Judgement Day: Studio Dave Tests Ubuntu Studio 9.04

That's a lot of steps, a lot of hackery, to make Ubuntu Studio work properly. I'm very interested in multimedia distributions for video and audio production, but the barrier to entry here seems a bit high.

Hey, you dare to say Linux is not ready for the desktop? Not ready for 'normal users'? You astroturfer! You shill! Joining the FUD-bandwagon, huh? Receiving a nice laptop for Christmas!

I'm not serious, but please be aware, those are the tendencies I noticed from 'certain' Linux-news writers not so long ago. You may be glad you are known over here, otherwise some people would certainly be interested in your bank statements to see where the money from your $10 laptop did come from.

LOL hans :)

Dave Phillips is the reigning guru of Linux audio production, he really knows his stuff. Ubuntu Studio is a bit of a mess. My audio production workstation is Ubuntu 8.04 with Audacity, Ardour, a realtime kernel, no effing PulseAudio, JACK, and plain good old ALSA. Later buntu incarnations have many vexations and hurdles for the audio geek.

tuxchick, I'm waiting for your audio book ...

So it's PulseAudio that's messing up the world of Linux audio.

Will all of this get better at some point, or is it reverting to ALSA forever?

PulseAudio is still a baby, and a big part of Dave's problem was it depended on the entire Gnome desktop, so there was no obvious clean way to remove it. He found a way which is linked in the article.

PulseAudio is for managing playback so you can have simultaneous audio streams doing different things. Like Skype being routed to a USB headset, and Libre.fm on your computer speakers, and both with independent volume controls. It's not really a good tool for audio recording.

Audio recording and mixing have different needs: a real-time low latency kernel, a low-latency audio server and router which are supplied by the excellent JACK, and ALSA for the low-level mixer and drivers. Anything else gets in the way. Linux audio is pretty messy with all kind of legacy cruft, but it's getting better. Just a matter of time.

Quoting:PulseAudio is still a baby, and a big part of Dave's problem was it depended on the entire Gnome desktop, so there was no obvious clean way to remove it. He found a way which is linked in the article.

It can't be removed from a KDE desktop either, at least not easily.

Quoting:Linux audio is pretty messy with all kind of legacy cruft

At least you didn't mention OSS, which means we're finally rid of that. However, I have to admit OSS was what made sound work out of the box with OpenBSD; while 'getting sound work' was told to be a nightmare in OpenBSD. When I tried Linux, sound didn't work out of the box, but 'alsaconf' definitely does the job.

Only in Windows does one have to search for drivers. If the CD-ROM ended up in the Bermuda-triangle again this means searching the net and such; so we Linux users are spoiled. I can go out, buy a cheap Sweex soundcard, put it in the case in the slot, disable onboard-sound from the mobo, and all I have to do is run Alsaconf and I'm done. No freakin' "OS detected new hardware" nag-screens.

JACK is a different beast though. I tried and fiddled with it, but just couldn't get it to work. It was indeed quite nasty. Compiling a low-latency kernel was far easier I remember. Those were the times of the 2 'audio-specialized' Linux distro's that are not around anymore; so things might have changed. I should find out.

TC: When are we going to see some nice photographs (digiKam album or so I guess) from your home-studio, or live action when you're recording a concert?