instead
> of ...." ?

I believe I've seen such a review of Reaper, which while it does have
a price, is priced on the order of a reasonable donation to the Ardour
project. And like Ardour, a free trial isn't crippled. Most of those
magazines
have a "download of the month" which is often a free or inexpensive
piece of software, though more likely a utility, plug-in, or sound library
than a full-out DAW.

>> So what might distinguish a Linux distribution that I might like better
>> than others, that would cause me toward using it?

> They might do a better job of tracking new releases of the kind of
> software you are primarily interested in.
> They might do a better job of providing kernels customized for the
> kind of work you are interested in.
> They might do a better job of providing a system that is ready "out of
> the box" for the kind of work you are interested in.
> They might do a better job of NOT screwing up the system for the kind
> of work you are interested in.
> They might do a better job of convincing you that they do these
> things.

All good points, but they're all "might"s. One who has tried a number of
distributions probably has a good idea of what's the current best choice
for him, but I'll bet if I were to ask 10 experienced Linux users for their
recommendation, I'd get about 30 different answers.

> DAWs are commodities now. That's why.

Really?

> There are dozens of immensely cool programs to do very, very different
> things with audio (and MIDI) than a commodity DAW. Yet whenever such
> tools are mentioned in a group like this one, they tend to be
> dismissed as "that's not part of my workflow", or something
> equivalent.

That's certainly true with me. I don't even know what "make the beats" means
in the contemporary context. I don't work with loops, I don't piece
together
a song from snippets played well enough to patch them up, and I don't own
AutoTune (or even ProToos). Nor do I think that anyone needs a DAW that
does everything, because nobody can do everything well. But that doesn't
seem
to stop the makers from piling on the cool tools that this one or that
one will
find very useful.

What makes this a good thing is that if you do three or four different
things, all
of which are incorporated in the same program, the constants remain
constant.
You have the same menu structure for everything, the same input and output
assignments, color scheme, location of transport controls, similar editing
paradigms . . . all things that smooth workflow when moving from one task to
another in the same project.

> Pro-audio folk have co-evolved a workflow with the tools
> they have, and challenges to that workflow model generally require
> generational change. Most of the different stuff falls into the realm
> of compositional tools.

I won't argue with either of those points. Us old fogies tend to prefer
working with real live musicians who come in prepared with songs that
they can play pretty well. The compositional tools are a real boon to
the individual who wants to be a recording artist but doesn't have all
the skills or money to hire them.

> where's the auto-input button on ProTools? there's no auto-input
> button? but all my digital recorders have an auto-input button! how
> can anyone use protools without an auto-input button? what kind of
> experience do the digidesign guys have? how could anyone have written
> nuendo without an auto-input button?

I don't know about ProTools, but the auto-input button in Nuendo is called
"Tape deck monitoring" or something like that. I figured that out pretty
quickly.
But it's not an issue for me since even with auto-input monitoring, the
output
still comes out enough later than the input so that I find input monitoring
through the computer useless.

What I had hoped, when ASIO first came about, was that it would have
hooks to enable direct hardware monitoring - something that would tie the
analog input of an I/O box directly to the analog output, just like a
tape deck.
I was assured that such hooks were there. The problem was that the hardware
manufacturers didn't want to put relays in their boxes even though they
could
be controlled by the record/play status of the DAW application. Not even
the
boxes with a DSP mixer (with the inherent delay of the A/D converters
and DSP
hardware) take a "switch to direct-as-it-gets input monitoring" command
from
the DAW if, as I was told many years ago, such a command was even possible
and documented in the ASIO standard.




--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without
a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be
operated without a passing knowledge of audio." - John Watkinson

Mike Rivers wrote:

> ... I couldn't find anything to use it for that wasn't easier and
> better with inexpensive hardware or simple software. I have plenty of
> ways to record and edit stereo.

You were going to write a review of a multi-channel DAW software package
from experimenting with recording and editting stereo? Doesn't that
seem unfair? Couldn't the same be said of working with ProTools, Logic,
Digital Performer, Cubase, and others?

