| In 2000 I managed to get out of the claustrophobic environment of
Freeport Studio and into the more comfortable premises of Sonus Stellaria.
After many years of faithfully using my old PowerMacs 7200 and 8600, running Cubase VST, an upgrade
was inevitable. The easy choice would have been to go Mac OSX, and continue to feed the dragon with
money for new no-frills upgrades of operating systems and software. But as I am a computer professional anyway, I decided to take another - and more more challenging route - by switching over completely to Linux! This enables me to use most of the PC equipment on the market, and at the same time be at the bleeding edge of software. Sonus Stellaria is now based on an HP Pavillion 64-bit machine, currently running Ubuntu Studio 12.10 64bit Linux, Ardour 3.5 hard disc recording system, Rosegarden MIDI sequencer, and LinuxSampler sample player. As Ubuntu usually only provides older binaries for Ardour, I occasionally recompile Ardour myself. The same with LinuxSampler, as it doesn't come with a binary. This is the sort of thing you can do with Linux. You want a cutting edge version? Go recompile it yourself! Switching to Linux has me given access to a world of music and video software. Today it is possible to base a home recording studio entirely on Linux. The old PowerMacs have been almost retired, though I still keep the old 8600 alive for the odd program - especially the MIDI editing of the old Cubase that has some quantize functions that I really like. I have several computers connected in a network, so file transfer, backup and publishing is fully integrated from my desktop. To detail the studio setup here would be too complex, so I've decided to make an entire page devoted to Linux music studio usage here. |