What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

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blockflute
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What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by blockflute »

I am completely new to this - had never heard of a DAW before this week!

I generally use Debian, a fairly customised installation but with the stock kernel. I have tried simply installing Ardour from the deb repos, and it worked ok: I was able to import a track a friend sent me, add one of my own, and export the result. I can't imagine ever doing anything a great deal more complicated than that, and I don't think I would be looking at long pieces or more than, say, 4 or 5 tracks. I will be doing this on a laptop - a Thinkpad X1 3rd gen, so not the very latest, but not bad. I might add some sort of external sound card. I only anticipate recording sound from an acoustic source via a microphone, not working with electronic inputs, midi, or special effects.

Would installing a complete linux that is geared to AV work really be useful/necessary? It would include eg a low-latency kernel, though I had no problem with the stock one, and presumably other things would be configured for max benefit to AV software (so I wouldn't get the memory restrictions message Ardour currently gives me at startup), but I have no idea how much any of this matters.

If a full system seems to be the way to go, which one? I don't use the laptop for much else so it would be fine to dedicate it to recording work. I have tried Ubuntu Studio and AVLinux, briefly, via installing them on an external drive. I see there is a system called LibraZiK which I have not tried - might do that today. It looks like it is also Debian based. That would be good for me as I wouldn't have to learn anything else - I don't know how different Ubuntu is from Debian (I know it's a derivative, but I think it might be more distantly related than AVLinux's MX platform). My own thoughts, that I would be grateful for comments on, are:

AVLinux - seems to be well regarded and MX is close to Debian. It is put together by a single individual, so if he gives up, I suppose that's potentially the end of the distro unless someone else takes it over. Also, I was surprised, given Deb's reputation for being slow to update packages, that the Thunderbird in MX could not deal with my existing configuration as it is too old. I don't know how up-to-date other packages might be.

Ubuntu Studio - seems to get more negative press than AVLinux, though I can't see any obvious reason why. It has Plasma desktop which I have never used, but I could either try to get used to it or just install the studio package over a different Ubuntu version. I don't know if there are any drawbacks to that method. I would guess that both current support and long-term stability are better for Ubuntu than for the other alternatives. Thunderbird worked!

LibraZiK - another single person operation, so same drawback as AVLinux. Also clearly francophone orientated, and I do not speak French. It seems to me that it would have to be significantly better than AVLinux (for my purposes) to be worth dealing with that.

Many thanks in anticipation for any help offered!
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by LAM »

I use Debian, once it is configured well and you install the software and the repositories (eg. KXStudio) you need I see few reasons to install another distro.

in mix, nobody can hear your screen

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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

blockflute wrote: Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:35 am I am completely new to this - had never heard of a DAW before this week!

I was able to import a track a friend sent me, add one of my own, and export the result. I can't imagine ever doing anything a great deal more complicated than that, and I don't think I would be looking at long pieces or more than, say, 4 or 5 tracks.
Welcome to the wonderful world of DAWs :)

I haven't used Ardour but https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free (free, closed source) instead to exchange projects. It's got a very handy export-complete-project-in-a-single-file feature that makes this easy, especially for projects with more than 1 track where some mixing is involved. Ardour may have something similar. If not you may need to manually place each track in the timeline or reset any levels and automation curves which can be a trivial time thief.
...I can't imagine ever doing anything a great deal more complicated than that, and I don't think I would be looking at long pieces or more than, say, 4 or 5 tracks. I will be doing this on a laptop - a Thinkpad X1 3rd gen, so not the very latest, but not bad. I might add some sort of external sound card. I only anticipate recording sound from an acoustic source via a microphone, not working with electronic inputs, midi, or special effects.

Would installing a complete linux that is geared to AV work really be useful/necessary? It would include eg a low-latency kernel, though I had no problem with the stock one, and presumably other things would be configured for max benefit to AV software (so I wouldn't get the memory restrictions message Ardour currently gives me at startup), but I have no idea how much any of this matters.
- since you explain your case so clearly I'm pretty sure that you don't need to bother with another kernel.

As @rghvdberg pointed out during the video meet last Saturday you basically only need low latency for certain tasks that involves real time recording (multiple) tracks. I'd expect that any stock kernel and most audio interfaces are capable of recording a single mono or stereo input at buffer sizes at 256 or even 128. 256 equates to ca. 5ms latency, that's the delay the processing adds from the input to the disk. Then there might be a slight delay on top going back to your speakers or headphones. In total the overall latency will not make you miss a beat.

If you start throwing more CPU demanding tasks into the chain, like reverbs f.ex., your OS performance will be impacted of course, relative to CPU clock speed, amount of RAM, disk speed and specific config of DAW and plugins. But if it's still usable that doesn't matter that much as long as you're using soft synths or samples, mixing or playing back tracks. If you reach a limit anyway and hear crackling or the OS more or less freezes you can try a higher buffer size, since input latency is irrelevant, or render some tracks to a file and turn off their plugins to increase performance.
If a full system seems to be the way to go, which one? I don't use the laptop for much else so it would be fine to dedicate it to recording work. I have tried Ubuntu Studio and AVLinux, briefly, via installing them on an external drive. I see there is a system called LibraZiK which I have not tried - might do that today. It looks like it is also Debian based. That would be good for me as I wouldn't have to learn anything else -
They are great as showcases for all kinds of audio software and plugins. AVLinux in particular for easy Wine usage. Ubuntu Studio for easy jack front-end control interface and bridging of multiple interfaces. That's just my exp., others will highlight other things of course.

AVL CEO CIO @GMaq is also active here as are many of the users so you can expect quick and solid advice from the community. Probably likewise for Ubuntu Studio somewhere. @briandc uses LibraZik AFAIK and might be able to tell more about that one.

