The state of Linux DAWs in 2021?

[Death]

I haven't kept up to date with Linux DAWs for the last year or so. Has there been any major developments to existing DAWs or the arrival of any good new ones?

I'm most interested in general midi and piano roll functionality as that's what all Linux DAWs seem to be the worst at in my experience.

Zrythm looked interesting last I checked but apparently it still needs a lot of work.

Anyway, let me know what you think. I'm looking forward to finally finding one I can switch to.

Cheers.

[Basslint]

Hi, as far I can tell you, since you already know about Zrythm, I am not sure new DAWs with a long-term vision have been released.

An up-and-coming program is Valhalla tracker (https://github.com/rdybka/vht). It is more of a modern tracker than a DAW, in line with programs like Tutka.

Ardour has greatly improved and now has VST3 support.

LMMS is finally getting LV2 support in version 1.3.0.

The developers of MusE this year have done a lot of great work, version 4 is very close.

[Death]

Thanks for the tips

I remember trying out the Renoise demo as it looked really cool. I just don't think trackers are for me though..

I did look into Ardour but it seems like midi still isn't where I'd like it.

That's really cool about LMMS. Last time I used it I really wanted LV2 support.

I'll download MusE and check it out when it gets the V4 update to see what it's like.

[bluebell]

I'm most interested in general midi and piano roll functionality as that's what all Linux DAWs seem to be the worst at in my experience.

What do you think is missing in Qtractor? It has a very good MIDI editor.

[Death]

What do you think is missing in Qtractor? It has a very good MIDI editor.

Qtractor is one of the best Linux DAWs I've tried. That and Tracktion Waveform were my favourites. But as an FL Studio user, I'm just used to being able to work really quickly in the piano roll and I love the way midi clips work in FLS. I always find it tough to explain this to people but if you use FLS for long enough to understand how those things work, you'll see what I mean. It's great for midi work! But just to list a couple of things to give you an idea..

FLS Piano roll
* Left click will instantly draw a note (The same length as the last note you drew) and right click will instantly delete it. There's no clicking and dragging needed unless you want to resize a note that already exists.

* It has a pattern and chord generator which can come up with new ideas or alter what you already have. While I rarely use this, it's great for those sessions where you're really struggling for ideas (Waveform has something similar).

* Controls for things like velocity, note pan etc are easily accessible and always visible at the bottom of the window. Let's say you want to change the velocity of some notes - You just select the notes you want, hold alt & scroll the mouse wheel. It's the same for any other parameter you've selected. There's also an option to randomly alter the velocities/other values and things like that.

FLS patterns/clips
* If you left click on an existing pattern it will automatically copy it, then when you left click on the playlist it will paste that same pattern. You can also just hold the button down to repetatively paste the clip wherever you move the mouse.

Right click deletes. You can also hold right click and everything you touch will be deleted instantly (Same in the piano roll).

* If you edit a pattern, every copy of it will receive the same edit (Something no other DAW I've used does! Although it's possible LMMS does but I haven't used it lately). If you want to edit a pattern so that only that copy of it receives the edit, you just click on the top left corner of the pattern and choose to make it unique first so it becomes a new pattern. Then when you edit that pattern, any copy of it will receive the same edit. This setup saves you a hell of a lot of delting patterns and then copy & pasting it again with the changes!

* One of my favourite things about patterns is that you can assign anything to pattern - there's so much flexibility with this. So for example, if you wanted you could have the entire song or big chunks of a song play from one pattern. What I like to do is have a pattern with kicks & snares on it, another for hi-hats, another for toms etc.. This allows me to quickly swap in and out individual parts of a beat to trial them and also have subtle changes in the song. With other DAWs, I can't have multiple patterns controlling one thing in the same way, like a drum machine, for example. So, it all has to be on one pattern or one single drum on each individual pattern. This makes it much slower to try things out and it's also harder to see what's different at a glance. In FLS, playlist tracks are not hard linked to generators or mixer tracks so it allows you to do things your own way.

There's more to it than that but it's amazing the difference these things make. It's got so many useful and easy to access features like that which make midi editing so much faster than any other DAW I've used (I've tried loads of them..).

