Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 12:45, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 03:15:51AM +0100, Jens M Andreasen wrote: I have studied scales from apart the world since I was a teenager. Great ! Do you make the results of your efforts available somewhere ? Now you're imposing the same kind of attitude on Jens. ;) That (Scala) package reveals *nada* that isn't already well known. If you have some pointers to similar packages, please share them with us. I think this isn't the point. The point is, that even if the application itself is free as in beer, you may encounter problems when trying to run it, like: ./scala: error while loading shared libraries: libgnarl-3.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory The closed source model just isn't flexible enough in the open source world since more technically capable users are not allowed to fix such problems on their own and contribute by sending back. With windows you always get one and the same OS which is governed by one company, so a closed source model is more likely to work under such conditions. Once such application becomes unmaintained, there's little or no hope for using it any further if the source code isn't available. There are too many dependencies, too many libraries that advance each day in terms of code and version numbers, and too many configurations, combinations thereof, which means that a closed source model isn't feasible under linux at all. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 21:34, Lee Revell wrote: On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 17:32 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: I think this isn't the point. The point is, that even if the application itself is free as in beer, you may encounter problems when trying to run it, like: ./scala: error while loading shared libraries: libgnarl-3.4.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory The closed source model just isn't flexible enough in the open source world since more technically capable users are not allowed to fix such problems on their own and contribute by sending back. Yeah, I really hate those cryptic error messages like No such file or directory. Please. Any technically capable user would figure out in a microsecond that the above means you are missing a library that the binary is linked against. It even tells you exactly which fscking file you need. The fix is apt-get install libgnarl or whatever. Oh really? You would get a very similar error trying to compile the program if you didn't have the libgnarl-devel package installed. This is not a question of open vs closed source it's USER ERROR. So what if there's libgnarl 6.7 available, with changed APIs and all that or what if Scala or whatever app can be happily compiled against 3.2 or 3.6 or whatever else? There are much better examples to illustrate your point (like the old story of RMS and the printer driver). Even for a troll that's pretty weak. Read my messages again and *think* before you respond. Idiot. End of discussion.
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
it's the height of hypocrisy to disrespect the copyright holders distribution terms. What?? Where did i disrespect his terms? Guy, I don't need the source code. I really don't. You may, but I don't. Sometimes I want to see it. Sometimes I need it to make a binary because there is no other option. I like the option of having it available. Sometimes I even poke it with a stick and let the author know if any maggots fall out, but it's not a requirement. If a prog sounds interesting, I want to spend most of the introduction time running the code to see if it's even worth taking the time to download the source. I say I don't care about access to the source code, which is the developers melieu, you say you don't care about the runtime, which is the users melieu. It's two sides of the same coin, so let's all just do what we gotta do instead of going around in circles. You didn't get my messages at all Listen, why don't you just buy the software you need? As you said anyway, they are a lot better in terms of quality, and you're not really interested in free as in speech anyway, so what's the point? Or is it that you just don't want to spend the money? Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
B) The GPL is not the be all end all ideal of licenses. Actually it's a rather smart license and i'm glad it's been widely adopted. The fact that GPL needs another revision is another story. OTOH, how do you measure the value of Scala or any other application? Is it determined by popularity? Perhaps utility. Err, actually the more people find it useful the more popular it is. snip a whole lot Every extra developer adds administrative overhead. Accounts must be established, patches inspected, debates resolved, boo-boos kissed. Not everybody has time for the drama. I can't believe what i'm reading. A) This is Linux Audio list not EFF. The S/N ratio here sucks as it is. (oh sweet irony) Let me suggest that we all just shut up from now on? Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 00:59, Taybin Rutkin wrote: Marek Peteraj wrote: Read my messages again and *think* before you respond. Idiot. These flamewars are making me want to unsubscribe from LAD. You don't have to, i'm doing it now. Please stop being so hostile. Sure.
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
On Sat, 2004-12-18 at 22:44, John Check wrote: On Saturday 18 December 2004 10:20 am, Dave Robillard wrote: On Fri, 2004-17-12 at 15:28 -0500, John Check wrote: On Friday 17 December 2004 01:04 pm, Paul Brossier wrote: On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 04:18:15PM +0100, Andreas Kuckartz wrote: future). But he made this offer: However if someone makes a Debian package for it, I'll be happy to distribute it. oh well, without (!) the source code there is no point anyway... Nah, nobody is interested in running the app, just dickering about licensing... Frankly, I _really_ don't think there's room for elitism coming from LAU because non-free software currently kicks our asses up and down the street as far as functionality goes. What's good to advance the cause is good apps. The source doesn't matter. Hell, I'd pay a dollar not to hear such silliness before I'd complain about gratis-ware Correction: What's good to advance YOUR personal cause is good apps. pWn3d The source doesn't matter to YOU. Source of the apps, not source code. All of the good things about free software are not constants that apply in every case or context. It's the fact's Jack, for most people source code is worth bupkis. Simply because they are not aware of the idea of open source at all(people that use other operating systems). Open source is about flexibility, control, trust, quality and eternal life of your favorite application. You should care even if you don't know how to code at all. Linux as an audio platform is about the _runtime_. Linux audio _development_ is about the source code. Not really, it's both about sourcecode and runtime. That's the main difference. If you want to walk the altruism walk, you do IIRC, have the skills to fix what you see as evil. I have a hard time believing Andreas' statement is coming from a need to audit every line of code on his system. You don't need to audit it as long as you have the source code itself. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Request/Offer: Debian package for Scala
On Sun, 2004-12-19 at 01:46, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 10:20:44AM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote: Not everyone's standards/opinions are the same as yours. And not everyone's credits are the same as yours. Did you ever have a close look at Scala ? It's one of those rare apps that show off a level of dedication and quality that's hard to find. It has probably taken years of hard work and painstaking research. No disagreement about that. If the author of such a great work makes it available for free, I can only say 'thanks a lot'. If ever you contribute anything that reaches only ten percent of the value of Scala, then maybe you will have gained a bit of the authority required to question the author's choices. Until that time, you will just make a fool of yourself by doing so. I think there are two types of contribution, application contribution(free as in beer) and source code contribution(free as in speech). While Scala falls into the first category, AFAIK Dave is an active open source contributor. OTOH, how do you measure the value of Scala or any other application? Is it determined by popularity? And if Debian wants to preserve its (her ? his ?) virginity by imposing strict rules on what will be included and what will not be, that's fine for me. But please don't impose the same attitude on the whole world. I don't think it was Daves intention to rant on the authors decision to not release source code. He was trying to point out some of the motivations behind open source that some of us seem to forget. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] ssm2
Hi, Or has some or all this stuff already been done? Most of the work will be in converting ssm's 50+ existing plugins to ladspa - and writing a gui that sends osc messages. I think this is a great idea, since it allows everyone else to share the DSP. Marek
[linux-audio-dev] Re: [linux-audio-user] TAKE ACTION - Thread on RME - additional notes
Hi, just wanted to say that there are 10 posts already, none of those guys were actively participating in recent threads except Martin IIRC. I counted at least another 10-15 people who mentioned that they're using RME on LAD/LAU. For those who don't feel like expressing their opinion at all, i'd like to say that it's absolutely ok to just mention your gear:Hi, i use RME (...).. BTW all of those posts are very polite (too polite for my taste ;) Marek
[linux-audio-dev] TAKE ACTION - Thread on RME has been started(2msgs), Please Contribute!
Hi all, thanks to Martin Rumori, there is now a thread called Linux audio, ALSA and RME support on the RME forum. Please do not hesitate to contribute! The forum can be found here: News server: news.x-networks.de Forum: rme-audio.forum In case you have troubles finding the right software in order to reach the forum, here are some suggestions: Mozilla www.mozilla.org Pan http://pan.rebelbase.com/ Pine http://www.washington.edu/pine/ Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] TAKE ACTION - RME customers and linux audio users please read
On Sun, 2004-12-05 at 02:32, Jens M Andreasen wrote: WILL YOU PLZ ALL SHUT UP ALL BEFORE EVERYBODY IS GETTING BADNAMED!! THIS LIST IS F SEARCHABLE, IF YOU DID NOT KNOW THIS IS NOT A PRIVATE CONVERSATION Jens, that's the beauty of being public. It's a lot closer to honesty and takes a lot more courage to do it. BTW RME knows about this lists. (sorry, felt like raising my voice as well ...) No need to. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] TAKE ACTION - RME customers and linux audio users please read
Additional note: Since i've been involved in discussions on that forum, it would be better if anybody else volunteered to start the thread. As nobody has done this yet, i suspect it going to be a fiasco, but at least it was worth a try. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
I thought you were just bitching because RME didn't give you something you wanted and you were trying to rally the LAD troops to create a big stink to try to get RME to give it to you... ;-) No it was me. Watch your words. You're starting to be pretty rude and offensive.
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Sat, 2004-12-04 at 16:18, Jan Depner wrote: On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 19:58, Dave Robillard wrote: Your initial reply to me, which was not about the issue at hand whatsoever - you called me obnoxious and insulting. That counts as a personal attack in my books, and immediately forced the discussion in a useless direction. Point is you made comments about me personally, not my statements (always the sign of someone with no argument to stand on, BTW) I didn't call you obnoxious. I asked you to stop being obnoxious. A fine difference I admit but a difference anyway. You *did* insult a number of people by calling their ideas ignorant so I didn't find it insulting. - Petition. Probably not the right attitude we want to project, and less impact than many individual letters anyway. Agreed. The only good point is that it's much easier to get people to sign an online petition than sending individual letters. Not really if you take people into account that either find it uncomfortable to use their real names on the internet(which is fine with me) and possible spam in case they're asked for email. Plus there's the chance to get more people into linux audio, since almost *everybody* there is able to run LA with his audio hw. Guess why. :) - Forum posting. Apparently there's an RME forum? Never seen it personally. Possibly better than email letters because it's viewable by the public and they can't just ignore all of us. Plus a productive conversation might result. As long as we keep it respectable. Negative emotions are ok. Positive emotions are ok. No emotions are ok. I can't tell anyone to behave in a certain way. There's no such thing as collective responsibility in this case. Marek
[linux-audio-dev] TAKE ACTION - RME customers and linux audio users please read
Hi all, following the conclusion of a very long discussion on both LAD and LAU mailinglists, i would like to invite you all to participate in an event that should take place on RME's official forum. The goal is to run a thread on linux audio and RME support. Not a discussion, but rather just raising your hand if you are a customer and letting them know what hardware you are using, or whether you are interested in their products or plan to purchase one if you are not a customer of RME todate. Please, if you are a RME customer, let them at least know what hardware you are using. You are free to express your feelings and you are free to express no feelings if you do not wish. Please avoid using swearwords. In case you haven't found the thread, feel free to start it. Hi, i'm a linux audio user and i'm using your prod. X with linux audio and i plan to continue using your products in the future (upgrades, new products) if there will be future support from RME by providing specifications or something along these lines. We need to agree on the topic so that people can easily find it: Linux audio, ALSA and RME support In case you are not satisfied with the topic, let us know so that we can agree upon another one. Please be sure to post in that thread. In case you have friends that use linux audio with RME and are not LAD or LAU subscribers, please let them know. The forum can be found here: News server: news.x-networks.de Forum: rme-audio.forum In case you have troubles finding the right software in order to reach the forum, here are some suggestions: Mozilla www.mozilla.org Pan http://pan.rebelbase.com/ Pine http://www.washington.edu/pine/ In case somebody knows of other newsreader software please let us know. Ok, let's go! :) thanks Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
I am not sure that providing opensource drivers is risk free, and I am a huge proponent of oss. You do not sound like a lawyer, I am one. Better luck next time. ;) I'd give it one more chance and post a 'rme - take action' letter to lad and lau which would encourage people to go to the rme forum, tell them that their using their hw, what kind of hw they have purchased and that they would continue to do so in the future. But i fear that a lot of people would just ignore it, thinking to themselves 'my vote doesn't count, they will ignore it anyway, it's a waste of time, there's just 5 of us' or similar. I might be wrong. If somebody wants to encourage me in doing this i'd be glad to do it. I'd also encourage to write polite letters if that's what suits the majority here ;) Politeness is almost always a better approach to get what you want. Your opinion. Mine is - depends. In this case...not. For various reasons. If we'd achieve a fairly large number - say 100, the consequences would be either: - RME reconsidering their decision - raising interest of all the RME customers in linux audio, because virtually everyone there is able to try it out on a professional level. Except the fireface users(minority still, since it's a new device). which if successful, would most likely bring RME to reconsider their postion anyway. The number of interested people is not the only factor in RME's decision. I would be surprised if a mere 100 people would have any impact at all. You'd be surprised. This is not to say that I do not support such efforts, just be a little more realistic with the expectations. I could tell the same to you. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
Open source and freedom of IP for me are moral choices. I have no problem with anybody who tries to live or behave according to his beliefs. That would be me. I *do* have a problem with those who want to impose their standards onto others that do not share the same beliefs. That would be the companies that impose their proprietary standards on me. Forget it. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 15:44, Doug Wellington wrote: delurk Most of you don't know me, I'm sure, but I've been working with various forms of Unix since the 80's. I work as a system adminstrator during the day, where I deal with about 500 computers of various types, from Linux to Solaris to Tru64 to VMS and, yes, Windows. I'm also a programmer, maintaining various userland applications as well as developing device drivers for the Ensoniq EDS-1000 (PARIS) audio processing card. I'm a big believer in freedom of choice - choose the right tool for the right job. I also believe in accountability - I don't mind paying for something if it means I get some form of customer service in return. I judge people and companies not just by the initial product they create, but also by how they deal with problems associated with that product. I also judge people by their reaction to problems I have in my own work - are they understanding of me as a human being or do they get upset with me when I don't meet their standards (which may or may not be my own standards)? With that said, one comment has inspired me to don my asbestos and respond to this thread: I think that at some point it has become disrespectful for companies to ignore linux. There is a reason that many self-help and management books say that you have to *earn* respect. Ok say you did the drivers, provided support for them, everything went ok, no ripoffs, say a hundred of sold products as a consequence. After all that they say we don't share this information with *anyone* If that doesn't ring a bell, then it's not worth to continue with this discussion. People aren't going to do what you want if you beat them up about it. Look at history Why do i have to look at the history if there are numerous cases which proved that it just works. Why do you compare this situation where a bunch of people would normally try to achieve something, which in return would give companies more customers, which christian clergy which misused every opportunity to spread their propaganda. I deeply feel for those who were brave enough to ignore it and were prosecuted for it. So i can't really understand people (oss users or even oss developers) who try to defend the position of companies that make their lives harder for no reason. But it's OK for you to make those companies' lives harder? Sorry but i fail to see how. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
