A Guide to switching to Linux as your music production OS (If you really want to!)

[Passing Bye]

RME have best performing USB drivers in the business, which outperform every other USB device by a long shot, Windows or macOS, ASIO is a slightly more efficient protocol than Core Audio, but Core Audio can utilize class compliant devices OTB like Linux, among other things, so it's not really a question can it utilize class compliant device, but how it performs, as I said, I find my audio interfaces having little better performance on Windows with ASIO drivers anyway, but it's nothing to scream about, so it's fine, just saying and asking if there is actually something more than that, something that is tweaked especially for Linux?

Seems like old RME DIGI 9636/52 cards have dedicated Linux drivers
https://archiv.rme-audio.de/old/english/linux/alsa.htm

and one can get even newer PCI 9632/52 to work too, so this is actually amazing news and amazing card, PCI tho, so not really for new build, most mobo's doesn't support PCI anymore
https://linuxgamecast.com/2021/02/inter ... hdsp-9632/

Here's more info about state of RME cards on Linux
https://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.ph ... 09#p101909

Seems like one can only partially utilize USB and FireWire RME offerings, Thunderbolt at all.

[lunardigs]

Is absence of proper audio drivers actually real bottleneck of Linux for audio? Compared to same thing on Windows running Bitwig? Seem like I just get better performance on Windows with proper ASIO drivers (Mbox 2 Mini, Audigy 2)... Is there anything out there that performs the same on Linux, as it does on Windows?

Linux has 'proper audio drivers'. If you're using a class compliant USB audio interface then that should just work. Unlike on Windows you don't need special manufacturer specific drivers to use it for pro audio.

So RME in vanilla class compliant mode should perform the same on Linux as with their manufactured driver on both macOS and Windows?

In my experience, yes. I run a Fireface UFX. The performance upon Linux is indistinguishable from Windows. The reason I say is that I used it with both Linux and Windows at one point.
Mind you, my experience is only with USB mode. I've never tried the Firewire mode.
Nevertheless, it's been a really good experience. In fact, my next interface will most likely be a Fireface UFX+, with USB3; which works in class compliant mode as well.

About Linux and drivers. The Linux Kernel is the hardware driver. It's a bit strange to think of, perhaps, but that's its roots. It's still a modular system, sorta, but this concept of installing drivers really isn't a thing in Linux. This is not to say you can't, btw.
Basically, the kernel is continually updated to take advantage of new hardware--simply upgrade and you gain it.
Think of it this way; there's uniformity and conventions with chip IO design. The Linux kernel sees this in a generic sense. Hence, a single Linux driver (kernel module) can be used to drive a variety of devices. This includes audio interfaces.
When you plug-in a given device, Linux sees it's identity and picks a driver to use with it. It's all automatic, but you can influence what it does, or force it.
In the case of my kernel and Fireface UFX, Linux chooses snd-hdsp ( https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/s ... e-snd-hdsp ). If you look at that page, you'll see there's a lot of sound drivers (kernel modules). Collectively called, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). If you run a modern desktop distro, ALSA will be included for sure.

[Passing Bye]

In my experience, yes. I run a Fireface UFX. The performance upon Linux is indistinguishable from Windows. The reason I say is that I used it with both Linux and Windows at one point.
Mind you, my experience is only with USB mode. I've never tried the Firewire mode.
Nevertheless, it's been a really good experience. In fact, my next interface will most likely be a Fireface UFX+, with USB3; which works in class compliant mode as well.

Awesome, thanks for the info, so RME is pretty much safest bet for amazing Linux audio performance.

About Linux and drivers. The Linux Kernel is the hardware driver. It's a bit strange to think of, perhaps, but that's its roots. It's still a modular system, sorta, but this concept of installing drivers really isn't a thing in Linux. This is not to say you can't, btw.
Basically, the kernel is continually updated to take advantage of new hardware--simply upgrade and you gain it.
Think of it this way; there's uniformity and conventions with chip IO design. The Linux kernel sees this in a generic sense. Hence, a single Linux driver (kernel module) can be used to drive a variety of devices. This includes audio interfaces.
When you plug-in a given device, Linux sees it's identity and picks a driver to use with it. It's all automatic, but you can influence what it does, or force it.
In the case of my kernel and Fireface UFX, Linux chooses snd-hdsp ( https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/s ... e-snd-hdsp ). If you look at that page, you'll see there's a lot of sound drivers (kernel modules). Collectively called, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). If you run a modern desktop distro, ALSA will be included for sure.

