Any recent DAW comparisons?

[tavasti]

Normal case, if you want something decent you have to make it yourself

That's a fair point but I think just using hearsay or lies in your review is pretty bad for everyone. For example, now anyone who posts on reddit will probably be linked to something suggesting Ardour crashes without doing anything which is very inaccurate and damaging for Ardour. Not to mention the inaccuracies which have been highlighted about qtractor, nor the falsities about the others - for example, renoise does currently have a slow release schedule but there was an update to it just a month or two ago, it does what it does extremely well.

I believe no review would be better than such a falsified and misleading one because if you have no information you can discover what is good but if you are told mistruths from the beginning you might not ever even get started.

I fully agree with you. However, ways to fix damage done:

- Go and comment on that reddit thread, fix false comments
- Write own, larger & better review, so that it is the best linux daw review. I've started my own try, but my progress is slow due lack of time, and I am such a novice in using any daw, so results are next to nothing. http://cargocollective.com/tavasti/Selecting-Linux-DAW

[chaocrator]

just a thought.
DAWs actually were invented to avoid session management.
the only practical way to do it is making DAW handle everything (and saving its state to a project file).
but on linux, we still have both )

[milkii]

I've started an open Linux FLOSS DAW/etc. Comparison Matrix spreadsheet if anyone wishes to contribute.

[chaocrator]

And stop using DSSI plugins please.

but why ?
i mean, i would, if someone ports whysynth to LV2, or (even better for my setup) to a standalone synth build.

[chaocrator]

it's just that we need to move on to a single format.
VST still has its licensing issues, even VST3. DSSI is quite limited in what you can do, LADSPA even more.

well, you have a point.
the only thing i strongly like about DSSI is its ultraminimalistic UI.
anyway, DSSI did not become that popular, so i would not miss it much.
VST is industry standard in proprietary audio world, and that's all. this fact by itself does not make it any better than LV2.

[Linuxmusician01]

I will never, ever stop using my beloved free 32 bit Windows VST's. I love them. And using them via DSSI in aa DAW or trying them out via the command line is super easy. I know that it has to be replaced by something as complicated as Carla or something as vague as linvst or airwave (brrrrrrr). But it would be great if something as easy as DSSI could be integrated in DAWs again...

LinVST really needs website with a clear layout to explain how to install/compile it and how to use it. GitHub is meant for developers and not for us simple users, period. And I as a simple user do not understand why DSSI (which is slowly getting totally unsupported) is in standard repositories and LinVST is not (its not even in KXstudio!). I understand the developers point of view but I think distro makers and developers might be a bit more understanding of us humble simple users. It is not strange that we users long for 'ye olde DSSI: don't blame us for it please.

[ubuntuuser]

I will never, ever stop using my beloved free 32 bit Windows VST's. I love them. And using them via DSSI in aa DAW or trying them out via the command line is super easy. I know that it has to be replaced by something as complicated as Carla or something as vague as linvst or airwave (brrrrrrr). But it would be great if something as easy as DSSI could be integrated in DAWs again...

LinVST really needs website with a clear layout to explain how to install/compile it and how to use it. GitHub is meant for developers and not for us simple users, period. And I as a simple user do not understand why DSSI (which is slowly getting totally unsupported) is in standard repositories and LinVST is not (its not even in KXstudio!). I understand the developers point of view but I think distro makers and developers might be a bit more understanding of us humble simple users. It is not strange that we users long for 'ye olde DSSI: don't blame us for it please.

LinVst is based on wacvst (mac) which was based on dssi-vst, so dssi things are in LinVst but there have been quite a few alterations and additions.

It's pretty simple to use.

The linvst.so file is like a template that can be bolted on to any windows vst (well some of them anyway).

So just say I have a windows vst plugin named delay.dll then I copy linvst.so to where delay.dll hangs out and rename linvst to delay.so and then load it (delay.so) into a linux daw.

The server files lin-vst-server... just get put into /usr/bin and that's the end of that.

[ubuntuuser]

No one is trying to take your precious windows plugins away.
dssi-vst is in the repos (or used to be) because it's quite old. smart choices made years ago, made it easy to build and use in the long term.

We're getting to a point where linux native stuff is decent enough to make music, so devs are focusing on that in order to actually make something happen in the opensource side of things.

LinVST is new, it's quite weird to build (lots of makefiles, not sure which one is best to use..) and hard to track changes and contribute.
We used to have a more concentrated community years ago, where talks would happen on IRC and mailing lists.
Now everyone seems to just want to do his own thing, instead of contributing to existing projects.
We have fst, dssi-vst, fsthost, airwave, vst-bridge and linvst all doing pretty much the same thing.
(and carla too, although it does much more)
I probably forgot a few projects.

@Linuxmusician01 I think you're confusing DSSI (the format) with dssi-vst (the magic plugin).
I am trying to make things as easy as dssi-vst, regarding carla.
You can already use "carla-single win32 vst /path/to/dll", which is not that complicated I believe.
Soon enough I'll adapt FeSTige (remember this?) to use carla's stuff.
This old thing... http://festige.sourceforge.net/snapshot.png
Oh, and right now you can drag&drop dlls into carla's rack view and it will load the plugin. No need for scanning or setting up paths if you don't want.


and btw, for the curious ones...
fsthost is based on fst code.
ardour-vst is based on fst.

carla's bridges were originally based on dssi-vst code, but now they're quite different in design.
linvst is based on dssi-vst.

airwave and vst-bridge are new implementations.

