Some general approaches in optimizing Ableton Live within Wine-Staging

[monologue]

Hello there,

So some weeks ago, I got quite happy about realizing a good and stable setup of Ableton Live 10 Suite within Wine-Staging 7.0.
Moreover, I was able to install Arturia Pigments 3 (an awesome Synthesizer VST) and some other PlugIns - although nothing from iZotope works in Wine.
Having said that, I recently do experience horrible lag spikes, that - inasmuch as I understand - come from Arturia Pigments.
So freezing or disabling them is not enough: I have to flatten the Midi into audio or delete the whole track. I did increase the buffersize and latency-error-compensation within Ableton to a ridiculous size, meaning I even cannot use my Midi-Hardware properly.

So my current question is, what steps I could take to improve my cpu load. I use Kubuntu 21.10 with some Ubuntu-Studio installments that managed the audio configuration concerning the lowlatency-kernel and Jackd-Server. Unfortunately I failed in installing Wineasio (the reg32svr command does not find the wineasio.dll) and I am even not sure if it would improve anything.

My Hard- and Software:
Operating System: Kubuntu 21.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.22.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.86.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.13.0-23-lowlatency (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-4670 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 23,4 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD TAHITI

Do you guys have some general advices in optimizing my setup? Thanks in advance!

[tavasti]

I have tested Ableton Live Lite and Mixcraft with wine in linux. With both of them, need to adjust jack Frames/period insanely high, meaning huge latencies. With native linux Mixbus I can use values like 128 or 256, with windows DAWs I think I needed to put something like 8000 to get rid of xruns. Which means huge latency, not usable with playing midi keyboard.

[Linuxmusician01]

[...], not usable with playing midi keyboard.

That pretty much takes the Live out of Ableton Live.

Also, the question is: why use Linux if you need to run Windows/Apple software? I can understand that it's very handy to be able to run the odd Win app every now and then. But back in the day when I still needed to write reports in MS-Word (instead of LaTeX, aaaarrrghhh!) I'd rather use Windows. Until OpenOfficeOrg and Libre Office could do a reasonable job at creating simple Word docs. Simple docs, that is!

When I switched to Linux very slowly and gradually I was very busy with finding and trying out alternatives to Win software. Same thing goes for switching from Linux to Win: you'll have to find Win alternatives for your favourite software and utilities. I wouldn't want to run Linux stuff on a regular basis in the "all new and improved" Linux environment that's been baked into Windows 10 and 11. Nice that it's there for an emergency but that's all.

[tavasti]

[...], not usable with playing midi keyboard.

That pretty much takes the Live out of Ableton Live.

Maybe not. Using pads to start midi clips might still be usable, you just need to be ahead of time enough. And adjusting parameters, 0.3s late is not too bad?

[monologue]

Also, the question is: why use Linux if you need to run Windows/Apple software?

That's actually not the question, since we are in the subforum of Running non-linux software

But you got a point there. I decided to leave Ableton Live - It's a mess, at least in my concerns. Nevertheless, there are people running Ableton on Linux. Maybe they got an even powerful cpu, maybe they optimized their system well: Who knows.

I am currently checking out Bitwig Studio, which seems quite nice!

[Toejam76]

With Live 11 and Pigments 3 I get 10.2 ms /448 samples at 44.1 khz, but performance isn't great. CPU is around 20 % idle and up to 40 with one instance. winedrv is alsa, no jack or pulse. APU is a AMD 3400g with 16GB 3200 DDR4 on Ubuntu Studio with wine-staging and yabridge.
I really like the Arturia stuff, but they are much more demanding with wine. My 10 year old Mac handles those plugins as a AU much better.
Honestly I would rather use a native host with Vital if you want a wavetable synth.
Live is cool and all, but the emphasis is really on the live part. The pros are a consistent UI without hovering windows that works well for small laptop screens. The clip launcher isn't really special anymore. Bitwig can do that and I read that Ardour gets that feature, too. Bitwig might be the way to go or trigger midi clips. Carla could theoretically do that for a live setup.
I wish I could give some tipps for better performance, but I am mostly oblivious why things work or don't work.

