Day: March 18, 2016

Speaking of Linux and the future, I've been learning Ardour (a digital audio workstation) on a Linux PC.
I had noticed Ardour was playing the first couple of MIDI notes silently in loop mode. I thought it was me but it's a known bug. There's even an .ogg video showing the error. Apparently it worked in Version 4.4 but broke in 4.6 and is still broken in 4.7, the current version.
Since I mainly work with MIDI loops playing hardware and software instruments, this is kind of disastrous. The dropped notes are only a problem on streaming/playback. If you render the loop as audio all the notes are there. But it's very frustrating at the composing stage not to hear exactly what you will be recording. I anxiously await Version 4.8 and the fixing of this bug.

On the topic of Linux and the difficulties of keeping it compatible with hardware, ports, and so forth, I was fortunate to find a PC with an internal PCI slot. This means I can do my audio with an RME Hammerfall (HDSP 9632) soundcard. Linux drivers and mixers were written to work with this card, probably 10 years (?) ago. But most PCs use PCIe (PCI Express) slots now, which won't work with that particular RME card. This post on the Ardour forum discusses the problems with the gradual dating of hardware recognized as Linux-friendly. (seablade: "in the PCI world honestly... that situation really is relatively unchanged to my knowledge, and the fact is that many manufacturers just aren't focusing on that area. USB has become a much larger area these days though, and while I won't agree Firewire audio is dead, I will say that it is certainly on it's way out at this point.")

Update: The MIDI dropped notes bug was fixed but MIDI looping is still imperfect, audio-playback-wise. When monitoring a MIDI loop running a softsynth, you get silent notes or stuck notes. There are workarounds such as slightly enlarging the loop brackets in non-grid mode, but what a pain. Also, in loop mode, using the plugin host Carla, you get audible pops at the loop point. Unacceptable. (Except this is being done by volunteers, mostly, and you can't really complain.)

Update, March 2018: On the Ardour forum, Paul says that "MIDI looping will be an area of intense focus for the 6.0 release. It is known to work incorrectly in all existing releases, at least in cases where note boundaries coincide with the loop boundaries (it does work in other situations)."

Speaking of the Expert Sleepers plugins and hardware, here's an amusing forum exchange about which computer operating system is "the future":

hems: Not having a linux version [of Expert Sleepers] is a real deal breaker. Product manufacturers like ES and cycling74 must start thinking about the future (linux), and not only the present (osx) and the past (windows).

A couple of responses to hems:

bsmith: I dunno, I'm still pretty nervous about the y2k bug around the corner. Just got back from seeing sixth sense at the movies - that M. Night Shyamalan and his clever plot twists, I tell ya...

And (a bit more substantively):

Waz: Windows is definitely not "the past". I would say apple's recent decisions both in design and software will cause it some major headaches and put it into that category. I've been running solely in a linux environment for 3 years and in dual boot for well over a decade. Recently, I had to install windows 10 to use Ableton. W10 is pretty solid, well designed, and stable. I easily have way less headaches than in the linux environment. Things just work when you plug them in. No editing config files and installing binaries/packages from all over the internet. With that said, I still use Linux for my day to day stuff, but it has a LOOOONG way to go if it wants to compete with W10, or OSX in the general population. For music people especially, JACK is a fucking nightmare to work with. For power-users, multi-desktop monitor support is just terrible. This is in an age when the general population is starting to use multi-monitor systems for work and play. For gamers, Linux is another nightmare. I have over 200 linux games in my steam library. I think 40 or 50 work properly. The other 150 need some pretty heavy editing of config files due to my multi-monitor setup. Not to mention the headaches that come from developers who abandon their linux ports. General end-users don't want to run scripts, edit configs, search for dependencies, and work in the command line.