Not to start a flamewar, but I think it will be a very very long time before you see anything professional running on Linux. The audio drivers are truly horrid, the libraries they use to access them are just as bad. They are trying to get bits and peices from people like Silicon Graphics and copy other things they seen in other OS's, but nobody can seem to get things straight.



In fact, if you have to look at all the little hack jobs they have to do to do something as simple as say let 2 audio streams from different (or even the same) application access the sound device, they have to wait in line with an external application. That functionality should ALL be built into the audio libraires, but linux keeps changing the way they do things. They move from one type of library to another type of device and never actually finish the first part to perfection.



The linux programming model is based on the assumption of "If we build it, someone else will fix it later". The problem with that is that nobody wants to go back and fix it later. They all want to work on the coolest newest project.



MacOSX, now with its new overhaul is also very Unix like, and is the cheapest Unix based solution you can get, once all the applicatoins are ported over for it natively (which is coming fairly quick).



MacOSX and SGI are the only Unix platforms where you can get fully capable sound devices such as 8 channel ADAT optical capable .



I wish there was more options available, because my primary occupation is unix kernel programmer , and Id much rather use it to windows. Im not a big fan of macs yet, and everytime I need something SGI, except on rare occasions it costs me an arm and a leg, but I can write my own glue software to make things work together a little better, and not worry about the audio quality, or messing things up because of the work SGI has put into say thier audio libraries and midi subsystem.



I have tried every single Linux audio application that I have run into, and they have all left me very wanting. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and Linux is a prime example of that.



Mike




You go in hard, and you go in fast.