[Ardour-Users] Struggling to do anything at all

[John Emmas]

Andrew made some valid points there.  I could especially empathise with his
point about having his kernel compiled for the wrong CPU and I can't help
wondering if that kind of thing might be a factor in other stability issues.

I've been designing high end DAW's since the 1980's so I'm well aware of the
havoc that can be introduced by unexpected hardware niggles.  In fact, I
gave an example a few days ago where someone had under-specified certain
memory chips (in a proprietory design) leading to around 2 years' of
inexplicable stability problems.  I've "been here before" as the saying
goes.

It's a simple, though unpalatable, fact that you can't design a complex
product like Ardour to work on an unlimited range of unknown hardware.  In
the past, the big players used to alleviate this by producing their own
proprietory hardware and even their own OS's.  More recently, commercial
pressures have forced them to port their products to the mainstream OS's.
But even so, it's still rare for a high-end manufacturer not to insist that
the s/ware gets run on 'trusted' hardware.

I really admire the Ardour dev team for turning out a product with such
universal appeal but as any product grows in complexity, there comes a stage
where you simply have to start eliminating unknown quantities.  If you
don't, you end up with stability problems.  It's inevitable.  One could
argue that, under Linux, that stage can be delayed somewhat (at least in
theory) by the ability to build software on the specific platform that it'll
be running on - but, theory or no theory, there's an unavoidable tradeoff
between complexity and stability.  A requirement for weeding out the
unknown will always get reached, sooner or later.

I read recently that part of the SAE sponsorship deal will result in an
'Ardour lite' for want of a better expression.  Is there maybe a case for
keeping the 'lite' version as universal a product as possible - but maybe
for the 'pro' version, the developers should think about specifying some
'optimum' platforms.  This would be more in line with other high-end
products.  I just wonder what others think?

John


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Johnston" <andyandtaya at gmail.com>
To: "Steven Chamberlain" <steven at pyro.eu.org>
Cc: <ardour-users at lists.ardour.org>
Sent: 04 August 2007 04:34
Subject: Re: [Ardour-Users] Struggling to do anything at all


>I must admit I have had varying success with different so called 'stable'
> releases, some have worked very well and others have been a nightmare of
> different problems - that I can empathise with Steve's comments.  However
> most of it has come down to me either using VSTs or once I had my kernel
> compiled for a older AMD cpu than I actually had, and once I recompiled
> that
> things settled down a lot.  I also like to use bleeding edge stuff...and I
> need to learn to live with less frills in order to gain stability.  I
> think
> if you are using VST's then you really can't complain if Ardour is having
> issues...when I use it without VST's or the known dodgy ladspa plugins it
> is
> ROCK solid...compared to my earlier experience with ProTools it leaves it
> for dead stability wise...and even if it does shutdown, I don't have to
> reboot my whole PC (I almost always had to do that with the mac).  Another
> thing to consider with any instability you are finding is the large
> possibility that it is a library or dependency that is buggy, not ardour.
> In the ever evolving landscape of OSS, different elements of the OS are
> always going to be changing, especially if you are wanting to upgrade to
> get
> the most recent features.  Also, we should consider that the developers
> are
> not a large team of full time highly paid people, unlike those belonging
> to
> AVID or Steinberg.  The very fact that despite all these hurdles, Ardour
> at
> it's core is extremely stable, is actually quite an incredible feat.
> All that said, I would actually like to see a feature freeze for a while,
> until every single bug has been sorted.  Midi is going to be nice, and all
> the other things people have suggested will be nice...but for some people
> (like me) Ardour2 has gotten to the stage of having enough features to
> make
> it fully useable in a professional environment.  What I would like to see
> is
> an Ardour that is as much as possible bug free, that is going to run
> flawlessly day in day out and that I can boast to people that my DAW never
> crashes =)
>
> Thanks again devs, doing a great job.
> For those out there having real big issues...I think having a rock solid
> stable distro is the first step, maybe carefully test each VST you want to
> use...put up with older versions...and if you have money buy a muse
> receptor
> =)  Boy do I want one of those.
>
> my 2 cents
>
> Andy
>
> On 8/4/07, Steven Chamberlain <steven at pyro.eu.org> wrote:
>>
>> John Rigg wrote:
>> > I think it's a little unfair for users of the latest SVN code
>> > to complain that they can't do their everyday work with it. Those who
>> > use bleeding edge software need to be prepared to live with the
>> problems.
>>
>> If there was a more stable version of Ardour that supported loop
>> recording, I would use it.  AFAIK the feature was new to 2.0.x, and the
>> 2.0-ongoing SVN is considered to be the most stable code:
>>
>> Paul Davis wrote:
>> > On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 11:45 -0400, Dan Tepper wrote:
>> >> Um, shouldn't you guys be using the stable releases and not the SVN
>> >> versions?
>> >
>> > the code in branches/2.0-ongoing in SVN can generally be considered to
>> > be as stable, or more so, than the latest released version of 2.0
>>
>> Regards,
>> --
>> Steven Chamberlain
>> steven at pyro.eu.org
>> _______________________________________________
>> Ardour-Users mailing list
>> ardour-users at lists.ardour.org
>> http://lists.ardour.org/listinfo.cgi/ardour-users-ardour.org
>>
>


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