[sdiy] Another new hard to find part....

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Wednesday 07 July 2004 12:37 pm, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
> Richard Wentk <richard at skydancer.com> wrote:
> >At 17:35 07/07/2004 +0200, Ingo Debus wrote:
> >>Am Dienstag, 06.07.04 um 19:08 Uhr schrieb Richard Wentk:
> >
> >Meanwhile if there were a DIY open source softsynth - something like
> > Csound but with a more intelligent internal design and better interface -
> > a project like that would run and run. Csound is already 25+ years old.

> Good question.  The infinite "if".  As you say, Csound is 25+ years old.
> Where is this utopian open source software? 

Your references further along to windoze and m$ lead me to believe that you 
haven't looked...

> The possibility has been here for 25 years.  Why isn't it being done in a
> DIY realm?  Every free softsynth I've tried has sucked for one reason or
> another.

> Personally, I think that these things need to start from scratch with an
> operating system that is specifically designed for music generation in real
> time.  Windows is a piece of sh!t.

You'll certainly get no argument from me on that!

> Linux is good, but also a general purpose OS.

So?  It's also quite adaptable to specific uses.

> This doesn't even touch on the fact that all of this runs on a general
> purpose CPU, not one designed to function as a synth.

What are you looking for,  an OS that runs on a DSP?

> So I'm back making circuits that do music and don't crash and need a reboot
> because of some stupid memory leak, poorly written driver or any of the
> other tens of thousands of bugs in every version of Windoze that Microsoft
> admits to and declares no intention of fixing.

I have *one* box here that runs m$,  and that's only 98,  and it's mostly used 
by my grandkids to play games on,  and not much else.

I'm typing this on a linux workstation,  which has the "mail folders" living 
on a server.  I'm still getting things together with regard to nfs and 
networking in general.  Your post comes to me (and my reply to you goes out) 
through yet another linux box,  that one being my firewall/router,  that I 
built out of an old 386dx40!  And it all words just fine,  and transparently.

If your concern is bloat,  then there are lightweight versions of things like 
window managers and such out there.

If your concern is too much junk in the OS,  then leave out what you don't 
want/need,  but be prepared to spend a little time understanding what you're 
doing,  and don't expect to accomplish this with distros that hold your hand 
and use package managers.

If your concern is realtime response,  there are enhancements to the basic 
kernel that accomodate this need -- they're in use right now as a way of 
running CNC machines,  which require some fairly good realtime response, a 
"crash" on one of those (or missed steps,  or whatever) can have consequences 
a whole lot worse than something sounding bad!

Log on to freshmeat.net sometime.  If you register you'll then have the 
ability to tell it to ignore stuff that doesn't interst you.  Check in from 
day to day,  and see what all is going on -- it's a LOT,  actually.