What HW/SW do people have working?

[Larry David]

On Jan 26, 2009, at 1:46 AM, Scott wrote:

>  This may answer your questions about xruns,
> latency, etc.
>
> http://subversion.ffado.org/wiki/SomeNotesOnLatency
>
> Pay attention to the section titled "So why is the latency higher  
> than on OS XYZ?"  In
> any case,

Thanks, that was very informative.  (And I looked up xrun on  
wikipedia - duh - don't know why I didn't think of that before  
asking...)

>
>> Now this is very interesting.  RT means "real time", right?  Is  
>> there some real
>> time capability that Linux has for processing audio that Mac does  
>> not?
>
> I don't know.  I can run Linux on commodity hardware but a Mac  
> costs bank.

Woo hoo!  I will shamelessly adopt that phrase into my vocabulary.   
"_____" costs bank!  10 coolness points...

> A recent
> email thread on the ffado-users list (or was it this list?)  
> discussed why Apple and
> Microsoft wouldn't devote the resources to making an RT version of  
> their OS because
> the proaudio community is too small to bother supporting, or  
> perhaps they just can't
> do it.  Again... I'm not a kernel hacker, I'm just good at  
> following directions.

As the link you posted above suggests, Apple may think that < 10ms  
latency is good enough - and hence no need for an RT version of Mac  
OS (do I sound like I know what I'm talking about yet??... :-)  This  
brings up the question of why RT capability is needed in the first  
place.  Again based on your link above, latency below 10 ms may be  
undetectable when playing soft synths (since it takes about 3 ms for  
sound to travel 1 m - can you notice a difference in latency if you  
move closer or further from your speakers when plugged directly into  
an amp?  I can't...)  So that leaves the ability to playback and  
record at the same time (forgot the fancy term for that ...).  I can  
see the usefulness of that for punching into a multitrack recording,  
but Digital Performer 4 on my old powerbook can do that very easily  
if I tell it where to punch in beforehand (which is not a big  
limitation) - it just preloads buffers or whatever so that there is  
no glitch/delay when the punch happens.  Seems like a Linux DAW could  
be programmed to do the same thing - so what is the great benefit of RT?

>
>> I really want to be convinced that Linux is the way to go -  
>> cheaper machine and
>> free SW - can't beat that with a stick.  But I'm very skeptical -  
>> you get what you
>> pay for and all that...
>
> You can always contribute to the cause.  Donate buttons are on the  
> right side of the
> page at http://ardour.org.

Hehe, well thanks for the tip, but I was actually not so concerned  
about the "pay" part as much as the "get" part.  Ardour is what it is  
whether I pay for it or not.  (And I would gladly make at least a  
token donation if I ended up using it.)  I'm more concerned about how  
functional it could be if it is developed for free - I mean a man's  
gotta make a living and that sounds like more than a full time job.

>
>> ld
>
> BTW, I loved Curb Your Enthusiasm. :^)

Thank you.  I have moved on to other things now, obviously.  I had my  
fortune in the stock market and now live in a van down by the river;  
hence my interest in a Linux machine for music, since a new Mac costs  
bank, baby!

ld

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