mic latency in ableton on wine

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Fishy Business
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mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Fishy Business »

So Im new to linux and music production and I have a problem: Currently the microphone in ableton works like this: Ableton recognizes the virtual device "Pulseaudio DX" as an input device. This device will have anything I have set as a mic input on my linux install. That also means, that I can currently only record one mic input at the same time, wich will become a problem. Also there seems to be severe latency after the recording is done. Like.. the clip itself is late. Is there a way to fix this? Can I maybe sort of "pass through" my audio interface into the wine instance? So that ableton can use the Komplete Audio 2 - Audio interface directly and record both its inputs at the same time? Any insight is welcome. Or maybe if there is some sort of page I can read to figure that stuff out. I'm willing to put the work in. I love linux and I love music and I love that this forum exists :D
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Natelok »

Is there any particular reason you're using Ableton? Do you have an audio interface or are you using an onboard sound chip? Which distro? Actually, forget all that. Let's just stop a second.

There's a lot of setup to do for proper audio on Linux. I'd suggest you check out the Linux audio wiki http://linuxaudio.org/resources, seriously consider switching to a native DAW and setting up a computer for Linux audio production.

Pulseaudio is really not something you want to be using when you're recording. Many (maybe most?) of us either turn off or completely disable pulseaudio. We use Alsa and JACK, although some people (not me!) are now using pipewire.

https://linuxaudio.github.io/libremusic ... kflow.html is a bit out of date but will give you an idea of the scope you're looking at to improve latency at all, let alone in ableton.

Read through some of the articles and guides, and then decide what you want to be able to do. Then we might be able to help you more.

There are lots of tools for audio on Linux. You might like to check out LMMS for starters, and for Ableton type work, Ardour, Reaper or Bitwig. But you have a bit of reading to do first.

Good luck, and feel free to ask questions if you get confused.

Also, check out the how tos subforum, it's full of answers to questions you're probably going to have.
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by tavasti »

Fishy Business wrote: Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:58 pm So Im new to linux and music production and I have a problem: Currently the microphone in ableton works like this: Ableton recognizes the virtual device "Pulseaudio DX" as an input device. This device will have anything I have set as a mic input on my linux install. That also means, that I can currently only record one mic input at the same time, wich will become a problem. Also there seems to be severe latency after the recording is done.
To get more than one input device connected to Ableton, you need to run jack, and have wineasio installed. With wineasio you can get I think max 16 channels input and output.

And then latency, with jack you can adjust your buffers, but according to my personal experience, you need big buffers to use windows programs with wine, meaning big latency. At least in my machine, even simple song needs at least 2048 frames/period, and in practise, 8192, which means 372 msec latency.

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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

My 2 cents, others may beg to differ.

Emulating an operating system (Windows) in between your own (Linux) and the microphone will cause latency. Period. Unfortunately recording music requires one to have a system (Linux, Windows, Apple, ...) that's optimized. For word processing or watching a movie the odd latency doesn't matter. However, I'd never use a DAW from one OS on another. For other things I might use Windows software on Linux for a short while. But if Ableton is of utter most importance to you then the sad truth is that you can save yourself a lot of trouble by using Windows.

If you ask me the only solution is to switch DAWs (there's a Reaper version for Linux, Win and Apple). Wanna go "the Linux way"? Use Qtractor.

Good luck making music and enjoy! :)
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by tavasti »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 9:53 am Emulating an operating system (Windows) in between your own (Linux) and the microphone will cause latency. Period. Unfortunately recording music requires one to have a system (Linux, Windows, Apple, ...) that's optimized. For word processing or watching a movie the odd latency doesn't matter. However, I'd never use a DAW from one OS on another. For other things I might use Windows software on Linux for a short while. But if Ableton is of utter most importance to you then the sad truth is that you can save yourself a lot of trouble by using Windows.

If you ask me the only solution is to switch DAWs (there's a Reaper version for Linux, Win and Apple). Wanna go "the Linux way"? Use Qtractor.
It might not be full and final truth, because to my understanding wine (Wine Is Not Emulator) is not emulator in full. But is is most likely true that with current wine, getting decent latency is impossible. At least I haven't heard anybody claiming that they have gotten it. If there would be some skilled developer who would start working getting that latency down, it might be possible.

