The linux DAW thread

[glokraw]

Thanks for sharing the info, very encouraging.
Arch users always seem to score early and often
Cheers

[NystagmusE]

I am currently having success with MX Linux 17 32-bit PAE and some RT kernels with Wine and 32-bit Windows REAPER. I use REAPER in WASAPI mode and Wine in PulseAudio mode. I have manually edited the PulseAudio preferences files for lower latency, and set the kernel parameters to include THREADIRQS, as mentioned in the AVLINUX manual. I got rid of a few things like CUPS and disabled some stuff I don't need to have running.

This has turned out to be much easier to config for audio than my previous Ubuntu Studio, Xubuntu, and even AVLINUX installs. I'm really happy with it.

I also am using FL Studio and a ton of freeware VST instruments and effects.
I was able to resurrect my old drum sample library, so I should be back into making deep music soon!

I just wanted to share this so people know, "don't give up hope", Linux can be great, even with PulseAudio, even without some specialty repos, even without JACK or JACK2 running, even without Carla, even without FeSTige... although, all of those are great!

[glokraw]

It's a good collab to have Mepis and antiX folks teamed up
for MX Linux, two groups that pushed for progress and
sensible innovation. You can't hardly cross the dance floor
without hearing some dood news. I used Mepis for quite a while
many years ago, and burned an antiX cd, probably late 2016,
but had no time to use it.

I'd be interested in any plugin/standalone config choices
regarding wasapi mode, sometimes something special comes along,
but needs a different way to get it working.

Is there a wineHQ repository for MX such that wine-staging
can be installed, and are the RT kernels part of the MX repos?
Thanks for posting the good news! The more choices, the better

[glokraw]

https://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopi ... 48&t=18535

The Guitarix developer has been using schematics for some
recent plugin creations, and has made a new power amp plugin,
GxCreamMachine.lv2
and posted the schematics he created, and some design notes.
Guitarix itself can be most anything you want for your guitar,
plugin host, ampsim suite, parts fitted in other chains etc,
and gets frequent updates and additions.

There is a handy app called jalv.select that gives you
a gui to select and load a single lv2 plugin and preset,
as standalone jackd apps, so GxSuperFuzz routed to
Cream Machine, for a quick jam etc

http://guitarix.org/

Cheers

[NystagmusE]

It's a good collab to have Mepis and antiX folks teamed up
for MX Linux, two groups that pushed for progress and
sensible innovation. You can't hardly cross the dance floor
without hearing some dood news. I used Mepis for quite a while
many years ago, and burned an antiX cd, probably late 2016,
but had no time to use it.

I'd be interested in any plugin/standalone config choices
regarding wasapi mode, sometimes something special comes along,
but needs a different way to get it working.

Is there a wineHQ repository for MX such that wine-staging
can be installed, and are the RT kernels part of the MX repos?
Thanks for posting the good news! The more choices, the better

Just add the Debian "Stretch" repo for basic support. And then use the Debian wine-staging install instructions from WineHQ. The RT kernels are part of the AVLINUX project I think. I read about it on Linux Musicians .com (.org?). That's a great site for getting down to business.

Read their sticky post about "DAW LAW" and it will have the main tips.
Peace.

[glokraw]

Thanks for the info. I'm due for a fresh install
without my muddy pawprints alll over it anyway
and this looks like an excellent choice.
Cheers

[NystagmusE]

Thanks for the info. I'm due for a fresh install
without my muddy pawprints alll over it anyway
and this looks like an excellent choice.
Cheers

Here's where my pawprints are in case you need 'em
https://linuxmusicians.com/viewforum.php?f=27

GMaq, the AVLINUX guy, goes there too and posted up links to his nice kernels.
That's what was the breakthru for me. Apparently his kernels work on some of the Ubuntu's too, although the advantages over low-latency vary according to specific systems. The last system I had before this one was low-latency on Xubuntu, and up until v16-17 of Xubuntu, it was great. But something changed from within Ubuntuland, so I ditched it for a while.

But I think I might try it again just for kicks because I took another look at Xubuntu lately and it seems slightly more streamlined and stable than before.
Lubuntu was nice too, but missed a bit too much stuff. I can only wonder what Lubuntu with an RT would be like if I could figure out how to deal with the missing pieces.

