Digital Audio Out of the Box

Use of dedicated machines

• more stable: no need to use your general purpose machine
• cost efficient: e.g. for sound installation you do not need to purchase a full featured machine

One of the reasons is that they want a dedicated machine, that can stay stable, so that setups are not broken when updating other programs or an operating system - they want to play music on a different machine, than on the one they write their emails with. They want to freeze their machine for particular performance setups.

For artists making sound installations, they often need to make easy to start and robust machines that can be turned on by gallery personel, and just work.

Small computers like the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard and BeagleBone Black provide good solutions for these artists.