The makefiles are for different options.

There are embedded and standalone window options and some might prefer either one or the other in whatever host.

Some of the wine features such as drag and drop and whether a standalone window is always on top are also preference options.

LinVst is different in some respects to Airwave in how it interfaces into wine and some other things.

I used to sometimes use wacvst on the mac ages ago and I was thinking about porting it over to linux and LinVst came about because of that and because of Reaper Linux initially and then got extended to other daws in a compatibility way.

Airwave is based on Abique's vst bridge for anyone that's interested.

[ubuntuuser]

I understand, but all those options make me (and possibly others) confused regarding which one to use.
preferably you, the developer, selects the best one and focus on that.

If I was going to package it, which version would be the best?

hmm perhaps you can have a single makefile, and make this configurable at runtime?
env vars would do the trick, just make sure to document them.

Embedding the wine window into a hosts window was a real (censored) and drag and drop in a hosts embedded window is just about completely unobvious whereas the standalone window is pretty straightforward.

Airwave uses xembed for embedding which only half works.

I've gone another way.

So, I've always had an embedded and standalone window version option.

The default Makefile at github is for the standalone window version 64 bit.

There are also makefiles for 64/32 bit vsts or just 64 bit vsts.

The names of the makefiles are pretty obvious for what they are for (or I thought they were).

[chaocrator]

You can already use "carla-single win32 vst /path/to/dll", which is not that complicated I believe.

wow! never knew about this, and still confused how to run it with native plugins.
i see that LV2 is supported, but

Code: Select all

$ carla-single lv2 /usr/lib/lv2/Obxd.lv2/Obxd.so 
['/usr/lib/carla/carla-bridge-native', 'lv2', '(none)', '/usr/lib/lv2/Obxd.lv2/Obxd.so', '0']
libjack.so.0 loaded sucessfully!
Error opening file /usr/lib/lv2/carla.lv2/manifest.ttl (No such file or directory)
lilv_world_load_file(): error: Error loading file `file:///usr/lib/lv2/carla.lv2/manifest.ttl'
lilv_world_load_bundle(): error: Error reading file:///usr/lib/lv2/carla.lv2/manifest.ttl
error: attempt to map invalid URI `/usr/lib/lv2/Obxd.lv2/Obxd.so'
Carla assertion failure: "uriNode != nullptr" in file ../utils/CarlaLv2Utils.hpp, line 472
Carla assertion failure: "cPlugin != nullptr" in file ../utils/CarlaLv2Utils.hpp, line 512
Plugin failed to load, error was:
Failed to find the requested plugin

and

Code: Select all

$ carla-single lv2 /usr/lib/lv2/Obxd.lv2/
['/usr/lib/carla/carla-bridge-native', 'lv2', '(none)', '/usr/lib/lv2/Obxd.lv2/', '0']
libjack.so.0 loaded sucessfully!
Error opening file /usr/lib/lv2/carla.lv2/manifest.ttl (No such file or directory)
lilv_world_load_file(): error: Error loading file `file:///usr/lib/lv2/carla.lv2/manifest.ttl'
lilv_world_load_bundle(): error: Error reading file:///usr/lib/lv2/carla.lv2/manifest.ttl
error: attempt to map invalid URI `/usr/lib/lv2/Obxd.lv2/'
Carla assertion failure: "uriNode != nullptr" in file ../utils/CarlaLv2Utils.hpp, line 472
Carla assertion failure: "cPlugin != nullptr" in file ../utils/CarlaLv2Utils.hpp, line 512
Plugin failed to load, error was:
Failed to find the requested plugin

and it's totally unclear how do i specify the necessary stuff that it can't find by itself.

[chaocrator]

wow! it works now.
thanks a lot, that's very cool for my all-modular kind of setup.
by the way, can carla-single run headless ?

[tavasti]

I think this thread contains valuable information which can't be found by name of this thread, would it be possible for admins to split this thread?

[Linuxmusician01]

@Linuxmusician01 I think you're confusing DSSI (the format) with dssi-vst (the magic plugin).

Wow! Apparently I do.

I am trying to make things as easy as dssi-vst, regarding carla.
You can already use "carla-single win32 vst /path/to/dll", which is not that complicated I believe.
Soon enough I'll adapt FeSTige (remember this?) to use carla's stuff.
This old thing... http://festige.sourceforge.net/snapshot.png
Oh, and right now you can drag&drop dlls into carla's rack view and it will load the plugin. No need for scanning or setting up paths if you don't want.

I have some catching up to do. I'll study Carla more. Same goes for LinVST. Thank you all for the clarifications and the homework I'm gonna do.

[occulkot]

I've started an open Linux FLOSS DAW/etc. Comparison Matrix spreadsheet if anyone wishes to contribute.

Great comparsion, ive added renoise from what i remember from my head.

[chaocrator]

And carla itself can also run headless, provided you start it with the "-n" flag and a project file in the command-line.

i use it headless for a while yet, since no need in GUI when everything is controlled via MIDI by a hardware controller.

but sometimes i need only a single reverb plugin on the stage, and 13 inch laptop screen is not that big, so carla-single in headless mode is very handy for such kind of setup.