Running commercial audio software on linux

[glokraw]

August 20th saw the release of new
Fathom Pro 3,
Fathom AVX, and
Fathom Vector

I installed the fine AVX and running fine in linux, Ubuntu Studio 19.10, linux Reaper 5.9 wrapped by LinVst 2.82, or a windows Reaper in wine. I'm greatly enjoying the very fine new
221 sounds in the Trance Warehouse soundset.
Fine Fine fine

Fathom3-Warehouse.png

Much improved cpu usage!

If anyone has purchased Fathom Pro previously, you can upgrade inexpensively to fathom Pro AVX at

https://www.fathomsynth.com/avx

Those who previously made multiple purchases of Fathom upgrades and soundsets using a still-active email account, can report this to Fathom, and the total paid will be refunded towards the purchase of the $125 Fathom Vector, see the website for details. Payday is coming almost soon enough

Note that FathomSynth daMANNNN kindly replaced functionality in the free mono version of Fathom, a roll of the dice for Mono users to upgrade to a paid version in the future.
(Yes, Wilbur, there is a future )

https://www.fathomsynth.com/download

[glokraw]

@ imrae and audiojunkie: Thanks for the nice comments. Glad to know people are reading and pondering alternatives. I think win10 would drive me bonkers, and a mac would dent the food budget.
I'm happy for those who are happily using mac/win, but glad to have the daily freedoms afforded by linux.
Cheers

[glokraw]

attached a quick teaser mp3
Three layered seq sounds from Fathoms Trance Warehouse soundset.
Cheers

[glokraw]

'twas a good Monday in the lab
Noticing several successful linux musicians using the debian MX Linux distro, I thought I'd test the waters, so I got a 128 gig micro SD card and usb reader, and dove in. I unplugged all the external drives for luck, burned a dvd of the iso image, booted from it, and hit the go button. Happily, the install was uneventful, and soon ready for config editing and installing the linux audio apps.

The one dissapointment was that Synaptic package manager was not installed, so I had to use the MX equivalent to install it...I'm no fan of newfangled software managers that use niknames rather than the actual titles seen in /usr/bin.

I added the kx-studio and wineHQ repositories to Synaptic, reloaded to update the listing, and used synaptic search function with jack, alsa, sound, lv2, and vst as keywords, and easily picked out my favorites, and a dozen or so I haven't tried yet, like Patroneo and Arpage.

I decided to test the wineHQ 5.6 and Native Instruments by doing a full copy of all the disparate NI bits and pieces from a nicely working Ubuntu Studio partition. This included the four registry files in drive_c holding all the secret handshakes performed by Native Access, IK Multimedia, KV331 etc.

Since I had a 128 gig 'disk' I only copied a portion of the large Kontakt libraries, along with Battery 4, Absynth, MassiveX, Reaktor, and a dozen or so Reaktor based instruments and effects. This went surprisingly well. I only made one user-error

Next, I copied over my linux Reaper folders, and installed the latest windows Reaper version 6.13 to bring luck to the dancefloor. When the dust settled, I rebooted MX, started qjackctl, started reaper, and used it's clear-cache-rescan option. Some of the NI plugins were launching in demo mode, and Kontakt offered to launch Native Access to register, so I fetched the serial number, and pasted it, and watched Native Access re-sort the collection as installed and registered.

Next, I copied over all the LinVst plugin-wrapper items, and a folder of old vst jewel, many 32 bits, and the brand new Fathom Pro 3. I placed the vst folder in /home/me/wine.drive_c/users and used linvstconverttree to make sure any .dlls that were nested in folder chains, also would be wrapped. Time to restart the linux Reaper, with more plugins to scan.

It was already time for recess, so I launched Battery 4 and
SynthMaster One, using S_One's arp midi-out to pound on the drums. I loaded the Miami Vice kit, and came up with some klubbacentric beats for when the snows come this fall.

I'm now the proud owner of perhaps the tiniest productivity daw on the block I wrapped the usb-cardreader in orange tape, lest it fall lost between the black amps and synths. The supply of musician/producer tools and toys just keeps on growing and improving, always something new to stir the imagination

Battery4SynthMaster_One.png

[glokraw]

https://harrisonconsoles.com/site/mixbu ... id=[UNIQID]

While looking to update my Harrison Mixbus, I came across this video, as they are promoting a sale of Mixbus with six plugins for $69

the 600+ page Mixbus manual:

https://cdn.manula.com/user/3491/20801_ ... 0623091924

( a little light reading for the weekend? )

[glokraw]

To celebrate Labor Day, I upgraded my Harrison Mixbus license
to the latest 6.1x. First impressions are that the gui is faster, and the plugin scans are much faster, and the success rate is now about equal to Reaper. So I'm out of excuses for not reading the 600 page doorstop manual All that high-spec jargon to attempt assimilating
What's Redbook? I thought that was an old womens' magazine...

