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Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
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https://www.digitalsoundfactory.com/pro ... /cakewalk/

The Cakewalk format sounds at this part of the above shop should be in SFZ format, and could prove useful. I have the Planet Earth collection (in SF2 format) and it's lots of fun for earthy percussion. I believe almost everything they have is available as SF2. That's a great idea to have prepared sfz's where people can drop in their purchased/created sounds.

The 'Sketchy Rock Drums' soundset comes with
a 1.5 gig collection (2000+ .wav samples, with different velocities and roundrobins etc) could be worth a look...at

https://gretchenswretchedlabnotes.wordpress.com/

Cheers

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Guenon wrote: Tue Aug 10, 2021 2:39 pm Really good stuff. I'll add, as Jack has been mentioned, my favorite way of managing Jack configuration and connections (with the included toolset): Cadence https://kx.studio/Applications:Cadence

If you go that route and all-in Jack, consider also experimenting with the Pulseaudio Jack sink (pulseaudio-module-jack in Debian based distributions) if it's not around already, and then you can also have everyday applications like the browser and media players etc. consumer stuff output audio at the same time you are doing audio/music in actual DAWs and whatnot, and you can route those sources, too, in a Cadence toolset wire patcher display and interconnect all such software as well, just like that.
Good to see more ways to be productive as well as entertained,
without repeatedly changing settings. AVLinux uses some scripts in the qjackctl gui that keep conflicts from forming when starting and stopping various audio tasks. I went ahead and installed Cadence in AVLinux, and set up what for me would be an oft used setup: audio in, drum machine, synth, and multi-effects.
Thanks for the nice synopsis of possibilities!

A-nice-setup.png

Here's a qjackctl panel, with scripts displayed:

pulse-jack-qjackctl-scripts.png
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alefunguju announced a new version of his arpeggiator, linux and windows vst3 versions, and it's quite nimble. I had it playing the great linux U-he ACE plugin in mere seconds. (not saying how many seconds, as us dinosaurs don't move real quick until the weekend, which is still a few days off :( )

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=506845

I'll be trying to get a lot of use from this. Seems very easy to use, and fun to play, as all arps should be.

LibreArp-ACE.png
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Here's a quick example of LibreArp, a pluck and a pad arpeggiated in mere seconds :wink:

ACE-In-Austria.mp3.zip
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I've been thinking about this topic for a while, and I'd like to open a discussion about it. I've researched the various distributions and their repositories and I have determined that when it comes to Linux plugins, effects, and instruments, there are two main families of distros that contain the lion's share of the music applications: The Debian and Arch families of distros. The Arch family, with the Arch packages and also AUR probably have the most and best supported music making applications. The Debian family (including Ubuntu, Mint, etc) has the KXStudios repository, which makes up the lion's share of available music making apps for that family of distros. The other major families of Linux distros (ie Fedora, Red Hat, SuSE, etc) seem to contain smaller numbers of available music applications in their repositories.

When it comes to commercial works or closed source and freeware applications, the Debian family (probably due to popularity) seems to get the most support and apps. Almost universally, when a single binary package is supported, it is a Deb. Rarely, you will find support for more linux binaries, but it does happen. The problem with all of this is that, as is commonly stated, there is no "Best Distro". There is only the best distro for you. Each distribution is tailored to a specific target audience, and of the 200+ active distros out there, developers are not packaging these apps for your particular distribution.

When it comes to commercial applications, the reason is usually a matter of business--choosing distribution method that will reach the highest number of potential customers with the least amount of work. I can't fault that. I don't fault the many various distributions that target specific audiences either. So, the problem comes down to this: How to build an application for multiple Linux distributions from a single source--especially for commercial and closed source developers.

For open source development, at its most basic level, there is Git, SourceForge, etc. People can custom-build from source using Make without too much effort. However, commercial developers don't want to open their source, which means that if you want to use a commercial Linux application, you are probably stuck with a .Deb compiled specifically for Ubuntu. If you are an Arch based distro user, you will likely not have any commercial apps available to you. This is the problem I'd like to find the best method to solve. I truly believe that a lot of developers are trying to support Linux, but truly know little about this environment. They compile their app on Ubuntu and call it "experimental" or "beta" and do not guarantee it works--Try before you buy, they warn. if you need something other than .Deb, you're out of luck.

But it doesn't have to be this way. I'd be willing to bet that many developers are unaware of the various tools that are available for making their job easier. For instance, the Linux Standard Base has been set up to reduce differences between various distributions:

https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/lsb/start

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base

Projects for easily creating various binaries from a single source (like the Open Build Service) are now available:

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/how-b ... le-source/

https://openbuildservice.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Build_Service

These things that I mention are only 2 possible solutions out of what I suspect are many ways of going about this. In the end, we all benefit if the widest number of distributions contain the widest number of available music apps. Thoughts? Comments?