> When I first encountered Ardour, I already had a 24-track hard disk
> recorder (Mackie) which it appeared that Ardour was attempting to
> emulate. I was trying to get my friend who is totally committed to
> Unix to give it a try, but when we figured out what was involved in
> getting 24 channels of I/O, it simply didn't make any sense, other
> than perhaps Paul who had an RME interface and wanted Linux-based
> software to take it to its full potential. So he wrote a program.

I don't know if I would have started with Ardour when I did if I'd
already had a hard-disk recorder rather than ADAT. I'm also not sure
that I'd switch to HD now. I know I would go back to using ADAT only if
I needed to collaborate with someone else who was working that way. I
still fool myself that I will eventually settle on using Ardour as "the
tape machine" while working on my physical mixer and processors. I
haven't done that yet ... I have, at times, done rough mixes that way,
but when it comes to doing it for real, I tend to go to the computer
instead. Automation is very addictive.

> I don't bother with metrics. ...

Apparently you do: you decided that Ardour wasn't worth your effort
because you "couldn't find anything to use it for that wasn't easier and
better with inexpensive hardware or simple software." That's a metric ...

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sylvain Robitaille (E-Mail Removed)

Systems analyst / AITS Concordia University
Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------

On Feb 5, 11:08*am, Mike Rivers <mriv...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> I believe I've seen such a review of Reaper, which while it does have
> a price, is priced on the order of a reasonable donation to the Ardour
> project. And like Ardour, a free trial isn't crippled. Most of those
> magazines
> have a "download of the month" which is often a free or inexpensive
> piece of software, though more likely a utility, plug-in, or sound library
> than a full-out DAW.

did you check the download of the month for Electronic Musician for
Jan 2010?

On Feb 5, 11:08*am, Mike Rivers <mriv...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> What I had hoped, when ASIO first came about, was that it would have
> hooks to enable direct hardware monitoring - something that would tie the
> analog input of an I/O box directly to the analog output, just like a
> tape deck.
> I was assured that such hooks were there.

Indeed, they are, and "ASIO Direct Monitoring" was a significant
inspiration for JACK's monitoring API. As you note, its use is a bit
limited by h/w design.

In the Ardour menu structure:

Options -> Monitoring -> External Monitoring
Hardware Monitoring
Ardour does monitoring

The middle option is only available for devices that (a) have the h/w
to do direct monitoring (b) have support for it implemented. Right now
that covers the RME Hammerfall and HDSP series and anything based on
the ice1712/1724 chipsets, which is basically a ton of PCI interfaces
from various manufacturers (M-Audio, Terratec and lots more).

On Feb 5, 11:08*am, Mike Rivers <mriv...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> What I had hoped, when ASIO first came about, was that it would have
> hooks to enable direct hardware monitoring - something that would tie the
> analog input of an I/O box directly to the analog output, just like a
> tape deck.
> I was assured that such hooks were there.

Indeed, they are, and "ASIO Direct Monitoring" was a significant
inspiration for JACK's monitoring API. As you note, its use is a bit
limited by h/w design.

In the Ardour menu structure:

Options -> Monitoring -> External Monitoring
Hardware Monitoring
Ardour does monitoring

The middle option is only available for devices that (a) have the h/w
to do direct monitoring (b) have support for it implemented. Right now
that covers the RME Hammerfall and HDSP series and anything based on
the ice1712/1724 chipsets, which is basically a ton of PCI interfaces
from various manufacturers (M-Audio, Terratec and lots more).

On Feb 5, 11:08*am, Mike Rivers <mriv...@d-and-d.com> wrote:
> What I had hoped, when ASIO first came about, was that it would have
> hooks to enable direct hardware monitoring - something that would tie the
> analog input of an I/O box directly to the analog output, just like a
> tape deck.
> I was assured that such hooks were there.

Indeed, they are, and "ASIO Direct Monitoring" was a significant
inspiration for JACK's monitoring API. As you note, its use is a bit
limited by h/w design.

