fred wrote:
> Ralf Mardorf a écrit :
>   
>>>> I don't remember if you once give information about your hardware. 
>>>> Can you please (again) write what mobo, CPU (type and speed), 
>>>> graphics (type and on-board or slot), how much RAM and which audio 
>>>> device or devices you're using? I guess I remember that you're using 
>>>> 1GB RAM, right?
>>>>         
>>> Right, CPU is P4 and all devices are onboardHP. Not a good machine 
>>> but try to get all than can be from !  Greets -f
>>>       
>> Referring to http://www.64studio.com/faq_user "Something like a 
>> Pentium IV with 512MB RAM works well enough for most tasks". But a 
>> sound device for ex 90,- EUR is needed. Even if you shouldn't become 
>> fine with Linux real-time audio you will need such a sound device for 
>> the OS with name you won't read too.
>>
>>     
> Since 4 years have made music without, even on winblowsTM, but do you 
> means that a sound device will help for the RAM ?
>
> Notice please there's wroten MOST tasks, maybe what I try to do is not 
> concerned ? ;-)

Hi Fred :)

I guess you should listen to music made by Linux and ask those people 
who made music similar to the music you like to do, what hardware they 
are using for productions, that have the quality you like. Also ask for 
the kind of way they make music. Do they use sequencers, or do they play 
each instrument manually? Do they use additional hardware, e.g. 19" 
effect racks? Etc. ...?! Anything else just is useless, coloured by 
individual opinions.

If you like to listen to good audio productions listen to "Dave 
Phillips: Music Made With Ardour", 
http://linux-sound.org/ardour-music.html. This is possible by using 
Linux, but notice that he is making music different to the way we will 
make music. If you find a production as good as those, done with Linux 
in the way we would do music, let me know the link.

This is my individual opinion ;), nothing more and nothing less.

I had an ASRock K7VT2, Athlon single core 900MHz 32-bit, 256MB RAM, AGP 
NVidia and it was able to do heavy mixing with Windows. I wanted to use 
Linux only, I'm not from Windows, but Linux wasn't fine with 256MB and a 
900MHz CPU, so I bought 1024MB additional RAM, that means I then had 
1280MB RAM, but Linux still wasn't fine with the resources. Only because 
of this a friend lend me money to get another computer.
Today I've got an ASUS M2A-VM HDMI, Athlon dual core 2.1GHz 64-bit, 
1920MB RAM (2GB - 128MB for frame buffer), on-board graphics and I still 
can't do such heavy mixing with Linux, I could do with the old board on 
Windows.
The audio (not MIDI) sound device was always and is a Terratec EWX24/96.

Tuning a computer for Linux is like tuning a small moped. To plane the 
cylinder had, to install a larger nozzle to the carb and adding a bigger 
manifold etc. will have less effect for the single tuning, but in 
addition all tunings will make the small moped much faster, but a small 
moped never will become a big motorbike.

I know more people who would confirm my experiences, but some claim that 
their mileages do vary, they say Linux should be the OS that should need 
less resources, but because of the ways LADSPAs and VSTs are working, 
this is hard to believe. Because of the limitations for LADSPAs for 
Linux, LV2 was made. LV2 should be available to do similar less limited 
effects like it's possible to do when using VST.

LV2 still is less supported and the available effects seems to be 
reprogrammed LADSPA effects, that maybe don't use the advantages that 
LV2 might has got.

In forums it's very often to read, that something should be better for 
Linux, than it's for Windows, if you qualify such issues. Then, some 
years later, when Linux has adapted a feature from Windows, the same 
people do write that this feature should be an effort by Linux, that 
Windows shouldn't have got too.

Linux still is a golden calf for people that want to be cooler than the 
average population. Technical facts doesn't matter for those people. I 
guess less of them really do have different mileages to ours.

The long and the short of it, if a sound device is faster, it needs less 
buffer and buffer is RAM and/or usage of CPU registers. Every 
application's audio data has to be buffered.

Linux will become better each day, Linux for audio real-time will become 
better each day too, but sometimes it got and will get some temporary 
setbacks, because real-time on Linux still is experimental and the audio 
community for Linux is a small one. A report from 2009 said that Linux 
for desktop computers is used by less than 1% of all desktop computer 
users and less computer users are real-time audio users. There are only 
a few developers and users for real-time audio. For most Linux folks it 
seems to be more important to include the existing experimental 
real-time to extensive desktop environments made for consumers, but not 
producers, by adding daemons, e.g. dbus, real-time kit, that only will 
have disadvantages for producers who struggle for every little piece of 
resource, while there seldom is a need to use real-time for consumers.

Everybody should stay at Linux if possible and everybody should shoot of 
one's mouth. I know so many people that wrote off-list and after a while 
for audio work only, they changed the OS. Often I pointed out troubles 
for release candidates and because of this I was dissed and when a 
distro was released and everybody could see that I were right, the 
postings in forums were deleted.

The community must think that I'm crazy, that I "invent" imaginary 
off-list contacts. Btw. thank you that you forwarded this off-list reply :).

It's very important to point out important issues and stand above 
obligatory bad abuses.
It's also very important that for the needs of most musicians Linux 
isn't comparable to proprietary applications. Listen to the productions 
of people who are fine with Linux, notice what equipment they use and 
compare this equipment with the equipment you own and ask yourself if 
you would be fine with the quality of their productions for your own 
productions.

Instead of making music with my Windows installation, I try to fix my 
Linux installation, while I'm very controversial that I do so, but I'm 
not controversial because of the distro. There's not only a windows 
installation on my machine, but also different Linux installations, at 
the moment just different 64 Studio versions and different Suse 
versions, but I also tested other distros, e.g. dynebolic. There seems 
to be some other distros that are good for real-time audio, but 64 
Studio is one of the good distros. If you'll use another distro it's 
possible that everything will be as good as with 64 Studio, but it's 
more probable that thinks become more worse for real-time audio and less 
probable that something will become better by another distro.

I only installed Windows, because for 64 Studio 2.1 Jack disconnected 
clients, I'm a native Linux user for the PC, I'm a native computer 
musician (in addition I'm a native non-computer musician), but I'm not a 
native PC computer musician, I used other computers. PC and Mac seems 
not to be the best choices for making computer music, but the only 
choices because of the costs. The Atari ST today isn't expensive, but 
the needed MIDI and SMPT interface still is expensive, additional 
hardware, synth, effects and tape recorders or good hard disk recording 
systems are expensive.

Yes, "most tasks" is very vague, that's why I wrote this statement. 
Anybodies opinion or experiences in the end is relative irrelevant for 
you. You should listen to music made with Linux and if you found music 
that is near to your ideas, you should ask for the used hardware etc..

Cheers,
Ralf
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