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sehsphare
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total newb

Post by sehsphare »

Guys I'm a hobby musician. As such, I would like some practice at it before I invest a lot of money (say $800 practically for Ableton or something like that). I did buy FL20 for Windows and had Serum and a small army of other plugins as well as Acid Pro 10, but I kept it under a grand. What is my best DAW option for Linux? I switched over to learn development, but like I said I'm a hobbyist. I was thinking about Traktion, although Ardour comes highly recommended. What do you guys think? Reaper? Bitwig?
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erlkönig
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Re: total newb

Post by erlkönig »

What is my best DAW option for Linux?
...like most times, the only right answer seems to be: it depends...
Maybe you should try out different daws to find out, what fits to your personal needs (workflow, skills, ...).

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Fiddling with sequencers does not evolve into music necessarily and Mac users have smelly feet and guzzle little children.

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Linuxmusician01
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Re: total newb

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Most people who review DAW's say that there are no bad DAW's. So it's a matter of taste (read: it doesn't matter).

However, in my opinion one should always choose software that is available in a native version for one's OS. So using Ableton via Wine: nope. You'd better use Reaper: they have a native version for Linux and Windows. What you learn in Reaper you take with you if you switch OS. The other DAW's you mention are also fine though. I'd watch some Youtube tutorial vids on 'm if I were you.

But if you really wat to go "the Linux" way: use QTractor! :)
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Re: total newb

Post by Natelok »

I'm an ardour guy. It reminds me of the early days of Cubase but so much more powerful. I recently upgraded to Harrison Mixbus partly to support the project and partly to have eq in the channel strip. It works for me, but I use hardware step sequencers, software step sequencers and external midi editors a lot too. It's greatest strength is audio recording, but it's always improving

Give ardour a go!
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Re: total newb

Post by sysrqer »

If you like the look of Ableton then go for Bitwig. It's not cheap but I think it's worth the money when you realise how deep it can go and how powerful it is.

If you like an insane amount of customisation then go for Reaper. I think of Reaper more like a tool whereas to me Bitwig is more like a creative instrument.

Personally I wouldn't recommend Ardour, over the years I've had nothing but problems with it crashing and losing work, weird issues with using midi. If it works for you then it is a capable daw.

You could also check out Renoise. It's quite different than all the others but it can be very quick to use and has a lot of power. It probably has a slight learning curve because it's drastically different to a regular daw but it's more of a conceptual curve rather one based on difficulty.

If you really like FL then you can probably get it working in Wine.
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RyanH
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Re: total newb

Post by RyanH »

I'm a big fan of QTractor, myself. Reaper is great, but in my opinion it has a lot of visual noise - I find it hard to tell the trees for the forest. QTractor is very clean, visually, and although I have yet to find much that I can't do with it, it doesn't overwhelm with options. This does mean that it's not immediately obvious how to do some things, but that's what forums like this are for! :)

I use QTractor for recording, editing, and playing MIDI, including adding automation, as well as recording audio, and it's easy to add plugins to any audio or MIDI track. Overall, it's great, it's free, versatile, clean, and as Linuxmusician01 says, it's the Linux way!

(I am not in any way affiliated with QTractor. Just a fan.)
Last edited by RyanH on Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: total newb

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

RyanH wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:15 am I'm a big fan of QTractor, myself. Reaper is great, but in my opinion it has a lot of visual noise - I find it hard to tell the trees for the forest. QTractor is very clean, visually, and although I have yet to find much that I can't do with it, it doesn't overwhelm with options. This does mean that it's not immediately obvious how to do some things, but that's what forums like this are for! :)

I use QTractor for recording, editing, and playing MIDI, including adding automation, as well as recording audio, and it's easy to add plugins to any audio or MIDI track. One thing that I can't do (as far as I know) is edit (i.e. cut up) audio tracks, which I use Audacity for.

There are a couple of odd things I would change about it if I possessed that kind of magic, but overall, QTractor is great, it's free, versatile, clean, and as Linuxmusician01 says, it's the Linux way!

(I am not in any way affiliated with QTractor. Just a fan.)
[off topic, sorry can't help myself] Welcome to the forums! If you've got an audio clip on a track in Qtractor then you can select a part of it with the mouse. Then use the right mouse button and choose "Split". That'll cut the clip in 3 parts. Then choose "Select > Invert" and delete. Now you've got the selected part of the audio clip left. :)
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scott.thomason
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Re: total newb

Post by scott.thomason »

RyanH wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:15 am I use QTractor for recording, editing, and playing MIDI, including adding automation, as well as recording audio, and it's easy to add plugins to any audio or MIDI track. One thing that I can't do (as far as I know) is edit (i.e. cut up) audio tracks, which I use Audacity for.
I like Qtractor, too. You can indeed cut up tracks with it, I do it all the time. Select your track by clicking on it, position the playhead (the red line) at the point you want the clip to be cut at, then do right-click > Clip > Split. Do this as much as you want, move clips around, add/delete clips, etc. If you want to paste the whole track together into one clip again (to make it easier to manage, let's say), just multi-select your clips and do a right-click > Clip > Merge...

Better instructions at https://ubuntustudiomusic.wordpress.com ... -qtractor/
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Re: total newb

Post by wjl »

The question can't be answered, as there is no "best" for everyone, and for every task.

For me (mostly audio, very rarely MIDI), Ardour is by far the best of the cheap ones, you probably get an older version of it with your distribution of choice without paying anything, it runs on any OS, and newer versions can be had starting at 1$ (pay as/what you want/can model).

Reaper is also cool and has some things Ardour doesn't have, but it's not open source.

I've tried QTractor in the beginning, that's probably better for MIDI-related things than Ardour, can't tell because I haven't looked at it since quite a while.

Can't say anything about Tracktion, and I also haven't tried Bitwig (which is a bit more like Ableton I think, but I don't plan to use these tools for Live performances).

So to each their own I'd say, and without knowing your use case it's hard to give any advice.

Cheers,
Wolfgang
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RyanH
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Re: total newb

Post by RyanH »

Thanks for the tips on cutting up audio. I edited my post to remove that part. Thanks also for the warm welcome, Linuxmusician01!
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Re: total newb

Post by bentheass »

If you're doing a lot of MIDI, I don't know.
If you don't do a lot of electronic production, Ardour is excellent beyond words. Not sure why anyone thinks its unstable. As long as you get Ardour from Ardour and not your distro's repositories you shouldn't have a problem. And if you do have a problem, the Ardour forums are more active than the forums here or Mixbus'. Not only generally more active, but the 2 lead developers are almost always there to help.

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