Linux does *not* make a good studio box, at least not at this time.
Sure, with kernel patches such as the preempt and lowlatency patches you get very good responsiveness from Linux based systems, but hardware support is so-and-so (the Alsa project is doing a lot to improve the situation) and software support is downright horrible.
I have a studio. The current studio computer, which is pretty much the core of the studio, is a plain homebuilt AMD-based PC running Windows 2000. It has a very nice
Hoontech/STAudio DSP24 Mk.I soundcard (8 in, 8 out) with an ADC/DAC2000 breakout box with phantom gain on the two first channels. Add a mixer, half a million microphones, even more cables, and you pretty much have a studio....
...or do you? Well up to this point, Linux does well. Alsa even supports the soundcard (woo yay). But on the software end, things doesn't look so bright. The most promising project out there is
Ardour, but it has been "promising" for years now. Other than Ardour, there is *no* open source (or proprietary!) project that can even begin competing with
Emagic Logic Audio.
Trust me, I'd go with Linux right away if there was a decent HD recording environment available for Linux, but Ardour just doesn't cut it (yet!).
Håkan
...decent enough for home messing about with....problem is getting software that can compare with the impressive results of the Sonar and Cubases of the world which unfortunately at this moment in time I don't know of any linux equivalent. Tried Ardour but it never compiles properly even after hunting down and installing all it's dependencies....maybe when it matures.
