Re: [Drc-fir-users] R: R: R: Can't Initialize Output Device after changing samplerate

[Ed W <li...@wi...>]

Hi Nicola

> I a am not scared by Linux nor I blame it. 

If you don't mind me being slightly antagonistic: yes you are, you 
clearly feel that you understand windows better and hence by definition 
you are scared of the alternatives. 

What you are trying to achieve is non trivial and you will be only one 
of a very small number of people in the entire world to have achieved it 
- so please don't feel that the complexity is due to the operating 
system - it's due to the small number of people who have been here 
before you.  I setup http://www.duffroomcorrection.com to try and help 
document this process, but it's only by people such as yourself offering 
help to the next generation that things can get better - you will see 
that there are zero instructions on there at present for using Ulis 
setup - I hope that you can help us change that!


> After I installed it replacing the hd in my notebook I started loading in
> Open Office all my  documents  (and the ones sent to me by my boss and
> collegues and clients of the bank) and a lot of formatting simply was not
> right under Linux. Excel Spreadsheets, Word layouts and Powerpoint
> presentations.
>
> Then my wife tried some of her documents, big Excel spreadsheets full of
> commercial data and reports and she had problem in the way they appeared
> under OpenOffice.
>
> Let's mine and her documents were 95% compliant with the original Windows
> version. But 95% is not 100% and I cannot force bosses and collegues to
> reformat my documents.
>   

Here's an interesting situation I found myself in just last week.  I 
have only Office 2003 here and I received a .DOC file from a supplier.  
Every time I opened it my Word 2003 would just hang and sit there.  
After a few times I realised that probably it was either corrupted or in 
2007 format so wrote to the chap and asked for a resend.  He resent it 
in 2003 format, but when I opened it it opened with lots of warnings 
about wrong margins and corrupted styles, etc.  However, it opened 
enough that I could read it and get the address and prices out.

On a whim though I tried to open both versions in the *latest* Open 
Office (2.2.1).  The Word 2007 doc opened perfectly with no loss of 
formatting at all, and in fact I was so suprised that I printed it out 
and compared it with the Word version - absolutely identical!

I have had this experience several times now - if you try the very 
latest OOO compared with a version say 6 months ago you may be very 
impressed

So the conclusion of this little story is that OO opens Word documents 
better than Word does in my little example...  I also find it quite 
distressing that this failure to export to 2003 format is almost 
certainly a deliberate MS bug - it's the same marketing ploy every time 
- inconvenience *me* who owns the older version again and again with 
little niggles until I have to buy the new version just to keep up.  
This time it might backfire though because I needed to try OO to open 
some Word 2007 file and since it did the job perfectly I might just 
stick with it now...

I don't have the same constraints as you, but please accept that the 
same events which make *you* *want* to stick with Office is also the 
same reason that I personally want to keep away.  The idea that in a few 
years time I may not be able to read my work that I produced (at great 
cost) is a very big reason for me NOT to want to have it in Office 
format.  That you prefer to lock yourself into a format which is quickly 
demonstrating to be flawed (in my opinion) is up to you, but just factor 
in that not everyone sees it that way and personally I am fed up with 
the deliberate breakages engineered by MS and avoid using their software 
as much as possible.


> Without Denis help maybe I'd had quit trying DRC after a couple of
> unsuccesful trials.
> Surely without Uli's files and hints my fanless convolver pc would run under
> windows.
>   

You see you *think* that things would be easier under windows - this is 
why I accuse you of "fear".

Denis works most of his time under windows and I think he might actually 
claim that he is not all that linux savvy (is that true Denis?). So his 
choice to use linux was not due to it being his most familiar tool.  
Sadly also I use Windows for quite a lot of my work, yet my TV is 
powered by a linux box running Mythtv and NOT Vista media center (which 
I also own).  The reason for this is that *I* don't know how to achieve 
all this stuff under windows, but I *do* know how to make it all work 
under linux (difficult though it is)

If you read the forums you will find people pulling their hair out with 
various ASIO drivers, mixer settings, graphedit problems, subsystem 
crashes. etc. etc.  Doesn't look like fun from where I am sitting and 
I'm not keen to go down that route at all - it's hard enough with my 
current setup where at least all the stuff works robustly and if it 
doesn't I can badger someone to rewrite the relevant bit of the 
operating system to fix the problem!

> Now I hope to improve what I reached using the toslink inputs too to equlize
> cable tv and the xbox 360 but only if it takes little effort. 

Well, few other people in the whole world have achieved this. You should 
not underplay your own accomplishments!

> I cannot start
> from scratch learning a new Os, alsa, shell programming etc.. when maybe the
> solution to my problem is simply changing a variable in a text file. I'd
> spend less time and efforts installing Win on the convolver PC and patch
> when I have to patch with C# or VB code.
>   

I think you misunderstand. 

1) OS's are not so different.  Only the tools provided are the main 
distinction. 
2) Alsa is barely involved in your setup and your digital only card.  
Those alsa tools we mentioned are just ways to change driver settings, 
but apparently via Alsa.  If you have Ubuntu then you can simply use the 
HDSPControl application and change them directly I think?  The alsa 
tools are convenient though because they are command line based and 
hence you can script them easily.  If you want to go the windows style 
route then fine - simply boot the computer, attach a screen, fire up the 
gui controller, adjust the controls, then play your music.  No problem.
3) I think you should try getting windows going as a convolver - from 
what I can see it's quite difficult...
4) If you prefer C#/VB then please realise that you can run these nearly 
unchanged under Linux.  The only difference is that the tools are free 
and have active support, versus under Windows where you need to pay 
about £1,000 for the dev tools.  (c# is called Mono under linux.  I 
forget the project which makes a near perfect VB emulator, but search on 
google)

> Linux is perfect for the task and everything is running without problems.
> Not having the time to learn and master it just for fun is the real problem.
>   

I just don't agree that it's any easier under windows.  At least here 
you can easily write some C# program to fixup and hook bits of system 
together.  (Yes no need to write shell script - I personally don't 
understand it well and dislike it - however, it's more readily available 
without installing anything!)

Please take these comments in a positive way!

Good luck

Ed W