As I gear up to create my home studio (to be named the Half-Assed Home Studio) I'm trying to decide which platform I'm going to use. I thought it was going to be a no-brainer - Mac with Garage Band - until I discovered Ubuntu Studio.
I installed it on my test computer at work and was impressed, especially since the computer was just a run-of-the-mill Dell with a Pentium 4 processor. Everything just worked, even though it took a little more tinkering (welcome to the world of Linux). With a real-time kernel, the JACK MIDI interface and Patchage configuration tool set up, I was able to play around with a software synth (the horribly named ZynAddSubFX) and even create a passable half-time shuffle beat on Hydrogen, an excellent drum sequencer. Bolstered by this, I decided to install it on my crappy old Compaq Evo laptop and start recording at home. Let's just say it didn't go quite so smoothly.
First off, the laptop isn't much to write home about. It has a P-4 just like the Dell, but only 512MB of RAM compared to 2GB on the Dell. Despite this, I was still impressed with the Ubuntu install as it ran much faster than it did when it had Windows XP on it. I installed the Ubuntu Studio meta-packages and made the appropriate tweaks and was ready to start synthing when I ran into my first problem - JACK wouldn't start. In fact, not only would it not start, but when it was trying to start, I couldn't open up any other programs. I was using the JACK Control GUI at the time, which worked fine on the Dell. After Googlin' the hell out of the problem, I ended up trying to start JACK via the command line (sudo jackd -d alsa) and it started. I was able to open up Patchage to manage connections. ZynAddSubFX opened and connected just fine and I was able to synth away. Sort of. If I tried to press too many keys at once it would crash. Still, it was a start.
Things got even worse when I tried to plug my guitar into the laptop. Granted, I don't have the best setup now - the MIDI interface is not yet purchased - but I should've got something. I ran my VOX headphone amp through the microphone input and I was able to get some sound through, but the latency was terrible (even with the real-time kernel) and the sound was spotty, kind of like a cell phone with bad reception. In the end, the Ubuntu Studio experiment was an epic failure, although I chalk it up to the horrendous piece of crap that is my laptop as opposed to the OS itself, which is still quite impressive despite the setback. I'd have to test it on a better piece of hardware to really determine its fate, but unfortunately I don't have anything else to put it on.
Fast forward to last weekend. My wife, who is normally the caretaker of our MacBook Pro, was doing some serious reading for school, leaving me with not just some free time, but free time with the MacBook at my disposal. So I tried the same experiment I did with Ubuntu Studio. I ran the VOX headphone amp into the microphone input and opened up Garage Band. I had to Google up some instructions on how to get the microphone input to work, but once I did, lo and behold, I was able to get my guitar to make sound. Sure, it wasn't the best sound, but it was sound nonetheless. I had to turn the gain up on the headphone amp in order to hear it at all, so it ended up sending in some buzzy distortion, but I was actually able to get a signal through. Latency was almost negligible. I even recorded a crappy riff into Garage Band. I'm sure with a better MIDI interface it would sound great.
In round one, the Mac scores a victory. I know the hardware contributed strongly to the Ubuntu failure, but after experiencing the intuitiveness and ease of use of the Mac, I'd be hard pressed to find a better option for the Half-Assed Studio.
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