[Linuxmusician01]

With Live 11 and Pigments 3 I get 10.2 ms /448 samples at 44.1 khz, but performance isn't great. CPU is around 20 % idle and up to 40 with one instance.[...]

I wonder how CPU is when you load a few (Windows) VST plugins.

[off topic] From the rest of your reply I understand that you really known your DAW's and Ableton Live. Respect! I couldn't tell the difference between Qtractor, Reaper and Ableton: all pretty complicated to me. They all seem to have 10.000 options and I've a hard time to find the 10 that I need. I don't "produce" or "make" a lot of completed music pieces/songs, but when I try then I record stuff track by track on a portable recorder and export the tracks to computer. And then I come to the conclusion that all I need is Audacity and some reverb plugins.

Reminds me: gotta get my head around using side chain compression with the Calf plugin in Qtractor some day. Gotta search these forums or the Qtractor forums for a topic on this.

[Toejam76]

I wonder how CPU is when you load a few (Windows) VST plugins.

Bad 2-3 Pigment instances in Live and before it crackles with the first preset patch. Forgot to to look up how many voices are played. In Carla standalone every instance adds around 8 % DSP load idle,. Two Pigments triggered by a small Win VST midi sequencer (Harvest Mini) the load is at 60% and things are already getting unresponsive. I guess the workaround is to bounce to audio as soon as possible and mute/disable the plugin which I do anyway with bridged plugins. Too much load can cause crashes, but it depends on the plugin. Pigments particularly is pretty beefy.

Btw, if you record to an external recorder you could skip that step for example in Reaper by right-click on the rec button of the track, select Output Stereo compensated for example and it renders as a audio file.
Or make the instrument MIDI track, route the track into another track that renders audio by dragging and dropping the route icon of the MIDI track to the second to render both midi and audio at once. You could add more audio tracks with different FX plugins with that method and enable/mute them to preview (if that makes sense).

[tavasti]

Also, the question is: why use Linux if you need to run Windows/Apple software? I can understand that it's very handy to be able to run the odd Win app every now and then. But back in the day when I still needed to write reports in MS-Word (instead of LaTeX, aaaarrrghhh!) I'd rather use Windows. Until OpenOfficeOrg and Libre Office could do a reasonable job at creating simple Word docs. Simple docs, that is!

When I switched to Linux very slowly and gradually I was very busy with finding and trying out alternatives to Win software. Same thing goes for switching from Linux to Win: you'll have to find Win alternatives for your favourite software and utilities. I wouldn't want to run Linux stuff on a regular basis in the "all new and improved" Linux environment that's been baked into Windows 10 and 11. Nice that it's there for an emergency but that's all.

To starting with need, I need linux for my work. And sure, been running linux-only since 1994, I don't want any windows, and even less I want to have dual boot. All the rest is something I want. Like for example, making music. That is not strict need.

But then, why to run windows software or plugin in non-windows system? There may be many reasons, I'll mark what match for me
* [X] Want to try different sounds
* [X] Want to try different work flows
* [X] Want to use feature which is not available tools having natively
* [X] Looking for suitable DAW because not 100% happy with ones having
* [ ] Use same tools friends are using for simpler collaboration
* [ ] Use same tools have used before
* [X] possibly help other people to migrate away from windows

For me, I haven't really found optimal DAW for my use, and Ableton has some interesting features, specially for working with samples. Ableton license I am using is for Lite-version coming together with some midi controller. For sure, it won't be my main DAW, simply because I am not willing to pay that amount of money full version costs. So even if it would work ok (decent latency), would use it only for part of production.

And because of cost, Bitwig is not option I am considering.

[Linuxmusician01]

@tavasti: I hear you. I get where you're coming from.

[monologue]

So as it went to some Off-Talk anyway:

I made my journey to Linux in less then the recent year and I am ostensibly happy, not only having a system that works just the way you expect it but that is also more secure when it comes to corporations dealing with your personal data. I do prefer some privacy in this almost surveillanced world we are gettin' to. Therefore I am proud having substituted almost everything you need to work and for the parts that don't work well: There are nifty workarounds and somehow you might manage a suitable solution - Even if that means using a virtual machine (Rekordbox doesn't like Wine for example).

To come to an end: I am very interested in seeing which ways we might come with sticking to Linux