But anyways, one other nice thing is that you can still install PCmanFM as a backup alternative file manager in case you aren't into Thunar. And you can switch back and forth between them, or use them both at the same time, usually without too much trouble.

I find that PCmanFM is less cluttered, but Thunar on MX has some nice contextual menu stuff to speed up dealing with root and protections, etc.

Good luck, man. Peace

[audiojunkie]

I just want to make a quick post again and (again) say how much I appreciate everyone keeping this thread alive! Since my last post, I've advanced quite a bit in my own project. A little background: There are currently only 3-4 active distros that focus on low latency audio music production--decent, but not too many options. Should we ever lose GMaq or FalkTX, we regular users (read: ordinary humans) would be in real trouble. I want a little independence, along with the ability to customize to what "I" want in a set-up. So, I have been trying to teach myself how to build a working low latency set-up that would work with basically any distro, and I'm trying to document how to do it along the way. I've been using Ubuntu Gnome for my initial experiments, but that basically means that it will work for most any Debian-based distro, and I suspect that it won't be too much different for other distros. I chose Gnome (even though it is quite a bit more resource hungry), because it is a touch-screen capable distro, and my ultimate goal is to use a hand-held touchscreen-based system similar to iPads (a 2-in-1 possibly), but based on Linux. So far, I've learned how to install a low latency kernel and configure Grub to boot to it every time. I've also figured out how to configure the audio group settings. I've figured out what needs to be done so that I can easily install and use a midi keyboard controller when needed. I've got JACK, the latest version of Ardour, KXStudio and several LV2 and Linux VST plugins working. I'm now teaching myself how to use these tools.

I know that for some of you this is really, I mean REALLY basic stuff, but it has taken me a while to get this far and get things figured out. It's a slow process and a hobby that I'm having fun with. The best part, is that finally, I'm not just reading what accomplishments others are doing, but I'm doing things myself.

I largely have the encouragement of you guys (and other Linux forums as well) to thank for the progess I've made thus far.

So, anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for keeping this thread alive and being available for questions and being so friendly and willing to help!

--Sean

[glokraw]

It's a slow process and a hobby that I'm having fun with. The best part, is that finally, I'm not just reading what accomplishments others are doing, but I'm doing things myself.

--Sean

Glad you're having fun, and making steady progress,
hopefully creating some fun music out of those
12 pesky notes that we wrap with technology,
and hopefully temper the wrap with a good ear,
instrumental skillz, and reap the pleasures
of sharing it all along the way.

I've been having great fun playing sequenced recordings
in audacity, at various speeds, then using the pitchbend
of my Alesis QS8 to match the audacity tempo-tuning,
and processing the sequence and QS8 sounds with multiple rakarrack instances, daisychained at times, and recording the sums with Timemachine. Simple and effective, without firing up a daw app and plugins.
Cheers

[audiojunkie]

I’m still learning what everything is in Ardour. But I’m still moving forward—last night I installed LinuxSampler VST/LV2 and the tried to use it, only to discover that it only loads the server. I then had to install Java and the Fantasia.jar (LinuxSampler GUI front end). I haven’t yet figured out how to make a launcher in Gnome for that single line of instruction, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out soon.

[glokraw]

Hi,there is a qsampler gui for linuxsampler in the typical repos,
made by the intrepid qjackctl developer in his 'spare' time.
In the row of icons it presents, click the green soundcard icon
to choose your audio device, jack or alsa, then click the create button,
then choose your midi device, and use the 'create' button again.
Next, on the main gui, click the Add Channel icon,
the rectangle with a * ...to choose a sound. In Channel dialog, there will be a 'filename' line
with a yellow filebrowser icon, use that to browse to your sounds
folders, I loaded a two Zampler drumkit SFZ files, and a guitar sf2
file in the first three channels, seems to be working fine.
For each sound channel, I choose the 'all' option, rather than
individual channels 1,2,3,4, ...16 etc, for multi-timbral playback.