In the Ardour menu structure:

Options -> Monitoring -> External Monitoring
Hardware Monitoring
Ardour does monitoring

The middle option is only available for devices that (a) have the h/w
to do direct monitoring (b) have support for it implemented. Right now
that covers the RME Hammerfall and HDSP series and anything based on
the ice1712/1724 chipsets, which is basically a ton of PCI interfaces
from various manufacturers (M-Audio, Terratec and lots more).

On Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:08:54 -0500, Mike Rivers wrote:


> I don't know about ProTools, but the auto-input button in Nuendo is called
> "Tape deck monitoring" or something like that. I figured that out pretty
> quickly.
> But it's not an issue for me since even with auto-input monitoring, the
> output
> still comes out enough later than the input so that I find input monitoring
> through the computer useless.

From the Nuendo 4 Manual:

¡E Manual.
This option allows you to turn input monitoring on or off by
clicking the
Monitor button in the Inspector, the Track list or in the mixer.

¡E While Record Enabled.
With this option, you will hear the audio source connected to the
channel
input whenever the track is record enabled.

¡E While Record Running.
This option switches to input monitoring only during recording.

¡E Tapemachine Style.
This option emulates standard tapemachine behavior: input
monitoring in
Stop mode and during recording, but not during playback

You can also set up ASIO for direct monitoring via a checkbox in
the ASIO control panel.

Sylvain Robitaille wrote:

> You were going to write a review of a multi-channel DAW software package
> from experimenting with recording and editting stereo? Doesn't that
> seem unfair?

No, not at all. I was going to write an article about Linux being a viable
operating system for audio production (the kind that most readers are
doing, which means a reasonably full-featured DAW). However, I did
not write the article since I was unable to evaluate any DAW with more
than a stereo interface. Hence, I wouldn't consider Linux to be a viable
platform yet because the choices for I/O hardware were too limited. But
that would be too short an article.

> I don't know if I would have started with Ardour when I did if I'd
> already had a hard-disk recorder rather than ADAT.

Again, you forgot the earlier part of the movie. I had no NEED to use
Ardour, I just wanted to see if I would recommend it to a typical novice
DAW user.

>> I don't bother with metrics. ...
>
> Apparently you do: you decided that Ardour wasn't worth your effort
> because you "couldn't find anything to use it for that wasn't easier and
> better with inexpensive hardware or simple software." That's a metric ...

No, that's an assessment. A metric would be "I found that it would with
with 25 out of the most popular 8-channel Firewire or USB interfaces."


--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without
a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be
operated without a passing knowledge of audio." - John Watkinson

dawhead wrote:

> did you check the download of the month for Electronic Musician for
> Jan 2010?

No, I hadn't got that far into the stack yet, but since you asked, I dug
it out and
checked the article over lunch. For those of you not so fortunate as to
have a
copy of the Jan 2010 Electronic Musician handy, the short article,
hardly a review,
is of Harrison Consoles Mixbus (Mac). Note that the subject header of
this post,
and lengthly thread, is about Linux.

While I'm sure you're pleased to see a mention of Ardour (the underlying DAW
part of Mixbus) mentioned in EM, the author brings up many of the points
that
we've been discussing here:

- It's not Linux, it's for the Mac

- "Audio routing requires the free and included Jack Audio Connection
Kit (Jack OS X),
and that entails a bit of setup.

- "AU plug-ins are supported but their graphics are sometimes iffy"

- "The documentation is sketchy but combined with a little DAW experience
there's enough to figure out most features"

- It doesn't host virtual instruments or offer MIDI sequencing
("Although Mixbus is
not likely to become your only DAW . . . ")

- "Mixbus is a great tool for sketching and remixing with files in your
audio library"

On a more positive note, the author notes "Its low-CPU footprint makes
it ideal for
recording on a laptop." (Reaper will run off a USB thumb drive)

I acknowledge that it's possible to record and edit in Mixbus, but I've
always thought
that its strength lies in mixing, not surprising since it's brought ot
us by the make of
some of the finest mixing consoles around.

And it's for the Mac.



--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be operated without
a passing knowledge of computing, although it seems that it can be
operated without a passing knowledge of audio." - John Watkinson