The linux DAW thread

[tetraplan]

I got me an Edirol UM1-ex the other day, and it works flawlessly. Jack saw it right away, out of the box, I used it to mess around on my Pulse.
This is on UbuntuStudio 7.10.

Groet, Erik

[pw]

well, for some unknown reason, my ubuntu studio installation did not work.

First, I did a clean install on XP (it was time...), and then installed ubuntu studio on a different partition. I manually partitioned the disk during installation, creating a 3gb swap partition and a 15gb partition (ext3) for the ubuntustudio system.

I got no errors during installation, everything seemed fine.

Then, after successful installation, I rebooted, and got the option to choose xp or ubuntu studio - there were three ubuntu start up options - normal, safemode and another I can't remember. I went with the normal one, it asked to me enter my user and password (still in dos, no graphical interface), and then it gave me a long message that I didn't write down. At the end of this, there was a cursor for text entry, but I had no idea what they were talking about.

Any ideas on what went wrong?

Maybe I will just stick with the normal ubuntu installation for the time being, and add the real time kernel later...

[schivmeister]

Hi

What graphics chip/card do you have? That definitely is an X server issue, where you don't see a login manager after a brand new install. First of all you should log in, as user. Then

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startx

If xorg fails, there are plenty of material in the Ubuntu forums to help you out. Basically, you may have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and/or install a binary (proprietary) driver. Other than that, it may just be a flawed installation where some level of configuration and/or packages are missing. Grab JackLab or 64Studio, they are better IMHO. Good luck.

Now to attend to the reason why I'm posting

VST

I've been lounging around these forums occasionally for some time now, and one thing I've noticed is that when the question of Linux's position as a DAW surfaces, people are actually optimistic. However, the VST equation is quick to entirely nullify that optimism.

In the one or two years that I've run Linux as a DAW, although mostly for experimentation and not serious production/content, I've yet to face issues with using VST(i). Sure, there were segfaults sometimes, but those occured with badly-coded and/or sub-quality plug-ins/instruments. It's only recently that I've started to really use VSTs, after finding out that LMMS offered a native layer via Wine and got interested in synthesizing. Now isn't that great? No SDK, no nothin'.

So far, only 5/50 (approximately) VSTs have failed to load, and that's it - no harm done to the host. I have yet to ask the LMMS team on the internals of this "lvsl" VST server, but if it's something all other Linux/*nix audio software could implement, it'd really be great.

I'd like to hear (or view) your experience with VSTs on Linux under software/hosts such as Ardour, Audacity, Rosegarden, LMMS etc, especially as to why it "doesn't work". Of course, at the end of the day, I do see LV2 and DSSI being successful alternatives

[pw]

Hi

What graphics chip/card do you have? That definitely is an X server issue, where you don't see a login manager after a brand new install. First of all you should log in, as user. Then

Code: Select all

startx

If xorg fails, there are plenty of material in the Ubuntu forums to help you out. Basically, you may have to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and/or install a binary (proprietary) driver. Other than that, it may just be a flawed installation where some level of configuration and/or packages are missing. Grab JackLab or 64Studio, they are better IMHO. Good luck.

Ah, ok. So, I have an nvidia card so what you said makes sense. I have been using the Ubuntu LIveCD as well, and had no problems with that - I guess the regular Ubuntu install has graphics drivers that aren't in the Ubuntu Studio install?

Being new to this, if you can point me to a resource that will help me install a video driver after doing a clean Ubuntu Studio installation, I would really appreciate it.

[pw]

so, I just installed the normal ubuntu installation, and added programs manually. Seems like a good solution, everything went very smoothly and installing ubuntustudio packages, the real time kernel and/or individual programs is a piece of cake with the Synaptic Package Manager.

[kensuguro]

I'm wondering if anyone can confirm if there is a performance hit or improvement from running vstis in linux. I still haven't gotten around to get everything set up on my Ubuntu studio machine, but was curious if it was even worth the time. I mean, I could just do all the stuff in XP, was just wondering if performance was actually better, or at least equal to XP.

