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New Forum Topic Section Heading - Linux and Free Software?

stellarartwars
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permalink   Wed, Oct 9, 2013 @ 10:30 PM
Recent innovations in Linux music technology such as Ardour 3 has made this a very desirable platform. From what I can see the only thing currently missing is some driver support and Reason rex2 file support.

I think it would be a good idea to dedicate a forum section for discussing Linux and other free software. One issue is unlike the commercial packages this software doesn’t always come with documentation and the user interfaces can be less developed, making it harder for newbies.

What’s particularly exiting is the sheer flexibility offered by open source, plus the Linux Jack system which is in many ways a superior platform to ReWire. Not being bound to one hardware platform like Mac or Windows, there’s potentially a lot of use in designing home-built digital instruments. And there’s also a high degree of compatibility with Android and iOS as both are UNIX based.
So all very exciting stuff for us hobbiests. Such a forum section could include links to relevent resouces- downloads, tutorial videos, blogs and so forth.
spinningmerkaba
admin
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permalink   Tue, Jan 3, 2017 @ 12:09 PM
I’ve been using Audacity, Hydrogen, and Ardour for years. I lost my ability to use Ardour when my computer crashed and I’ve been hacking at mixes with only Audacity and Hydrogen…but I just go a new laptop!!!

I’ve installed Ubuntu Studio 16.04 LTS on it, and I’ve experienced a few bugs that have kept me from diving straight into Ardour. Hopefully soon.

A lot of this stuff is over my head, and I still don’t fully understand how Jack works. A forum for this would certainly be helpful. Until then, we can post here, yes?
 
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permalink   stellarartwars Wed, Jan 4, 2017 @ 9:06 AM
KXStudio is a good distro. I’m running Windows at present because my sound hardware (Allen & Heath ICE-16) is relatively new and Linux drivers tend to take a few years.

What I don’t like about Windows is the restrictive technology- for example I’d like to be able to back up and restore my whole hard disk without being hindered by all the copy-protection systems. In the past I’ve chosen pirate software even if I’ve got a licence for that package, because there’s no faffing about re-installing and so forth.

I’m very interested in trying Ardour 4, my experience with 3.5 was very positive, it actually sounds better at the same bit depth and sample rate than a Windows Pro Tools 11 equivalent IMHO. The only thing really lacking was decent MIDI editing and that looks like it’s been fixed.

For some reason I’ve had a lot of difficulty running Audacity on both Linux and Windows, it doesn’t seem to like my hardware in both setups.

With a bit of luck, there should be some drivers soon if not already, the hardware being about 2 years old, and I’ll try a dual boot. One odd problem has been the removal of PCI slots from modern boards, which meant replacing perfectly adequate audio hardware.

A forum here dedicated to open source software would be very useful, especially now Linux is providing workable pro-audio applications.