Don´t want to suppor thes Window sh... anymore. Change to Linux?

Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
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I'm in no way knocking Unix as a platform. Whilst I'm not deeply technical, at work I provide major solutions parts of which are based on literally hundreds of Linux instances. The reason for this is the platform fits the architectural design philosophy of those parts of the solutions better than anything else.

None of those DAWs you mentioned float my boat, based both on features and 27 years invested in working with Cubase, but admittedly that's just my bias. Also not being able to use dongles would prevent use of tools commonly used here. If what I've read about Unix not supporting proprietary hardware drivers for audio interfaces is correct that'd be a red flag. I have an RME Babyface Pro for mobile which is nice in that can run in class compliant mode so works with stuff like an iPad, but in no way would I choose to run it that way on anything else because the RME drivers are proven to be rock solid.

I'd suggest that the history of cheap computer based recording was founded on the synergy between hardware, o/s and developers vision. Back in the late 80s there was nothing inherently better for music about the Atari ST vs Amiga except that Atari had thought to include a MIDI interface. The rest of 16 bit development is history. Then the Motorola based Macs of the time were the logical port for the developments started on the ST. However at the budget end the significant addition was that of Digidesign TDM enabling Cubase Audio on a Mac. Digidesign also brought Windows back into the frame with their Audiomedia interface.

These days the thing that makes everything good on Windows here is support for peripherals. My main DAW is using a 14 year old Multiface in a PCI chassis which also houses TC Powercores. The main box runs a UAD2.

I consider the most fundamental basis for this making a great DAW platform is the RME interface and drivers. It may be old but it is rock solid at low buffer settings and is still supported. Once you've got that solid foundation there's something worth building on. I'd really like to see Unix as a viable option, but in my view it's not there yet.

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I use an mAudio pci card for ages, always works in whatever linux using snd_ice1712 kernel module. If I run out of those, NI Komplete Audio 6 also work fine, as do many FocusRite interfaces. etc I'm all for competition inspiring more products, higher quality, focussed solutions. And happy for those with 'better stuff'. Same with operating systems, use what suits you best. But I'm seeing the duopoly wielding their power to generate revenue, which is fine,
but without a corresponding empowerment of their customers. The quality of music has remained static (not _low_) from win xp, 7, 8x, and now 10. Whatever improvements a musician might gather in workflow, come with the realization that you will be forced to comply with what the masters dictate, in both software and hardware. Even Apple kick that hornets nest. leaving intel/amd for their own take on ARM. Should have done it back when leaving PPC, rather than putting fruit stickers on expensive pc clones. And it's almost the weekend...time for quarterly check of the Reaktor user library, Amplitube Max, and some Hive tutorials. The suffering a linux user must endure :( :hyper:
Cheers

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glokraw wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 3:58 am A shot in the dark, but have you tried disabling selinux on the laptop?
I've used Fedora a few times, pre 2018 or so, and always turned off selinux to improve audio performance.

https://www.tecmint.com/disable-selinux ... el-fedora/

(you probably know much more than I, on the topic :scared: )

,726 is really good, was that verified 'round-trip' latency?
Even if not, it's still very good. One of my kids has an RME of some sort,
and won't let me 'borrow' it :hihi:
Cheers
glokraw, I actually think of you as a wizard for all the success you've shown with WINE!
I'm adept at Linux, but I could surely put more work/study in. In fact, WINE is one such area.

Anyway, yes, I'll disable SELinux and test that.

Also, you're right, I should definitely verify the 'round-trip' latency. I'm pretty interested to know at this point. Btw, I never really run at 16 frames, normally it's 256-512 frames.

My desktop is 2011-v3 socket with a C612 chipset (X299 partial equiv.) and the I/O is very good. These PCHs are intended to run at capacity too. Meaning, it's meant to see a realistic load at capacity, not just theoretical. I think this kind of thing matters a lot for latency/stability.