[schivmeister]

If we're talking about using VST natively (SDK compiled), there's no significant performance hit. Even if we aren't, say in the case of LMMS, the "hit" is not much to worry about. In the first place, there is no way to compare performance between different platforms. Linux scheduling is quite different from Windows'. Depending on how your kernel is configured, different types of tasks will yield different patterns of CPU usage.

I've seen plenty of people complaining about short bursts here and there, then go on to say the same application has no such behaviour in a different platform like Windows. That's fallacy. Needless to say, if you use an RT kernel, very simple tasks would appear to be consuming much processor power and the pattern would be strange. That's normal.

pw: great, that's usually what i'd recommend too for beginners. many people have trouble with Ubuntustudio and i feel it's sorta pointless.

[pw]

pw: great, that's usually what i'd recommend too for beginners. many people have trouble with Ubuntustudio and i feel it's sorta pointless.

Yes, now that I saw how damn easy it is to integrate the studio elements into the normal ubuntu install, the studio package seems pointless to me, too.

Anyway, haven't gotten into audio yet, but I am loving many things about ubuntu at the moment.

[kensuguro]

If we're talking about using VST natively (SDK compiled), there's no significant performance hit. Even if we aren't, say in the case of LMMS, the "hit" is not much to worry about. In the first place, there is no way to compare performance between different platforms. Linux scheduling is quite different from Windows'. Depending on how your kernel is configured, different types of tasks will yield different patterns of CPU usage.

Thnx schivmeister. Just wanted to make sure I wont' be loosing significant performance. Actually I was hoping for an improvement, since there's less crap on linux. I'll try experimenting, I'm curious to see how it turns out.

BTW, on a side note, if I were to just run Kontakt 2, and run band in a box in wine, what method would you suggest I use to run Kontakt? I know LMMS runs it, but I see that I can use grab Steinburg's VST SDK to make FST, and use that. (http://joebutton.co.uk/fst/) Is one more efficient than the other?

Sorry if these are recurring problems, there's so much info for different versions of different solutions. I'm having extreme difficulty figuring out what the big picture is.

[schivmeister]

LMMS's VST layer is unique to the software itself. Compiling the SDK is the only way to use these plugins for the rest of the crowd, afaik.

[glokraw]

LMMS's VST layer is unique to the software itself. Compiling the SDK is the only way to use these plugins for the rest of the crowd, afaik.

I just use wine, wineasio, Reaper, and Cantabile, then load up the vsts, in whatever is the 'distro of the month'. I accidentally deleted some of my X-server
video system, and PCLinuxOS allowed me to reinstall the OS without reformatting the partition, and all my eyecandy, internet, and preferences were there to greet me, after the new working install.
Cheers

[schivmeister]

See, it's even less of a hassle if you run a Windows app. Since the program itself is a host, all you need is Wine. Now we even have software like Renoise and EnergyXT2

[ruralist]

This is my first post here, though I've been using the KVR forums for a little while now and it has been an invaluable source of info whilst I make a transition from MAC to PC (So thankyou!). Not that I intend to stop using my Mac, but I really didn't wanna spend all that money to get a MacBook that has a shoddier build quality than my iBook G3 700Mhz.
I got a Thinkpad X61 with Vista Home Basic, went through the fuss of installing XP on a partition, to find that Vista outperforms XP in CPU usage when running Renoise or Tracktion.It uses way more RAM which is annoying compared to XP and OSX...
I have recently got Ubuntu 7.10 up and running. I sense there is potential for professional audio work, but am out of my depth with this OS (I've been cruising the Linux DAW thread as well as the Ubuntu documentation). I have installed Renoise and the XT2 demo, which both work, however there's clicks all over the audio stream, particularly in XT2. In Renoise I can eliminate the clicks by setting the latency to the largest buffer size, but I know there's a better way of doing things. I have alsa drivers and JACK is installed. These were both installed using the synaptic package manager, and I can play CD's and stream MP3's using ALSA player, so I think these are working fine.
Do I need to use the Sudo command to launch the apps to get the best performance out of Ubuntu? How do I launch Apps from the Terminal. Many thanks in advance for any help people. Jasper

[Jidis]

Well if anybody's got about fifty hours of free time and feels like doing a "brief" newbie tutorial on setting up a Linux DAW without using one of the big automatic distros, I could sure use it right now.