I'm not expecting everything to be like FLS, but whatever I use just feels so slow in comparison. I was getting on with Waveform fairly well but being limited with patterns on the drum machine and the fact that they charge for a new version every year was a deal breaker for me. I haven't used Qtractor for about a year so I'm not sure what improvements it's had to these things but I'm willing to give it another shot and see how it feels these days. Zrythm, if I remember correctly, looked like it was taking more of an FLS approach to the midi side of things which I thought was pretty exciting. I need to look into it again though.

Cheers.

[folderol]

Rosegarden is not really what you'd call a DAW, but I find it by far the easiest for piano roll or notation recording.

[milo]

* If you edit a pattern, every copy of it will receive the same edit (Something no other DAW I've used does! Although it's possible LMMS does but I haven't used it lately). If you want to edit a pattern so that only that copy of it receives the edit, you just click on the top left corner of the pattern and choose to make it unique first so it becomes a new pattern. Then when you edit that pattern, any copy of it will receive the same edit. This setup saves you a hell of a lot of delting patterns and then copy & pasting it again with the changes!

Ardour can do this too, but the interface obviously isn't as slick as what you describe for FL Studio.

[Death]

Rosegarden is not really what you'd call a DAW, but I find it by far the easiest for piano roll or notation recording.

I haven't used Rosegarden for quite a while so I'll reinstall that too. Why wouldn't you call it a DAW? Can you use plugins and mix with it?

Ardour can do this too, but the interface obviously isn't as slick as what you describe for FL Studio.

Well I didn't know that. I have used Ardour in the past so I must've forgotten. Then again, I gave up pretty quickly with Ardour because midi work was just painful to be honest. Outside of midi work, it's a great program. I really liked the Harisson Mixbus take on it actually. But it also had the same midi issues of course..

Cheers guys.

[spamatica]

FLS Piano roll
* Left click will instantly draw a note (The same length as the last note you drew) and right click will instantly delete it. There's no clicking and dragging needed unless you want to resize a note that already exists.

very neat feature!

* If you edit a pattern, every copy of it will receive the same edit (Something no other DAW I've used does! Although it's possible LMMS does but I haven't used it lately). If you want to edit a pattern so that only that copy of it receives the edit, you just click on the top left corner of the pattern and choose to make it unique first so it becomes a new pattern. Then when you edit that pattern, any copy of it will receive the same edit. This setup saves you a hell of a lot of delting patterns and then copy & pasting it again with the changes!

Seems very similar to what we refer to as clone-parts in MusE, they are all the same.

* One of my favourite things about patterns is that you can assign anything to pattern - there's so much flexibility with this. So for example, if you wanted you could have the entire song or big chunks of a song play from one pattern.

With other DAWs, I can't have multiple patterns controlling one thing in the same way, like a drum machine, for example. So, it all has to be on one pattern or one single drum on each individual pattern. This makes it much slower to try things out and it's also harder to see what's different at a glance. In FLS, playlist tracks are not hard linked to generators or mixer tracks so it allows you to do things your own way.

Not sure I'm getting this. Assigning several midi tracks to one synth can't be that uncommon? It's very easy in MusE at least.

As for the prior point "playing an entire song from one pattern", I read that as implying the reverse, several synths contolled from one pattern. This doesn't seem very convenient so maybe I'm misunderstanding. We used to support something similar for drum tracks but it has been removed as it was just complicated.

[finotti]

For MIDI editing/programming, I quite like Muse. I usually use Ardour for mixing and recording, but prefer Muse for MIDI.

[Death]

Seems very similar to what we refer to as clone-parts in MusE, they are all the same.

So if you edit any one of those clones, do all of them receive the same edit, or just the individual one you edited?

Not sure I'm getting this. Assigning several midi tracks to one synth can't be that uncommon? It's very easy in MusE at least.

As for the prior point "playing an entire song from one pattern", I read that as implying the reverse, several synths contolled from one pattern. This doesn't seem very convenient so maybe I'm misunderstanding. We used to support something similar for drum tracks but it has been removed as it was just complicated.

