Fave Linux DAW poll v2

[danboid]

Hi LM forums!

I wanted to restart the Linuxmusicians fave Linux DAW poll afresh but with individual options for what are in my estimation the most popular Linux DAWs, both free and non-free, as of Decemeber 2012 to get a better impression of Linux DAW usage than is offered by the old poll. The old poll neglected popular Linux DAWs such as Mixbus, MusE, Supercollider and Renoise which resulted in many voters having to choose 'Other' so I felt a new poll was necessary.

Remember we're limited to a choice of 10 options with these polls so sorrry if your DAW hasn't made the shortlist I've chosen here. 10 just isn't enough to cover all the options available unfortunately!

Thanks for voting (again)!

Dan

[male]

Is it really fair to list Ardour AND Mixbus? That's basically listing two different versions of Ardour.

[Vixus]

Nonseq was super buggy when I used it last. Kept crashing on me..

[danboid]

male:

I realise Mixbus is largely just Ardour 2 with a few tweaks and some non-free plugins bolted on but one of the main reasons I wanted to do another DAW poll was to find out how many of those who voted for Ardour in the old poll were actually running Mixbus as previously they may have decided to vote 'other' or 'Ardour' so there was no way to tell how popular Mixbus is amongst users of this forum. Looks like its not so popular on this forum.

falktx:

I fully expected you'd be voting for Renoise so you've surprised me there!

As I've already stated and apologised for in the OP - there are simply not enough options to list all the Linux DAWs out there. Had I been able to, I would've also added OOM, pydaw and the rest. Non-sequencer was 'bundled in' with the Non-DAW option in my head but maybe I should've labelled it as just 'Non' instead? I don't think there are enough users of the Non apps to justify giving it two options and I'm confident Mixbus has more users than non-sequencer. At least I've seen more people discussing Mixbus on LAU and the Ardour forums than the Non suite here and on the web in general.

I didn't like the 'other' option in the old poll as then you had to trawl the comments and try to decipher who had voted other and what they would've voted for. To do this any better the forum poll code needs an upgrade to allow more than 10 options.

[tnovelli]

I voted for QTractor... but I really love Traverso's UI. Unfortunately those two are buggy and buggier, so I end up using Audacity and Hydrogen more than anything... but damn are they clunky.

I would consider Ardour3 if the builtin sequencer were usable and it were debugged and packaged up in the distro repositories. That's a tall order, considering that it has like 30 dependencies. Too damn fancy.

[danboid]

As of Jan 2013 it still seems Ardour is resoundingly the most popular DAW on these forums with qtractor, renoise etc being some way behind. We see here how important it was to include Renoise as an option in this second DAW poll as it is currently the 3rd most popular Linux DAW for users of the LM forums.

It'll be interesting to see what happens over 2013. For sure this is the year Ardour 3.0 gets a release but Ardour will have better competition than ever before. Both Muse and qtractor made many notable improvements over 2012 and what effect will the release of Bitwig for Linux have on not only the Linux audio community but the music tech industry at large? Will PyDAW emerge from nowhere to make them all look obsolete?

If you've not already voted here, please do as its obvious only a small fraction of the boards members have voted so far. Note that I set it so that people could change their vote if they change their mind however long after voting.

[paperplastic]

I'm really trying to love ardour. The one is AVlinux is a lot more stable than when I was using Ubuntu studio, so it's a lot more fun to use and explore. Mixbus seems a really great addition to ardour, especially the mixer section is really useful.

I'm considering buying a few linux plugins from linuxDsp, the demos look really useful. Maybe a Pultec and the Vintage compressor or a Multiband compressor.

[tatch]

I'm having a tough time deciding how to vote. I've been using ardour2 for most of my projects but I can't really say its stability on my installations is all that great (ardour3 beta also crashes for me and tends to glitch randomly, plus i prefer the 'look' of ardour2). I've also been using qtractor for a few things but I encounter frequent issues on there (plugins crashing, random segfaults) and I don't really prefer its UI/interaction. I've tried LMMS on multiple occasions and have tried to get into it but it kind of feels arcade-y to me and I've always left without making anything even remotely interesting.

I've also thought about using MuSE/Rosegarden and have opened up MuSE before but I can't really get into either of their UIs either. I've read a little about the Non stuff and they seem to be pretty cool but I have yet to try them out. Since I recently installed KXstudio on one of my boxes I'll probably check out the non stuff along with the proprietary things on there later.

I've used seq24 and harmonyseq as well, they aren't really DAWs but since falk mentioned non sequencer I figured these two also merit a mention. They're both pretty cool ideas but I wish they both had more options.

I tried out pyDAWv1 a little while ago (v2 was released a few days ago) and it seems interesting. I dig its pattern-based structure but in many instances I also don't really know how to approach it, though maybe I'll become more comfortable with it as it matures.

For now I've voted for ardour; even though it isn't my "favorite" linux daw, it's the one I've used most and will probably continue to use to some extent barring some supranatural linux audio über-daw showing up (bitwig kind of seems like a godsend to linux audio, though I hope there will be increasingly-capable FOSS alternatives).

[danboid]

Hi Tatch!

Thanks for pointing out Jeff has released pydaw2 - I'll be giving it a go as soon as I get a chance although purely from looking at the screenshots I still don't feel its for me. If the screenshots on sf.net are from v2 then it still looks like a fancier seq24 to me which isn't what I'm after. Does v2 allow me to change time sigs or tempo mid song? Does it feature full automation of all tracks and FX? Has the new, improved synth arrived?

Jeff claims to be rebelling against REAPER/KDE etc level configurability and the 'option for everything' mentality but I, and I expect many other Linux users, really like a fat stack of options. In fact thats why many Linux users are using the penguin OS and not something like OSX. I see Jeff has his own forums now so I'm not expecting him to reply here but maybe Tatch can tell me how happy or disappointed I may be with v2 in advance of me trying it myself?

[tatch]

Does v2 allow me to change time sigs or tempo mid song? Does it feature full automation of all tracks and FX? Has the new, improved synth arrived?

I haven't played around with v2 too much myself yet, but from what I've seen the interface hasn't changed significantly. I don't believe alternate time signatures/tempo changes have been implemented (I think they're on the roadmap though). The improved synth you mentioned is Way-V, which I think has been out since the last update. I think pretty much everything can be automated, too, including the audio tracks and fx busses that were added in v2.

Going off what you mentioned, I guess pydaw is a little similar to seq24 in its pattern-based approach, but with a 'tracker-like' interface and more options. if you aren't interested in a pattern-based sequencer pydaw may not be right for you yet (I see promise in it), but I would still suggest that you play around with it a little, even now I think it's pretty solid.