Hacker News Reader

Comment by boulos | Hacker News Reader

I liked the “CoreAudio got this right” bits weaved throughout the interview; it makes for a good “sometimes you have the wrong interface and need to force a change”.

Paul: I’m curious which “industry / workflow” is likely to be the best driver of improvements in Linux audio. Is film production or post-production the best bet?

(My assumption is that as long as musicians “grow up” on macOS and Logic and so on, you’re fighting with the “perennial year of the Linux desktop”. That wouldn’t apply to audio production teams who don’t need to also use their machines for their personal life)

View on HN

"Professional" workflows on Linux are not affected by the sorts of things that bug desktop users. ALSA just works (and in some senses, works better than CoreAudio), all the more so for nice fixed studio configurations where the expectation that you can just arbitrarily plug/unplug devices and everything keeps working isn't part of day to day life.

Consumer/desktop audio on Linux will only advance (to the extent that it needs to - it already works quite well) because of people just sitting down and doing the work. Nothing is "driving" this forward.

The problems really arise at the junction between the two worlds: think bedroom/basement music/video production on your one laptop. This is the part that macOS/CoreAudio gets so right - there's no difference in any of this for consumer apps or "pro" apps. On Linux, you have to grapple with the awkward disconnect between these two "workflows". It's not THAT hard, but it's not THAT easy either. And this affects developers just as much as it affects users: which APIs to use?

Thanks. In that case, I liked your bit about userspace APIs as a potential path forward. Much like with userspace networking and storage layers that have become so pervasive lately.

> Paul: I’m curious which “industry / workflow” is likely to be the best driver of improvements in Linux audio. Is film production or post-production the best bet?

Well, you probably need an application which has real-time requirements. This has always been the most difficult aspect of audio processing pipelines.

That was solved on Linux over 10 years ago. It really isn't an issue now.

Real time audio programming within applications tends to be a problem, mostly because too many developers have never read or do not understand:

http://www.rossbencina.com/code/real-time-audio-programming-...

Ok. But in case an application still fails to prevent buffer underruns, perhaps it's a good idea to at least let the driver generate a reverb to fill the empty space.

At least in the electronic music world, production has long ago moved from Mac to Windows.

Citation?

Ok I don’t have a citation other than amongst the hundreds of djs and producers I’ve had contact with in the rave/club scenes over the past couple decades I’ve seen that Macs, Atari, and Amiga were dominant in the early 90s and by the early 2000s the tide was turning and now it’s almost exclusively Windows everywhere other than people doing all-hardware sequencing and modular stuff.

I haven’t exactly pestered everyone with a notepad and pencil taking a survey so I do not have a citation. I’d be VERY curious to hear a credible citation to the contrary showing that Macs are growing in use or even maintaining steady market share. That’s not what I see out in the world.

Since we are exchanging anecdotal evidence :), every single one of my musician friends except just one person has moved to the mac in the last 10 years. The reason why that one person didn't is that he needs some Windows-specific software for work.

I can concur, many - if not most - musicians musicians I know use Macbooks for their live performances. Low latency audio on Macbooks just works (tm). It's certainly possible on Windows and Linux, but it requires the right hardware and some tweaking. I'm on Windows, btw.

I’m talking in the studio when the actual work is getting done. A soldered down ssd and ram is not a good investment for a studio musician who wants to be able to expand. Definitely for live shows fashion plays a role so you’re gonna see more macs. Re: the latency thing everybody I know just drops the $50 for a Focusrite 2x2 and installs the right ASIO driver.

> I’m talking in the studio when the actual work is getting done

Ok, the situation in studios might be different (but I would curious to see actual numbers). In a live show you want reliable low latency audio (especially if you play VSTis on a keyboard or do any kind of live processing) and macOS is very good at this, better than Windows I would say. Dismissing this as "fashion" is a bit simplistic.

I'm a computer musician and audio programmer. Although I use Windows most of the time, I would be the first one to admit that the audio situation on Windows is a total mess. As Paul said, on macOS you have a single API and it just works (tm). On Windows, we needed an external company (Steinberg) to come up with a usable solution for low latency audio (ASIO).

Weird. What genres are your musician friends into? Must just the circles I travel with but in the parts of the techno/house/drum and bass scenes that I’m privy to in the US, UK, and Germany I see less than 5% macs probably and as the hardware has gotten less expandable (soldered ram, soldered ssd) that number has been decreasing further. Odd that we see such drastically different trends in our respective subcultures.

Thanks for your work on Ardour by the way. I’ve been attempting to move to a fully Linux-based solution for audio production on and off since the mid-2000s and Ardour is one of the best tools on the platform in my opinion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com