[ubuntu-studio-devel] "elementary OS" ... ONE Ubuntustudio user's thoughts ...

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Tue, 8 Sep 2015 10:51:46 +0200, ttoine wrote:
>I don't think we need to blacklist.
>
>Maybe we should just recommend some hardware and software that we know
>are using. Less is more.

The problem could be exotic revisions of hardware. Revision 1, 2, 3 and
4a might work, but revision 4b doesn't work for all purposes. This might
happen not that often. Right off the bat I remember a Microlink 56k
modem, a donation from a Windows user. I could use the modem for
Internet access, but for some usage it didn't work. Perhaps I couldn't
use it for fax, I don't remember, but I remember that revision 1, 2, 3
and 4 (or similar) were mentioned to work with Linux. It exposed that
revision 4 was split into an a and b version and neither Vendor nor the
Linux community cared about the chipset of this revision.

Regarding hardware recommendations it's important that we not only
mention hardware that might work for our individual usage.

My HDSPe's analog IOs can be used with long latency, but still getting
xruns, but anyway the sound quality is better than provided by most, if
not all prosumer cards. On the same machine it can be used with short
latency on a Windows install. On the Windows and a FreeBSD install
everything works, on Linux ADAT doesn't work with jackd.
Users often don't test all abilities. I for example never tested if
AES/EBU works. Another issue is what does work in wich version.

In general RME devices on other platforms support a lot of features
that aren't available for Linux.

What I absolutely can recommend is an Envy24 PCI device I own, but who
is interested in PCI devices?

Could I recommend the KORGnano KONTROL? Yesno! I own the old version.
For the old version a Linux application exists, but this app can't save
settings. AFAIK for new KORGnano KONTROLs no Linux app is available.

Blacklists are more important than Whitelists.

Often people ask for help to improve their mastering. They use all
kinds of EQ available by plugins. Excepted of Fons' parametric EQ, I
would blacklist all other Linux EQs I know, at least for audio
production. Most EQs simply don't do what they should do.

If you follow Linux audio mailing lists, you might have noticed that
each week at least one user reports a crash caused by plugins.
Since plugins are provided bundled by packages, it would be good to get
a list to

sudo rm list_of_plugins

It always takes hours, when I search a clean old school ping pong delay.
IIRC only one delay can provide it and it takes tricky settings to get
it. So even a whitelist should provide a description.