I'm Lad. Just some guy out in the PNW area. I'm obviously interested in (gnu)/Linux/free software, and music creation but let's get more specific since we're in good company.
I like to think of myself wearing hats... The musician hat, the "not really audio engineer but plays one on tv" hat, the system admin hat, and the classic dunce cap mostly.
[Insert banjo joke here]
So yeah, I'm your average guitar and keyboard dude. Picking it up as I go along, taking lessons when I can (shout out to wolftune for the lessons). Recently I've been exploring the grateful dead tunes (I know, where have I been?) and am really lucky to have a friend who 1. Plays six string bass and 2. Is a poutchouli sporting deadhead. Dude, good musical experiences man
On to the system admin hat...
I've got a laptop x220 (i5-2xxx)/16gbram
on Debian buster using liquorix kernel. Seeing it's age but it works for my needs. It will soon be replaced by a thinkpad T480 though. And a desktop/mixing workstation also on Debian buster, vanilla Linux kernel right now.
My daily driver for the last 7 years had been the admirable archlinux. We had good times mostly, but I realized I, personally, needed a more "static" OS... static meaning package updates are less frequent, pretty much. I learned a lot from archlinux though... Maybe just one VM image of it... No, no just leave it, leave it alone...
Finally the audio engineer hat:
It's easy to think you want things that you don't need, so I had to ask myself what the minimal setup would be for my "needs".
Laptop:
- goal is to have a simple "appliance". Turn it on and boom, ready to play. It should host the guitar and midi keyboard and a mic. Lightweight setup and teardown.
- Cadence/Claudia/Jack setup to auto start the studio on login
- bus powered USB 4 (2 xlr/inst Ins + 1 in built stereo mic) channel mixer (zoom h5) to host my
and Microphone/or other inst. The zoom h5 has an in built stereo mic as well.- guitarix for FX and amp sim
- Ardour for simple mixing and recordings
- Carla hosting Pianoteq and zynsubaddfx for the midi piano keyboard (Roland fp-30)
- Jamtaba for internet jamming
Desktop/Mixer:
- goal is to have stable "appliance" OS for recording and mixing, just turn it on and it's running what it needs to be running
- older gaming rig, can't remember specs
- 18 channel mixer (behringer x18). So far so good.
- Cadence/Claudia/Jack setup to auto start the studio on login
- Ardour for mixing
I am incredibly grateful and stunned for how much value I get from free software. Please remember to donate where you can to help support developers.
Whelp, that's that for now. Thanks for listening!
Welcome and see you around the forum!