Tracks Live

[Ben@Harrison]

@madmaxmiller: you are right; it is very easy to implement the DSP portion of the VST spec on all platforms. But VST provides "no" help for the GUI. Each vendor must write their own GUI code for each platform ( there are some good cross-platform libraries like JUCE and PUGL, but most plugins predate the existence of those). In many (most?) commercial plugins, the GUI is far more complicated code than the DSP. Things like drag-and-drop are entirely different on each of the 3 platforms.

I -do- think Waves' plugins, for example, work on linux or could be easily recompiled for linux. But for other vendors it might not be so easy. They need to see a sizable market before they can expand into linux. That's doubly true for the hardware developers who think they have to follow every new short-lived apple invention (*cough*) firewire (*cough*)

I don't think anyone can drive pro-audio users into linux. But mac and windows are doing their best to drive content-creators OUT. Interestingly I was at a "music tech" meeting here in Nashville last week, and a bearded (self-professed) apple-fanboy hipster said he would rather be seen at a coffee shop running Ubuntu than to buy the newly-released, post-Jobs macbook. That's pretty telling.

[Ben@Harrison]

MH3 will be a killer app for sure. I'm actually testing Ardour 3.5 (nightly builds) with all my plugins (Waves, Slate Digital, IK multimedia T-Racks, Overtone, Eareckon, Tonebooster...) and it works FINE (GREAT)

Thanks very much for that report! We've done a lot of work to improve plugin and virtual-instrument support.

Only missing AAF/OMF import/export as already said(these features are very important in audio industry but even for home studio)
tried AA translator but had of lot of issues...

We sell ArdourXchange on our website which converts AAF/OMF sessions into Mixbus sessions. In my experience it works quite well.

However I think it is de-rigueur among professionals to trade "stems" if you switch from one DAW to another, because the destination might not have all the same plugins. Once you've flattened the tracks into stems then there is little or no need for a session format like OMF. (although it does help by specifying the track layout, sample rate, and a few other niceties).

I'm not sure how good of a "standard" it is. When ProTools changes their OMF output (intentionally or not) then everyone has to jump to figure out what they are doing differently. OMF/AAF support is also quite complicated, with the latter being based on Microsoft COM techniques from 20+ years ago.

The Ardour session format, on the other hand, has these benefits:
1) it is trivially viewable as XML, with no "COM" technology or obfuscation.
2) there is a reference implementation (Ardour itself) that is completely open-source and can verify whether someone is creating valid ardour sessions or not
3) it includes a much richer set of information than was ever included in the OMF format.

Wouldn't it be cool if those "big" apps followed Harrison and Waves' lead here, and used a common format? Don't hold your breath

Tracks live for.. live
Mixbus Harrison 3 for recording and mixing MIDI/audio on studio

Exactly! These 2 apps should have "perfect" file compatibility, without the need for any conversion at all! Of course you won't get the Mixbus features when you open a Mixbus session in Tracks, but going from Tracks to Mixbus should be "lossless".

[PascalC]

Ardour 3.5 nightly build (15.03.2015) RME UCX and... A LOT of plugins everywhere. (tried with a track from a movie) : 11 plugins for the master.
No issues no crash no pb at all

agree with Matt.
I've been an Apple Fan for years, but my new computers are only... pc
because of IOSify post SJ Apple
(who really wants an Apple watch ??)
Snow Leopard was a great OS but actually Win 8.1 pro works better than Yosemite. (I have 2 PC and 2 macs)

[Matt]

I've been an apple fan since the first G4 Mac mini. But they so seem to be trying to "iOSify" OS X and macs in general. The new Mac minis aren't available with a quad-core any more. The new MacBooks seem more interested in low power CPUs than more powerful CPUs. And while I thought the Mac Pro could show some potential. It's still stuck with the same cpu options it had originally. And they were marginally behind the available options when announced.

So I've been eyeing windows. And w10 seems to be a good option. They've backed off on the tiles thing for those on tower pc's. So that's probably where I'll head next.

But metric halo has announced they are switching over to usb 3, instead of firewire, for their interfaces. And all existing interfaces can be upgraded. The best part. It will be class compliant. Not only with OS X (they have so far been a Mac only option), but with windows, AND linux! so linux is looking to be an option for me also.

And the funny thing to me is several "dedicated" live audio dsp's devices seem to run some custom version of linux. I know our allen and heath iLive is running linux. I'm pretty sure waves soundgrid is linux based. Avid's venue systems are based on a stripped down version of windows I believe. So it's an exception. But I'm betting other companies are using linux as its core os. Super low latency DSP from off the shelf CPUs and linux seem to go hand in hand. So maybe, just maybe, someday linux will become the pro audio choice. It will be a long time from now, but it "could" happen. At least in my optimistic mind.

[Ben@Harrison]

@Matt: yes, Allen&Heath uses some linux. I believe SSL uses linux in some products as well.

ALL of the Harrison large-format consoles use linux extensively: in the IKIS control screens, in the MPC5 console surfaces & screens, as firmware in the Xrouter audio router, and even on the Xengine 64-bit DSP processing engines. Our customers don't see linux, they just see the console as a product. But if professionals start to use linux on their desktop, then Harrison has a LOT of technologies we can start making available.