I started off running through several variants of Ubuntu and 64Studio, and most of what I got ended up looking like a cross breed of OSX and Windows 3.1, ate up about as much space as an XP install, and was as (or less) responsive than Win2K on the target P3. I finally ended up working toward a minimal custom install of one of the less friendly distros (Arch Linux) and learned enough to get some basic stuff installed, but I'm a long ways off.

FWIW- My goal is to get something for basic sequencing (and maybe audio later), which runs as well as 98SE w/98Lite on a "sub-GHz" P3. Ideally, it would run better, have tighter timing, and be even less cluttered. Right now, I'm learning it on a P3/933 desktop (133MHz bus), but I'd like to eventually get it onto a P3/600 laptop.

Arch Linux recognized and set up the onboard 3Com NIC and services during the "base" install, and after figuring out the "dhcpcd eth0" command, I was able to link to my router and retrieve online packages and apps. For this intended setup, I'm guessing I'll want none of the non-audio components, so I'll need to figure out how to remove things (or find out what's installed for that matter), load local packages from disk, and get whatever basic framework is needed to host the DAW apps and access the audio/MIDI hardware.

If anybody read that and has any pointers or warnings, I'm sure someone aside from me would be interested.

Thanks!

George

PS@Ruralist- With the Arch setup I was playing with (pretty much ALL text prompt interface), if "pacman" properly installed an app, I was able to launch it by merely typing its name at the prompt ("seq24" would launch Seq24 for instance). Of course in Xubuntu and all, they showed up in the audio apps menu or whatever. Also, check one of those NLite XP installs that's floating around. There was a good one in the Reaper forums a while back. I really can't imagine Vista outperforming that.

[glokraw]

Well if anybody's got about fifty hours of free time and feels like doing a "brief" newbie tutorial on setting up a Linux DAW without using one of the big automatic distros, I could sure use it right now.

snip

PCLinuxOS is the easiest, rpm based, with synaptic package manager gui, no
sudo nonsense, codec friendly, wine and wineasio in the repository.
The same user must run all audio apps.

Make a separate partition for /home so you can re-use all settings and eyecandy when reinstalling -just don't partition /home the next time. All
isp, email, prefs, gui tweaks etc are waiting your fresh install!
In synaptic preferences, change it to keep all downloaded files in the cache (files are then re-used when found in /var/cache/apt/archives, copy it to /home/user, or burn a cd to not store for if you reinstall, just put them back in /var/cache/apt/archives) )

Install wine, wineasio, qjackctl, vkeybd, creox, and zynaddsubfx, and run these commands

wineprefixcreate
regsvr32 wineasio.dll
winecfg

when winecfg opens its gui, in the audio tab, choose alsa to use midi/vst apps.

Wine command lines require a * to fill in blank spaces in windows paths and app titles:
wine /home/jidis/.wine/drive_c/Program*Files/VstPlgins/Guitar*Rig3.dll

to run windows installers:
wine reaper2149-install.exe and adjust the install path as desired. Some vsts
will only work in linux from
/home/jidis/.wine/drive_c/Program*Files/Steinberg/VstPlugins
most work from /home/jidis, Reaper uses a ; separated list of folders to scan, Cantabile lets you pick them where they are.

qjackctl can be used to start jackd, if you have a realtime kernel, mark that option, its priority (89) and your latency choices in the gui.

Start jackd on its own with jackd -d alsa -r 44100
read manuals for options.

Use Cantabile
www.toptensoftware.com
or Reaper
www.cockos.com
to host vsts, record midi and audio, audacity can be chosen as the default audio editor in Reaper. If Reaper is installed in your /home/jidis folder (probably e:\ in the winecfg gui, you would start reaper with

wine REAPER/reaper.exe
if you google wineasio allenpopo you should see some how-to threads he wrote in other kvr forums!
Good luck