Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by GMaq »

alextee wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 5:52 pm
GMaq wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 4:23 pm Oh-oh..

Problem already, I installed the Deb for Debian Bullseye (11) in AVL-MXE 21 and I pulled in the dependencies but I'm getting a terminal error:

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zrythm: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/zrythm/libgtk-4.so.1: undefined symbol: wl_proxy_marshal_flags
Anyone else using it on Debian 11 or any guidance @alextee ?
Ah I think this happened due to the updated gtk version... If you go back a release or 2 it should work. I need to roll back to previous gtk versions on debian 11 or see if I can include lib wayland client without messing with the distro.

I'll fix this for next release
OK, thanks!

Will try the AppImage for now until I see a new release posted

*Edit.. AppImage works! It's by far my favorite format anyway for these kinds of projects

**Edit 2...Gah! I was wrong... Appimage runs and opens but once opened window is completely unresponsive and has to be manually killed to exit. Seems this release doesn't enjoy Debian very much.. :o
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by sunrat »

alextee wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 5:52 pm
GMaq wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 4:23 pm Oh-oh..

Problem already, I installed the Deb for Debian Bullseye (11) in AVL-MXE 21 and I pulled in the dependencies but I'm getting a terminal error:

Code: Select all

zrythm: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/zrythm/libgtk-4.so.1: undefined symbol: wl_proxy_marshal_flags
Anyone else using it on Debian 11 or any guidance @alextee ?
Ah I think this happened due to the updated gtk version... If you go back a release or 2 it should work. I need to roll back to previous gtk versions on debian 11 or see if I can include lib wayland client without messing with the distro.

I'll fix this for next release
I posted a reply to GMaq about this in another thread - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24300&p=142999#p142999
Zrythm v1.0.0.beta.1.0.1 opens and sound comes out in (almost) vanilla Bullseye with Liquorix kernel same as AVL-MXE. Several dependencies were pulled in during install:

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apt install ./zrythm-trial-1.0.0.beta.1.0.1-1_amd64.deb
Install: zrythm-trial:amd64 (1.0.0.beta.1.0.1), librtaudio6:amd64 (5.1.0~ds1-1, automatic), guile-2.2-libs:amd64 (2.2.7+1-6, automatic), fonts-dseg:amd64 (0.46-1, automatic)
@GMaq are you missing any of those?
No GTK4 packages are installed.
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by alextee »

I fixed the issue in the latest nightly build. I reverted to gtk 4.6.0 and checked it works on debian 11. I will make a new release later today
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by alextee »

sunrat wrote: Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:34 pm No GTK4 packages are installed.
Zrythm deb packages bundle gtk4 and other libs that debian is missing in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/zrythm
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by alextee »

@GMaq just released beta 1.1.11. deb package should be fixed now
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by GMaq »

alextee wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 4:40 pm @GMaq just released beta 1.1.11. deb package should be fixed now
Hi, and thanks for the fix! Some progress but still some problems..

With the latest 1.1.11 update the zrythm Debian 11 package does launch and go through it's setup now however once the main window opens after a couple of clicks it stops responding completely to any mouse input including the window control buttons and it has to be killed with Xkill. I'm using the ALSA rtaudio backend if that makes any difference..?

Can anyone else on Debian Bullseye 11 or AV Linux MX 21 Edition corroborate this on their install with version 1.1.11 specifically?
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by alextee »

GMaq wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 9:25 pm
alextee wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 4:40 pm @GMaq just released beta 1.1.11. deb package should be fixed now
Hi, and thanks for the fix! Some progress but still some problems..

With the latest 1.1.11 update the zrythm Debian 11 package does launch and go through it's setup now however once the main window opens after a couple of clicks it stops responding completely to any mouse input including the window control buttons and it has to be killed with Xkill. I'm using the ALSA rtaudio backend if that makes any difference..?