Save the sessions you make as an lscp file, to be recalled as desired
from the main menu. The Zampler project provide a lot of sfz content,
well worth a thorough search engine adventure
Hope this helps.
Cheers

[glokraw]

Thanks for the info. I'm due for a fresh install
without my muddy pawprints alll over it anyway
and this looks like an excellent choice.
Cheers

Here's where my pawprints are in case you need 'em
https://linuxmusicians.com/viewforum.php?f=27

GMaq, the AVLINUX guy, goes there too and posted up links to his nice kernels.
That's what was the breakthru for me....
I find that PCmanFM is less cluttered, but Thunar on MX has some nice contextual menu stuff to speed up dealing with root and protections, etc.

Good luck, man. Peace

I love the linux filemanagers, starting thunar in a terminal with

thunar -B opens a great batch-renaming dialog, which has saved me
much time and grief in recent years, as has the pcmanfm option to
'copy path' from an icon. Windows Explorer,
not so much
Cheers

[NystagmusE]

I'd be interested in any plugin/standalone config choices
regarding wasapi mode, sometimes something special comes along,
but needs a different way to get it working.

Is there a wineHQ repository for MX such that wine-staging
can be installed, and are the RT kernels part of the MX repos?
Thanks for posting the good news! The more choices, the better

Here's what I use for WASAPI in 32-bit Windows REAPER:

Audio: WASAPI (Windows/7/8/10/Vista)
Mode: Exclusive mode
Input Device: Pulseaudio
Output Device: Pulseaudio
Input channels: 0 (0 to disable)
Output channels: 2
Prefered: { Be careful with this, wrong setting causes lound static noise; it needs to probably match in each program, the soundcard hardware, and the "default-sample-format" within the /etc/pulse/daemon.conf ("s16le"=16-bit LSB order, "s24le"=24-bit LSB order); You can find a list of possible formats within the formats list dialog of OpenShot, by the way. }

Block size = 64 or 128 or 256 or 512. 256 seems to work well in terms of both hardware and software; usually this should match other settings elsewhere on your system. This is a latency-related setting also.

Sample Rate: 48000

Audio Thread: Time-Critical {actually necessary on my system, but noticeably improves the lack of buffer underruns (xruns)}.

At the bottom, set the

Run winecfg to set the audio outputs of WINE; on mine, it's PulseAudio because I manually set the buffersize to be low.

"default-fragments = 4" & "default-fragment-size-msec = 2" is what I have within part of /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, near the end. "deferred-volume-extra-delay-usec = 0" is the last line. With those settings, the buffer size should be 4x2x0 or 4x2+0 which is a sum total of 8 milliseconds. That's below 15 milliseconds, so should be good enough for MIDI/Audio use. If you have a USB audio interface, the 4 could be 3 instead.

Also "default-sample-rate = 44100" & "alternate-sample-rate = 48000" to match the hardware capabilities. It possibly could be vise-versa and still work maybe.

As for WINE-staging, just use whatever is explained at https://WineHQ.org for Debian Stretch installation of "wine-staging". Also, "wine-devel"/"wine-development"(?) might work too. Wine-staging installs into /opt/ and the paths for WINE should be edited to accommodate that (where you put the GECKO and MONO). You will need to do that as root.

To check and see if they have installed correctly after you run those .MSI's (with WINE), you could use MyUnInstaller.exe from http://nirsoft.net

I hope this is helpful.

[glokraw]

Yes, very helpful information, and I've now got
wasapi, armed and dangerous, as a nice alternative
within reaper. Used some SampleTank accoustic guitars
on a sequence, with some, saturation and mild distortion,
nicely surprised by the results.

I got an antix 17 iso from a linux user magazine dvd,
and plan to install on a mini ssd, with an rt kernel,
and see if I can approach the speed of sound
Good times ahead!

[glokraw]

Saw this at www.linuxmusicians.com

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... RQFPnbSd87

'unfa' has been busy producing videos for using
zynaddsubfx with ardour primarily, and also
some Helm, Calf, OB-xd, and compression/mastering
videos.

I've not downloaded any, beyond verifying the first
50 megs of one will display in smplayer, as they are huge in size.
Not sure why there are not compressed-for-commoners versions,
but if gigabytes of video downloads don't scare you,
and you'd like 15 hours of zynaddsubfx-in-ardour videos,
give it a shot. Zyn is a powerful instrument, and unfa has gone
to great lengths to display it's capabilities in Ardour.
Bring on more such young Professors!
Cheers