On 01/14/2014 05:45 AM, Dan MacDonald wrote: > seems most people on this list are Linux users so I don't understand why > they aren't already using qtractor, presuming they're aware of it?
1. I can build entire songs in LMMS project files, which I can then email to other people or backup safely without adding $ dpkg -l >projectname-possible-dependencies.txt to my workflow, and have done so. It's too bad that you don't find its built-in instruments useful, but most of us here do. It allows me to get around the problem that the rest of the Linux audio community has tried again and again, with initiatives like LASH and LADISH, to combat, and they've failed every single time. So, using qtractor or any other MIDI sequencer without its own instruments is essentially like going back to the bad old days of the '80s for me, when I had a couple racks of synthesizers and had to remember the patches and settings (and save sysex files, in some cases) for each one of them in order to reconstruct a track. 2. I can run LMMS without remembering how to start and configure JACK. I just launched qtractor and it immediately complained I had no JACK or ALSA midi server running, requiring a restart after I had jumped through its hoops. One of my biggest issues with most Linux audio production tools is that they require you to learn a whole workflow (start JACK server, set up audio routing, set up MIDI routing) before you hear a single note, while with LMMS you start the program, double-click a track and hear a note in the default instrument. 3. With LMMS, when you're happy with what you have, Project/Render will make you a wav file of your song. With every other Linux MIDI program I've used, and unless I totally missed something in its interface, qtractor is no exception, you have to record the song in real time and hope for no JACK hiccups, which got very, very, VERY tedious when I was in the final stages of tweaking a track. LMMS is not meant to be a MIDI sequencer or HDR. It occupies the space between MOD trackers and MIDI sequencers, having its own built-in sound generation options that go far beyond sample playback, but totally capable of producing a track from start to finish. I'm told this is similar to the Fruity Loops workflow, but Fruity Loops appeared after I'd already dumped Windows. Yes, the Unix way is to have 10 different tools connected via IPC -- on the command line it's pipes, in the audio world it's JACK and MIDI. That's great on the command line where you can copy and paste a huge pipeline of commands or save them as a shell script, but when the 10 different tools are all individual X programs, it's a huge pain in the ass. That workflow also impedes my creativity hugely. I couldn't get through a single song from 2002, when I recorded my last track in the late, great Buzz before ditching Windows, until 2009 when I started using LMMS seriously. I have five old MIDI synthesizers in the den. They haven't been powered up since I moved into this house six years ago, because I can do more with LMMS than I can with any of them (a CZ-101, a DX7, an M1, and two newer sample-playback workstations I inherited when my mom died). My piano has been on, but I'd only really use that for input; I have piano sample sets that sound far better and there's no analog barrier between its waveforms and my song. Apart from the lack of arbitrary routing, to me LMMS is the closest thing Linux has to Buzz, and that's what I've used LMMS to replace. When I'm recording a song based on guitar or piano, sure, I use something else, but usually it's Audacity because I don't need or want real-time effects. So, the last thing I want is for LMMS to be more like qtractor (or MUSE or Rosegarden or any of the other MIDI sequencers I banged my head on before finding LMMS). Why is this on the devel list, again? Rob ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ LMMS-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/lmms-devel