Fathom-Mixbus6.1.22.png

If you are fully new to Mixbus, and using the demo, use the Tracks menu to add a track, choose midi or audio from the popup panel.

Then in the View menu, pick 'Show editor mixer'. It will have the default General Midi Synth loaded, that title near the top of the track, so right-click on it's title to open the panel for replacing it or loading other instruments you have that were scanned. You may have to enable seeing a 'hidden' .vst folder, so in the Mixbus vst preferences area, use the browser to see your home/username folder, and right-click in the panel, a popup will let you tick the box to browse hidden files. Then use the rescan button on the vst panel
Cheers

[audiojunkie]

How does Mixbus compare to Ardour? I've been somewhat less than impressed with the interface of Ardour.

[glokraw]

Mixbus tries to present the Harrison consoles in gui form, at very affordable prices, so a lot is on offer up front. Once familiar with the controls, it should be easy have a unified 'your sound', and save modified versions for various genres. Under the hood, I find the initial setup is still a mess, it has diagonal, vertical, and horizontal elements, with vertical text that reads bottom to top, the opposite of commercial signage, and then you have to sort the mono and stereo connections diagonally. Also, you can't just start using it without creating or loading a session, and to make it worse, to have a stereo midi session, you first must make a stereo audio session, and convert it to midi, not difficult, but absurd in 2020. I guess pros don't mind such things
But my inner reaper does

On the bright side, once you make a variety of sessions to cover your bases, the default 'sound' is pretty sweet, when importing audio. When I first got Mixbus, V3 era, I think, I loaded Zebra2, Discovery Pro and some other linux synth, maybe Hive 1, made a recording, and looked at the .wav file in audacity. It was far different in appearance to my typical recordings, due to the default compression and mix buss this mix buss that, things I have never studied.

The Mixbus demo should let you know if a future purchase is in order, and there are frequent sales, and bundle sales. I like the art-concepts of the Mixbus, but haven't installed Ardour in ages, because the same config style is shared between them.

PS: license is just pasting a longish alphanumeric string that includes your name, but then Mixbus can be used where you like.
Cheers

[glokraw]

I've watched a bunch of videos about IK Multimedia's
Lurssen Mastering Console, and the stories about how the
Lurssen philosophy and sound took shape and won awards for many years, and then transitioned into a software version from IK. The labor-day sale price was excellent, and reduced by some Jam Points from Grandmas cookie jar, so never would there be a better chance...

It's up and running, and everything works: drag audio files to the browser, set loop points, adjust presets etc It's designed for the bulk of the sound quality to arrive up front in a preset, with subtleties handled in the next few steps. Auditioning songs is easy, and fun to see if there are drastic A vs Bypass differences . Solid basic results are what the doctor ordered. Eq, limiting, de-essing, and compression based on award-winning principals, are etched in silicon and now have their feet on the coffee tables of suburbia

Lurssen-Ubuntu.png

IK have a new authorization manager, not nearly as simple and direct as the previous one But glitzy and with a product parade scrolling across the top It almost worked in my six-versions-old wine, but failed to initiate the download, with a spinning connections indicator...just spinning . I already had the Lurrsen installer from a recent test, and pasted in the serial number from the purchase confirmation using last-years old gray wrinkly Authorization Manager. I'll check the shiny new one again later in my newest wine 5.16 setup, as hopefully, the sale may have tested the IK server at that moment.
Cheers

IK-manager-ubuntu.png

[audiojunkie]

Thanks for the reviews!! Useful!!

[glokraw]

When I'm old and gray, maybe the reviews will remind me
that I have software installed on that old pre
hologram-cloud thing in the back hall closet

I got reaktor... ...I still got REAKTOR

[glokraw]

For this weeks Friday Night Flix practice-chillin combo session,
I wanted a new guitar tone, wound up with Mixbus hosting Calf Pulsator
and Reverse Delay, with the sound coming from Amplitubes Ambassador stomp feeding an Orange Rockerverb 50 amp model, lots of subtle movement on very enjoyable tones

Mixbus-Calf-Pulsator-Reverse-Delay.png

A4-Ambassador-stomp.png

A4-Orange-Rockerverb50.png

PS The Calf developer was unhappy with Pro Tools effects, and set out
to create his own excellent collection, a couple dozen effects, and some nice synths, just because he can! Off to the movies

[audiojunkie]

Nice!

[glokraw]

Audio Assault have an Independence Day sale, so I got a pack of extra Amps and cabinet IRs for their Grind Machine II amp sim (it's free thru the 16th) Works fine in Reaper/wine, lots and lots of gain for the metal players, in a nice gui that does it's job without any hassles. Added the NI Raum for some hevvymedal ambience. (this was in Ubuntu Studio 19.10, Reaper 5.99)

GrindMachineII-Raum.png

[courtjestr]

Hey glokraw, what Reaper theme are you using?