Hi!
I recently decided to set up a small home studio in order for my band to be a bit more independent. Right now I'm searching for the right software.

I want to use a dedicated Linux Distro for that purpose. However I'm not sure which one to choose. I have experience with both Ubuntu and openSuSE, so thought about Ubuntu Studio or JAD.

Which one would You suggest? Which one is better/easier to use/more fluffy?

And BTW. can anybody suggest a good laptop sound card suitable for music editing that would be well supported under either of those distros?

thanks

I highly recommend pure:dyne.

pure:dyne is an operating system developed to provide media artists with a complete set of tools for realtime audio and video processing:

http://devel.goto10.org/puredyne

enjoy!

Well I've never used any of those dedicated distros because I'm quite fond of my Gentoo. what matters most is you have a low-latency kernel and the right software. I like to use ardour as my multi-track it uses jack. jack was made for pro audio work and works well. jammin to master the cd's and audacity for fine audio editing. those usb audio things suck. they work ok for 2 channels or less. try to find a decent firewire one that is supported by alsa (if you can afford it.) if you don't have a lot of cash just get a nice preamp (make sure it has a high impendence input if your going to plug in a guitar) and plug it into the onboard audio. the noise in the onboard audio comes from emi from the rest of the computer when you plug in a low level input (like some people who just use an adapter to plug a guitar into the soundcard) then you amplify it inside the computer you amplify the noise to. most of the cheap usb audio interfaces use the same quality adc as your soundcard so any improvement in quality comes from it being in a box away from your computer; but then it has to deal with usb being to slow for decent audio. those are just about your only options if you're going to use a laptop. Personally you'll never get me to part with the pci MAudio Delta1010 in my gentoo studio box: 8 channels of 24bit 96khz audio + 2 digital audio + midi in and out simultaneously! wired up to a rackmounted 8 channel xlr preamp (with DI boxes for the guitars) it's very well supported by alsa and if I wanted I could gang up to 4 of them together and record a small orchestra

If you have a 64 bit system I have really begun to like 64 Studio (http://iso.linuxquestions.org/64-studio/). Runs really well and as it is based off Debian it has a LOT of software readily available for it!