[PascalC]

We sell ArdourXchange on our website which converts AAF/OMF sessions into Mixbus sessions. In my experience it works quite well.

Wouldn't it be cool if those "big" apps followed Harrison and Waves' lead here, and used a common format?

Ardour Xchange works perfectly with Mixbus 2.5 but doesn't work (yet) with Ardour 3.5 (15.03.15)
AXchange works much better than AAT (Noticed a lot of issues with this software, it's unusable: you have all your tracks but not at the good place so a nice recording becomes easily an enormous cacophony :/ )

Ardour Xchange is actually the ONLY serious choice we have

---

For the moment

Ardour nightly build works with :
- Waves, Melda production, Tonebooster, Slate Digital, Overtone, T-Racks (IK), Eareckon, UVI Workstation
- it works even with Nebula3 (...)
- doesn't work with Ardour XChange
- Video functions works fine (XJADEO)
- Ardour's translations are ok
- we don't have Light theme yet

- the software is stable, noticed not even 1 crash or Xrun (Even with Nebula 3 ^^)

So we can expect MH3 on few weeks I guess...

Tracks live is not bad (kind of Ardour lite)

[PascalC]

However I think it is de-rigueur among professionals to trade "stems" if you switch from one DAW to another, because the destination might not have all the same plugins. Once you've flattened the tracks into stems then there is little or no need for a session format like OMF. (although it does help by specifying the track layout, sample rate, and a few other niceties).

Agree, these feature is really nice and works fine.

[Matt]

@Matt: yes, Allen&Heath uses some linux. I believe SSL uses linux in some products as well.

ALL of the Harrison large-format consoles use linux extensively: in the IKIS control screens, in the MPC5 console surfaces & screens, as firmware in the Xrouter audio router, and even on the Xengine 64-bit DSP processing engines. Our customers don't see linux, they just see the console as a product. But if professionals start to use linux on their desktop, then Harrison has a LOT of technologies we can start making available.

Wow. That's exciting to hear. Nothing against apple or Microsoft. I see what they're doing and who they're catering too. And undoubtedly they are trying to please and compete in a market that is a lot bigger than the pro audio world. So they go more consumer/touch screen/widget friendly maybe linux will become more popular in "our" world. And then harrison can unleash their linux tech into the world and become the new daw standard.

As far as the ilive system goes, unless you pay attention to the screen on the t112 during start-up, you would never know it was running linux. I'm also pretty sure the idr mixrack are using Intel CPU's. I've seen rumors of i5 quads. I've been tempted to open ours up and look. But with my luck I would somehow damage something. And I don't have the $$$ to replace it lol.

Anyway here's to the future. It's exciting times for sure.

[madmaxmiller]

But metric halo has announced they are switching over to usb 3, instead of firewire, for their interfaces. And all existing interfaces can be upgraded. The best part. It will be class compliant. Not only with OS X (they have so far been a Mac only option), but with windows, AND linux! so linux is looking to be an option for me also.

And the funny thing to me is several "dedicated" live audio dsp's devices seem to run some custom version of linux. I know our allen and heath iLive is running linux. I'm pretty sure waves soundgrid is linux based. Avid's venue systems are based on a stripped down version of windows I believe. So it's an exception. But I'm betting other companies are using linux as its core os. Super low latency DSP from off the shelf CPUs and linux seem to go hand in hand. So maybe, just maybe, someday linux will become the pro audio choice. It will be a long time from now, but it "could" happen. At least in my optimistic mind.

Good news indeed. I'm using Linux on my own computers exclusively since approx. 1999 and today my studio runs completely under Linux. I'm not afraid to pay for Linux software. While I appreciate the free projects I also accept when someone wants to sell their software, such as Harrison and LinuxDSP (now available as OvertoneDSP)... It's the concept of free as in freedom (not just as in free beer) and sharing knowledge and open formats so you are free to chose the software you want to use for your data...
I hope we are becoming more and make an impact. As Harrison prove with IKIS and MPC5: Hi-End-Audio and Linux work very well together.

MMM

[PascalC]

Because it lacks of plugins (i'm sorry but i like waves plugins, want to buy UAD systems ) and hardware (do you have drivers for new MOTU soundcards ? no. Do you have drivers for Apogee ? No...), Linux, known as the best system ever, is not really interesting for end user for music. if you're not developper or advanced user, you can't have a perfect system under Linux. As one of the 1st french users of Linux for music (As one of the 1st members of Linuxmao.org, discovered Ardour when it was around 0.99 release, on Knoppix Live CD, had Studio from Rosegarden's dev, made music with 64 Studio... tried many many many distrib as OpenArtist, Puredyne, ArtistX, Dynebolic, JackLab
64Studio, Studio to go, even Agnula) I can tell you it's very hard to obtain a perfect music system under Linux. You can mark my words. So I came back to Windows and Mac os X because I don't want to compile code all nights anymore, I want to make Music. For advanced users and pros, it's the perfect choice no doubt at all.

Open source software is great, but under mac os X and Windows
thx to Ardour and harrison, we'll have in few weeks/months, a professionnal DAW for all OS, not only Linux.