[ubuntu-studio-devel] Audio

[autumna]

I was only gone for dinner. :D

First of all, a reminder to everyone to please remember being
constructive rather than negative as it was the case in this email.

While I know Ralf enough to not take the tone of his email personally, I
have already heard from several people that this is the type of
conversation that keeps happening in the mailing list that discourages
them from participating. This is bad for the productivity, morale and
sustainability of the whole group.

Nobody in this team is experts on all topics, nor should there be
assumptions that it is a requirement to be eligible to participate. As
we discuss, there will be mistakes, there will be misunderstanding,
there will be lack of knowledge, and even differences in opinion. We
have designers, audio experts, programmers, packagers and learners here.
Nobody knows everything, so we need each others contributions and
support to make Ubuntustudio better.

Also just to clarify, this is not my application, nor Len's. This is a
blueprint that has been in our todo list for a while. Len has been
putting a lot of work into making it happen. I have been trying to on
and off (and not nearly as much as I'd like to) put effort on UI design
aspect of it. Not everything will be functional at once, and some things
might take several cycles of feedback, not just brainstorming from us
but also from our users. Software takes time to mature. However, it is
important to have feedback early and often, which is why this
conversation in this mailing list has been happening on this topic and
will keep happening instead of waiting until a finished program.

Alright enough of this, onward to replies.


On 01/15/2017 06:56 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> Hi Eylul,
>
> Jack is a sound server for audio production purpose. For good reasons it
> defaults to 32-bit float. There's nearly no good reason to decide
> against this default. The bit depth used by the sound server has
> nothing to do with e.g. CD compatibility.
>
> If this app should make setting up an audio environment easier for
> noobs, only offer to select between all available sample rates and
> don't provide any choice to change the bit depth at all.

Alright I'll change the text to being only the sample rate.

>
> The default sample rate should be 48000 Hz. Sometimes it could make
> sense to chose 44100 Hz, so maybe you could recommend both. Other
> sample rates seldom make sense. Anyway, all sample rates should be
> provided, but selecting another bit rate instead of 32-bit float very
> unlikely is useful for anybody using averaged x86 or x86_64, aka amd64
> hardware and common Linux audio apps.
I was wondering about that 192k, but turns out it was a
miscommunication. 48k default then. (Just to clarify by the way, the
values in the mockup are by no means final, or even necessarily
realistic, my only goal in putting them there is to have a sense of how
much space and what type of interaction is needed. Thus, while these
informations on defaults etc help a lot, don't worry that some of them
might not be accurate. Corrections are appreciated through)

>> I added your wording with one difference (using latency instead of
>> response) but happy to change that back if need be. That option can be
>> more verbose too, but will require a bit of a layout tweak in that
>> case.
> It's not my wording, I quoted Audiobus settings. 128 frames isn't the
> frame size providing the lowest latency, just Audiobus mentions this. I
> wouldn't add a recommendation, but the information about device load and
> response/latency/delay is useful, even a default of 256 is useful for a
> lot of audio tasks, smaller would be better, but with a max of 256 it
> becomes interesting for e.g. guitar effects and smaller than 256
> easily could cause xruns. For anything else 1024 might be the better
> default. 1024 is the default provided by Jack.
Ok, I am not entirely certain I understand this one to revise the design.
* Am I understanding you correctly that frame/cycle doesn't affect the
latency? In that case we just need to correct the text. Just me know
what it needs to say
*  We should steer the users toward 2 values, 256 and 1024. Rather than
256 default, with 128 and 512 there as other solutions. Do I understand
that correctly?
> For experienced audio users and novices willing to learn your app is
> crap. The target group are users who don't have a clue and who are
> unwilling to learn. You need to make it easy for them, but actually you
> make it harder, by mixing jack settings, with settings that are not
> directly related to jack and by providing the same choice jack
> provides. Don't!
>
> Provide a first choice, 1. music production, 2. other
> audio productions (radio etc.) and 3. audio for anything else. Don't
> provide to chose between PA bridge and things like this. Disable PA for
> music production and enable it for other audio productions and don't
> launch Jack at all, for anything else.
>
> Everybody understanding the terms and/or willing to learn should purge
> this app. Everybody who wants it as easy as possible, should simply
> get an option to chose between sane defaults, don't offer grotesque
> options, such as different bit depths.
>
> Regards,
> Ralf
I have things to say on this, but will do so, replying further down the
thread.

Best

Eylul