a recent thread on the LAU list got me thinking. there were some posts to different blogs along the lines of “gnome and kde are dying!” “linux on the desktop is dead!” “nothing is moving anymore!” this was brought up as off-topic on LAU and folks started to weigh in on what the slowing of development on GTK+ and all that meant for the desktop experience on gnu/linux and the odds of us ever having an audio distro that works “out of the box.”
i should pause for a second and qualify some things. first off, i’ve been a professional windows programmer for just over 10 years now. i’ve been running debian gnu/linux since 1998 or so and i’ve had a powerbook with os x for around 3 years. i use what works for what i need to have done. and i’m not looking for some kind of “experience.” my computers are tools and i expect them to perform given tasks efficiently and reliably, but not without some level of expertise on my part. simply picking up an instrument doesn’t make one a musician, right?
and that’s where our first and most destructive assumption about any kind of audio appication on any platform enters. if i were to plop “joe geetar” in front of a 64 channel mixer and a DAT recorder would he expect to be able to push a button and start recording his album? i doubt it. but because joe can check his email and type up his resume should he assume that he can now click a button on his computer screen and master an album? that’s quite a leap. why? because checking email and recording a song are two entirely different processes requiring entirely different knowledge bases and having enitrely different system requirements.
i understand that the majority of folks are looking to walk up to a computer, open an app, point something at a microphone and record for a bit. that’s great! and that SHOULD be a safe assumption. it’s certainly an assumption one can make with garageband on any os x box. but i’m talking about “state of the art” level audio work. to me this means: low latency multi-track recording with non-destructive editing and the maximum amount of digital magic that can be forced into an application and run comfortably on a modern (2 year old) piece of hardware.
someone who is serious about using a digital audio workstation (DAW) knows that the more a user wants from an application, the more the application wants from its environment. if one desires low latency recording, one needs to be sure that the given hardware can handle it. an onboard sound chip and an off-the-shelf harddisk with the system and audio data stored on it won’t handle that (in most situations). an experienced DAW user
would expect that on any platform. that user would also know all about the performance of disks, how to partition them, what filesystems to use and how to configure the OS to maximize performance. and that’s on any platform. that user will also know that audio hardware is key. superior converters with onboard dsp means that there is more room to move on the system. more RAM helps as well. the user would know that having two browsers, an email client and four IM conversations open while trying to record or edit could damage performance.
but how would this user know all of these things? because anyone who is serious about working with digital audio will take the time to do a little research regardless of platform or software package preferences. the would be engineer who runs out and buys whatever is on the shelf at the local music barn is courting disaster and will get exactly what is deserved. think about it, a musician doesn’t simply buy any guitar. she buys the guitar that sounds and feels the best for her for the money she can afford spend. why should a DAW be any different?
it’s not.
i understand that learning the internals of a kernel and figuring out how to patch and recompile is an enormous roadblock. but that’s clear now from what i can tell. it’s easy to get a distro installed and have jack up and running with ardour in an afternoon (likely the same amount of time it takes to install windows and crack the light version of protools that was “borrowed” from a friend). with debian, it’s an apt-get away. maybe it’s my conservatory training talking here but nothing that produces worthwhile results is ever easy. practicing is never easy. learning a new instrument isn’t a simple affair. getting that first gig or finding a well suited collaborator doesn’t usually just happen. it’s work!
i’m not naive. i understand that we expect our computers to do more than one thing. we want a machine that will meet our DAW needs and still check email, browse the web, edit documents, layout flyers and keep our
finances. it would be pretty sweet if copy and paste worked across applications too. and if we could expect the desktop to behave the same way in all environments that’d be keen. these are all excellent goals and in most respects total no-brainers. that said, anyone who is serious about recording will likely be willing to give a little to gain a lot in terms of achieving his goals. when automating mixes in ardour using my midi faderbox of choice i seldom find myself wishing that i had a weather widget on my task bar.
there will be those who will say that simply going to os x or windows will solve those issues and that a user can have it all right out of the box, but that’s not true. after the amount of cash that gets laid out there is still a pile of configuration and tweaking to be done. the hurdles have different names, but they still exist. getting results requires education and work.
at the end of the day, someone who is serious about using a computer for something like digital audio needs to do some research and become educated in the use of the tool that she is trying to acquire. this is true of most things in the world and i’m not sure why computers and software are supposed to be exempt.
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