Best choice for Raspberry Pi 4 as a DAW?

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Dear All,

I´ve made a minimal high-WAF setup in our living room, that´s not to be confused with my main DAW setup elsewhere in the house: This is a simple 4 octave midi keyboard that I´ve attached to a pull out-shelf, which I made for the desk downhere, connected to an RPI 4 2 GB with Hifiberry digi+ connected to the living rooms Onkyo amplifier with a 7,5 m optical cable.
Currently I´ve ended up with Raspbian Buster 64 bit beta and Ardour. This works decently, but a buffer of 128 samples is crackling now and then and not giving me the latency I´m after. 64 samples gives me that, but is full of crackling.
It does tell me that 128 samples = 2,9 ms latency, but I guess this is measured in a different way than with a Win PC. I have no problems with 10 ms latency on my Hammerfall card under Windows.
The machine is not ment for any heavy stuff really, just for some jamming and recording of midi data, so all I´ve got running is a GM-piano from Ardours own included instruments and, also from Ardour itself, an EQ and a reverb.
So my question is: Have you guys got some experience with other platforms fullfilling such needs (sequencer, vst-ish instruments), running on an RPI4, with which you were succesful?
I should add that I need LAN and to run xrdp so I can control it from my other rpi downhere, which is rdp´ing into a win machine somewhere else in the house. Sounds complicated, but works pretty well :)

Thanks in advance!
Best Regards

Roman Empire

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I know Tracktion Waveform runs on RPi4 but not much else. Try posting over at the Tracktion forum here.
viewforum.php?f=22

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Steve Bolivar wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 3:21 am I know Tracktion Waveform runs on RPi4 but not much else. Try posting over at the Tracktion forum here.
viewforum.php?f=22
Thanks for the info!
Best Regards

Roman Empire

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Reaper runs on Pi
Duh

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bungle wrote: Thu Sep 24, 2020 3:36 pm Reaper runs on Pi
Thanks, I´m aware of that. But do you know which is the more resource-friendly one to use, for the best experience with playing with a plugin: Reaper, Tracktion or Ardour?
Best Regards

Roman Empire

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Well, REAPER or Ardour aren't the best experience full stop, any way you want to look at it, so if you are picking from those 3 that should make it easier.
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Reaper is way more resource friendly than the others.
Of course you have to ignore tools on this forum and try it.
Duh

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bungle wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:05 am Reaper is way more resource friendly than the others.
Of course you have to ignore tools on this forum and try it.
Thanks (to both).

I´m gonna install 32-bit raspbian before trying them, as far as I know I had issues with getting Tracktion to work on the 64-bit beta.

If you know some great OS tweaks to get more smooth performance with low latency, please don´t hesitate to share them :)
Best Regards

Roman Empire

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Maybe memory is the bottleneck?

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Tj Shredder wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 5:52 pm Maybe memory is the bottleneck?
Thanks, but it´s not.. Less than 300 mb used of 2 GB when having ardour loaded with a gm-piano and reverb :)
Best Regards

Roman Empire

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bungle wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:05 am Reaper is way more resource friendly than the others.
Of course you have to ignore tools on this forum and try it.
Resource friendly doesn't equal user friendly.
Decide accordingly.

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Hello!

Have you tried Elk Audio OS?
https://elk.audio/audio-os/ (https://elk.audio/audio-os/)

Never tried myself but at least beta should work also with hifiberry.
https://github.com/elk-audio/elk-pi/releases/tag/0.7.2 (https://github.com/elk-audio/elk-pi/releases/tag/0.7.2)

I stumbled on it here:
https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=21402 (https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?t=21402)

Also Patchbox OS looks interesting. It uses Jack as audio backend
https://blokas.io/patchbox-os/ (https://blokas.io/patchbox-os/)

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vitocorleone123 wrote: Tue Sep 29, 2020 6:58 pm
bungle wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:05 am Reaper is way more resource friendly than the others.
Of course you have to ignore tools on this forum and try it.
Resource friendly doesn't equal user friendly.
Decide accordingly.
User friendly doesn't equal somebody else's opinion on a forum.
Test accordingly.
Duh

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bungle wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:44 pm
vitocorleone123 wrote: Tue Sep 29, 2020 6:58 pm
bungle wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2020 6:05 am Reaper is way more resource friendly than the others.
Of course you have to ignore tools on this forum and try it.
Resource friendly doesn't equal user friendly.
Decide accordingly.
User friendly doesn't equal somebody else's opinion on a forum.
Test accordingly.
Yes, try it by all means, along with other DAWs. Initial usability of Reaper is as low as any DAW I’ve tried, and I’ve tried most. From what I understand, if you can get over that, and dive deep and keep it going, it ends up being easy to use. With the scripting and all that - very powerful for power users.

I have better things to do with my time. Like make music. Or do my day job as a UX designer and user researcher for almost 25 years.

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