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cleverr1 wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:37 am If I was newish to this I wouldn't have any bias towards any hardware / o/s platform if it supported a fully featured DAW and is the best available for the price. To make that happen an o/s platform needs great interfaces with great drivers and support from a great DAW developer. Whatever the reason unless I'm missing something there's nothing Unix based (other than Mac itself) that can rival Mac or PC at present.
Well, we've reviewed drivers and latency quite a bit here. As it concerns technical performance, I don't see a clear 'winner' between the platforms. In fact, it seems things are roughly equivalent to me.

Yet, as it concerns availability of stuff, from pro audio manufactures, sure. Mac and PC (Windows) are resoundingly catered to, and 'win' by that virtue.

All other practical areas though are arguably the same. The only things left is to point out points-of-pain and to that, each platform has them.

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cleverr1 wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:07 pm If what I've read about Unix not supporting proprietary hardware drivers for audio interfaces is correct that'd be a red flag.
Linux does support proprietary drivers; for example, I have used proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers.

The problem lies in proprietary drivers that do not support Linux.

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cleverr1 wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:37 am If I was newish to this I wouldn't have any bias towards any hardware / o/s platform if it supported a fully featured DAW and is the best available for the price.
Can't think of much that outdoes Linux on that last point :-)

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imrae wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 10:13 pm
cleverr1 wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:07 pm If what I've read about Unix not supporting proprietary hardware drivers for audio interfaces is correct that'd be a red flag.
Linux does support proprietary drivers; for example, I have used proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers.

The problem lies in proprietary drivers that do not support Linux.
True. Another sad true is lack of native mixer apps. Just couple of cards/vendors have good control software: RME and Echo, last one is not produced anymore and has PCI only version :(
There were attempts to build "universal" mixer, most complete is ffado-mixer, but FireWire is dead.

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imrae wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 9:57 amThose weren't complete lists. That time estimate is far too low. And, as far as I am aware, no amount of user fiddling will get usable aggregate devices on Windows.
I'm not sure what you mean but I can run Studio One and Orion at the same time, using different drivers, running through the same device (or different devices).
Yes BONES, the only conceivable reason that people might disagree with you is that they are being stupid
It's not about agreeing or disagreeing, it's about being right or wrong and prioritising something that is a non-issue is wrong.
They all suck equally, for different reasons.
THIS WAS MY ORIGINAL POINT
It was also mine, in that once you identify the things you need, you find the OS that best supports them.
NOVAkILL : Asus RoG Flow Z13, Core i9, 16GB RAM, Win11 | EVO 16 | Studio One | bx_oberhausen, GR-8, JP6K, Union, Hexeract, Olga, TRK-01, SEM, BA-1, Thorn, Prestige, Spire, Legend-HZ, ANA-2, VG Iron 2 | Uno Pro, Rocket.

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So without quoting everyone what I'm reading here is that the advantage of choosing Linux is that you'd save the cost of a licence in comparison to Windows. However, to leverage that saving you'd need to fully understand your use case before building your DAW system and ensure that it works within the serious limitations this choice would impose.

The problem I'd have is that I've never fully understood the use case of my DAW system throughout it's life cycle on day 1. Given the huge cost of decent hardware I'd consider the £130 for a Windows 10 Pro licence a sensible insurance premium at this time.

Is there any tangible advantage of using Linux as a platform for a DAW? (other than the not supporting the duopoly thing). I'd hope it was at least more efficient on resources.

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cleverr1 wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:44 amIs there any tangible advantage of using Linux as a platform for a DAW? (other than the not supporting the duopoly thing). I'd hope it was at least more efficient on resources.
The way I went about it, I aimed at 100% portability that can't be achieved on Windows, for example. Putting in the time to build and configure everything meticulously and really really well once, and then be able to reach for that configured state on a wide range of machines, just like that.

As you've seen from my replies, how it turned out was a really positive surprise. I've tested the DAW setup I wrote about earlier, on seven different computers so far (laptops and desktops, build years spanning 2007-2019), booting straight from a USB stick, both legacy BIOS and UEFI, from the same stick -- and every time it's been ready to go with professional level latency out of the box, the working environment configured exactly as I like it.