It's always so hard to explain these things to people and only FLS users seem to get this stuff really. I actually like using multiple patterns to control one synth because if I'm doing low and high end harmonies on the same synth, it makes it easy to audition different parts of that more quickly. However, this is not what I'm talking about. I'm focusing mostly on drum machines with my explanation. And yeh, if you want you can have one single pattern with the entire song on it - like every single instrument for the entire duration of the song. It's not a good way in my opinion, but it's possible. Some people like to have entire chunks of songs on one pattern (Intro, verse, chorus, ending etc), I prefer to separate mine out into different instruments and sections.

All sounds in FLS start their routing from a sampler/step sequencer. So a common use of this sampler/sequencer is to use it as a drum machine. You can make one pattern with an entire beat on it like you do with most sequencers/drum machines in any DAW. And just like other DAWs you can have a separate pattern for each individual drum sample. But the thing that's unique with FLS is that you can do any combination of drum samples/channels on as many patterns as you like which are all controlling the same sampler/sequencer/drum machine. So I'll have multiple patterns controlling the sequencer with different parts of my beat all separated out into different patterns - some patterns have individual drums on them, some have multiple drums on them. So like I said before, one pattern will have kicks & snares, the other hi-hats, the other toms etc.. I layer them one beneath the other on the playlist because you can put whatever you want on any playlist track seeing as they're not hard linked to anything. Now if I have a beat playing and I want that same beat with the hi-hats gone, for example, I can just delete the hi-hat pattern - no need to make a copy of the beat with the hi-hats removed. Or if I want to vary an individual part of the beat, I can just make the specific pattern for that drum sample (or drum samples if multiple things are on that pattern) unique and then edit it.

Man it's so hard to explain this and no one ever gets what they're missing here. There's a reason FLS is so wildly popular for electronic music and midi functionality. You can try the free demo to see what I mean It works really well in Wine! I've been using it on Linux for years.

But this functionality is why I just can't switch to anything because it's just so integral to how I like to work and it's so much faster. The only DAW I've seen come close to it is LMMS but it wasn't really close enough for me.

[bluebell]

In Qtractor you can place MIDI clips overlapping. Doesn't look good and it's hard to select the right clip. But you can have several tracks feeding a bus with your drum-plugin.

In Rosegarden you can place MIDI clips overlapping, and it looks ok.

rg.png (23.33 KiB) Viewed 11384 times

[folderol]

In Qtractor you can place MIDI clips overlapping. Doesn't look good and it's hard to select the right clip. But you can have several tracks feeding a bus with your drum-plugin.

In Rosegarden you can place MIDI clips overlapping, and it looks ok.

rg.png

Indeed! A very useful feature and I use it frequently. It is especially useful for adding automation generally, and individual drum types in drum tracks.

These can either be left like that, or once you have everything right you can merge them together.

[glowrak guy]

I have few problems with linux daws, but too many problems with the system files and system
gui's and system managers yada yada churning out beta after beta, where I hope the daw
software I need for some purpose will actually be unencumbered by this week's 'progress'.
Once my core tools are working, the updates stop. There are cheap ways to have
the latest of 'everything else', without risking your primary installations. That's installations
with an 's'. Linux is far too complex, to safely rely on just one installation. (Thankfully,
you can get by with just one, and a fully configured new installation isn't often fatal,
and clonezilla type apps abound tp preserve history )

Plus, we always have several recent and quality pre-configured distros in a pinch.
Not something mac and win devotees can boast about, as they rumage about in some
duopoly meltdown or crisis.
Cheers

[Death]

In Qtractor you can place MIDI clips overlapping. Doesn't look good and it's hard to select the right clip. But you can have several tracks feeding a bus with your drum-plugin.

In Rosegarden you can place MIDI clips overlapping, and it looks ok.

rg.png

Yeh. That's cool but it isn't quite what I'm talking about. There's a way FLS does stuff and it just seems to be unique to it regardless of Linux or not. I think the only developers that've caught on to how well FLS does these things are the ones working on LMMS, but that still needs a lot of work to get there. I will never be able to explain it to people in words. I'll have to make a video on it someday..