The MX Linux base for AVL makes it easy to install frugally. That's basically the same as booting from USB only the same OS files required are on the hard drive instead. This can simplify sandboxing so you can experiment all you want and only at session end, before shutting down, decide whether to keep the changes or not. When resting on disk all the OS files are compressed which enables simple backup (just copy and paste) and one or more variant versions (with another kernel f.ex.).

It also makes RAM disk boot possible, where all or some parts of OS and /home/user is copied into RAM instead of read from the drive. If you've got plenty of RAM it'll typically speed up most read and writes by a factor 10 or more. In both cases you'll also preserve disk life cycle as basically nothing is is read or written during session. Compared to using system backup or restore points that involves a lot of disk read/write. I'm excited about it because it keeps my old clunky HDDs going a few years more and saves me buying a new SSD or NVMe.
I don't know how different Ubuntu is from Debian (I know it's a derivative, but I think it might be more distantly related than AVLinux's MX platform).
don't know either but have been able to install some .deb files marked as Ubuntu only on Debian with no issues.
AVLinux - seems to be well regarded and MX is close to Debian. It is put together by a single individual, so if he gives up, I suppose that's potentially the end of the distro unless someone else takes it over.
AVL scripts and configs will hopefully remain online in that case so it wouldn't be that complicated to fork it. The kernels used however are paid by users donations to a developer AFAIK (as per http://www.bandshed.net/av-linux-kernel-repository)
Also, I was surprised, given Deb's reputation for being slow to update packages, that the Thunderbird in MX could not deal with my existing configuration as it is too old. I don't know how up-to-date other packages might be.
Maybe you can find a newer version on https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.mo ... hunderbird that can run on MX or any debian
Ubuntu Studio - seems to get more negative press than AVLinux, though I can't see any obvious reason why. It has Plasma desktop which I have never used, but I could either try to get used to it or just install the studio package over a different Ubuntu version. I don't know if there are any drawbacks to that method. I would guess that both current support and long-term stability are better for Ubuntu than for the other alternatives. Thunderbird worked!
I've used Ubuntu Studio XFCE version (via https://sourceforge.net/projects/jamulus-os) but prefers Plasma but it doesn't really matter for audio workflow and the u-launcher keeps me away from any other program menus anyway. There are some posts on how diff. DE/WMs may impact audio performance at viewtopic.php?f=27&t=22027. Not sure if that's relevant to your usage at all though.
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by blockflute »

Thanks both for replying - a particular thank you to Fmajor7add9 for all the additional info. I will just stick with debian for now, it will save with coping with too many new things at once. (Typically, my desktop machine has just blown up, so I need to use the laptop for everything - not really the time to be trying out new OS versions.) I have plenty of disk space - plenty of disks, in fact - so will set some or all of the AV distros up as alternatives once I get a new machine sorted, then I can try them out longer term. I'll also take a look at waveform-free.

In the meantime, I'll probably be back with some more very basic questions quite soon!
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

blockflute wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:01 am (Typically, my desktop machine has just blown up, so I need to use the laptop for everything - not really the time to be trying out new OS versions.) I have plenty of disk space - plenty of disks, in fact - so will set some or all of the AV distros up as alternatives once I get a new machine sorted, then I can try them out longer term.
I'd say go frugal then to make transistion back to desktop easier or even switch seamlessly between them going ahead. And you can leave everything on the laptop HDD as is.

https://mxlinux.org/wiki/system/frugal-installation/ and https://download.tuxfamily.org/antix/do ... tence.html are sort of helpful if you're into dense text info (AKA RTFM :) ) otherwise just ask on their forum and they'll set you up quickly.

waveform-free is multi-platform and nicely simple, I find it's default keyboard shortcuts especially helpful for recording, splitting and trimming tracks because you can rewind and fast forward smoothly on the timeline with arrow keys left/right.

Don't dismiss Ardour though, there's a full demo of its commercial friendly twin Mixbus 32C incl. in AV Linux with a very nice interface at first glance. It's on sale cheaply once a year so I've heard - https://harrisonconsoles.com/mixbus32c-landing/where
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by blockflute »

> I'd say go frugal

Frugal is my middle name! Seriously, new desktop will be built largely from the parts box, and I've got several HDDs kicking around that I can put spare OSs on to try out. I've also got a couple of external disks I can use to boot the laptop from - in fact, I've put AVLinux on one and started to have a tinker with it. I downloaded a LibraZiK image but it wouldn't boot for some reason, maybe I'll try that one day too.
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

blockflute wrote: Fri Apr 02, 2021 6:51 pm > I'd say go frugal

Frugal is my middle name! Seriously, new desktop will be built largely from the parts box, and I've got several HDDs kicking around that I can put spare OSs on to try out. I've also got a couple of external disks I can use to boot the laptop from - in fact, I've put AVLinux on one and started to have a tinker with it. I downloaded a LibraZiK image but it wouldn't boot for some reason, maybe I'll try that one day too.
Great, keep us posted

https://ventoy.net is handy for hosting several ISO's on the same disk when you're hopping

best of luck from a fellow frugalian
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

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Wow - ventoy is brilliant: thank you, I had not come across that before. It even booted LibraZiK which gives me a chance to play around with it easily. Cheers!
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Re: What is the minimum I need for basic audio mixing?

Post by Fmajor7add9 »

blockflute wrote: Sun Apr 04, 2021 9:15 am Wow - ventoy is brilliant: thank you, I had not come across that before. It even booted LibraZiK which gives me a chance to play around with it easily. Cheers!
if you want to save files and settings inbetween boots https://ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html support some distros
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