Yeah, I kinda get the concept, but someone needs to address all of that on kernel level to work, to write actual driver, my point is that probably someone who knows their stuff inside out and have good track record at writing drivers can get most out of it, like RME, they would probably do amazing job supporting their devices on Linux and maybe taking advantage of some other things, like some devs are now doing with Apple Silicon with great success.

So my question is I guess answered, class compliant devices that work OTB with Core Audio work the same with Linux, so they are safe bet, Behringer U Phoria, Focusrite Scarlett's and such, it's great to know RME is an option, my Mbox isn't class compliant and someone who wrote driver for Linux didn't do better job than original developer, it's close tho*.

Thanks again, really appreciate it.

*Maybe I'm just nitpicking, difference isn't that big and the fact it actually runs on modern OS is amazing, you can get device like that for peanuts these days.

[Passing Bye]

In other news, that yabridge thing runs everything I tried, impressed

Also after little digging around, to save people the trouble, Behringer U-Phoria audio interfaces are best thing one can get for their money concerning OTB Linux compatibility and generally it's best bang for the buck thing on the market right now, as far as budget USB interfaces are concerned, especially UMC 202/204HD and up.

[coolblinger]

In other news, that yabridge thing runs everything I tried, impressed

Awesome! Glad to hear it's working well for you. I have quite a substantial update coming on July ~15th with some more optimizations (including completely rewritten audio buffer handling to reduce audio processing overhead), some quality of life improvements, and a bunch of fixes and workarounds for plugins that were being naughty. There's an in-progress changelog (presumably with a bunch of typos still) here.

[Passing Bye]

Amazing work so far, you really made something awesome and useful, glad to hear you are improving it further!

[EnGee]

4 audio devices are working the same time in my setup. One is Realtek, other is HDMI nVidia and the other two are: Yamaha Steinberg (which is in my MODX) and Presonus iTwo (I didn't install any driver). I use mainly iTwo and have small latency:

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

Wow, just stumbled onto this thread by chance and it answers every question I may or may not have had. Truth be told, I've been contemplating switching from Windows to Linux for a while, but software compatibility was always a concern that's stopped me from seriously doing it. I'll keep this thread in mind and make sure to reference it if/when I do make the switch.

Thanks for this! Seriously.

[EnGee]

Not all my hardware is recognized of course! I had to install two main drivers. First, nVidia and second the network (Ethernet) driver. I have relatively new chipset (B550 for Ryzen 5000 series) and I needed to note the network model and download it from the manufacturer. As soon as I installed it, it works and connects to the Mesh network.

Still, my wireless (Intel chip) is not working properly! Sometimes it connects and sometimes no! Anyway, I don't need it now

Just a quick hint. I am not new to Linux. I started my first adventure in 1997-1998 with Mandrake and Suse. They were selling nice physical packages then However, I haven't delved deeply (still not very) as I used it mainly to learn Java and to get the programmer certificate from Sun Microsystems then.

I know some Terminal commands (the equalivant to DOS mainly), so if you have a package that is not .deb and it's compressed file (tgz ... etc), just extract to a folder and right click inside that folder and choose "open Terminal from here" or similar command, then type ./(the name of installation file or just first letters then press tab on keyboard to auto complete). It's a newbie advice I know! but I think it's regularly used in installation of non executable files.

Terminal is really big fun once you learn few commands
Ubuntu Studio default desktop manager is xfce. I like the xfce because everything useful is there in front of you and right click you have a menu and of course it's a blazingly fast

[Passing Bye]

For anyone that is trying to shape their Linux Mint for audio, definitely get indicator-cpufreq, than put your CPU in performance mode, it's probably in powersave by default.

[hoxclab]

Anyone have Spectrasonics plug-ins up and running? I use Trilian, Keyscape and Omnisphere a lot.

[audiojunkie]

Anyone have Spectrasonics plug-ins up and running? I use Trilian, Keyscape and Omnisphere a lot.

I'm going to copy this to a thread specifically discussing Linux with commercial plugins. A lot of Windows plugins are run on Linux through WINE, and that thread may get you the help you need.

Please follow here:

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=503359&p=8193253&h ... x#p8193253