Open soucre Music Software

If you use a computer at all in your recording setup, you'll know that the performance and stability of machines running general-purpose operating systems hasn't yet come close to that of dedicated studio hardware. That dedicated hardware might be like a computer inside, but it runs an 'embedded' operating system that is tailored for the purpose, with rock-solid reliability.

Most of the desktop computers in the world run a derivative of Windows 95 or the Mac's System 7, and it's a fact that the manufacturers of both know that their time is up. In the case of PC users, Microsoft would like to see their customers move to the NT-based Windows XP, while Apple has also abandoned its existing codebase with the launch of the UNIX-based OS X.

In the network era, computers that crash, lose data and work inconsistently are no longer acceptable. As more and more people have come to depend on computers for earning a living, a migration of some sort from the legacy operating systems becomes essential. Meanwhile, the computing power available to individuals continues to grow at rapid rate, meaning that off-the-shelf hardware can now process multiple tracks of digital audio in real time, something that not even the most well-equipped studio could do a generation ago.