Can anyone else on Debian Bullseye 11 or AV Linux MX 21 Edition corroborate this on their install with version 1.1.11 specifically?
plain ALSA is not working and ALSA rtaudio is problematic. you can run `zrythm_launch` from the command line to see any error messages. I guess it fails to open a device and then blocks - that's how rtaudio does it and it never returns control to zrythm when using ALSA. there is no reason at all to use ALSA, I might even remove the option from the binaries to avoid these issues. if you want a pro audio setup then use JACK, otherwise use PulseAudio (both are compatible with PipeWire too). I don't think ALSA is supposed to be used by high level applications

EDIT: you can run `zrythm_launch --dummy` to launch zrythm with the dummy backend so you can go in the preferences and change things
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by GMaq »

alextee wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 9:34 pm
plain ALSA is not working and ALSA rtaudio is problematic. you can run `zrythm_launch` from the command line to see any error messages. I guess it fails to open a device and then blocks - that's how rtaudio does it and it never returns control to zrythm when using ALSA. there is no reason at all to use ALSA, I might even remove the option from the binaries to avoid these issues. if you want a pro audio setup then use JACK, otherwise use PulseAudio (both are compatible with PipeWire too). I don't think ALSA is supposed to be used by high level applications

EDIT: you can run `zrythm_launch --dummy` to launch zrythm with the dummy backend so you can go in the preferences and change things
Thanks, switching to PulseAudio for the time being seems to have freed things up..

If you'll pardon my venturing an opinion I strongly disagree with you about JACK, I've recorded and had a Studio that does some commercial work with Linux for 15 years now, I have also distributed a ready to use Linux Audio Operating System for most of that time... No I'm not a coder nor an Audio API expert but I'm far from a newb. Your main competitors Ardour (+Mixbus) Reaper and Bitwig are using ALSA backends now and for me with Ardour and Mixbus performance and stability with ALSA have never been better and I'm not dabbling... we put some real hours in using various outboard USB interfaces with high track counts.

10 years ago Linux was about modularity and the state of combined Audio and MIDI was quite terrible (to be kind) and without the modularity afforded by JACK doing Audio with MIDI would not even have been possible. But in those 10 years times have changed and more people (of course not all people) are seeking a similar monolithic DAW workflow on Linux that they have enjoyed on MacOS and Windows and vendors have answered the call with Ardour maturing greatly and joining with Harrison, Reaper porting to Linux and BitWig and Tracktion providing Linux builds of their products from their inception. You have done an astounding amount of work with Zrythm and it's evolution has been nothing short of incredible! My devotion to Ardour and exhaustion with it's MIDI situation has made me sit up and take notice of Zrythm and it is obviously getting very close to sharing the same stage with all of these competitors..

JACK and the need for it is waning, PulseAudio (and JACK to a large degree) is waning and being replaced by Pipewire but it is really not a Pro-Audio solution yet. ALSA will be the core foundational Audio system for quite some time and I think in a true professional Audio context the DAW should connect directly to the underlying Audio bedrock for serious work without compromise. An actual working Studio is going to be far more concerned with rock solid direct to core performance and best latency potential than the ability watch Youtube Videos while the bass player is doing his Overdubs. I think a professional DAW should be able to use the system core Audio amenities reliably and of course also have the ability to work with Desktop Audio servers if wanted but not depend or require them being present, I think leaving off where the Desktop Audio servers end (regardless of which server we're talking about) is a very bad idea for professional Audio applications. Additionally ALSA MIDI is the superior choice for MIDI i/o and avoids some of the jitter issues associated with JACK MIDI.

For those new to Linux in the current days JACK isn't necessarily the go-to anymore when trying a system and although I have spent a lot of time creating AV Linux to be pretty much seamless to the user as far as JACK and PulseAudio I for one will rejoice when I can distribute a professional Linux Audio OS without JACK at all..
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by digitsun »

Wow... I read in this post a lot of things what are really interesting. For a long time I've read what for work with audio and midi in Linux with professional results was necessary JACK. And now @GMaq says that the only you need is ALSA. I suppose that you lost connectivity or... Is possible join Ardour with Hydrogen without Jack? I don't think so. Gmaq you are a professional and I respect your opinions. Are you develop these ideas and ALSA workflow in the AVLinux manual or another site?
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by bluzee »

there is no reason at all to use ALSA, I might even remove the option from the binaries to avoid these issues. if you want a pro audio setup then use JACK, otherwise use PulseAudio (both are compatible with PipeWire too). I don't think ALSA is supposed to be used by high level applications
Direct to ALSA is exactly what you want for high end audio. In a DAW environment where you don't need additional routing it is what you want. Jack can give you additional routing options with low latency but it's still a layer on top of ALSA. PulseAudio is not something I would ever consider using for a DAW.

