Har-Bal Users Forum BBS

I have been playing with the demos since the product first was introduced. 1.5 is quite nice, very impressive. The tool tips might tell us what we already should know about EQ, but nice to have them around.

The news flash is this: Using the WINE (WINdows Emulator), the program will run almost flawlessly in Linux!! So far the only audio application I have successfully run this way. This could open up a whole new market (though most Linux folks like their stuff open-source). Be able to play on either OS is a definite plus. Hope to purchase sooner rather than later.

That doesn't sound that surprising but I suspect the release version may not run correctly under wine because of the Armadillo software protection. I personally haven't tried and I don't have an up to date release of Linux installed on a machine at the moment anyway.

But, you may be interested to know that the Mac port is being implemented by re-implementing the HarBal GUI using wxWidgets. We'll be able to support Windows, MacOSX and Linux platforms using the one source base, which is what we're aiming for.

We have no plans for making HarBal open source (as yet) but we are talking about possibly starting an open source DAW project in a year or two. I think its time there was an open source DAW that everyone could contribute to and there's plenty of scope to come up with something better IMHO. The idea would be that we'd manage the project and fund it as well and it would be under a GPL license.

Paavo.

Great!

Yes, various protection schemes can run afoul of WINE. Ones that use the registry will work if the real windows registry is actively read (option) by WINE. Machine-code schemes--well Tracktion was listed as unregistered but once I (re-)activated the real registry reading, it comes up registered (which is a weakness since the machine-code number is different!) but their framework (a TK-based and soon to be opensourced something called "Juice") runs afoul. I would love to see them do a Linux compile because most of the current (OpenSource) apps either do not integrate MIDI and Audio, are too eccentric, or simply do not "satisfy".

Going to wxWidgets rather than hanging on to MFC, et al, is the best news I have heard. You can now distribute a CD or download with all three installations on it. WINE is problematic at best so why not native Linux?

For a more up-to-date Linux, try the Knoppix CD--you can play with this without changing your current hard disk partitions and if you wish, do the HD install as a basis for a (mostly) Debian distro later on.

I believe that the market is there for reasonably priced Linux software for pro or semipro studio use. Tracktion-2 will be $200 and this may not go. Tracktion-1 was $80 and had a chance. I actually got mine as a freebie in a promo last month. HarBal at $100 is borderline--a busy pro studio will take it, a non-profitable home operation might not. If I had income, I would have bought it long ago. Under Windows, I use Cakewalk's "Home Studio" which is Sonar's not-so-little sister--large fraction of functionality at a small fraction of the price!

Just like to point out that we do not, nor have we ever used, MFC or ActiveX in HarBal. Both are a dogs breakfast and leave much to be desired. I've never used MFC for anything serious and never will. It's a straight jacket.

HarBal was written using my own WIN32 app framework that I'd originally intended to make portable but now that wxWidgets has well and truly come of age and I haven't done any of the portability code, it seems like a pointless excercise. Hence the choice of wxWidgets. I like the style of my framework and some of the support classes it has that wxWidgets doesn't, but it is an easy excercise just adding whats missing from wxWidgets.

Anyway, wxWidgets is set to be our base framework in the next major revision when we finally make available an OSX version and a Linux version of course.

Paavo.