Considering Linux for my next music production computer - wise or not?

[glokraw]

The pics are from the recent AVLinux test release, the full release due to arrive pretty soon. It's a custom distro that a band leader shares with the communities. It's a respin of debian MX Linux. It has a tool called wine4vst that installs wine-staging 9.21, and a gui for plugin wrapping called Yadbridge, from which you browse to, and select your vst paths. Right-click in the gui to choose viewing 'hidden files' like .wine etc. When paths are selected, double-click the sync button, wait for the plugins to get wrapped, then reboot for luck, and start Reaper or your preferred linux daw, and do a full scan. I copied over parts of a working setup, including the reg files in
.wine/drive_c avoiding re-authorization issues. Keep in mind that once you get things working productively, just STOP trying to improve it. Do all your tests/experiments on a separate system on a separate drive.

Kontact 6 with the DS Thorn synth

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Kontakt6-DS Thorn-synth.jpg

Amplitube 4 with the excellent Carvin amp model and some nice effects

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A4-Carvin-U-he-CoCo-Solaris.jpg

[roxton]

Looks like Mint might be a good distro? Have used that one, and others. What would you suggest?
Let me know if other details are needed.

I write music in Linux near 10 years or so. My current software setup is Arch Linux, Reaper (and Ardour), Pipewire as sound system, and dozens of plugins - Drumlabooh for drums, and synths such as Surge XT, U-he free plugins, Vital, and many more. All free, open sourced and stable.

[FranklyFlawless]

Looks like Mint might be a good distro? Have used that one, and others. What would you suggest?

Up to you. I prefer Debian 'Trixie' at the moment, but most of my setup is designed for the stage, which heavily reduces the amount of Linux dependencies and quirks in my workflow.

[camsr]

Still looking for a Voxengo SPAN replacement. Or does that work on linux also? Yabridge?

[mabian]

SPAN works on Linux with yabridge here. All Voxengo freebies do. And also melda manalyzer and tdr prism. Tonebooster has a native Linux spectrum analyser, and a stereo meter too. Options are increasing

[kurviak]

I'm a Linux user since 1997, and I even colaborated a little in Ardour development about 15 years ago. But I haven't used Linux for music production the last decade. What is the current recommendation to start for someone familiar enough with Linux that used Gentoo as his daily driver for a few years but has been far away from Linux desktop for a while. To have more musical context I don't think I can use Linux for musical production because I rely a lot in virtual instruments including vocals but I was thinking about using Linux for mixing and mastering.

[audiojunkie]

I'm a Linux user since 1997, and I even colaborated a little in Ardour development about 15 years ago. But I haven't used Linux for music production the last decade. What is the current recommendation to start for someone familiar enough with Linux that used Gentoo as his daily driver for a few years but has been far away from Linux desktop for a while. To have more musical context I don't think I can use Linux for musical production because I rely a lot in virtual instruments including vocals but I was thinking about using Linux for mixing and mastering.

With your knowledge, you can pretty much use any distro you want to. Here are some things to know to catch you up a bit:

1. You no longer use JACK. There has been a grand unification for the linux audio server. Pipewire is the current audio server, and it's much better. Pipewire allows you to run all of the existing audio apps: ALSA, JACK, PulseAudio, Pipewire. To achieve the best latency, you need to switch pipewire to use the "Pro Audio Profile". The Pro Audio profile changes the scheduling to IRQ based scheduling, like there was on JACK. You then use a script (like you did in JACK) to prioritize the audio threads. You should remember the rtirq script.

2. There is no longer a need for real-time kernels, since all of the realtime patches have now been mainlined into the kernel. You use kernel parameters to tell the kernel to run at low latency or realtime scheduling. You will want to also use the kernel parameter that allows threaded IRQs--otherwise, there will be no benefit from your script that prioritizes audio IRQ threads.

3. Unlike the days in the past, connecting audio apps together with JACK is no longer necessary. It's still available, and it's still useful, but nowadays, there are audio DAWs that can host plugins. There currently available plugin types are: VST3, CLAP, and LV2. What you use is not so important as long as your DAW supports it.

There are many additional improvements that makes Linux pro audio viable on Linux these days, but these are the biggest ones that I can think of right now. Hopefully someone else will speak up with some other new changes. But know this: Linux Audio works great!

[stanlea]

Although you say jack is not needed, I want to point out that there are really good hosts in Linux when you want to chain plugins outside a DAW : Carla, Raysession. You would hardly find the equivalent on windows.

[kurviak]

Sounds great to me, I will spend some time in the holidays setting up something to play with. Thanks for the advice!

[uOpt]

1. You no longer use JACK.

STONE THE HERETIC

[mabian]

I'm interested in the script to prioritize audio threads using pipewire and pro audio profile... Where can I find it?

[audiojunkie]

Although you say jack is not needed, I want to point out that there are really good hosts in Linux when you want to chain plugins outside a DAW : Carla, Raysession. You would hardly find the equivalent on windows.

Absolutely! JACK apps can still be used, and the JACK capabilities are still there (through Pipewire). It's Linux's secret weapon. I guess what I meant, is that, like Windows, Linux users can now use Host (DAW), and plugins. But yes, JACK capabilities are still there--even though using Pipewire.

[audiojunkie]

1. You no longer use JACK.

STONE THE HERETIC

Hehehe!!! I'll clarify. The Pipewire server supports JACK functionality, so if a user is using Pipewire, you no longer need to use the "JACK server". The ability to use JACK's functionality has not gone away.

[audiojunkie]

I'm interested in the script to prioritize audio threads using pipewire and pro audio profile... Where can I find it?

There are 3 - 4 known scripts that have been written for this purpose. I'm not absolutely sure which one is best. They each do something a bit different or add a couple of different features. The granddaddy of them all, is this one:

https://github.com/rncbc/rtirq

[mabian]

I'm interested in the script to prioritize audio threads using pipewire and pro audio profile... Where can I find it?

There are 3 - 4 known scripts that have been written for this purpose. I'm not absolutely sure which one is best. They each do something a bit different or add a couple of different features. The granddaddy of them all, is this one:

https://github.com/rncbc/rtirq

Thanks!