Linux...anybody using it?

[pc999]

http://www.linux-community.de/Internal/ ... fuer-Linux

Bitwig linux beta, images too , but it is in german , if any interesting news please share ...

[glokraw]

Google translate understands your pain.
Suffice it to say, that if you are not fully committed
to your current DAW setup, it's 5 minutes well spent to
copy/paste this article, to a relevant language via the
google, or similar apparatus.
The linux version is alive and well, and the product itself
appears to include some nice innovations, for users who
are used to full featured DAWs. Die Bitwig ist geradeaus.
Cheers

[urlwolf]

Did I read JAVA

[jeffh]

Did I read JAVA

LOL, I've always associated Java with big, slow and buggy...

See: Netbeans, Eclipse, or any piece of enterprise software ever written for examples of big, buggy, slow Java applications...

Did they write the audio back end in Java too? Bitwig gets more bizarre by the minute...

[kmatheussen]

Did I read JAVA

LOL, I've always associated Java with big, slow and buggy...

See: Netbeans, Eclipse, or any piece of enterprise software ever written for examples of big, buggy, slow Java applications...

Did they write the audio back end in Java too? Bitwig gets more bizarre by the minute...

The language itself is very quick. It scores high on benchmarks. Very old versions of java had a garbage collector that paused the program for very long time now and then, but that's been fixed.

I've made some audio programs in Java, and it's a far better language than C++ for this purpose, perhaps unless you want super low-latency and super reliable audio. My guess is that the audio engine in BitWig is written in C or C++.

This is a smaller music program I've written in Java: http://www.ultimaskinen.no/ (click the "Ultimaskinen" links in the right part of the screen). The GUI for this program is not even written in Java, but in Scheme, running interpreted on top of Java. Still very quick and responsive. Source code: https://github.com/kmatheussen/hurtigmixer

[pc999]

Did I read JAVA

From their FaceBook

How will the controller java api work in reference to the different views? i.e. when you switch focus from arranger to mixer, will midi controllers change their mapping? Or when you change focus from one effect to another? This is something that's always annoyed me.in Ableton Live that I haven't found a workaround for.

Bitwig: It is not Java, it is JavaScript!

[jeffh]

The language itself is very quick. It scores high on benchmarks.

Yes and no... In PyDAW I simply allocate all possible memory (excluding things like audio files that haven't been loaded yet), and keep them in memory until the application closes, which means no malloc's and no free's while it's running, which is infinitely more efficient than any garbage collector. Since Java turns everything into a big giant class(unlike C), garbage collection is necessary because the application uses so much more memory to do the same thing.

I've made some audio programs in Java, and it's a far better language than C++ for this purpose

I don't disagree with this (from a UI perspective anyways), but more complex UIs are much slower in Java than C++ and Qt for example...

perhaps unless you want super low-latency and super reliable audio.

LOL, some people might consider those important

My guess is that the audio engine in BitWig is written in C or C++.

We can only hope

This is a smaller music program I've written in Java: http://www.ultimaskinen.no/ (click the "Ultimaskinen" links in the right part of the screen). The GUI for this program is not even written in Java, but in Scheme, running interpreted on top of Java. Still very quick and responsive. Source code: https://github.com/kmatheussen/hurtigmixer

I'll check it out tonight, I'm late for work

[jeffh]

Bitwig: It is not Java, it is JavaScript!

Errrr.... What?

HTML + Javascript?

QML?

JQuery?

node.js?

How the hell would they have written it in "Javascript"?

[pc999]

Bitwig: It is not Java, it is JavaScript!

Errrr.... What?

HTML + Javascript?

QML?

JQuery?

node.js?

How the hell would they have written it in "Javascript"?

I think that only the controller support with MIDI is supossed to have some form of Java. At least is what I get from them.

THE Javascript is for users to make stuff for controllers.

[urlwolf]

Btw, jeff, what's wrong with kxstudio?
Is this something you don't recommend? (according to your blog)
What's the easiest way to end the 'pulseaudio vs jack' wars?

I found this useful:
http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=10262

But it's written by a novice, so I'm not sure I can trust it. It recommends installing kxstudio on ubuntu.

