Greetings From Edinburgh

[Ben Tyson]

Hey folks

Been planning to switch away from Windows for a while, the recent end of support for Windows 7 just gave me the kick I needed to take the plunge.

I'm a full time gigging musician, I play keyboard/piano and electric/double bass. Writing music is a passion, although my studio and production experience is basically just using Cubase for composition projects in college.

Loving the whole Linux experience so far, running Ubuntu Studio 19.10. However, I didn't get far trying to set up my home studio on my own. Decided it was time to dive into the community and can't wait to start learning!

My main aim at the moment is to get my head around setting up my keyboard (Yamaha MOTIF XS8) via an interface (currently a borrowed focusrite 18i20 2nd Gen - I know this is way bigger than I need, I'll be buying a smaller one of my own soon) so that I can record multiple tracks from it into Ardour 5, ideally with the option to use it as a midi controller or record direct audio. I think my main takeaway from my initial attempt is that I'm a bit baffled by the interactions between pulse, Jack and ALSA, and have been struggling to get sound out of my laptop speakers, so if anyone can point me towards any useful guides that would take me through these bits of setup that would be amazing!

[khz]

You are very welcome.
Under GNU/LINUX@AUDIO ~ /Wiki $ Howto.Info >> 4. Linux && Audio --help you will find helpful information.
Have fun here.

[Michael Willis]

Hi Ben! You're on the right track, keep it up. Just a couple of suggestions:

First try using Ardour with just ALSA instead of JACK. There are more advanced things that you can do with JACK, like routing audio among multiple applications, but see if ALSA will do what you need first.

You are going to have trouble using your Focusrite interface and your laptop speakers at the same time. It is possible to use multiple audio hardware devices, but it has some additional complication so I wouldn't recommend it. Do you have some speakers that you can wire up to the Focusrite interface?

For what it's worth, I have a similar setup to what you describe. I'm using a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 (1st gen) with a digital piano, along with some cheap microphones and studio monitor speakers. These days I always use ALSA for my Ardour sessions, and I find that PulseAudio doesn't give me any trouble as long as I'm not trying to play audio from any other app while I have an Ardour session running.

Let us know how it goes, and what other help you need!

[Ben Tyson]

Hey guys

Thanks for the response Michael, that's all helpful stuff!
I forgot that this site wouldn't automatically give me notifications about replies so I spent a few lockdown days diving head first into everything and I've ended up working out how to run everything nicely, I think. I've got a script that I found online and tweaked to work for my system.
Now just into learning about the crazy amount of software and plugins I find myself with access to! Been learning some Ardour basics with a couple of projects, and I've had a little tinker with Hydrogen and Carla, so I guess for the time being I just need to explore stuff really. Any recommendations for useful software/plugins etc to explore for getting started? I'm pretty much a complete novice at sound production but I studied physics at uni and play keyboard professionally so I have a decent grasp of technical stuff, I think.

[Michael Willis]

Hey Ben! I was wondering if you would write back, I'm glad that you got things sorted out enough to get started making some music.

Now just into learning about the crazy amount of software and plugins I find myself with access to!
...
Any recommendations for useful software/plugins etc to explore for getting started?

I'm going to go all Cheshire Cat on you and say that it depends on what you want to do Determine what you want and ask more specific questions on this forum. In the meantime, here are some things that you might find useful...

For rendering SFZ instruments, sfizz is a relatively new option that is showing a lot of promise. Try it in conjunction with Virtual Playing Orchestra

Pianoteq has a native Linux version and is pretty nice.

For percussion, try AVL Drums and Drum Gizmo.

Synthesizers: Helm, Synthv1, Yoshimi, Zynaddsubfx, among many others. Here are instructions for building the latest Zynaddsubfx on Linux.

Linux Studio Plugins has a variety of effects plugins that you may find useful.

Auburn Sounds has some nice effects plugins. They're commercial, but you can also download the free editions that are still pretty useful, just missing a few features each.

For reverb, some dude recently released a collection of four plugins called Dragonfly Reverb.