Let's discuss!

Note: Crossposted from LinuxMusicians.com
C/R, dongles & other intrusive copy protection equals less-control & more-hassle for consumers. Company gone-can’t authorize. Limit to # of auths. Instability-ie PACE. Forced internet auths. THE HONEST ARE HASSLED, NOT THE PIRATES.

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I like having easy installs and backups, keeping the same username and passwords among installations greatly simplifies various install experiments, and requirements, allowing filemanagers to copy entire .wine environments, Reaper folders, and .vst, .lv2, and .vst3 plugin folders between computers, drives, or partitions. It is good luck also to keep distros up to date, with the latest critical system libs in as much uniformity as possible. And keep a perfectly working, or older distro locked down against potential improvements that might actually be duds :dog:

Folders like .config, .local, and Documents may contain re-usable files and configs, so preferences are easy to keep intact and transfer.

On a larger scale, in a new install, setting up a separate /home/username partition facilitates all of the above, and
in major system updates or re-installs, you can choose not to format that partion, and your prefs and eye-candy will mostly if not completely be retained.

One nice thing about plugins, is their simplicity. If you unarchive a .deb package for a full-featured plugin, you'll often see a .so file, and a few folders, where a package manager like synaptic would place the content ( sounds, config files, icons, docs) from those folders where the author desires. This can also be done manually in most cases, should the need exist. A plugin like Vital, where wavetables are part of the presets could have sounds folder placed, or moved-and-linked, as disk-space dictates.

The .rpm package format is a bit different than debian, but the alien command can easily transform .deb to .rpm or .rpm to .deb. If you like an rpm based distro, converting debs to rpms is easy, and only needs to be done once, until there is a new version worthy of the effort. Once in the wild, a linux standalone, vst, vst3, or lv2 plugin doesn't care much what distro it's in, assuming a common baseline of linux system libs and gui kits is at hand. The rpm command, like debian's dpkg command, may not account for installing dependencies. Fortunately, it's rare that dependencies need to be tracked down at package websites, and added one by one until success.

For ease of installation, U-he created linux binaries, and provide installers. Once in place, the .u-he and .vst/u-he folders (containing links) can be added to a new install. And if under the same username, ready to roll. Your registrations follow your folders.

We have a pair of plugin wrappers, linvst and yabridge, that do a fine job of letting windows plugins be used in linux daws. I saved a list of plugin paths I use in .wine, so I can copy/paste them for use with the wrapper commands. I also saved a folder of plugins that don't have any of the .so files created by the wrappers, so it's easy to have a fresh start, as the wrappers happily get new versions quite often. I put the windows VstPlugins folder in
.wine/drive_c/users

(I also install the windows version of Reaper there)
For more complex commercial plugins, I stick to their factory default paths, so in each setup, I know where things can be found.

For Arch linux and it's many variants, and some niche based linuxi, it's pretty cheap and useful to keep deb/ubuntu setups of both AVLinux and Ubuntu Studio on usbsticks, using them to capture the latest new plugins and goodies, and copy them over to a preferred environment, in the respective folders.

As a relatively small group of computer users (linux based musicians), we are offered a disproportionately large number of excellent audio production environments, each able to be customized to suit our needs, and each with their own sets of experts and proponents. There are worse problems to have :hyper: Discussion of new ideas, sharing new discoveries and describing successful ventures, will improve the prospects for more and better linux audio tools. From dozens, to hundreds, to thousands 8) Hopefully a finely tuned and easily configurable pipewire system, will attract a new group of mac/win refugees, and provide and make the existing users more productive. And also make turnkey audio/video distros a possibility with a much smaller and more logical learning curve.
Cheers

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Personally find Linux Mint Cinnamon best OS, not just for Linux, but best OS period. Been using and liking both macOS and Windows, but Mint have best of both worlds, totally my cup of tea, everything I love about both is there and most things I don't ain't. I have been using it for years and always have it on USB too, that's pretty much OS some of my close circle friend use, which I take care of, A+ experience for them.

When audio is concerned, I'm pretty much whatever runs my tools best, that's why I have been using both macOS and Windows, also that's why I didn't use Linux for it, it wasn't possible... up until recently, when my DAW of choice and my main weapon synths went native, Bitwig and U-He, if that wasn't the case, there would be no chance to use it for audio, over WINE, yabridge or whatever.