I think the whole thread got started by the fact that Marek needs the product, or feels that he needs it. That he went and bought assuming a linux driver would appear is maybe naive, It was naive i admit. A real conundrum And this will get worse IMHO. The oss advocates seem to insist on a separation between soft- and hardware that is becoming more and more vague. I wonder if it is even economically feasible to make small production runs when you put all your custom stuff in custom chips instead of in the driver and using off the shelf components. And what is the difference between a closed-source library/driver and a some custom chips without blueprints/specs? Does anyone here run a computer where they full access to all the bios www.linuxbios.org, tyan already ships MoBos with LB preinstalled. /northbridge/southbridge specs and code? Definitely they (via, amd, intel) provided specifications for kernel developers. For example intel has not provided their specs for centrino yet, but promised they would deliver closed source drivers. Not sure about the current situation. 2 years ago, it was (almost) impossible to run linux on an nvidia chipset based MoBo. Same problem. So in short: yes. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
And anyway, it's not like we're trying to force a religion on them or something. Open drivers being better is not a belief, it is a fact It's only a fact modulo your assumptions, which in turn depend on your perspective. Define 'better'. Philosophers have been busy doing that for some tens of centuries, and they still do not agree. We do not live in a world that has realised this ideal. Lots of people think differently, and we have to live with them. IIUC ideal world means an opensourced world? If so it's simple. Spread the word. Not hard, and that's what people usually do. Take ffii.org as an example. Is there really anything wrong with sending some polite emails pointing out the problems and requesting a more open strategy? No. But you can't 'request' anything, they are free to act as they like. You not only can but should request it if you care, they are free to act as they like. And bare the consequences. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 17:42, Dave Robillard wrote: On Fri, 2004-03-12 at 02:35 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: I'd give it one more chance and post a 'rme - take action' letter to lad and lau which would encourage people to go to the rme forum, tell them that their using their hw, what kind of hw they have purchased and that they would continue to do so in the future. But i fear that a lot of people would just ignore it, thinking to themselves 'my vote doesn't count, they will ignore it anyway, it's a waste of time, there's just 5 of us' or similar. I might be wrong. If somebody wants to encourage me in doing this i'd be glad to do it. I'd also encourage to write polite letters if that's what suits the majority here ;) Do it. We hardly have any right to complain if we don't even express distaste with their newfound fascist strategy. It's much easier to send a letter (or post on the forum or whatever) if there's some sort of easy template to go by. And since you volunteered... :) Ok :) A few questions before i proceed. I think i should mention where to reach their forum and what sw is available to conveniently reach it(i use pan, does anybody recommend something else?) About the subject: not sure whether to use all uppercase or not. I'd use uppercase in order to make people more aware but not sure anyway. The subject would be TAKE ACTION - RME customers please read or something like that. The rule would be to agree on the subject under which the thread would run on their forum, something like Linux, ALSA, RME support. Everybody would find this thread and post: 1. his/her RME hardware 2. if (s)he's not a customer yet and considering, mentioning that (s)he's doing so 3. whether he/she was satisfied with their hw and ALSA support or not comments? Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 19:15, Doug Wellington wrote: Previously: All this mentioning of belief and church to degrade open source people is no better than me calling you and RME Nazis. Seems to be a recurring theme that the person who presents the open source position makes no personal attacks whatsoever, and someone who is okay with proprietary drivers responds with personal attacks (both suggestively by you to Marek and directly by Jan to myself). Let's throw the name calling aside please. Anyway... There are very valid technical reasons why a closed piece of hardware is a POS from a Linux user's perspective. [Heehee... Anyone else see the irony in this?] So, it's ok for you to imply (in a previous email to Marek) that RME is fascist and (in this email) that their hardware is a POS, but if anyone else says anything defending them, that's a personal attack? I think Dave was trying to point out something different. Besides, it's not a personal attack with regards to RME, simply because RME is a legal entity. :) There are a lot of things that I'd like to be able to do that I can't. [SHRUG] There are always other options. Why limit yourself? Could you give me one option for 10 analog i/os of 24/192, firewire? I'm a linux user. :) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Fri, 2004-12-03 at 22:23, Doug Wellington wrote: Previously: Ok say you did the drivers, provided support for them, everything went ok, no ripoffs, say a hundred of sold products as a consequence. After all that they say we don't share this information with *anyone* So, did they, or did they not, stop sharing the information they were sharing previously? We have a lot of discussions here in the States about entitlements. (In my estimation, one of the defining characteristics of being a democrat vs. being a republican.) Because someone provided something in the past (and still provides it), does that mean you are automatically entitled to something else similar from them in the future...? Why do you compare this situation where a bunch of people would normally try to achieve something, which in return would give companies more customers, which christian clergy which misused every opportunity to spread their propaganda. You can't see any similarities??? Oh my... It's hard for me to do anything besides see the comparison - it's called moral righteousness. Think about it for a bit, and if you just can't imagine any similarities at all, send me a private email and I'll give you some ideas. OK, one hint - imagine, if only just for a second, that for this comparison non-Christian roughly equates to non-Linux-user and that Christian clergy roughly equates to Linux evangelist. (Oh, and feel free to substitute open source for Linux in that phrase...) It is my personal belief that people who hide behind the shield of moral righteousness are the most close-minded people of all... I deeply feel for those who were brave enough to ignore it and were prosecuted for it. As I deeply feel for the RME folks who are being persecuted for this... Heheh. Was a lot of fun to read it. Poor microsoft. Now flame me ladders. Now that i've got a fire...face.
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 13:52, Thomas Grill wrote: If 50 persons say Please would you be so kind ... And another 50 say FY, in the end it's the number that counts. 100 (potential) customers. Each one of use is responsioble for his *own* statements. Sorry, maybe we're from different planets, but i can't follow. Your attitude is disgusting - i'd call it sociopathic. That's exactly what i was trying to avoid. Next time you offend someone better read the post you're repliying to.
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 17:00, Esben Stien wrote: Marek Peteraj [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: perhaps if more and more ATI customers went for their older cards, they'd certainly be forced to rethink their policy. That's what I did. I've been waiting for years to get a new 3d chip, going to dri.sf.net many times a week (for years). I've had this g550 based card since I switched from a g400. With the release of the rv280 chip, I could'nt take it any more, I just needed to get it. It's the most powerful chip you can get with free software. I would never run proprietary software on my computer. Me and that world waved goodbye. My friend, richeros, did the same. We both bought the ATI 9250. I'm going to do this aswell(still stuck with g400). Thanks for inspiring me. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] Doing the soundcard manufacturer tango (long)
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 17:47, Dave Phillips wrote: Marek Peteraj wrote: Geez, people, stop talking and start singing ! Where's Marek's Blues or The RME Fight Song ?? Come on, the talent's here, we know it is. unfortunately i don't have a gear to record with. Really ? No soundcard at all ? No microphone, not even a crappy tape recorder ? No way to write down some words to send to someone who does have a soundcard and a microphone ? The right software shouldn't be too hard to find... Oh yeah, there's windows and plenty of sw that i can use with my excellent fireface. ;) Anyway, this is OT for LAD, sorry. And I have work to do, two new songs to record with Ardour and an article to complete by this evening. No time for love, Doctor Jones.. Is it an article about linux audio? Because then, according to your own words, why write about it, who would care anyway... And of course, i apologize for bothering. Dr. Jones
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 21:02, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 05:56:03PM +0100, Esben Stien wrote: Alfons Adriaensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For the same reasons, there would be no need to upgrade your Linux version, and you don't need driver updates. The current closed-source driver will still work in 5 years. Now, you're twisting everything to fit a twisted view. Software is changed much more often than hardware. Yes. And you can't expect a manufacturer of a e.g. soundcard to update all drivers each time you or any other customer decide to upgrade his system. If *you* modify your system and thereby make an existing driver useless, then it's up to *you* to find a solution, which in case of an opensource driver would be to change a code here and there to make it work... maybe by providing a compatibility interface in your new system. You can't expect others to pay for the consequences of your decisions. A manufacturer will adapt to a new system if that is in his interest, otherwise not. Paul, Jan, Fons, and others. I believe that you should switch your software to proprietary and make a living out of it. Because in that case your reasoning would be perfectly valid. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 23:47, Dave Robillard wrote: On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 23:23 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 21:02, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Thu, Dec 02, 2004 at 05:56:03PM +0100, Esben Stien wrote: Alfons Adriaensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: For the same reasons, there would be no need to upgrade your Linux version, and you don't need driver updates. The current closed-source driver will still work in 5 years. Now, you're twisting everything to fit a twisted view. Software is changed much more often than hardware. Yes. And you can't expect a manufacturer of a e.g. soundcard to update all drivers each time you or any other customer decide to upgrade his system. If *you* modify your system and thereby make an existing driver useless, then it's up to *you* to find a solution, which in case of an opensource driver would be to change a code here and there to make it work... maybe by providing a compatibility interface in your new system. You can't expect others to pay for the consequences of your decisions. A manufacturer will adapt to a new system if that is in his interest, otherwise not. Paul, Jan, Fons, and others. I believe that you should switch your software to proprietary and make a living out of it. Because in that case your reasoning would be perfectly valid. Marek Marek! Come on.. I'm sure you're trying to prove some point, but nothing good can possibly come from suggesting people switch their projects over to a proprietary licensing scheme. I, for one, greatly appreciate the contributions of the above to the world of free audio software - regardless of what opinions they may (or may not) have about proprietary hardware drivers in Linux. Me too. But it seems as if they wouldn't do themselves. That was my point. I think that at some point it has become disrespectful for companies to ignore linux. So i can't really understand people(oss users or even oss developers) who try to defend the position of companies that make their lives harder for no reason. I'm just trying to point out that they should be more proud of their work which if wasn't oss, could be: 1. a well marketed proprietary money-machine 2. valuable IP, treated as tradesecret and protected under the terms of business law and IP law. So it would be the same thing basically. And i really tried to clarify why there should be no fear in providing opensource drivers, providing a brief analysis and concrete examples. Seems that i completely failed in what i was trying to achieve. Better luck next time. ;) I'd give it one more chance and post a 'rme - take action' letter to lad and lau which would encourage people to go to the rme forum, tell them that their using their hw, what kind of hw they have purchased and that they would continue to do so in the future. But i fear that a lot of people would just ignore it, thinking to themselves 'my vote doesn't count, they will ignore it anyway, it's a waste of time, there's just 5 of us' or similar. I might be wrong. If somebody wants to encourage me in doing this i'd be glad to do it. I'd also encourage to write polite letters if that's what suits the majority here ;) If we'd achieve a fairly large number - say 100, the consequences would be either: - RME reconsidering their decision - raising interest of all the RME customers in linux audio, because virtually everyone there is able to try it out on a professional level. Except the fireface users(minority still, since it's a new device). which if successful, would most likely bring RME to reconsider their postion anyway. Which seems that it should be in our interest to do so. It's not much effort anyway. If not, tell me, and i'll shut up. ;) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: closed vs. open drivers
Anyway I am not sure how much more can be said, the should we allow binary drivers argument has been rehashed many times and it's something we have to agree to disagree on. You are free to not buy it. If I choose to buy an Nvidia card I know that I will have to use a binary driver but that I can probably use a recent kernel and it will work. If I choose to buy some other random hardware with a binary driver that only runs on RH9 or something then that is also my choice. This issue affects more than just drivers BTW. If you want to run Oracle on linux you can't expect to just use any distro and expect the binaries to work - your Oracle rep will tell you exactly which distro and kernel version you need. Does that limit your freedom? Hell no, you could have chosen not to run Oracle. If there's no food available on the market that i need for various reasons(health, say celiac desease ) then i can just choose to not eat and die. Same thing here, although a less serious situation. I can just choose windows if there are no linux drivers. If i can't afford a windows license i can just choose not to have a computer at all. Note - Oracle's core product is software. So i still can *kindof* understand Oracle. NVIDIA, RME and others sell *hardware*. So whether they provide support for an additional open source OS or not, they will still make money. Of course they can expand to new emerging markets and invest so that they secure their position in such markets. Or they don't have to. But is it ok if *I* want to *buy and use* their product and they *don't* allow me to? Hell no! BTW I've read numerous articles about nvidia and ati ripping each other off. Cheating with benchmarks. Etc etc. If they provided oss dirvers, at least they'd be honest with all that. Same way you don't have to buy a Fireface or an Nvidia card. :) Nvidia - binary ATI - binary XGI - binary Matrox - binary Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
I also asked you to not be so obstreperous in your posts. You'll get more respect and attention by being polite. Jan, i think Daves posts were pretty ok in that respect and pretty much hit the nail on the head. Talking about teaching morals - i think our egos can handle more than that. ;) Besides, your recent post about vegetarians vs. meateaters could offend me as a vegetarian too. I just took it easy but i know many vegetarians that hate this and consider that as an offense: http://eca.cx/lau/2004/11/0944.html http://eca.cx/lau/2004/11/0947.html ;) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 00:13, Dave Robillard wrote: On Wed, 2004-01-12 at 03:38 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 00:09, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 05:32:30PM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote: I'd rather not have people with this ignorant 'closed drivers = good' opinion turning Linux into yet another Windows. If you want a sh***y proprietary OS, there's plenty to choose from already. Do the rest of us a favour and don't advocate turning Linux into yet another one. I will follow you reasoning up to a point. Suppose we have a card X with a closed source driver. You will not use it. Now we make a new card Y, which is actually an X with the functionality of the driver pushed into the (closed source) firmware. We make a third card Z with the same functionality pushed inside the hardware. Will you use Y ? Will you use Z ? If the answer to either is yes, what is the essential difference ? It's a lot more likely that Z will work very well with a newer kernel/system/api/whatever with changes applied to the open source driver. You can forget about that with product X once it gets discontinued. I take Z. Marek This is a very good point I forgot to mention. I sincerely hope Nvidia drops all linux support some time in the future. It's the only way some people will learn. Seems like there's no other chance. Sigh. The problem is that people are reluctant to give up some of their artificial (or bogus, from the manufacturers perspective) convenience in order to gain a lot more of true, genuine oss convenience in the future. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 03:27, Marek Peteraj wrote: I also asked you to not be so obstreperous in your posts. You'll get more respect and attention by being polite. Jan, i think Daves posts were pretty ok in that respect and pretty much hit the nail on the head. Talking about teaching morals - i think our egos can handle more than that. ;) Besides, your recent post about vegetarians vs. meateaters could offend me as a vegetarian too. I just took it easy but i know many vegetarians that hate this and consider that as an offense: http://eca.cx/lau/2004/11/0944.html http://eca.cx/lau/2004/11/0947.html That said, i can't believe that we still call this thread Behringer. ;)) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 01:52, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 20:15, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 00:29, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 16:37, Dave Robillard wrote: On Tue, 2004-30-11 at 17:43 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: No one said they were good. I just said it was better than no support at all, and whatever RME decides to do, they designed the hardware, it's THEIR CHOICE. No, it's not better than no support at all. No support doesn't destroy Linux in the long run. Try to think on a little wider scale than getting one silly little sound card to work in your specific (x86, running a supported version of the Linux kernel) computer. There are more important things than trivial convenience for a small subset of Linux users (at the expense of all the other ones) you know. My problem is a whole lot more important than 1 silly little sound card. As I said before, somewhere around 200 Linux systems with NVIDIA cards and the proprietary driver. The more important things you speak of are important to you but not to me. I don't belong to your church. Jan no offense. But i don't care about your 200 linux systems. Simply because if nvidia didn't care at all just like RME does with it's fireface, you would use windows on your 200 machines. But OTOH, if you had windows on those 200 machines before, had nvidia cards installed in those boxes, and in order to reduce TCO you went with linux instead of buying new licenses for a new version of windows, and were forced to use nvidia binaries because those machines had nvidia cards installed already, then that's kindof fine. Kindof because there still would need to be a very _pragmatic_ reason to ditch old versions of windows. But i certainly wouldn't advise people to go buy nvidia because of their exceptional binary drivers. Too careless. I certainly agree. We're using windows because I write about 60% of the sonar/navigation processing software we use and I refuse to have Windoze in my office. snip I would like nothing better than to switch to an open source driver for exactly the reason you set forth. If you need max performance then you have no choice. But for linux audio it would be probably better to check out cards that are still available and do have oss drivers and then recommend those. I believe that there are some old radeon cards with passive coolers(isn't that what we, linux audio users want ;) that do have oss drivers because ATI does provide specs for their older cards(if they are still in production). At least AFAIK, please correct me if i'm wrong. Also, perhaps if more and more ATI customers went for their older cards, they'd certainly be forced to rethink their policy. That said i asked them to release specs for their latest GPUs, and i got a friendly 'no' response. The petition was at ~13000 signatures in Sept02. Today, 3 months later, it's ~2 already. I don't know how many ATI units are sold worldwide in one year but the number must be huge compared to audio hw manufacturers. Still, 2 is an interesting number. I think it's the same case here. The one who will provide specs first is going to secure his position in a new emerging market. Also, i can pretty much imagine the huge wave of new ultracool 3D demos in the demoscene squeezing as much juice out of the GPUs as possible if the registers co documentation was released for a given GPU. So lots of positive things would happen. Let alone X.org and our new accelerated desktops. Or perhaps samplerate conversion done on the GPU in RT ;) That said, i can't buy older RME products anymore. The reason why i freaked out on their forum is that after 15 products were supported in alsa, after some people were cool enough to do the drivers which caused them to sell say ~100 units(i think it's a lot more). What's more, they provided support for it(helping people out, giving advices, fixing the driver is what i call support). So they took all that off the shoulders of RME. All for handing out a perhaps 15p pdf and 3-4 devices. All OK. But. Tim Hall said, that we should build our relationship on trust becasue it's a two way process, which involves building trust. That's exactly what triggered my responses(besides them being arrogant to other customers in other threads). We don't share this information with anyone. So after all this, they called these people anyone. If i were the author of the driver i'd be very offended and i'd just pay for the donated hw just to say ehm ;) They had my trust. ;) The point is not that someone might reverse engineer and do a worse/better oss driver. The point is that nvidia, ati, xgi, matrox *should* do open source drivers. I agree but I can't make them even though we're a fairly large outfit. I think that the oss community would be able to convince someone. But then again, forget
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 02:48, Paul Davis wrote: The point is not that someone might reverse engineer and do a worse/better oss driver. The point is that nvidia, ati, xgi, matrox *should* do open source drivers. The point is that nobody has persuaded them of this, and in the matrox case, they actually went backwards, from our perspective. These companies cannot be shown to be incorrect, Oh sure they can, as it was the case with iriver. 2 years ago their forums were full of hatefilled msgs just because people demanded ogg vorbis and were ignored.(or at least it seemed so, no response from iriver). Today, we've got an iriver linux device, and almost all of their products support ogg vorbis. Still they haven't updated their pages properly and i wonder whether they're also not breaching GPL(see old 'GPL breach' thread in the archives) all we can say is that they have a different perspective on the world than we do. Paul, honestly. I can't explain why they haven't even *tried* to install linux with jack and ardour. If i were them i'd at *least* track the situation, just to *see* the current state and how well *my* products work with the drivers. I BET they would fall in love with it. Cause you can't do otherwise ;) And in such case, they'd probably deliver an alsa driver for fireface, fireface2, whatever themselves pretty quickly. And i'd be also interested in how many units were sold due to alsa.If i were them. If i were them i'd want every customer no matter what. Their different perspective might make you want to boycott them, or try to change their minds. If boycott is your thing, end of story. No. Boycotting can a very powerful instrument. If there is a valid reason. And there is one. Otherwise, given the apparent absence of a benign, GPL-friendly deity who will change their minds on our behalf, yelling at everyone that shares this view ; AUDIOSCIENCE the question would seem to be can they be convinced, and if so how? Does anybody think that the attitude that Marek and Dave R. have offered might work? There's them, companies striving for higher revenues. There's us, paying customers. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME isno more]
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 12:10, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 04:49:26AM +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: But it's for the interest of *everyone* here. I have read the entire thread on the RME forum, and I really don't think it is in our interest at all. So i think the more of us agree the more strength we can show (...) You don't show strength by losing your temper. Like Nando's cats would do, it's much more effective to turn your back and walk away. that's what i'm doing now. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 00:09, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 05:32:30PM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote: I'd rather not have people with this ignorant 'closed drivers = good' opinion turning Linux into yet another Windows. If you want a sh***y proprietary OS, there's plenty to choose from already. Do the rest of us a favour and don't advocate turning Linux into yet another one. I will follow you reasoning up to a point. Suppose we have a card X with a closed source driver. You will not use it. Now we make a new card Y, which is actually an X with the functionality of the driver pushed into the (closed source) firmware. We make a third card Z with the same functionality pushed inside the hardware. Will you use Y ? Will you use Z ? If the answer to either is yes, what is the essential difference ? It's a lot more likely that Z will work very well with a newer kernel/system/api/whatever with changes applied to the open source driver. You can forget about that with product X once it gets discontinued. I take Z. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] closed source drivers [was: Re: Behringer]
On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 00:09, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 05:32:30PM -0500, Dave Robillard wrote: I'd rather not have people with this ignorant 'closed drivers = good' opinion turning Linux into yet another Windows. If you want a sh***y proprietary OS, there's plenty to choose from already. Do the rest of us a favour and don't advocate turning Linux into yet another one. I will follow you reasoning up to a point. Suppose we have a card X with a closed source driver. You will not use it. Now we make a new card Y, which is actually an X with the functionality of the driver pushed into the (closed source) firmware. We make a third card Z with the same functionality pushed inside the hardware. Will you use Y ? Will you use Z ? If the answer to either is yes, what is the essential difference ? It's a lot more likely that Z will work very well with a newer kernel/system/api/whatever with changes applied to the open source driver provided there are specs available. You can forget about that with product X once it gets discontinued. I take Z. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 23:43, Lee Revell wrote: On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 17:32 -0500, Dave Robillard wrote: I'd rather not have people with this ignorant 'closed drivers = good' opinion turning Linux into yet another Windows. So Linus is ignorant, huh? Have you thought about why he allows binary drivers? He certainly could choose not to. http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/21/141225tid=190tid=106 See post by slux. No one said they were good. I just said it was better than no support at all, and whatever RME decides to do, they designed the hardware, it's THEIR CHOICE. You can't expect people to respect your choice to GPL the code you write then bitch and moan when they decide to sell their hardware under terms that make sense to them. If you don't like it then pardon my French but you can design your own fucking sound card. I used to share this opinion. Once. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME isno more]
The latest hatefilled posts on the RME list about the ALSA driver issue are surely not helpful Saying nothing is *never* helpful. Showing your dissatisfaction at least *sometimes* helps. We'll see. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME isno more]
On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 01:27, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote: On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 15:55, Marek Peteraj wrote: The latest hatefilled posts on the RME list about the ALSA driver issue are surely not helpful Saying nothing is *never* helpful. That is true. Showing your dissatisfaction at least *sometimes* helps. We'll see. [disclaimer: I have not read the posts] Perhaps you should :) I think you are missing the point, whether intentionally or not I don't know. Hatefilled posts are not going to help. Normal posts will. Maybe I'm misunderstanding (if so, ignore the rest), but you seem to think hate filled posts are just fine, right? If that's true, this would be the time for me to say something rude so that you change your mind, right? If enough of us post hate filled responses you are going to agree with whatever we say? I think not... I think i clarified it in my previous posts. What you're talking about is a different relationship. We're talking about a vendor vs. customer relationship in which case if the number of unsatisfied customers [EMAIL PROTECTED] about your product grows, you have to take adequate action no matter how much they're hurting your ego. Becasue sometimes there *might* be a valid reason for that. ;) That said i think it's silly to argue about that here. We have lost two main specs providers. Not because of hatefilled posts. That was the consequence. In my eyes a very valid one. In your case perhaps not. But it's for the interest of *everyone* here. So i think the more of us agree the more strength we can show to everybody out there, instead of arguing whether to beg or be more proud(no offense, my POV). Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: [linux-audio-user] Linux audio hardware market research [was: creating a wiki soundcard experiences site]
On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 22:14, John Check wrote: On Saturday 27 November 2004 07:43 am, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 11:06, MarC wrote: what about creating a wiki website to submit soundcard experiences? This also seems like a good idea to me, and it would be cool to have a knowledgebase like that. However i think that doing a survey in order to measure how big the linux audio market is is a different project. Similar to what David did, i imagine that a RME (or M-Audio) customer would submit his name, optionally email, choose type of his card from a list, and enter approx. date of purchase so that we can track the growth of the market(thus it's possible to roughly estimate its future growth). Also we'd need to announce it to a broad range of people, LAD/LAU/LAA, ALSA-dev/user/site, and Slashdot i suppose, so that we reach as many such customers as possible. Let's also not forget about OSS users which are also linux users. (I personally reckon a few people from #lad having troubles with alsa, they switched to oss for that reason). However, since i've got no php experience and very little mysql experience, i can't tell how hard it would be to do such a sumbit/log system. Now that you mention it... I made some posts regarding a MIDI implementation chart reporting system over the summer. I'm getting in the home stretch with that, mainly gotta do something WRT of authentication before it's ready to roll out. Wouldn't be a big deal to add another area for that of which you speak That'd be great. It wouldn't need to be something really simple so that people don't have to bother with it too much. Most relevant information such as type of card, approx. date of purchase, so that we can count the numbers and estimate future growth. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 21:43, Lee Revell wrote: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 01:51 +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: They create software to support it and make it work. Then all the technical information goes into the public domain and some low cost manufacturer from Taiwan or Russia or somewhere else knocks off a copy and sells it for 1/2 the price. No one buys RME hardware, RME doesn't make money and goes out of business. Did this happen? Maybe not to them but look at Mackie and Behringer. Mackie designs hardware and manufactures it in the USA. Behringer reverse engineers Mackie's (among others) design, replaces some parts with cheaper ones, and manufactures in China. Mackie has lost a lot of money as a result and has had to move some production abroad. I don't believe it's the only cause. It's like saying that the recording industry is losing money just becasue people are pirating stuff. Nobody there cares about the quality. Besides, Mackie doesn't target low-end market that much anyway. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 23:21, Lee Revell wrote: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 16:22 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: Man, I've been waiting all day for someone to say this. Personally, open source is not a religion for me so a closed source driver would be fine and dandy. Let the flames commence - now where did I put my asbestos underwear? Eh, it's a slow day, I'm bored. But I mean it 100%. Flame away... So, the next question is, what would it take to make a closed source driver happen? They should start the bidding on alsa-devel at one free FireFace... Lee and Jan, i talk to you as an owner of fireface. :) I really like the philosophy of not letting any closed source drivers into the kernel. In the end i only saw people upset because their XY nvidia or ATI driver wasn't working. Besides they'd need to provide it themselves, which means a lot more money than just handing out documentation or perhaps one free unit. My point of view - either open source alsa driver, or i'll just sell that unit. And now that they have accused me of causing damage to RME specifically because of this thread, i can only say, i'll stay away from any of their products. Speaking of damage, i'd like to see a slashdot story about this so that 30.000 people can judge for themselves. :) The best bet would be to find a adat/smux card manufacturer which is able to release specs and keep the rest as far away from your pc as possible. :) Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 22:36, Lee Revell wrote: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 15:43 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: Did this happen? Maybe not to them but look at Mackie and Behringer. Just to save people some googling here is a thread that documents the long and colorful history of pro audio hardware manufacturers blatantly ripping each other off, often leaving the victims with no legal recourse: http://homerecording.com/bbs/archive/index.php/t-74439.html IMO the issue is not whether RME's concern is valid - clearly it is. Sorry, but arguing otherwise makes us look stupid and naive. I don't think so. Currently there are new fw products coming out, in a few months time the audio market will be literally *flooded* with fw audio stuff. There's even mackie onyx analog mixer for which they offer an optional fw card for. Most of them *will* deliver 2-3ms latency i bet. And this under conditions which can't be guaranteed for many reasons(mostly rock-solid hw configuration which is guesswork to build most of the time, and *very* well tuned copy of windows that's installed). Heck i get crackles with a 256 setting with my fireface on an amd 2.2 system with amd761 northbridge and a g400(compared to what they claim, i.e. 1ms latency), don't ask what it does on a i815 chipset(which is crap chipset for critical applications such as audio but just to demonstrate). Of course i can't blame the hw manufacturers for that, it's simply impossible to guarantee that, it's just that it's achievable under some specific conditions. But nevertheless they *have* to deliver such performance because of the market. Now everybody does hiding it's own research from each other and the result is that there will be only these subtle differences in terms of performance. Who does suffer? Linux users. This just shows how healthy and benefitial the collaborative open source model is. Instead of working out an audio-over-ieee1394 standard they will just hide the stuff because everybody is just stealing. (their way of thinking) :/ So i think that no matter whether rme or other audio card manufacturer, in this case it's just not valid at all. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 13:35, R Parker wrote: --- Marek Peteraj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 23:21, Lee Revell wrote: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 16:22 -0600, Jan Depner wrote: Man, I've been waiting all day for someone to say this. Personally, open source is not a religion for me so a closed source driver would be fine and dandy. Let the flames commence - now where did I put my asbestos underwear? Eh, it's a slow day, I'm bored. But I mean it 100%. Flame away... So, the next question is, what would it take to make a closed source driver happen? They should start the bidding on alsa-devel at one free FireFace... Lee and Jan, i talk to you as an owner of fireface. :) I really like the philosophy of not letting any closed source drivers into the kernel. In the end i only saw people upset because their XY nvidia or ATI driver wasn't working. Besides they'd need to provide it themselves, which means a lot more money than just handing out documentation or perhaps one free unit. My point of view - either open source alsa driver, or i'll just sell that unit. And now that they have accused me of causing damage to RME specifically because of this thread, i can only say, i'll stay away from any of their products. Speaking of damage, i'd like to see a slashdot story about this so that 30.000 people can judge for themselves. :) I really hope you don't do that. My intention wasn't to post that on /. at least not now. I was thinking out loud. Of course, in case we did a market survey it would definitely be needed. RME has provided Pro grade audio hardware when Linux Audio needed it in order to become a legitimate alternative to proprietary solutions. Not really. It was Paul, Thomas, and one other guy(don't remember the name) who did. Remember it was almost no investment from RME's side. They got a lot of units sold in return and built a very good reputation based on that fact and this went beyond the linux audio world i believe. I hope you consider how much work has gone into Linux Audio But that's what i'm talking about. So much effort, oustanding technologies(although i know the authors won't admit ;) and they(hw manufacturers) don't care! and how difficult it is to develop that type of business relationship. There is no relationship. The only real manufacturer from the POV of linux audio is audioscience(.com), which unfortunately does only broadcast hw. They do ALSA drivers, provide support and invest their time and money in doing so. They deserve highest respect for that considering the current situation. That's how it should be. And this is what we should fight for. Whether you are in the right or wrong, is it inconcievable for you to act for the interests of many people by selling the unit and getting something else? Not sure i understand. I'm about to sell my fireface copy as i declared previously. Of course if there's any way i could help out other people here in keeping the unit, i'm prepared to do so. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 14:03, tim hall wrote: Last Saturday 27 November 2004 21:36, Lee Revell was like: On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 15:43 -0500, Lee Revell wrote: Did this happen? Maybe not to them but look at Mackie and Behringer. Just to save people some googling here is a thread that documents the long and colorful history of pro audio hardware manufacturers blatantly ripping each other off, often leaving the victims with no legal recourse: http://homerecording.com/bbs/archive/index.php/t-74439.html IMO the issue is not whether RME's concern is valid - clearly it is. Sorry, but arguing otherwise makes us look stupid and naive. The issue is how to address this concern. If that means a closed source Linux driver, fine. Maybe the reason no firewire hardware is supported is because Behringer and their ilk would instantly have all the info they need to copy the design and mass produce it. Doesn't matter how cheap the device is to design - it will _always_ be cheaper to rip someone off than design it yourself. They can even sell at a loss, due to huge cash reserves - they only need to sustain it long enough to put the competition out of business. In the case of the Swizz Army Tuner, the original designers were ripped off by Behringer, but a lawsuit would have bankrupted them _even if they won_ so could not take action. I think many people in this thread underestimate how cutthroat the hardware business is. Yeah, If I was the MD of RME, after reading some of the responses on this thread I'd be thinking of flippin' the bird at all these ungrateful linux users. I think it's about defending the position of open source and its nature. And the work that people do here no matter whether for fun or not. From now on every company that doesn't do it like audioscience does, is a plain loser to me, no matter whether they provide specs or not. It's because other people do the actual work + support providing. If MacOSX can have them, so can we, we have a greater marketshare. Why the heck should we *always* understand them? Why can't they understand *us*? We're a minority group and I think the onus is on us to convince RME to produce a driver for their firewire hardware, politely and if necessary, via the florists ;-). OK, so closed-source drivers are far from ideal, but better than a hole in the head. http://www.audioscience.com If they can, who can't? I can't see the difference, can anyone explain? It means that the drivers can't be bundled with distros and we won't be able to provide users developers with technical support, which is a great shame. However, I suspect a certain amount of well-reasoned persistence will pay off here. Sure, our numbers on this list aren't great, but they are significant. There are many audio hw customers outside of this list (see CK's post for example, or judging form experience - somewhere on #gnome talking about rme ;) plus tons of talks on #lad - Q: hi, what's the best card for audio under linux? A: rme or if you don't have that much money, maudio) OK, _very_ few people are using firewire technology for music, up till now I'd considered it the preserve of mac/motu users. I think a majority of pc based audio hw will be fw based in the near future. Every manufacturer will have at least one product. Scary. I think we should continue to support RME where licenses allow and look forward to the day that they release their firewire drivers :-). That is going to be the day their hw becomes redundant on the market? Or even discontinued? That's the problem i'm seeing. I think we should keep up the pressure on manufacturers like MOTU too. They'll see sense eventually. ;-] I doubt it. They have their own sw products, like the DP. In their case i can pretty much understand why they don't do that if they see linux audio as a competition. Mine is an equally naive viewpoint, but with the knowledge that a little bit of positive thinking can go a long way, especially when backed up with a well-researched wish-list and plenty of patience. 2 years korg and now this. Trust me it's not possible to cope with that for a long time :) Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 14:50, Tim Goetze wrote: [Marek Peteraj] RME has provided Pro grade audio hardware when Linux Audio needed it in order to become a legitimate alternative to proprietary solutions. Not really. It was Paul, Thomas, and one other guy(don't remember the name) who did. Remember it was almost no investment from RME's side. A not uncommon belief has it that the investment called 'trust' is worth more than any monetary investment. Ah i don't know. I mean, you guys have put a lot of time into what your doing anyway. And in my case the trust in rme turned out to be a bummer just becasue i was thinking that they have trust in the open source developers. If they did have such trust, something like this would never happen. Once again, the simple answer is www.audioscience.com. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
Why? Because with the availability of closed drivers the (market) demand for open source drivers suddenly becomes as small as the handful of Libre Software supporters like I am one. The just make my hardware work type of Linux users is not interested in Open Source drivers anymore, so why should someone still write this kind of drivers? NVidia is the prime example. They provide closed source drivers, a lot of (probably most) users are happy about this, NVidia makes millions of dollars also in the Linux market. No free software drivers? Bah, who the heck cares? And who the heck cares, that you cannot buy a single modern 3D-card anymore, which has open source drivers, by any manufacturer? Oh, that's not the fault of the linux community, Matrox simply sucks, they don't provide binary only Gone are the beautiful days, closed already (their 650, 750 and parhelia series - binary only) Oh BTW, just in case :) http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.html If RME doesn't want to support Linux for their FW card, that's fine with me. There are still enough alternatives. We're risking a case where the alternatives would soon be redundant technically or discontinued. And firewire is der letzte schrei, almost every manufacturer has got or prepares his own firewire product. Marek
Re: Behringer [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 19:53, Jan Depner wrote: On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 10:15, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 14:50, Tim Goetze wrote: [Marek Peteraj] RME has provided Pro grade audio hardware when Linux Audio needed it in order to become a legitimate alternative to proprietary solutions. Not really. It was Paul, Thomas, and one other guy(don't remember the name) who did. Remember it was almost no investment from RME's side. A not uncommon belief has it that the investment called 'trust' is worth more than any monetary investment. Ah i don't know. I mean, you guys have put a lot of time into what your doing anyway. And in my case the trust in rme turned out to be a bummer just becasue i was thinking that they have trust in the open source developers. If they did have such trust, something like this would never happen. Once again, the simple answer is www.audioscience.com. Why don't the guys who do the driver development see if audioscience Do you mean the ALSA developers? Audioscience does its drivers for ALSA, no volunteers needed. :) would be interested in producing pro audio cards (not just broadcast) with driver help from the OS community. They seem like they have their act together. Seems like a good idea to me. The 5044 cards offers 8 analog i/os of 24/192 and i wonder whether such card could not already be used for studio purposes. But in any case, they're very close. Marek
Re: why open source drivers [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 21:31, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 15:20:33 -0500, Lee Revell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 12:06 -0800, Mark Knecht wrote: Fine with me. If I shelled out for RME hardware I better be able to call RME for support, same as on any other OS. You get what you pay for, right? Sure, but when you buy it and the box says 'Requires Mac OS X or Windows XP' then as a buyer I have to respect that. I cannot expect them to support Linux when it wasn't advertised that it works on Linux. RME has given me GREAT support under Windows and I expect that this will not change. They are a great company. I own two cards and wouldn't hesitate to buy another if I was going to set up another Windows box. Yeah, I was referring to an Nvidia like scenario, where they don't release open drivers, but release closed Linux drivers of comparable quality and the same support as the Windows driver. Sure, I get it. However I think you and plug in a close source RME card driver and happily use it if it was available. I think Marek, Frank and others do not feel this way. I had no second thoughts about putting an NVidia controller in my dad's Linux box even though I used ATI up until then. My experience using both is no that different, but for me it's not political. Am I wrong when I think this desire is particularly European in nature? I'm so Open Market driven, especially when it comes to technology, that I hardly seem to understand this oter POV. However, I am interested. One nice example. Korg 1212 i/o, worked under win98, doesn't under winXP because korg does not provide support for it. There is an alsa driver for it now(and specs), so basically the life of that card is extended to eternity. There are more such damn good reasons for open source drivers. People just don't shout too loud. :) Of course I would be pretty annoyed if they just drop Linux completely, for the same reasons as others in this thread - they have a relationship with the community at this point. But I don't think they would be that stupid. After all pissing off hundreds of potential customers is just as bad an idea as giving valuable IP to the competition. Darn straight. However how did Marek end up being an RME customer when there was (as far as I know) never any support for this device under Linux, nor anyone even really saying there would be? Actually not quite, it seemed as if there would be support, Thomas wanted to do the driver. I just invested too much trust in RME. My fault. In my case I Was told that supporting the HDSP 9652 would be a non-issue based on the DigiFace working. It turned out to be true, but then again it took about a year to become really useful to me, and even today doesn't work as well as it does under Windows. How did he end up with this device and in this position? I somehow don't think this is RME's fault... If RME did the drivers for your HDSP 9652 then you could directly contact them and ask them for support. I'm sure Thomas would help you aswell if he had the card, and that's the problem. In such case claiming that they do support alsa is just plain unfair. Marek
Re: audioscience [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 10:27, Eliot Blennerhassett wrote: Ah i don't know. I mean, you guys have put a lot of time into what your doing anyway. And in my case the trust in rme turned out to be a bummer just becasue i was thinking that they have trust in the open source developers. If they did have such trust, something like this would never happen. Once again, the simple answer is www.audioscience.com. Why don't the guys who do the driver development see if audioscience Thanks for the vote of confidence! Do you mean the ALSA developers? Audioscience does its drivers for ALSA, no volunteers needed. :) Not so fast... we at audioscience would love to have some help with our ALSA driver and our underlying HPI driver. We are a small company that supports various Micros~1 flavours as well as Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernel variations. I am the single person who does all the linux stuff, and would still say I don't know enough to do it easily or properly. (Of course I have had help from our customers and other alsa developers, and kudos to Takashi Iwai for doing the work to incorporate our ALSA driver into the alsa tree) So step right up... Hi Eliot, thanks for clarifying this up for us. Nevertheless i think that what you do is great and your the *only* company that does provide official alsa drivers and support for professional audio products(i know it's just you but anyway, the philosophy is cool). I think that you would get a lot of feedback if you entered the studio market. would be interested in producing pro audio cards (not just broadcast) with driver help from the OS community. They seem like they have their act together. So, what is the difference between our current offerings and what you'd like to see in a pro audio card? I think that having a breakout box with 24/192 converters inside the breakoutbox would rock. 8 analog i/o is fine too. Most such devices usually offer around 26 channels of inputs + 26 chans of outputs, ~1/2 being digital. Hmmm now that i think about it, the 5042(the AES/EBU one) with a breakoutbox with analog i/o would be really cool. Not sure about how much load the DSP processor can handle and whether it's flotingpoint capable, but running a few ladspas on such DSP would be very nice too. :) Just some initial thoughts. Marek
Re: why open source drivers [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 00:58, Mark Knecht wrote: On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 02:25:09 +0100, Marek Peteraj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 21:31, Mark Knecht wrote: One nice example. Korg 1212 i/o, worked under win98, doesn't under winXP because korg does not provide support for it. There is an alsa driver for it now(and specs), so basically the life of that card is extended to eternity. There are more such damn good reasons for open source drivers. People just don't shout too loud. :) Fair enough. There are companies here in Silicon Valley that take over 'end of life' chip designs and manufacturer them for a while to help customers, but there isn't much money in it most of the time, just as there is probably no financial reason for Korg to support that card. I didn't like it when DigiDesign said they weren't going to continue to support the 001 forever and I was forced into buying an 002 or going away from Windows. Unortunately there was no other platform that maintained my music investment as well so I stuck with Digi. That's the nature of technology. It gets outdated. Not too many companies making buggy whips anymore either... However how did Marek end up being an RME customer when there was (as far as I know) never any support for this device under Linux, nor anyone even really saying there would be? Actually not quite, it seemed as if there would be support, Thomas wanted to do the driver. I just invested too much trust in RME. My fault. And I am very sorry about that. You don't have to be. It is a disappointment I'm sure. You're a long ways away. If it was more practical I'd probably buy the unit from you. I have uses. I'm sure others will too. You'll sell it and get good money. Chalk the loss up to learning and remember...Trust, but verify. Agreed. It was a lesson to learn. Thanks for your 'heads up' :) In my case I Was told that supporting the HDSP 9652 would be a non-issue based on the DigiFace working. It turned out to be true, but then again it took about a year to become really useful to me, and even today doesn't work as well as it does under Windows. How did he end up with this device and in this position? I somehow don't think this is RME's fault... If RME did the drivers for your HDSP 9652 then you could directly contact them and ask them for support. I'm sure Thomas would help you aswell if he had the card, and that's the problem. In such case claiming that they do support alsa is just plain unfair. RME never 'supported' the card under Linux. The 'supported' the developers by providing technical info. I did not purchase the card because of RME telling me it would be OK to use the card under Linux. They never stated such things. Unfortunately they did. To quote a part of their response: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more Complete BS. We have and will support Linux/Alsa as before. The only excluded product is the Fireface. Marek
Re: why open source drivers [was Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more]
On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 01:32, Mark Knecht wrote:
On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 03:19:14 +0100, Marek Peteraj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
RME never 'supported' the card under Linux. The 'supported' the
developers by providing technical info. I did not purchase the card
because of RME telling me it would be OK to use the card under Linux.