So in other words, in my case it had a lot to do with having a DAW system (and also in this particular case, a system with other power user tools as well) that stays in a known state and works on any machine. It's great to have a secondary system like this at hand. I can literally reach for this and do actual work even on a machine without any functional hard drive whatsoever :D -- a funny scenario, but as an example it appeals to my certain "hacker aesthetic" side a lot, hah.

The stick has persistent project and library storage but an immutable core image (booting into a known state unless told otherwise), a low latency configured kernel (a switchable selection of kernels, actually), lovely hardware support, virtualization features, yada yada :), all the software I wrote about earlier, customized into a very functional whole. I am writing this on that platform, and I often work using it also while coding. It can also be installed as an actual local HD/SSD installation straight from said stick, 1:1 enviroment intact (I've done this on three systems so far), and new 1:1 snapshots can be created from any installation, transferred onto other bootable media, and so on.

And yeah, quite a bit lower on system resources as well.

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Guenon wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 11:53 am
The way I went about it, I aimed at 100% portability that can't be achieved on Windows, for example. Putting in the time to build and configure everything meticulously and really really well once, and then be able to reach for that configured state on a wide range of machines, just like that.

As you've seen from my replies, how it turned out was a really positive surprise. I've tested the DAW setup I wrote about earlier, on seven different computers so far (laptops and desktops, build years spanning 2007-2019), booting straight from a USB stick, both legacy BIOS and UEFI, from the same stick -- and every time it's been ready to go with professional level latency out of the box, the working environment configured exactly as I like it.

So in other words, in my case it had a lot to do with having a DAW system (and also in this particular case, a system with other power user tools as well) that stays in a known state and works on any machine. It's great to have a secondary system like this at hand. I can literally reach for this and do actual work even on a machine without any functional hard drive whatsoever :D -- a funny scenario, but as an example it appeals to my certain "hacker aesthetic" side a lot, hah.

The stick has persistent project and library storage but an immutable core image (booting into a known state unless told otherwise), a low latency configured kernel (a switchable selection of kernels, actually), lovely hardware support, virtualization features, yada yada :), all the software I wrote about earlier, customized into a very functional whole. I am writing this on that platform, and I often work using it also while coding. It can also be installed as an actual local HD/SSD installation straight from said stick, 1:1 enviroment intact (I've done this on three systems so far), and new 1:1 snapshots can be created from any installation, transferred onto other bootable media, and so on.

And yeah, quite a bit lower on system resources as well.
That looks properly innovative and useful, and my inner geek thinks it's really cool :)

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cleverr1 wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 12:58 pmThat looks properly innovative and useful, and my inner geek thinks it's really cool :)
Thanks :)

Yeah that geeky cool is the vibe I had about it, hehe. I enjoy super functional stuff like this, the kind that makes me go "wow, didn't think this and this could work so elegantly", and ways of combining that with "more traditional" creative activities, and so on.

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BONES wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 3:15 am I'm not sure what you mean but I can run Studio One and Orion at the same time, using different drivers, running through the same device (or different devices).
On MacOS you can create a virtual audio interface that combines more than one physical interface as needed. For example, I used this in the past to re-amp guitars with an Boss GT-10 (multifx with built-in audio interface) or record synth from my Novation X-station (synth with built-in audio interface) while using my usual audio interface for monitoring and capturing some sequenced MIDI hardware.

I've also found the Mac audio setup to work pretty well for routing hardware into a Zoom call; you can setup a DAW to have hardware inputs and the virtual Zoom interface as the audio output. The inbuilt microphone is then still available as your main voice input. I can't figure out a sensible way to do this on Windows.

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cleverr1 wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 10:44 am £130 for a Windows 10 Pro licence a sensible insurance premium at this time.
You can pick up legit licenses for 99% less than that.
Or get an old Win7/8 licence and upgrade that for free.
Amazon: why not use an alternative

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oh n/m, who cares about my bored typing
Last edited by jancivil on Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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