Is Linux advanced enough for DAW work?

[fjell_strom]

Just curious to see are there any/many linux users doing DAW work. Anyone have positive or negative things to say on the issue - or point me to a forum where this has already been discussed (in light of audio work).

Cheers all,
fjell

[Lump]

Just curious to see are there any/many linux users doing DAW work. Anyone have positive or negative things to say on the issue - or point me to a forum where this has already been discussed (in light of audio work).

Cheers all,
fjell

Is Linux ready for DAW?
Depends on the point of view or what you need.

With JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit) AudioLinux has a very perfect proAudio enviroment with lowlatency and a free routing audio/midi. There are some nice applications available - like Ardour as a audio sequencer (DAW).

But: You need a special kernel for audio, which opening the jack realtime audio. Not many Linux distributions offer a kernel like that. So you need a special extension like DeMuDi (based on Debian) Planet CCRMA (based on Fedora) or JAD (based on SUSE). The latest Ubuntu ready for make a little bit music "out of the box" but there is a lack of a real rt-Kernel for poweruser.

And: most of the AudioApps for Linux are in a very early state, not very stable, not much features like some free/shareware on Windows or MacOS X. A all in one total recall solution is missing (but eXT2 will hopefully do that job).

I have no problem to work with Linux. The community helps a lot. But I see clearly, theat most of my creative musican friends are not ready for AudioLinux: or better to say - Linux is not ready for a virtuel studio enviroment. Ok for enginering, recording and postproduction by experiend unix users, but this typical FL, Cubase or Logic user won't feel comfortable in AudioLinux.

And be carefull: many Linuxuser are like religious fanatics

So here are some usefull links:
ubuntustudio.com
jacklab.net
agnula.org
linux-sound.org

[stanlea]

Lump said the most important...

sadly, the Agnula Project seems to be frozen

[RTaylor]

Easy answer... yes. Real answer... it's up to you.

[fake]

Lump said the most important...

sadly, the Agnula Project seems to be frozen

I have been using the DeMuDi 1.3 test release updated in feb so it seems to be still going somehow.


Warning
Unfortunatley the latest additions to the debian repositories break stuff if you upgrade after installing 1.3.

It tries to uninstall the operational kernel 2.6.14 and install 2.6.16 the latest released kernel but it has been built using a diferent system. Whoever decided on that course must have been drunk at the time as it has been badly thought out.

I have had very good results with the 2.6.14 kernel with the realtime lsm and preempt patches, at 5.8ms latency and with no dropouts using ardour, rosegarden dssi and several vsti at once. The reason why I want to keep the setup and not change.

Luckily I have recently compiled several kernels with the timers set at 1000hz and with a rt kernel that can use rlimits. They work but have not been tested well yet.

I like linx cos of jack and the way I can route stuff so easily, for live takes its great. I still have a dual boot with windows though because linux lacks the apps and convenience in doing some things.

Horses for courses as they say.



fake

[stanlea]

Personnaly I use CCRMA based on Fedora Core 5 and it rocks.

[VitaminD]

'advanced'-wise ermm.. yes, absolutely.. imo.

that said, I still (or have) use(d) Demudi, ubuntu, mandrake/mandriva, and a couple other distros of linux. and I'd have to say its way too technical still for a non-techie user... really.. its a pain in some cases. Thats even with the synaptic or other package managers and more 'friendly' things in the linux realm..

so I'd say if you're more a musician and less a computer scientist then I'd probably steer clear...

[satchnut]

I agree with VitaminD, plus there doesn't seem to be a distro that integrates everything properly. It's still quite experimental...unless you use PureData. It's a much more mature product in the linux world (more extensions, etc.).

[tetraplan]

I agree. It seems there are a number of very powerful experimental tools on Linux that seem very mature: CSound, Pd, SND, and so on.
Straightforward DAW stuff is very young, though. Be prepared to be an Early Adopter.

Groet, Erik

[dburgan]

Linux is getting there and has tons of promise. My personal view is it's not quite ready. Until the vendors of the majority of these VST/VSTis I've purchased and the vendors of my major hosts (e.g. energyXT, SONAR and P5) add support, I'll be running a dual-boot configuration and dropping into Windows for audio work.

I'm a Linux LOVER but sadly it's just not quite baked yet for pro audio. The good news is the community is very active and Linux is constantly improving. So this will change sometime in the future, hopefully near future.

[Lump]

Up....

A few weeks before I had written a "something like" objective statement about audio linux. But now have to follow a personal, subjective view.

In my studio allready Linux working. And its working very stable and productive in my setup. But it needs time to make all the things work. I was going deep into the Linux story and screwing up SUSE Linux for a DAW with a lots of help from some friendly hackers. So I created a user4user project named www.jacklab.net - now it is not so hard to install a realtime audio kernel and many apps (also VST support) on SUSE Linux for everyone whos interessted. At JackLab my alias is "metasymbol"

I work mainly with Ardour on a amd64 3500 / 2GB Ram / Hammerfall light / ddx3216 DA AD convertor for recording an postproduction.

For virtual composing and arranging I use a IBM Thinkpad with WindowsXP, Ableton Live Lite and EnergyXT and a lots of VSTi digitaly routed into the Linux DAW with SUSE 10.0 / JAD (JackLab Audio Distribution). All acoustic recordings, mixings and mastering are made with the Linux DAW. Later this DAW will also be used for webradio with LDJC http://www.onlymeok.nildram.co.uk/ so I can make live broadcasting directly from the studio.

Here is an impressive view of my SUSE Linux / JAD Setup at the "Linux Audio Conference" end of April 2006 in Karlsruhe (Germany). A lot of hardware working "out of the box".
We used to play live with many vst and fx. I have to admit, it was not easy, so I can't wait for a commercial all in one sequencer for Linux...

[toddyjoe]

From my experience, Linux is making progress but you have to spend some time with it at this stage of its development. While it is easier to work with some of the pre-made audio distros like DeMuDi and dyne:bolic, it is a bit harder trying to build a Linux DAW from scratch. I have been working with a smaller distro, Puppy, and compiling my own low-latency and realtime kernels (depending on which Puppy version you use). I have also been building my own packages for Puppy (called dotpups) for different audio, synth, sampler and DAW applications. So far, I have little packages and squashfiles for JACK-Qjackctl, Vkeybd Virtual Keyboard, JACK RACK, Fluidsynth-Qsynth, TkEca-Ecasound, DSSI-VST, Xsynth-DSSI, Whysynth, RT Synth, ZynAddSubFX, Alsa Modular Synth, Spiral Synth Modular, Ardour, Timidity, Rosegarden, Audacity, Hydrogen, Freebirth, Bristol-Brighton, MX44, etc. I am working on new ones everyday but it takes time to hunt down libraries and tarballs and then build and compile them. Hopefully, developers catering to the Windows and Mac markets will start to branch into the Linux field and little by little make it easier to build a Linux DAW from scratch.