Personally I love JACK, but I don't use DAW much. Most DAW people hate JACK . Pipewire doesn't change anything, it just combines JACK and PulseAudio. If your DAW doesn't work with ALSA I would say you have a very big problem.
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by GMaq »

digitsun wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 12:48 am Wow... I read in this post a lot of things what are really interesting. For a long time I've read what for work with audio and midi in Linux with professional results was necessary JACK. And now @GMaq says that the only you need is ALSA. I suppose that you lost connectivity or... Is possible join Ardour with Hydrogen without Jack? I don't think so. Gmaq you are a professional and I respect your opinions. Are you develop these ideas and ALSA workflow in the AVLinux manual or another site?
Let me be clear,

If you want to work within a DAW host + Plugins with no outside Audio applications connected... so for known-working examples Ardour or Reaper then you simply have to pick the ALSA driver in the Audio/MIDI Setup Window and select the Audio device you want to use with the DAW. In this case there is no need for either JACK or even PulseAudio to do your recording, Ardour or Reaper will connect directly to ALSA both Audio and MIDI..

Now... if you want to use Hydrogen with Ardour then you definitely need JACK, If your DAW only works with JACK (ie MuSE or Qtractor) then you need JACK.. if you want to surf the web and listen to music or watch Youtube Videos while you are using Ardour you will need PulseAudio and JACK working together but to use Ardour, Mixbus, Reaper, Bitwig by themselves no need for JACK.. :wink:

The AV Linux User Manual touches on this very briefly but not in detail for Ardour and Mixbus on Pages 61-64:
http://bandshed.net/pdf/AVL-MXE-User-Manual.pdf
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by alextee »

ALSA is unusable as-is because it doesn't have an API usable by apps like DAWs. It's a very low level API intended for things like JACK and PipeWire. In the context of a DAW, you have to make it work by implementing it the way JACK does and there is no point doing that when JACK already does that. JACK is a thin layer on top of ALSA that makes ALSA usable for things like DAWs. The fact that it also allows connections is just a bonus. I still don't see any reason to use ALSA. There are absolutely no advantages in implementing an ALSA backend directly as a DAW. You get the exact same latencies with JACK. There are only disadvantages like having to maintain this hacky backend that is clearly not intended for audio applications, and people picking ALSA and saying Zrythm is broken because ALSA deadlocks or whatever (which is proof it's not an API suitable for audio apps). Do you actually get better latencies without JACK?

Also you are the first and only person who has ever wanted to use ALSA. Everyone else either uses JACK or PipeWire or doesn't know much about audio in which case PulseAudio will do the job, so there is not even any demand for an ALSA backend.

>Additionally ALSA MIDI is the superior choice for MIDI i/o and avoids some of the jitter issues associated with JACK MIDI.

How true is this? Have you discussed it with JACK devs? Is it a known issue? I have never heard of anyone experiencing device issues with JACK. It just works.
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by Kott »

I use ALSA for my audio stuff. I use JACK sometimes, but not on a regular basis. JACK produces rare pops, while ALSA doesn't. I admit that something has to be configured in my JACK setup, but why, when ALSA works out-of-box?