They never stated such things.
Unfortunately they did. To quote a part of their response:
[linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
Complete BS. We have and will support Linux/Alsa as before. The only
excluded product is the Fireface.
Marek
Well, I don't know exactly what you're calling BS
No no you don't understand, i was quoting RME. I had a discussion with
them on their forum.
Marek
[linux-audio-dev] Re: [linux-audio-user] Linux audio hardware market research [was: creating a wiki soundcard experiences site]
On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 11:06, MarC wrote: what about creating a wiki website to submit soundcard experiences? This also seems like a good idea to me, and it would be cool to have a knowledgebase like that. However i think that doing a survey in order to measure how big the linux audio market is is a different project. Similar to what David did, i imagine that a RME (or M-Audio) customer would submit his name, optionally email, choose type of his card from a list, and enter approx. date of purchase so that we can track the growth of the market(thus it's possible to roughly estimate its future growth). Also we'd need to announce it to a broad range of people, LAD/LAU/LAA, ALSA-dev/user/site, and Slashdot i suppose, so that we reach as many such customers as possible. Let's also not forget about OSS users which are also linux users. (I personally reckon a few people from #lad having troubles with alsa, they switched to oss for that reason). However, since i've got no php experience and very little mysql experience, i can't tell how hard it would be to do such a sumbit/log system. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 19:36, Georg Rudolph wrote: Please, let's not be too harsh. I recently bought the pcmcia based multiface from RME, only because it has linux support, and it works great, on both kernels. Of course, firewire is cooler, but there is this way out. Not for me. :) anyway it seems there a *lot* of linux audio users that bought RME because of alsa support. How about doing a list where everyone can submit his name and type of RME card so that we can see how big and attractive the market currently is? Marek
Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
I assume that RME has developped their own protocols, which they don't want to share. And frankly I can understand their point of view, because I think an awfull lot of time (=money) must have been spent to develop an efficient protocol. 1. So they haven't invested the a comparable amount of time into Hammerfall series? 2. I can only understand the point of view of open source developers here, since they also invested an awfull lot of time (and money that they didn't get back!) into developing linux audio applications, many of which are state-of-art at least with respect to technology. And they're free as in beer/speech. That said i really don't understand the point of view of those few how actually kindof defend the position of RME (or any other manufacturer in a similar position), no offense intended. The RME story also goes for the firewire interface of M-Audio. They use a DM1000 based platform, so initially we thought the device could be supported by FreeBob. But apparently they modified the reference firmware, making it (possibly) non-conformant to the 1394TA specs. As such these devices cannot be supported by FreeBob directly. Maybe if we have a working driver, we can convince the M-Audio people to share the nescessary info so that we can support their devices also. Which seems like it's the beginning of end for linux pro-audio hw support if we don't fight for it. Right now it concerns just me, but it might concern everyone in the near future. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 23:17, Mark Knecht wrote: On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 00:34:17 +0100, Marek Peteraj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: SNIP 2. I can only understand the point of view of open source developers here, since they also invested an awfull lot of time (and money that they didn't get back!) into developing linux audio applications, many of which are state-of-art at least with respect to technology. And they're free as in beer/speech. That was their choice. Right? Sure but the result is the _same_ with respect to what they deliver(state of art technology), which has the same value for me. Not the same with respect to what you get in the end.(a non-functioning device you paid a lot for, just because this and that) That said i really don't understand the point of view of those few how actually kindof defend the position of RME (or any other manufacturer in a similar position), no offense intended. RME's position, and I am only guessing here, is that they would be happy to release info to the Open Source community __IF__ that information didn't help their competitors develop hardware that competed with RME. How? To achieve 1ms less latency? It is natural for people who have spent money to want to protect it's value. We are that way with our own purchases, correct? I (and I think you...) would not be happy if I bought something and then it stopped working, Worse. It actually never worked in my case. or if the company you bought it from stopped supporting it. Worse. They never did in my case. RME is the same way. They invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Euro's developing new hardware ideas. Hence the analogy with oss developers. They do that too without being cowards and misers. They create software to support it and make it work. Then all the technical information goes into the public domain and some low cost manufacturer from Taiwan or Russia or somewhere else knocks off a copy and sells it for 1/2 the price. No one buys RME hardware, RME doesn't make money and goes out of business. Did this happen? See how many RME cards are supported. Almost all. Perhaps all except fireface. Did someone from russia or taiwan knock-off a copy? Does RME suffer from us having alsa drivers? Are russian engineers or taiwanese engineers(envy24 btw AFAIK) not smart enough to come up with their own superb design? Is it too hard for smart people to reverse-engineer? In other words - what are you talking about? What's so hard to understand? Pretty much everything. Considering that they have used proprietary protocols in their hammerfall series anyway. Which seems like it's the beginning of end for linux pro-audio hw support if we don't fight for it. Right now it concerns just me, but it might concern everyone in the near future. This I agree with, but the best way to fight for it (speaking as a business man) is to develop a real market for it. We need thousands of buyers. Develop the market and hardware manufacturers will come. Perhaps it's here already. I think there's more of us RME or M-Audio customers than one might think. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
On Fri, 2004-11-26 at 22:48, Tim Hockin wrote: On Sat, Nov 27, 2004 at 12:34:17AM +0100, Marek Peteraj wrote: Which seems like it's the beginning of end for linux pro-audio hw support if we don't fight for it. Right now it concerns just me, but it might concern everyone in the near future. How can we fight it? I've been holding off on a firewire interface, but now maybe I just won't get one... I'm not sure how right now. But i really think there's a lot more of use rme/maudio customers out there than we might actually think. And it's obvious that the numbers will grow. A survey might help us to figure this out.. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: [linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 20:50, Florin Andrei wrote: On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 04:22 -0500, Rick B wrote: I kind of got the impression that the annoucement was just pertaining to RME *Firewire* audio interfaces. Consider that they have released some specs for their HDSP hammerfall series, which uses a *proprietary* firewire protocol and that their latest PC products were based on IEEE1394 except one or two PCI based cards. That's what i thought. RME is no more seems a bit exagerated (although i feel for the person who bought the card thinking it's supported by the Linux drivers). I don't think it's exagerated, see explanation above. I knew exactly it wasn't at the time i bought it, i just took it for granted. I talked to Thomas Charbonnel back in april at the ZKM and it seemed that they were positive about alsa support for fireface. Anyway, beyond Linux support tribulations, the RME Fireface is a great card. I just read a review in the international Dec 2004 edition of Sound On Sound - it's really cool. It has all the things that i wish the Multiface had. I can only agree with that. But that's even worse for us then. ;) Sadly, if there's no support for Linux, i guess i won't buy it. It's not like the world ends with RME or anything. Well it's close to such situation in the linux pro-audio world. The two major players in pro-audio hw market that supported ALSA development if only indirectly by providing specs, were m-audio and... rme. Have a look at the ALSA matrix, it's a pretty sad situation. The only *real* hw manufacturer in my eyes is audioscience, they provide their own ALSA drivers(that's how it should be) but produce only broadcast cards. Marek
[linux-audio-dev] RME is no more
Hi all, sorry for crossposting, just wanted to let everybody know: The official statement is that there will be no support for ALSA (Linux) FireWire drivers from RME. In other words there will be no such drivers, as it is impossible to write them without tons of hardware and software documentation from RME. And we won't share these information with anyone. Regards Matthias Carstens RME No further explanations. The moral of this story is: Never buy a product that isn't already supported in ALSA, such as i did. :( There's no guarantee even if pretty much every other card from the same manufacturer *is* already supported. Me and Benno talked to Matthias personally during Musikmesse, he was friendly and seemed to be open with regards to future cooperation with oss developers. Seems like things have changed dramatically since then. Marek
[linux-audio-dev] Re: [linux-audio-dev/user] RME is no more
I forgot, this is the product i'm talking about: http://www.rme-audio.de/firewire/ff800.htm Marek
[linux-audio-dev] Re: [linux-audio-user] RME is no more
On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 00:49, Frank Barknecht wrote: Hallo, Marek Peteraj hat gesagt: // Marek Peteraj wrote: Me and Benno talked to Matthias personally during Musikmesse, he was friendly and seemed to be open with regards to future cooperation with oss developers. This is oss as in Open Source SW, I suppose, not as in Open Sound System? Open source, me = alsa only. :) Marek
[linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
Paul: paul returns from a week away % f +gtk-in % rmm cur-last % f +gtkmm-in % rmm cur-last % f +new % rmm `pick -from wine-devel` % rmm `pick -from xdg-list` and then i can put all those commands in script and next time just do: % clean-mail that's what i call a mail client. And this is exactly what explains the clutter in ardour UI. Sorry Paul, but this is your way of handling email. My way of choosing and using email clients(and other apps) is simply driven by the same needs most users have. To read, write and manage email easily. I just want to fetch my emails, click twice to respond to them, perhaps...hmm backup my mboxes so that i can import them next time with two other clicks? The only advanced feature i'm using is filters perhaps. And that's just setting up a filter so that i don't care next time, and it's damn easy in evolution. One thing you might all consider as stupid. I need it black on white to concentrate. And 19th century ncurses is driving me crazy. And yes, i'm using linux audio, using gentoo, compiling packages from sources, running jack, configuring all that stuff etc etc. Fons: There seems to be a belief that computers and software would eleminate the need for education and training, that sitting at a DAW turns you instantly into a sound engineer, But knowing the features of a DAW isn't *at *all* the only thing you need to know in *order* to be a sound engineer. And the less it takes up the better for the rest of the things a sound engineer has to *know* in order to be a good sound engineer. and clicking the mouse on soft synth makes you a qualified musician. It *never* did, *even* with *tons* of perfect win/mac software. All tools there only. This is a complete fallacy, and IMHO just one manifestation of the global dumbing-down exercise that's happening all around us, and that is driven by those who make money out of it. So you call not removing disturbing non-efficient and stupid UI designs which make your life harder and all that -- fallacy and dumbing-down?? :) Certain things i just don't get into my head and probably never will: * Why do some people here believe that centralising information, encouraging standards and trying to make some proprietary/pro-grade oss software is going to take your freedom of choice? Suppose we have say 6 different applications (DAW, drummachine, sampler, you name it)that perfecly compete with proprietary world. Does *that* take the freedom of choice? Does encouraging of toolkits(we've got two major ones) take your freedom? Did jack take your freedom to make your own audio server? No. Why? Two words - *Open* *Source* The only thing that's going to happen is that *most* users will use those 6 applications in a (what people tend to call here) dumb environment. And those users haven't even arrived here yet. Because they are the *real* non-technical users. The rest can fiddle around with configurations and code as much as they can. Not(!) so in win32 and to some extent also on mac. Can you tweak evolution code-wise? sure you can. Can you just go ahead with your own client? sure you can. Can you pick your favorite toolkit or make your own? Sure you can. But why do i have to install 280+ toolkits in order to use linux audio? Last note - i might be a dick, but i'm honest. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 15:09, Thorsten Wilms wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 01:59:41PM +0200, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: I didn't. What I said was that those who complain because things do no look as they are used to, are in general the same people that just do not master the application domain itself. Those that do will just get on with the job. My slider design might tell you that I'm not aiming at what I'm used to (which would be a problem anyway, as I use Windows and Linux (gnome/KDE) and sometimes Mac). I try not to blindly copy, but to learn from various uis and to think outside the box a bit. ... If the 'standard' says that a R-click should popup a context menu, and I don not need such a menu at all, why not use that for some thing else that makes sense ? To not mess up the overall consistency? It should at least be the last option. Totaly different behaviour on the same gesture can be very confusing. For example the 3d app Blender uses rightclick for selection and left for placing a 3d cursor. Makes me try to select with leftclick in Blender when i havn't used it for a while. And after using Blender I often find myself trying to slect in a file manager with rightclick. It's an extreme example, but should make clear that having to do a mental switch can be very problematic. That mental switches are exactly what describes broken UI designs. If they are inside one application, then the developers of the application have a *real* problem. Agreed, but that does not imply that everything done by software will as by magic become easy. You can always dumb it down to make it easy, but then very often some of the 'real function' is sacrified. Allowing you to play out of tune is part of the 'real function' of a violin. Allowing you to go beyond the conventions that are observed most of the time is part of the 'real function' of every interesting creative tool or instrument, be it real or software. Usability != dumbing down, but restrictions can help with creativity, something I learned after switching from just a workstation keyboard to a pc solution. Having many different apps also means that some can concentrate on rather common things, while others provide more freedom. I like modular synths, but they can be counter productive, making you fiddle around, while the goal might be easily achievable with a fixed system. And this is currently non-existent in linux audio. My point was, modular and freedom will stay, fixed is what's missing. Entirely. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 15:52, Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen wrote: Alfons Adriaensen: On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 07:24:59PM +0200, Kjetil Svalastog Matheussen wrote: Tim Hockin: I know Linux people love to claim how choice is our strength, but I think it's bunk. Linux needs a single GUI environment that has a lot of deep flexibility Yes! I completely agree with this. What exactly do you mean by Linux needing something ? And how are you going to impose that single GUI environment ? Will you take me to court when I write a new window manager. or a widget that doesn't have your 'imprimatur' ? If you want your freedom to program limited, please goto Windoze or MAC. But please do no impose your limitations on others. Ouch, never be sarcastic/ironic on e-mail. I completely agree with you. I though that was clear by my Oh... comment which you had cut away. The point was: _i_ actually want to customize everything via scheme-scripts (that is true), which Tim Hockin made (some kind of) a joke about. And by saying that I tried to express that what Tim Hockin perhaps means is ridiculous, does perfectly makes sense for other. We need to have choises/alternatives/anarchy/etc. because we are all different, etc. Were not that different actually, we're human beings ;) Besides, look at the CD vs. tons of DVD standards issue. Having lots of opportunities in DVD burning world can make you perfectly incompatible with your friends. That's why CD still works. And Kjetil - you're a perfect minority and actually being ignorant to those who are the exact opposite. Freedom will stay on linux. It's because it's open source. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 16:03, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 05:17:17PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: And this is exactly what explains the clutter in ardour UI. Marek, your comments on the logic and consistency of the Ardour GUI were IMHO justifed, and I'm probably not the only one who appreciated your contribution in that case. But what you write above is for me beyond the linmits of acceptable behaviour on any public forum. Sorry Fons, but define acceptable! Please! 1. You know me personally. 2. Don't teach be about behaviour, please. I'm expressing my opinion just as you are describing my opinions as fallacy and dumb-down. So please! thank you. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 16:08, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 05:17:17PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: So you call not removing disturbing non-efficient and stupid UI designs which make your life harder and all that -- fallacy and dumbing-down?? No, I never said such a thing. So then you've probably never used the real software tools - industry standards. Although i'm not saying it can't get better there either.
Re: [linux-audio-dev] linux use (was [OT] marketing hype)
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 15:10, Tim Orford wrote: i would be very careful about what lessons are to be drawn from Protools. Some of the reasons are purely historical and no longer relevant. Hardware bundling and marketing are factors. It is also a very polished, reliable product. Agreed. OTOH some recent changes in their sw make it more or less obvious, what the actual market demand is.There's where a few lessons could be learned. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 16:33, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 06:25:28PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 16:03, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 05:17:17PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: And this is exactly what explains the clutter in ardour UI. Marek, your comments on the logic and consistency of the Ardour GUI were IMHO justifed, and I'm probably not the only one who appreciated your contribution in that case. But what you write above is for me beyond the linmits of acceptable behaviour on any public forum. Sorry Fons, but define acceptable! Please! I will define as non-acceptable the implication: Paul uses a text based mail client = this explains why his GUI designs are cluttered. It would be acceptable and in this context even funny with a :-), but I didn't see that. And this is exactly what explains the clutter in ardour UI. :) Does it sound better? 100% sarcasm IMNSVHO. I was at least trying to be 100% serious. The point i was trying to make is: There are developers were born to design great technologies and make them better. And there are developers or even non-developers which were born to make design UIs which people would love to use. Paul falls into the first category. But i have a strong feeling that he thinks he falls into both categories. Web design, marketing speech, UI design, documentation, developing a monster application and being competitive with proprietary counterparts. You just can't do it all. just as you are describing my opinions as fallacy and dumb-down. I did describe as a fallacy the opinion that 'sitting at a DAW turns someone into a sound engineer'. AFAIK, that's not your opinion, nor did I imply it was. I used the term 'dumb down' without in any way referring to yourself or your expressed opinions. Are you seriously sure? We're in the marketing hype thread which i've started. ;) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 16:58, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 06:31:45PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 16:08, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 05:17:17PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: So you call not removing disturbing non-efficient and stupid UI designs which make your life harder and all that -- fallacy and dumbing-down?? No, I never said such a thing. So then you've probably never used the real software tools - industry standards. Although i'm not saying it can't get better there either. I don't see the logic of this implication. One other thing: your messages are consistently dated about two hours into the future. I hope it's not Evolution doing that :-) No it's not evolution. And sarcasm isn't above the average acceptance threshhold either so if you try to teach other people how to behave you should consider that too :) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 18:04, Martijn Sipkema wrote: [...] Sorry Fons, but define acceptable! Please! I will define as non-acceptable the implication: Paul uses a text based mail client = this explains why his GUI designs are cluttered. It would be acceptable and in this context even funny with a :-), but I didn't see that. While I do in general find Marek posts to be irritating, as in long an pointless, Thank you. ;)
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Fri, 2004-06-11 at 17:19, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 07:08:06PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: Are you seriously sure? We're in the marketing hype thread which i've started. ;) It's not all about you, even if you started it :-) Seriously now, I see your point, and mutatis mutandis I will even agree with it. But I am not as market driven as you seem to be. I will make no concessions to the 'rich bedroom techno making kids' that make up the larger part of the audio SW market, nor am I interested in their opinions. They are just not my intended audience, if such a thing exists. What is your intended audience then? DAWs in general definitely don't fall into the techno-kids category. Look at each available DAW what it offers, how it looks like, how usable it is. It's driven by market and that is driven by market *demand*. And your audience is a part of that. Nuendo has been designed with having *specifically* soundengineers in mind. They have worked with several highclass sound engineers to make it as usable as possible(the result is another story). Besides, ardour has been driven by this kind of thinking. Similar to evolution-the email client(enterprise). The result? We have a #lad channel which actually isn't a lad channel at all, since only user related stuff is being discussed there. Rarely dev stuff. With ~39 people. And an ardour channel - ~30 people. Several polls indicate that this is the most popular app of linux audio. Is ardour for technokids? Could be. Is it intended for sound engineers - definitely. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 21:15, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 01:54:58PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: Fons' Moog HP filter is a complex piece of DSP i suspect. No, it's actually quite simple :-) The most complex one is the four-band parametric filter I released recently, and that's also the only one that is not intended as an AMS plugin. And it will reappear in some time as a JACK application with it's own GUI, as this permits to do some things that would be difficult in a plugin. Just to throw in my 2 eurocents in this debate: - When I saw the collection of VST plugins that Paul Davis used to show his VST hosting in Karlsruhe, I asked myself My god, do they all look that childish ?. Ask win32 and mac users how the linux audio UIs look like :) This is just to say I terribly dislike this eye-candy style, and given the choice between that and a (maybe boring) set of standard toolkit sliders, I'd prefer the latter. The ideal is somewhere in between, but certainly not to the eye-candy side. - Before everything went digital, multitrack mixing desks had lots of controls and very little space to put them in. Good layout was absolutely essential, and most of the big name manufacturers mastered this quite well. It's done by - observing elementary aesthetic rules (e.g. color combinations), - removing all useless clutter, thus saving a few bucks.. :) - following the logic of the application, e.g. keeping things that are related together, - accepting culturally defined standards, such as that a signal flows from left to right and from top to bottom. - using hints that are picked up unconsciously, rather than explicit labeling. Doesn't influence eye-candy much. - The typical VST plugin (talking about the serious ones) corresponds more to a JACK application than a LADSPA plugin, not because both have a GUI, but because of the complexity. This is just a matter of naming. We could start calling a JACK application a JACK 'plugin' but I'd vote against. JAMIN is a good example of this. But if you let JAMin run as the only client, you'll see it makes no sense, since it needs audio input to be useful. You guys are developers, but this could get rather confusing for users. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 11:49, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 10:06:00AM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 21:15, Fons Adriaensen wrote: - When I saw the collection of VST plugins that Paul Davis used to show his VST hosting in Karlsruhe, I asked myself My god, do they all look that childish ?. Ask win32 and mac users how the linux audio UIs look like :) Whatever they think about linux audio UIs, that will not change my opinion expressed above. It should if you don't do your program just for yourself. There are various kinds of users of audio SW; their requirements and opinions will vary. In my experience, most serious and professional users prefer a UI that is first of all functional, Have you done a survey? with as little clutter as possible, i.e. a UI that is designed by people who understand how something works and how it is used, rather than by the marketing department. It's always done that way. It's because it's *driven* by market demand. Those people are called usability engineers. i.e. it is *never* designed by marketing department. The kind of people that linux still totally lacks in certain areas. Rule #1: comfort. technologies help to achieve that goal. We have tons of great technologies, no comfort. Software companies are not only about developers and sw technologies. Lots of oss developers tend to think they can do it all. They can't. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] centralising ladspa [was: Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?]
