Open Source Musician Podcast

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Wed, 20 January 2010

Open Source Musician Podcast Episode #31 - PLOrk!

OSMP Episode 31 - PLOrk!

Title:

Banter:

Software Releases:

Muse Hit's 1.0

http://muse-sequencer.org/

Rakarrack listens to PipeManMusic's rant and answers (not really) http://rakarrack.sourceforge.net/now.png

Audio Releases:

Tips:

IRC User Raboof mentions another cool metronome called Klick - this one supports Jack Audio

http://das.nasophon.de/klick/

IRC User danni submits this video link demonstrating Ladish session management for Jack

http://vimeo.com/8530340

IRC User TheJesus submits this link to an 808 sample pack and another link to more details on the sample pack.

http://thedeepelement.com/tr808

http://trashaudio.blogspot.com/2010/01/roland-tr-808-sample-pack.html

IRC User Anchakor submits this link for the Princeton Laptop Orchestra - or PLOrk

http://plork.cs.princeton.edu/

IRC User holstein submits this tutorial on using Muse

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11VWsbeT35s

IRC User Stuzz submits this link to a new FOSS manual on Ardour

http://ardour.org/node/3274

Pat of The Linux Link Tech Show made an interesting post to his blog about the current state of linux audio. To quote the beginning excerpt from his blog

"So sound issues STILL plague Linux in general. I think we can all agree that the decision to make Pulse Audio the default sound daemon in Linux has resulted in mixed results at best. While the creator of Pulse Audio has repeatably claimed the issue was entirely the fault of Linux distribution maintainers for not implementing it properly it still continues to be an eyesore more than 3 years since it was first introduced."

Pat reminds us that back in 2005, Linspire was using Jack audio as the main sound server.

To quote from the final section from Pat's post

"Mark Shuttleworth should hire Paul Davis, the programmer who wrote JACK and Ardour. I guarantee the current audio issues in Linux would be resolved in under a year and for good. The only major challenge would be implementing a simplified configuration out of the box that 98% of users would be happy with. The remaining 2% could go to the “advanced” settings and do their multi-track recording."

Discussion

Pat's full post can be read here:

http://pdavila.homelinux.org:8080/blog/?p=369

OSMP asked Paul Davis to respond to the content of Pat's blog post.

Paul's response was that he thought the post was sweet, but answered pragmatically he has discouraged the use of Jack for Desktop audio use. I asked Paul to clarify, and he stated quote "Jack doesn't provide 30+% of

what desktop audio needs" End quote.

Steve then asked Paul, "In a perfect world, money and politics aside, would you like to see the whole Linux audio stack (basic and advanced) to be done on Jack?

Paul response was - Quote "Yes, in that perfect world, that's about right, alas, we don't live in that world." End Quote.

Paul went on to say - Quote "More precisely, I'd like to see

(a) ALSA slightly redesigned so that it could easily be used for low latency & low power situations with equal ease, and even at the same time. (b) An application layer library that provides blocking i/o for apps that don't want to do callback driven i/o. (c) Some way for JACK to do re-sampling. (d) A resolution of the netjack mess and way to get that working with huge ease. (e) Something very much like JACK at the core of it all.

Paul at this point gave respect to Lennart's efforts with Pulse audio stating

Quote: "Any attempt to fulfill the same role (as pulse) is going to run into the same issues. Part of the reason why JACK "Works" is because JACK sets the rules; Pulse tries to let apps set the rules and works with them as much as it can." End Quote.

Steve asked Paul if he thought the root cause of PULSE audio's challenges was ALSA?

Paul state - Quote "Not directly, ALSA is an extremely flexible HAL (hardware abstraction layer) that has allowed people to continue to write apps using very different strategies for audio i/o. It has also continued to support the old OSS API in addition. This means that the Linux audio landscape is littered with hundreds of applications each of which can have its own little quirks... ALSA is great; applications using ALSA is not so great." End Quote.

Dan asks Paul:

In your opinion, do you think that pulse is going to resolve the issues with desktop sound currently plaguing Linux?"

Paul responds - Quote "I believe that it *could* - I'm agnostic about whether or not it will." End Quote.

Steve then asked "Would the ALSA overhaul you suggested earlier replace jack and pulse or would they still be required but work better on that stack

Paul responded "The stack would just be more integrated it would still be ALSA. there would be something a lot like JACK. there might or might be something like Pulse depending on what you think pulse is. Lennart and i have actually talked about the ALSA part" End Quote.

Gear:

Announcements:

Play klaatu's Multimedia Sprint promo

When - Jan 26th 14:00 to 06:00 EST NYC Time - go to irc.binrev.net #media for more details.

IRC User and bassman extraordinaire Mike Holstein will begin a new segment entitled 3 minutes with The Theory Ninja. :theoryninja@opensourcemusician.com for topic suggestions.

Tunestorm01 - see here: http://opensourcemusician.com/index.php/Tunestorm01

Rants/Calling BS:

Steve calls BS on himself for getting the song title wrong from last episode. One Hundred Owls is the project name and the song is called - Insert Here.

Tech Segment:

Introduction to acoustic treatment.

http://www.foambymail.com/

http://www.pmerecords.com/Diffusor.html

Listener Feedback:

Mark Rufino's email

Hardbop200's Voicmail about Ableton Live rant.

Contact Info:

Wiki:

http://opensourcemusician.com

E-Mails

osmp@pipemanmusic.com