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Re: [microsound] Mac vs PC



Malte Steiner wrote:

Installing Linux is a task on a laptop, it sometimes refuses several features like wifi or sleep mode. But anyway, the intel world getting better with the Centrinos so it will be different in a year, perhaps.

Linux plus an Athlon processor laptop is my recommendation. You get more speed for the buck, and Athlons don't have this silly denormal numbers problem [i.e. CPU useage skyrockets whan it has to process floating point numbers which are extremely small, such as the values of samples at the tail of a revrb... this is a problem for all P4 and newer processors, also under windoze!]


I'd say that Mac laptops are alright, but I know too much about the funny "hardware optimizations" which Mac does... things like putting the exact same video card in the season's release of Powerbook and the I-book, but crippling the firmware of the one in the Powerbook so that you have to buy an I-book to get a second video out or accelerated graphics or things like that. This kind of trickery doesn't really make me too fond of a company's business strategy.

Another distro I would recommend is Planet CCRMA [based on Fedora, which is the new incarnation of Red Hat]. Super fast installation and a very helpful user list.

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/

If you are curious if the PC laptop you are about to buy is Linux-compatible, you can always take a live CD such as Knoppix or Dyne:bolic to the shop and try it out:

http://www.dynebolic.org/

Software: Pure Data / gem, free and available for several OS

Don't forget about PDP for video! Getting better all the time.

How far is Ardour, the opensource DAW? Anyone tested the current version yet?

I use Ardour quite a bit. In fact, I'm mixing a track in it right now. I have to admit it still has some instability issues [noting that they released an 0.9beta14 a few weeks ago, then almost immediately after told everyone to downgrade back to beta11!] They are really working their ass off to get to 1.0 status, so I am willing to accept some bugs [sometimes!] and look forward to the release of the first totally free alternative to ProTools this summer or fall.


There's also FreqTweak, a Spectral Delay clone, and all the work people have been doing with VSTserver to get all those VST plugins and Native Instruments softsynths running under Linux as well! There's a picture from the last Linux Audio conference of a guy from NI with Kontakt running under Linux with VSTserver and Jack projected on the wall behind him. Kontakt, Battery or Absynth ain't free or open source by any stretch of the imagination, but if you already spent money on the apps, and/or are too lazy to build them yourself in PD [doesn't take that long once you get the hang of PD as a language] then it is probably worthwhile to check out.

Speaking of Jack, this has to be the real killer Linux sound app out ther. Jack allows you to connect and route all the sound apps on your system. Last but certainbly not least there's Jamin, which is a truely sweet mastering tool.

I have to admit my own personal bias towards Linux, simply because I dropped windoze a year ago and spent all the time since learning, using and teaching only free + open source software. So nothing could get me to go back to m$. Although OSX looks interesting enough [I would rather wear my mother's underpants than mess around with OS 9!], and is in fact based on another free, Unix-type operating system [FreeBSD], it just doesn't quite have everything in the right place yet in order to be fully Unix compatible. In my experience, running a lot of this free, Linux-world software on OSX takes more time and trouble often than just running Linux ;-) But to each their own...

best,
d.

--
derek holzer ::: http://www.umatic.nl
---Oblique Strategy # 8:
"Accretion"

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