[seismic1]

.... garbage collection is necessary because the application uses so much more memory to do the same thing.

Stop the World. I want to get off.

We have a JVM Oracle front-end at the office. It's all I can do to keep the thing running for 10 weeks. After that the GC is unable to help and it's restart time.

I doubt that this would be an issue for a DAW, but tuning those memory parameters is a something of a black art. The thing is extraordinarily sensitive to workload variations.

[jeffh]

Btw, jeff, what's wrong with kxstudio?

Well, the guy that wrote it bet the entire farm on Jack... Jack is an absolute hard dependency to be able to use KX Studio, and after close to 15(?) years, Jack still very much so fails to get a lot of things right that Steinberg got right with a proper host/plugin format back in the late 90s.

Now, I don't mind admitting that KX Studio offers a fair bit of polish and unification for the Jack-centric workflow, BUT............

1. Session management is still incomplete
2. Having to wire everything together is still a PITA
3. Way too many instances of "that application isn't quite finished yet", and "X doesn't work with Y yet" situations in KX Studio...

but KX Studio is much better than the audio distros of 4-5 years ago when I first tried them... I would just argue that Jack is a terrible workflow.

For example, imagine using all of the Native Instruments Komplete plugins as standalone instead of plugins, and you can never close any of the windows, and instead of inserting instruments then effects on the tracks, you have to wire them all together manually... Oh, and I hope you can get session management to work properly for you or else each of them will have to be manually saved and opened... PITA, right?

PS: Falk is seriously contemplating moving KX Studio from Ubuntu to Arch Linux Is it already PyDAW-OS's turn to become the dominant Linux audio distro?

[urlwolf]

I know. I voted 'no' on the move to arch...

But right now, if I want pydaw I need jack. When is the jack-free version supposed to be out? Considering the neck-breaking dev speed, I'd not be surprised if you say 'tomorrow'

Btw, what does energyxt do? It doesn't require jack, right? But while it is open, no other app can make noises (not spotify or flash at least)...

[jeffh]

.... garbage collection is necessary because the application uses so much more memory to do the same thing.

Stop the World. I want to get off.

We have a JVM Oracle front-end at the office. It's all I can do to keep the thing running for 10 weeks. After that the GC is unable to help and it's restart time.

I doubt that this would be an issue for a DAW, but tuning those memory parameters is a something of a black art. The thing is extraordinarily sensitive to workload variations.

I used to work for a top 100 US website in Alexa rankings that used Java... We constantly had to recycle JVMs and reboot entire clusters just because Java is such a turd. I actually turned down the opportunity to be converted from contractor to full time just because I didn't want anything to do with Java after that

But Eclipse is a Java based IDE for developers, and that's actually a good comparison to DAWs because the UI complexity is comparable. Eclipse is unlikely to cause out-of-memory errors on a desktop PC with >=4GB of RAM, but it is slow and buggy, and frankly any desktop application that complex written in Java is going to be slow and buggy...

[jeffh]

I know. I voted 'no' on the move to arch...

But right now, if I want pydaw I need jack. When is the jack-free version supposed to be out? Considering the neck-breaking dev speed, I'd not be surprised if you say 'tomorrow'

Btw, what does energyxt do? It doesn't require jack, right? But while it is open, no other app can make noises (not spotify or flash at least)...

Actually, for the express purpose of pissing off my former associate who is trolling me to keep Jack support, I may implement ALSA-only for the backend soon, maybe even in the next couple of weeks? I think he needs to learn that you don't come into an open source project at the n00b/apprentice level, contribute for 3 weeks, and then attempt to dictate the project's direction, as if he somehow knows better than I do

I'm not going to release it until I'm confident that it's stable and ready for "Windows users" to be able to use properly without any CLI-foo, but I think I can pull that off sooner rather than later. ALSA does have horrible documentation though(but then again, so does Jack)...

PS: Speaking of neck-breaking dev speed, I've got some seriously awesome stuff for audio recording/sequencing in the pipes right now... Ardour isn't going to know what hit them