Political issues: 1. we'd need to centralize the LADSPA scene on the web, using the www.ladspa.org site, building a unified ladspa directory, each entry would describe the plugin(category, author, decription, purpose) At least? :) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 14:05, Dave Griffiths wrote: On Wed, 09 Jun 2004 15:44:53 +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote There are various kinds of users of audio SW; their requirements and opinions will vary. In my experience, most serious and professional users prefer a UI that is first of all functional, Have you done a survey? Most music software written for profit is now aimed at rich bedroom techno making kids - hence all the flashy GUI's. Professional software (that costs much much more) will often have much simpler, clean interfaces because if you use it all day every day gimmicky GUI's tend to get very annoying very fast. Really? I can give you a perfect example - a *reference* DAW system - ProTools. Which, in ver. 6, has gone eye-candy. Guess why. Another fine example - serious professionals using Mac, with macosx. Pure eyecandy. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
If developers don't know how to operate their own apps then we have a serious problem :) Marek On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 14:13, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry, you are correct. In JAMin it's center click. Jeez, I wrote it, I should know these things :-\ Jan On Wed, 9 Jun 2004 08:32 , Chris Cannam [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent: On Wednesday 09 Jun 2004 7:30 am, Richard Bown wrote: On Tuesday 08 June 2004 20:22, Chris Cannam wrote: On Tuesday 08 Jun 2004 7:46 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Right click on any slider in JAMin and it immediately goes to the default position, whether center or zero. Ah, now I looked for that feature but didn't find it. In Rosegarden you double-click to zero a fader. I didn't think of right-clicking. Actually no - you right click in RG to center a fader. Double click doesn't do anything AFAICT so maybe you dreamt that. Ah well here we go again then, an inconsistency. You certainly do double-click to zero a fader, but (again I hadn't thought to try this before, but now I just have) you right-click to centre a knob. And that is centre, rather than reset to default, which seems odd. (btw, in JAMin it seems you actually middle-click, not right-click, to reset a fader. At least in the version I have here.) Chris
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 14:46, Steve Harris wrote: On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 04:42:32PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: I can give you a perfect example - a *reference* DAW system - ProTools. Which, in ver. 6, has gone eye-candy. Guess why. The core app is still pretty plain (apart from a bit a 3d-ish shading), its the bundled plugins that are photorealistic. http://www.digidesign.com/products/sw/index_tdm.cfm Steve you can't be serious. What about the transport bar? What about the buttons that switch modes, the smallish transport bar next to them and the rest, what about the R,I,S,M buttons in the track headers? It's all chrome and glass. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: UI stuff
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 15:15, Ben wrote: Sounds interesting. This is what I do for a living. But would any of the linux audio developers actually follow it? You mean you're a usability engineer? Marek -Ben Loftis Maybe some kind of audio app interface design proposal is in order: linux audio interface design - basic application control keys: LAID BACK Gerard
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 15:15, Tim Orford wrote: On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 01:46:36PM +0100, Steve Harris wrote: On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 04:42:32PM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: I can give you a perfect example - a *reference* DAW system - ProTools. Which, in ver. 6, has gone eye-candy. Guess why. The core app is still pretty plain (apart from a bit a 3d-ish shading), its the bundled plugins that are photorealistic. http://www.digidesign.com/products/sw/index_tdm.cfm and neither do they market entirely to professionals. Most of Digidesigns efforts in the last few years have been at the bottom end of the market where they can shift more units. Their pro hardware for example is looking quite sad these days. Right. Like this one: http://www.digidesign.com/news/details.cfm?story_id=919localonly=N Sad we can't afford it. ;) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype [was: Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?}
I couldn't resist. snip a UI that is designed by people who understand how something works and how it is used, rather than by the marketing department. snip marketing, which has been defined as 'the art of disturbing rational decision making'. Let me give you a perfect example. The line6 variax. Guitar DSP modelling. What if your guitar could be every guitar? Pretty well described product, it offers 28 various types of guitars. Fenders, Gibsons, Martins. There's something magical about playing a 50-year-old guitar. Even better is a guitar that's actually been played every day of that half-century. Those instruments have a sound to them that only comes from the passing of time, hundreds of sessions, thousands of gigs... The guitars that are modeled in Variax aren't just showroom pieces. They have been played to perfection. These guitars have dings, scratches, and, most importantly, unbelievable tone. With one knob and a 5-way switch, Variax will take you through this historic collection of guitars. In other words, they have taken up to 50 year a old guitar model and tried to model it as close as possible. And now they're describing it with positive words. Are they cheating with this kind of marketing? Check the sound demos. They sound great. True, you can't go better than original, but you can get as close as possible. So, in other words - perfect product, perfect marketing - that includes a perfect site, perfect sound demos, perfect descriptions(i.e. positive ones). They're doomed to have success. And i wouldn't mind buying one. Just as if i said: There something magical about the sound of pipe organs. No wonder they're called the kings of all musical instruments. We have tried to model one such pipe organ as close as possible so that you can enjoy playing a real church organ at home. Almost - the church is missing. The sound isn'tlink to sound demos Would i cheat if i said that? Judging from the reactions of lots of people, i'd say not at *all*. And you'd be surprised - your opinion doesn't matter much to me, Fons. Why? Because you'll always be critical and you'll always know what's missing even if it's 0.1% of it all. Which is good for the DSP part of that application, not the application as a whole. Or... JACK, the award winning professional audio server that let's you seamlessly connect each professional audio application and route audio as you wish in an ultra-low-latency environment. Is jack an award winning app? It is. (google if you don't believe me ;) Is jack professional? It fulfills most conditions, one of them being ultra-low-latency. Most of linux audio apps intended for pro usage support jack today. Is it a lie? What you guys blatantly underestimate is that in order to bring your apps to users (= having success, sorry ;) it doesn't suffice if you're a developer. You have to be a good manager, have a goal that you'd like to reach(other than fooling around with code, if that's the case, ignore this email).And that a really good and successful app has got both - comfort and the underlying technology. What linux audio offers is technology. No comfort at all. Right now it's all just academic software. rant over Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Re: UI stuff
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 20:33, Ben wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 15:15, Ben wrote: Sounds interesting. This is what I do for a living. But would any of the linux audio developers actually follow it? You mean you're a usability engineer? Marek Er, yes. In addition to graphics designer, programmer, tech supporter and occasional gofer. The audio industry is actually quite tiny. I doubt that ANY audio software company has a dedicated usability engineer. I've never seen such a position posted. Believe it or not, they have. And they've got continuous feedback from professional community. You just can't concentrate on everything and make it 100%. And absolutely not if you're 2-3guys working on a big project. Forget about it. The advantage of a usability engineer is, he doesn't have to know the internals of an application, and it's even better if he doesn't since that would distract him from his actual work - to design the UI to be as logical, intuitive, effective and easy to use as possible and according to habits of most users. In order to do that, he has to think as a user, not as a developer. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 11:04, Pelle Nilsson wrote: Marek Peteraj [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: ... Second thing is that the way you percieve them shouldn't change as you switch applications. Which is what VST perfectly fulfills - it provides its own UI. If I have 100 LADSPA plug-ins installed and 3 LADSPA hosts, I'd rather spend my time learning the guis of the 3 host-applications than learning the different guis of 100 plug-ins. That a plug-in then has three different interfaces depending on in which application I use it isn't a problem. Well, no. As hosts only provide a slider for each parameter, there is absolutely no layout, controls aren't organised in a logical way. No visual clues - except a slider. All the parameters in all existing ladspa plugins can be (and usually are) fundamentally different, but you're only providing - a slider.(or a knob?) So you end up with 3x100. Look at the tape delay ladspa plugin for instance. Compare it to this for example: http://www.kvr-vst.com/i/b/asiofxproc.jpg Also, current ladspas are way to simple, so in order to achieve some more complex dsp schemes you need to put lots of ladspas in say one mixer strip. The order makes a difference, but there's no easy and obvious way to reorder them. http://www.beatmode.com/ohm-boyz/art/classic.jpg That tiny green glowing button (LPF) is exactly one ladspa plugin these days. Looking at the number of i/os is horrible. 1/1, 2/1 1/2 1/3 etc etc. Is that even close to usable? Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 13:17, Dave Griffiths wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 21:11, Marek Peteraj wrote: What linux audio offers is technology. No comfort at all. Right now it's all just academic software. This, and the lack of marketing departments is exactly why I am here. I don't want to see linux apps turning into slickly hyped lifestyle products like the rest of the music software business. We should push the advantages we have, What advantages? Free as in beer? rather than follow the path of steinberg etc... But you guys *are* following proprietary software in general. Ardour is a DAW just like cubase is, while SSM resembles reaktor in its philosophy. LADSPAs are plugins like VSTs are, etc etc etc. There's nothing which is perfectly original. I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. What we have is tons of links and no information. Although there are some very good standards which could be successful even in another domain(e.g. jack), nobody cares to promote them. Lots of LADders even think that this mailing list isn't really important. Nobody cares that it actually represents a pretty central meeting point for developers interested in linux audio, and a perfect knowledgebase. We also have an organisation, which isn't really an organisation since it's not a legal entity, and about 2/3rds of all don't seem to even participate. And that organisation seems to have different goals than promoting and protecting linux audio in *general*, *whether* pro or not, i.e. the linux audio community. Centralising information and provoding easy access is a pretty good way to promote linux audio so that it reaches more developers and users, you don't need marketing hype for that. No matter if it concerns linux audio in general or ladspa plugins. The gnome community already provides that, the kde community aswell. Heck, there's even a linuxprinting.org community. Do i need to say more? Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Because if they share your opinion, i'd rather save some bucks and buy myself a mac. Linux audio is perfectly unusable for me. Currently. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. Oh just got an email from the linuxsampler mailinglist. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: GNOME Foundation Hackers Unite! GUADEC: The world's #1 Open Source Desktop Event. GNOME Users and Developers European Conference, 28-30th June in Norway http://2004/guadec.org just to prove my words. Yes they're a rant but not a troll. Marek (who's trying to calm down)
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Knobs / widget design
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 22:38, Thorsten Wilms wrote: Hi! With the recent talk about plugin guis and stuff I think it's well fitting to present a knob design experiment I created for a LDrum redesign. SVG vector graphics (prefered by Peter and me) http://wrstud.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/forum/04-05-02_knobs_02.png 3d rendering variatios http://wrstud.uni-wuppertal.de/~ka0394/forum/04-05-02_knob_3d_1-2-3.jpg Excellent work. Clean, easy to read, eye-candy. I prefer the 3d ones. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 22:37, Dan Hollis wrote: i think its possible to get your point across without being a dick. sadly, you didn't do it. I always don't, you should already know that, i'm known for that ;) On Thu, 10 Jun 2004, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 13:17, Dave Griffiths wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 21:11, Marek Peteraj wrote: What linux audio offers is technology. No comfort at all. Right now it's all just academic software. This, and the lack of marketing departments is exactly why I am here. I don't want to see linux apps turning into slickly hyped lifestyle products like the rest of the music software business. We should push the advantages we have, What advantages? Free as in beer? rather than follow the path of steinberg etc... But you guys *are* following proprietary software in general. Ardour is a DAW just like cubase is, while SSM resembles reaktor in its philosophy. LADSPAs are plugins like VSTs are, etc etc etc. There's nothing which is perfectly original. I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. What we have is tons of links and no information. Although there are some very good standards which could be successful even in another domain(e.g. jack), nobody cares to promote them. Lots of LADders even think that this mailing list isn't really important. Nobody cares that it actually represents a pretty central meeting point for developers interested in linux audio, and a perfect knowledgebase. We also have an organisation, which isn't really an organisation since it's not a legal entity, and about 2/3rds of all don't seem to even participate. And that organisation seems to have different goals than promoting and protecting linux audio in *general*, *whether* pro or not, i.e. the linux audio community. Centralising information and provoding easy access is a pretty good way to promote linux audio so that it reaches more developers and users, you don't need marketing hype for that. No matter if it concerns linux audio in general or ladspa plugins. The gnome community already provides that, the kde community aswell. Heck, there's even a linuxprinting.org community. Do i need to say more? Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Because if they share your opinion, i'd rather save some bucks and buy myself a mac. Linux audio is perfectly unusable for me. Currently. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 23:21, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 04:49, Alfons Adriaensen wrote: On Wed, Jun 09, 2004 at 10:06:00AM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 21:15, Fons Adriaensen wrote: - When I saw the collection of VST plugins that Paul Davis used to show his VST hosting in Karlsruhe, I asked myself My god, do they all look that childish ?. Ask win32 and mac users how the linux audio UIs look like :) Whatever they think about linux audio UIs, that will not change my opinion expressed above. There are various kinds of users of audio SW; their requirements and opinions will vary. In my experience, most serious and professional users prefer a UI that is first of all functional, with as little clutter as possible, i.e. a UI that is designed by people who understand how something works and how it is used, rather than by the marketing department. This type of user may be a minority, but they are the only ones that really matter to me - I am neither a politician nor a salesman, and I have no desire to be popular. In a more general sense, a majority is not 'right' by itself, a majority of informed people probably is. And having paid for something does not qualify someone as informed. In other words, the consumer is not always right by definition. If he were, there would be no place for marketing, which has been defined as 'the art of disturbing rational decision making'. The audio business is full of hype and irrational behaviour. Lots of people seem prepared to pay 5 Eur for a meter of 'directional oxygen free left-twisting copper' loudspeaker cable. Should I take their opinion seriously ? I prefer not to. sarcasm Didn't you know that the consumer is *always* right. Now stop bothering me - I want to go watch my Betamax, but first I have to do some number crunching on my Windoze system. /sarcasm s/Betamax/VHS ;) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 23:18, Steve Harris wrote: On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 12:26:07 +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: I don't want to see linux apps turning into slickly hyped lifestyle products like the rest of the music software business. We should push the advantages we have, What advantages? Free as in beer? Free as in beer is good. Not having to use windows is good. Mostly I just like the tools - varied, sometimes wacky and generally really versatile and easy to hack. I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. Good. I /like/ the current (lack of) linux audio community. Its not like we're one homogenous organisation. Were just a bunch of people who hack linux audio systems. Its great :) The only real connection we have is that were all doing audio hacking under linux - some are using GTK and C, some Qt and C++, some python... Right. And most people do use linux audio standards - JACK, LADSPA, ALSA. And lots of people from here talk about them and make them better. I think the linux audio world is too small and varied to have a tightly knit organisation like the Gnome guys. But.. why are you participating in linuxaudio.org then? Seriously, i don't understand, no sarcasm. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 00:07, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 17:26, Marek Peteraj wrote: But you guys *are* following proprietary software in general. Ardour is a DAW just like cubase is, while SSM resembles reaktor in its philosophy. LADSPAs are plugins like VSTs are, etc etc etc. There's nothing which is perfectly original. I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. What we have is tons of links and no information. Although there are some very good standards which could be successful even in another domain(e.g. jack), nobody cares to promote them. Lots of LADders even think that this mailing list isn't really important. Nobody cares that it actually represents a pretty central meeting point for developers interested in linux audio, and a perfect knowledgebase. We also have an organisation, which isn't really an organisation since it's not a legal entity, and about 2/3rds of all don't seem to even participate. And that organisation seems to have different goals than promoting and protecting linux audio in *general*, *whether* pro or not, i.e. the linux audio community. Centralising information and provoding easy access is a pretty good way to promote linux audio so that it reaches more developers and users, you don't need marketing hype for that. No matter if it concerns linux audio in general or ladspa plugins. The gnome community already provides that, the kde community aswell. Heck, there's even a linuxprinting.org community. Do i need to say more? Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Because if they share your opinion, i'd rather save some bucks and buy myself a mac. Linux audio is perfectly unusable for me. Currently. Marek Marek, I hate to break this to you but I've got a life, a job, a wife, two kids, one in college, 3 bands, and I travel for my job about 30% of the year. I'm not interested in making money or getting customers from JAMin. I do this because I enjoy it. I do it because I use it myself. I do it because other people can use it and appreciate the work that goes into it. I started working on JAMin originally because I thought that I owed people like Paul Davis, Steve Harris, Jack O'Quin, Fernando, Erik, Jaroslav, Jesse, Taybin, Takashi, ad infinitum something back for the work that they have poured into the tools that I use on a daily basis. Fair point. If you want to organize something go ahead and organize it, but please don't tell me that I have to conform to some consumer driven vision of the great commercial future of Linux Audio. Sorry to criticize still, but you're participating in linuxaudio.org whose current aim is to do exaclty that. ;) Which i'm not saying is bad, the opposite. I think that a lot of valuable work has been done so far(if only technology-wise) and i think it's a pity to leave it like that. I also doubt if there is a single developer in the Linux Audio Developer community who could accurately be described as inept. Just to be clear, i've never said that they're inept. What's wrong about saying hey were cool, want to join us? Here are the standards we worked out and we use, this is how they work, this is where we meet and discuss, this is where you can learn a thing or two. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 00:24, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 15:26, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 13:17, Dave Griffiths wrote: Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Most probably you will find out (when/if other developers care to speak out) that this view is shared by many, if not all, developers, and not just in the audio world. Great projects in the open source community usually happen when a motivated individual or group _needs_ something. It is not the needs of the world (usually), or user demand, or the desire to fill or create a marketing niche, it is their need. That is very untrue, and evolution and the motivations behind that app prove that. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 00:34, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 19:27, Marek Peteraj wrote: If you want to organize something go ahead and organize it, but please don't tell me that I have to conform to some consumer driven vision of the great commercial future of Linux Audio. Sorry to criticize still, but you're participating in linuxaudio.org whose current aim is to do exaclty that. ;) Which i'm not saying is bad, the opposite. I think that a lot of valuable work has been done so far(if only technology-wise) and i think it's a pity to leave it like that. I'm doing that because I was interested and everyone else was already a member for another project. I will do whatever I can to help out but it's not the driving force in my life. What's wrong about saying hey were cool, want to join us? Here are the standards we worked out and we use, this is how they work, this is where we meet and discuss, this is where you can learn a thing or two. There's nothing wrong with that and I agree with some of your points. I just think you need to chill a bit. A good dialog has been started. Contribute positively instead of negatively. Jan, i'm sorry but if say negative words about a few things, is it negative contribution? I'm only naming things which i see as a real problem. I feel that the threshold for criticism is low and every criticism is viewed as negative. Otherwise it would be pertty easy to digest even trolls. Which sometimes too can be very educative. Believe it or not. I'm honest. that's all. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 02:27, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 00:07, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 17:26, Marek Peteraj wrote: But you guys *are* following proprietary software in general. Ardour is a DAW just like cubase is, while SSM resembles reaktor in its philosophy. LADSPAs are plugins like VSTs are, etc etc etc. There's nothing which is perfectly original. I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. What we have is tons of links and no information. Although there are some very good standards which could be successful even in another domain(e.g. jack), nobody cares to promote them. Lots of LADders even think that this mailing list isn't really important. Nobody cares that it actually represents a pretty central meeting point for developers interested in linux audio, and a perfect knowledgebase. We also have an organisation, which isn't really an organisation since it's not a legal entity, and about 2/3rds of all don't seem to even participate. And that organisation seems to have different goals than promoting and protecting linux audio in *general*, *whether* pro or not, i.e. the linux audio community. Centralising information and provoding easy access is a pretty good way to promote linux audio so that it reaches more developers and users, you don't need marketing hype for that. No matter if it concerns linux audio in general or ladspa plugins. The gnome community already provides that, the kde community aswell. Heck, there's even a linuxprinting.org community. Do i need to say more? Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Because if they share your opinion, i'd rather save some bucks and buy myself a mac. Linux audio is perfectly unusable for me. Currently. Marek Marek, I hate to break this to you but I've got a life, a job, a wife, two kids, one in college, 3 bands, and I travel for my job about 30% of the year. I'm not interested in making money or getting customers from JAMin. I do this because I enjoy it. I do it because I use it myself. I do it because other people can use it and appreciate the work that goes into it. I started working on JAMin originally because I thought that I owed people like Paul Davis, Steve Harris, Jack O'Quin, Fernando, Erik, Jaroslav, Jesse, Taybin, Takashi, ad infinitum something back for the work that they have poured into the tools that I use on a daily basis. Fair point. If you want to organize something go ahead and organize it, but please don't tell me that I have to conform to some consumer driven vision of the great commercial future of Linux Audio. Sorry to criticize still, but you're participating in linuxaudio.org whose current aim is to do exaclty that. ;) Which i'm not saying is bad, the opposite. I think that a lot of valuable work has been done so far(if only technology-wise) and i think it's a pity to leave it like that. Moreover, i think that opensource has become more than just hacking around with friends over the years. I think that there's a real chance to make this a better world. Which can sound as cliche, but at least it would legalize the software in the whole world in a few years time. Not to mention free as in beer for those who can't afford to pay for sw at all. So i think it pays off to be more open to new ideas, especially usability related and organisational, these days. You might not reach your peak in terms of usability with your app still. And people get used to good things easy so it's easy to recognize. ;) So using that kind of empathy in designing interfaces is what should drive oss aplications forward these days. This doesn't apply to desktop apps only. The desktop people already have human interface guidelines worked out. They have usability mailing lists, and usability engineers that do UI reviews. And here's the chance to decide whether you want to provide your tool to as many people as possible. The more people will use your tool the happier you'll be since you make more people happier. And since you'll continue hacking on JAMin(or any other project) anyway Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype [was: Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?}
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 00:56, Dave Robillard wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 16:11, Marek Peteraj wrote: What you guys blatantly underestimate is that in order to bring your apps to users (= having success, sorry ;) it doesn't suffice if you're a developer. You have to be a good manager, have a goal that you'd like to reach(other than fooling around with code, if that's the case, ignore this email).And that a really good and successful app has got both - comfort and the underlying technology. What linux audio offers is technology. No comfort at all. Right now it's all just academic software. rant over Marek I don't think I could possibly care less who uses 'linux audio'. I don't really think anyone else here should either - we should be aiming to build the best system possible, period. Not saying look! popular software the people pay money for does this; therefore we must too! If anything, we should be looking at the proprietary music software world to make sure we avoid repeating their mistakes (ridiculous duplication of effort, lock-in, and horrid UIs for example), not duplicating them just because. (Not to say we can't take positive things from that world too though) Exactly! Note that there are many things that we should learn from though. It's because most things are driven by market demand i.e. users. So the sw companies *had* to respect it in order to sell thier product. Sure they don't have Jack - but see the reason - being proprietary is there barrier they could not bridge. Open standards are very strong players! To not promote them is suicide. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 01:08, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 17:50, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 00:24, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 15:26, Marek Peteraj wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 13:17, Dave Griffiths wrote: Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Most probably you will find out (when/if other developers care to speak out) that this view is shared by many, if not all, developers, and not just in the audio world. Great projects in the open source community usually happen when a motivated individual or group _needs_ something. It is not the needs of the world (usually), or user demand, or the desire to fill or create a marketing niche, it is their need. That is very untrue, and evolution and the motivations behind that app prove that. I'm missing something. Which app? What is untrue? The email client. Which one are you using? What I just wrote? Let the developers speak, please. The devs are themselves users. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 01:19, Jan Depner wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 18:08, Fernando Pablo Lopez-Lezcano wrote: Most probably you will find out (when/if other developers care to speak out) that this view is shared by many, if not all, developers, and not just in the audio world. Great projects in the open source community usually happen when a motivated individual or group _needs_ something. It is not the needs of the world (usually), or user demand, or the desire to fill or create a marketing niche, it is their need. That is very untrue, and evolution and the motivations behind that app prove that. I'm missing something. Which app? What is untrue? What I just wrote? Let the developers speak, please. So far they are saying what I stated, more or less. Now, if what the developers themselves say does not matter, or if you know their (our) minds better than ourselves then this is all rather pointless. As far as I'm concerned, Fernando has hit the nail on the head. I think Marek is talking about Ardour, but I doubt if Paul's total motivation is monetary return. In case anybody here is using evolution to post on lad. That application was driven by the same factors that drive most sw apps today. User demand, marketing niche. All there. Result? Since 1.2 it was the most stable and perfect application i've ever seen. Fast, robust, export/import of mailboxes with tons of emails with no problems, easy searches, easy and fast managing of multiple accounts, easy to add filters (without digging manuals), virtual folders, and more... Much better job than outlook has ever done. Why? Because it's enterprise ready. And it shows. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
Simple logic has it that you just can't do a perfect app if your motivation isn't 'to do it for lots of users'. You guys stated that it's just your hobby and your doing that mostly for yourself and the other devs that did other apps perhaps if somebody wants to give it a go. I'm fine with that. Just wanted to know. I think we can end the session now. :) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 01:11, Fons Adriaensen wrote: On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 12:26:07AM +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. Maybe this explains my experience about 8 months ago when I upgraded from SuSE 8.2 to 9.0. In the new distro, most of the Gnome apps that I loved before suddenly seemed to be dumbed down to the point I really started to dislike them, and I just removed them form my system. Facts please. :) (Ok i promised to shut up so hopefully this time ;) Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] [OT] marketing hype
On Thu, 2004-06-10 at 01:40, Dave Robillard wrote: On Wed, 2004-06-09 at 18:26, Marek Peteraj wrote: I've never seen such inapt community btw, which is totally ignorant in organizing itself. See the gnome community which started to exist the same year. They have more conferences per year, one of them being huge(guadec) with sponsors, larger companies involved, and *most* of *all* they're a centralised community. What we have is tons of links and no information. Although there are some very good standards which could be successful even in another domain(e.g. jack), nobody cares to promote them. Lots of LADders even think that this mailing list isn't really important. Nobody cares that it actually represents a pretty central meeting point for developers interested in linux audio, and a perfect knowledgebase. We also have an organisation, which isn't really an organisation since it's not a legal entity, and about 2/3rds of all don't seem to even participate. And that organisation seems to have different goals than promoting and protecting linux audio in *general*, *whether* pro or not, i.e. the linux audio community. Centralising information and provoding easy access is a pretty good way to promote linux audio so that it reaches more developers and users, you don't need marketing hype for that. No matter if it concerns linux audio in general or ladspa plugins. What exactly is preventing you (yes, YOU, Marek Peteraj) from promoting linux audio in *general* etc. etc.? Not much that I can see. I don't want to speak on behalf of anyone here; but I'm sure there are plenty of people here who DON'T CARE. ie me. I don't care if every idiot who'se ever bought an Electronic Musician magazine uses LAD software. I don't want to waste my time letting them know about it. You do? Fantastic, then shut up and do it already. All the other super communities you love that are so much better than LAD can have their conferences, sponsors, larger companies, legal identities and whatever other stupid MBA-speak you've come up with. I just kinda like hacking FOSS audio stuff, whether or not it jives with your plan for world domination or not. Personally speaking, as a free software developer I don't care if my programs are deemed as sucessful, they work for me, and handful of other people - this makes me happy :) I'd like to see what other developers of the most popular linux audio projects think. Because if they share your opinion, i'd rather save some bucks and buy myself a mac. Linux audio is perfectly unusable for me. Currently. Marek I would like to personally apologize for not dedicating my free time to making you happy. This is the linux audio DEVELOPERS list, and it's just that, a mailing list for developers. Just a bunch of people with a common interest. Want the easy route out? Want to just go buy a Mac and get some spiffy music making programs and be on your way? Then do it! Oh so sorry the free ride didn't work out for you, better luck next time. If you want a plug-in-and-drool computer, you're not running the right OS. Suggestions are good, ideas are good, discussion is good. Bitching and moaning that Linux audio is perfectly unusable for me, and implying that somehow everyone on this list needs to make it their goal in life to spend all their _free time_ making a bunch of nameless random idiots happy is not good. Especially when you don't make a single valid suggestion while doing so. (My apoligies to all for the ESR style 'self appointed voice of the community' crap...) -DR- (Who debated hitting send on this one for a good 5 minutes) Point taken. Marek
Re: [linux-audio-dev] Is ladspa actually la-dsp-a? Is JACK the ultimate solution?
On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 10:18, Steve Harris wrote: On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 11:45:53 +0200, Marek Peteraj wrote: VST plugins tend to be rather complex, offering tons of features and eyecandish GUIs, while LADSPAs usually offer limited functionality, no GUI at all(hosts usually provide simple ones to control the parameters). But what's interesting is that each LADSPA plugin usually implements exactly one type of DSP technique, for example, an oscillator, or a delay. This basically leads to a situation where a certain DSP technique is 'isolated' in a separate plugin. I think thats down to two factors (and its not a good thing) 1) LADSPA developers are few in number and short in time. The basics are a good place to start. The number of dsp developers isn't relevant. Besides - there's at least 5 devs i know of. The number will grow. 2) The lack of a UI standard makes complex plugins a bit pointless. Why do you need a UI standard for jack fx/synth clients? Does JAMin follow one such standard? You could do a virtually unlimited amount of UIs for exactly 1 fx/synth using IPC. There are a few counter examples (e.g. my VyNil plugin wraps a lot of different bits), and infact if you look in many LADSPA plugins you will see theres really more going on than there appears to be. According to my proposal, this shouldn't happen. :) [OT] - my canned plugin writing experience - all generalisations and IMHO of course Time breakdown: 10% writing code, 10% maths and optimising, 80% tweaking and tuning. See point 6) Fewer controls is better. Doesn't seem like if you look at the most successful VST(i)/DX(i)/RTAS/TDM/AI plugins :) Affordance, appearance and usability has as much affect on the perceived sound quality as the DSP code (posivly and negativly). Some of this can be achieved without a custom UI. Today we've got 100% Affordance, 0% appearance and 0% usability. :) At least the point that there's no unified affordance since each host implements it's own, makes the question of usability irrelevant. You mentioned JAMin - true that does use LADSPA plugins - but of the total ammount of code the LADSPA plugins are a tiny fraction. I just reused them because I hate fixing bugs in two places :) And? :) Points 5) and 6) Marek