So, why I need a JACK when I don't need it? :)
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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by milkii »

The rhetoric above went into myth territory. DAW people do like JACK, says Alex the dev of Zrythm and many others in #lad (maybe devs who have decades of experience and had a hand in creating JACK might not mind direct ALSA coding, and Paul/las, for winning-a-debate purposes, conveniently doesn't qualify their "you don't need JACK" with "if you're only using one bit of software like Ardour that supports ALSA"). One can't just say "I make a distro that I hope can avoid JACK entirely in the future" and a post later say "well if you're want to use more than one app, JACK is probably the way to go". Anyway, if your in a pro studio, it would be a stupid thing to put your recording software on your production computer, that's just bad practice. JACK does not add latency or jitter and any of that our pops are configuration related. The need for JACK is not waining, I'm not sure where that was pulled from. Many users have gone to PipeWire but that emulates JACK API so most of the audio software used will still be a JACK client. Plus JACK has better metadata (as it stands), showing port CV, MIDNAM, etc. And PipeWire combines not just two but four systems, i.e. also ALSA and PipeWire. The only released PipeWire audio-first app I know of (that isn't a visual graph app that's just showing JACK, PW and PA apps anyway) is EasyEffects. And JACK is multiplatform. And Firefox can be built to output to JACK, and that compile option is set to true for Arch and Fedora (iirc) binary packages.

If people are going to make pointed arguments, can they please check their facts with people on IRC or on mailing lists? This is how fear, uncertainly and doubt start/fester.

they/them ta / libreav.org / wiki.thingsandstuff.org/Audio and related pages / gh

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Re: Z-curious... anybody using Zrythm for actual production?

Post by GMaq »

@milkii

What rhetoric or myth? Ten years ago every Linux DAW that was usable in a way comparable to how people work on other platforms required JACK to work, now four of the front-running DAWs (Linux and cross-platform) work direct to ALSA... Plug in your interface fire them up and they DO that. How is that myth, or rhetoric or hyperbole of any kind??

And how else in the context of Pro-Audio Monolithic Hosts + Plugin DAWs which was clearly the context in which I was speaking from the get go what would you say the need for JACK is currently?? Would you say it's increasing?? No, it's not required for these DAWs at all so you would have to conclude it is the opposite of increasing, it's not even waning... I was wrong about that. In this context it's not required at all..

Do I have anything against JACK or PipeWire? Of course not they are sound servers that facilitate a lot of cool things on a Linux Desktop system and in the case of JACK It's still the ticket for other great DAW choices but is it required for Professional Audio work these days? Not in a number of cases illustrated above. That's a fact, I don't have to like or dislike JACK for it to be so and I'm pointing out it is now so..

You cannot install a Linux Distro that isn't intended for Pro Audio and get to work across all scenarios... If you are preparing a Distro for Audio you need to have either jackdbus (which barely anyone starting out even knows exists or understands). Or you need an outside script like pajackconnect in AV Linux or you have to write a specialized tool (Cadence, Ubuntu Studio Controls) just to manage the Audio servers. So again in context as someone who has had to do this over 14 years in a few different ways to make it 'just work' for people and as someone who currently uses ALSA for Pro Recording it seems hopeful that in the future (and maybe eventually Pipewire will seal the deal on this) that I will not have to create a specialized JACK-based set of Audio workarounds for people to install and use my project and THAT is what I look forward to. People coming to Linux installing a Distro of their choice and enjoying what we have to offer for Pro Audio, can we not agree on that at least?

Obviously we are not there yet so I (and the other Audio Dists) provide systems that do work with the current realities of applications that require JACK and PulseAudio integration and that of course is how I can say both things at the same time, you really don't understand the concept of what someone does in a current situation and what they aspire to in the future both being possible to say at the same time without being hypocritical? I'm sure you do..

As far as ALSA MIDI jitter etc. I'm sure Robin Gareus and Paul Davis can give you API chapter and Verse on that, I'm sure they haven't been saying it on Ardour's forum and IRC for years because it's not true. @alextee you have free reign and free choice to do what ever you want to do and you have solid reasons to want to do things in a different way.. I for one am very grateful you're doing MIDI in a different way! To say ALSA doesn't properly (or can't) work with a Linux DAW and to suggest I'm the only person who would want this seems a bit dubious. I think direct ALSA support is important and will be one of the things that people check off when looking at Linux Professional level DAWs in the future, take that and do what you will. It seems getting real about where JACK is in the current state of things in a holistic sense has stepped on some toes... Not my intention at all, I merely wanted to underline the emerging increased importance of direct to ALSA support.
Last edited by GMaq on Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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