So in current state, options are:
a) accept latency is horrible. For recorded audio it is possible to accept, if latency compensation does not work, need just to move recorded track to right place. With midi it is much harder, at least I cannot work if I hear my playing 0.3s late.
b) Switch daw. If you want to have most ableton-kind daw, Bitwig is way to go. I personally use it.
c) Switch operating system

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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

tavasti wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2022 11:35 am [...]It might not be full and final truth, because to my understanding wine (Wine Is Not Emulator) is not emulator in full. [...]
You're absolutely right. But, like you said, Wine in between our OS and the hardware is not ideal. I've got no idea to explain what the hell Wine is to my friends. I mean: if it's not an emulator, then how do I explain what it is if I don't get what it is myself, ha ha. ;) This is how WineHQ describes what Wine is:
Wine [...] is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications [...]. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly
This might speak volumes to some, I've got no idea what that means. And neither do my (IT) friends. I just keep on saying it's an emulator. ;)
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Gps »

Maybe we have somebody here who does understand the difference between an emulator and wine.

I remember reading a discussion about it, and me getting lost when they started to argue along the lines of:
Wine is not an emulator because ...
Then somebody else said , that's what an emulator does.

I also saw somebody claiming its nerd humor, because wine is of course an emulator.
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Fishy Business »

So first of all, thanks for all the answers. I'll start reading the linked pages tomorrow. About the wine thing: I just say it's a compatibility layer. That's true either if it is and if it isn't an emulator. Here is some more information:
I'm using Pop! OS 22.04. I'm using ableton, because ableton Live Lite came free with my audio interface (komplete audio 2) and I can't afford software and even if I could afford to switch to another daw, I wouldn't want to do that now, because I'm in the beginning of learning music production and switching daw right now would be really frustrating, also I've kind of fallen in love with ableton. I also despise windows. It's been nothing, but trouble and always finds a way to piss me off :D. So I don't want to install windows and I REALLY don't want to switch daw.
What I will do, is read through the linked articles and put in the work to optimize my linux for audio and make ableton work as good as possible. I'm highly motivated to make this work. Also I always wanted to learn programming anyway, so there is a good chance that, after I'm done optimizing, I'll learn and start contributing in this field (wich is not to say, that I think programming is easy. That is OBVIOUSLY far from true). I've also worked out how much I need to move the tracks back pretty well. I will write again, after I have made considerable progress with this situation.

Have a good day and thanks again for the insight.
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by tavasti »

Fishy Business wrote: Fri Jul 29, 2022 7:51 pm So first of all, thanks for all the answers. I'll start reading the linked pages tomorrow. About the wine thing: I just say it's a compatibility layer. That's true either if it is and if it isn't an emulator. Here is some more information:
I'm using Pop! OS 22.04. I'm using ableton, because ableton Live Lite came free with my audio interface (komplete audio 2) and I can't afford software and even if I could afford to switch to another daw, I wouldn't want to do that now, because I'm in the beginning of learning music production and switching daw right now would be really frustrating, also I've kind of fallen in love with ableton. I also despise windows. It's been nothing, but trouble and always finds a way to piss me off :D. So I don't want to install windows and I REALLY don't want to switch daw.
Looking what was linked here is this thread, most likely none of the links will help you in scope you want to go on.

What audio driver you are using right now in your ableton?

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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by Fishy Business »

tavasti wrote: Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:49 pm Looking what was linked here is this thread, most likely none of the links will help you in scope you want to go on.

What audio driver you are using right now in your ableton?
I believe it's called pulseaudio. That is if I even understand what you mean.
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Re: mic latency in ableton on wine

Post by tavasti »

Fishy Business wrote: Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:35 am I believe it's called pulseaudio. That is if I even understand what you mean.
Sounds like valid answer. With that, you definitely can't have low latency, and don't even have any settings for it.

Best option is to get jack running, and use wineasio. There you can adjust buffer sizes, and optimize your latency. Sure, be prepared that you cannot get decent latency for ableton in wine.

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