Gave it a shot recently again and managed to have pretty much my whole Windows setup working thanks to yabridge and actually got quite relieved to leave some stuff behind too, but that's odd iLok and stuff I don't really use that much.

Archived my Windows system on separate drive and right now only thing I have connected and working is my SSD with Linux Mint, I don't even have my old projects, samples or anything, as folks who started with M1 Mac's fresh, I only use native tools and gonna bridge just essential stuff that I find missing over time... don't care about open source, don't care about 98% of stuff that is there for Linux, I'm just using stuff I used before and that's it.

I don't feel restrained, because my Windows projects revolved around same stuff pretty much, have my Realphones plugin for referencing working great via yabridge too, cool beans.

Wifey and me decided against renovating the house or moving to other place, so there' budget for my hobby, looking at building Ryzen based desktop PC, getting some fancy new screen and all that, gonna use this old trusty machine to run AudioGridder in worst case scenario... I'm not even remotely interested in WIndows 11, still feel hot for M1 Mini, but time will tell, I gave Linux fair shot and let's see what future will bring.

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Mint with Cinnamon system gui has been excellent for a long time. I used Mint 17 for quite a while until the drive stopped spinning. At the time, there became a need for me to have the nVidia 3D driver for some plugins, so I switched to pclinuxos and Ubuntu Studio, which used it by default, so there was no drama sometimes associated with installing that driver. I imagine Mint is even better now, although improving on the stability, features and visuals of the past would be a labor of love. I hope to get some upgrades at some point, but the renovation$ I need here have changed that for the moment. I may wind up horse-trading for used gamers gear :hyper:
Cheers

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Anyone using Spectrasonics products on Linux? Also anyone running OpenSUSE with Bitwig? Lastly anyone using the latest release of Debian with Bitwig?

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Hi, I've read that several Spectrasonics users run those products in linux, but can't cite names/links. The yabridge and linvst plugin wrappers do a great job, and I think their devs have spotted such users.

For bitwig, in years past, people used the 'alien' command to convert a bitwig.deb to an rpm for use in Fedora, look way back in KVR's bitwig forum for discussions. A cheap alternative to that, would be a usbstick install of Ubuntu Studio, or AVLinux (it's based on debian MX Linux/openbox gui) Install bitwig there, and copy over all the folders to your preferred system.

About bitwig on AVLinux, the dev's site mentions

"If (and only if) you want to install Bitwig 3.3.10 on AVL-MXE then download and install both the 32bit and 64bit versions of these ‘libxcb-util1’ Debian Packages before installing Bitwig."

AVLinux also has pre-installed wine 6.2, ardour, and demos of Harrison Mixbus, and Reaper, and various plugin demos.

KVR member Kott is likely the best source for openSUSE knowledge around here or elsewhere, and part of the braintrust that keeps me from going crazy at times :hihi:
Cheers

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Bitwig works in openSUSE too.

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audiojunkie wrote: Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:55 pm So, the problem comes down to this: How to build an application for multiple Linux distributions from a single source--especially for commercial and closed source developers.
There's options like https://flatpak.org/ and https://snapcraft.io/

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Blaster wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:28 pm
audiojunkie wrote: Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:55 pm So, the problem comes down to this: How to build an application for multiple Linux distributions from a single source--especially for commercial and closed source developers.
There's options like https://flatpak.org/ and https://snapcraft.io/
Unfortunately, those options won’t work for plugins and hosts because of the sandboxing nature of those technologies. The plugins, when loaded into a host essentially become part of the host. Those technologies block the communication between apps and host.
C/R, dongles & other intrusive copy protection equals less-control & more-hassle for consumers. Company gone-can’t authorize. Limit to # of auths. Instability-ie PACE. Forced internet auths. THE HONEST ARE HASSLED, NOT THE PIRATES.

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audiojunkie wrote: Wed Aug 25, 2021 1:13 am
Blaster wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:28 pm
audiojunkie wrote: Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:55 pm So, the problem comes down to this: How to build an application for multiple Linux distributions from a single source--especially for commercial and closed source developers.
There's options like https://flatpak.org/ and https://snapcraft.io/
Unfortunately, those options won’t work for plugins and hosts because of the sandboxing nature of those technologies. The plugins, when loaded into a host essentially become part of the host. Those technologies block the communication between apps and host.
I'm not very familiar with it these technologies, but I assumed you can open it up, e.g.: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sand ... sions.html

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Blaster wrote: Tue Aug 24, 2021 11:28 pm
audiojunkie wrote: Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:55 pm So, the problem comes down to this: How to build an application for multiple Linux distributions from a single source--especially for commercial and closed source developers.
There's options like https://flatpak.org/ and https://snapcraft.io/
… or just use an installation script, like reaper does

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