How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

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gabtram
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How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by gabtram »

hi to all,

i'm Gabriele and i'm fresh new user of this forum.
Someitimes i lurked this forum but i never wrote on the board.

So how are you?

I'm discontinued user of daw's, registration program and sequencer since early 2000, but i never go deep. I used Fruity loops first version, reason, soundforge and audacity, ableton and some times pro tools. I'm also a music passionate and seldom a guitar, bass and synth player. In the last 3 years i go crazy for some instruments like Carla Host, Jack, Audacity.
I recorded, not in a good way, a 9 track demo usign carla, my external alva nano face usb card and audacity. I used audacity as a daw, like a multitrack and then arranged the tracks to match tempo. But it is so difficult, so i started to find a way to use qtractor and find a mixing and mastering software, and drum machine like hydrogen, so i realized: i use windows but all this software is native free open source program!
So i decided to change and start using linux music, i'm a just a linux user (i manged my test and local webserver, creating website in php/laravel in lamp stack ), so i'm just ready to fight with linux distros and software dependencies.

I'd like to ask you something.

1) There are many linux distros for music. I read something about ubutnu studio, fedora, Avlinux. And on real time and low latency kernel. Which are your config? Which is the best for you? What type of hardware do you use? Could i try to use a VM or is a better a new pc? I have an old i7 2th gen with 8mb of ram, is it good?
2) I'd like to try ardour, with Carla, loading vst2 and vst3 plugins, also win plugin, and then using hydrogen. Ardour is also for mixing and mastering or do you use something different? Which is the best routing audio software? Jack or pipewire? I read something about but i can't have an idea yet. I'd like also to join Carla and Hydrogen like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeZWMjaAckA
3) I'd like also to produce and record a podcast. So i need to route browser, discord and something else to different channel creating virtual cables using cadence or something similar. Experience on that?
4) for diffent purpose seldom i have the need to reverse speech to audio from an audio file directly to google document shhet with mic function. I do this on windows with the help of voicemeeter (but i hate it cause it's too heavy) and vb cable. Which is your configuration to pass audio throuh virtual cable to an internal mic?

Pardon me but before start i'd like to find a way to have some clear ideas.

Bye
Thanks
Gabriele

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by bluzee »

If you want to install a system that is preconfigured and ready to start producing the AVL-MX is an excellent choice. Don't use a VM. Your i7 with 8Gb of ram will do well unless you have some very heavy weight projects planned.

Pipewire is still a work in progress. For routing Jack is still the best choice.

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by Impostor »

Welcome!

1-An audio oriented distro is really unneccessary if you don't mind tweaking a bit yourself. Just use the distro you're most comfortable with. You can manually tweak your system's performance, and install alternative low latency kernels if you feel you need the improvement.
8MB of RAM? I hope you mean 8GB? 8GB is fine for most mortals.

2-Pipewire's still a work in progress. I use QJackCtl for audio and midi routing (which is actually a GUI for Jack). There are some forum members here who are perfectly happy with pipewire though. Up to you.

3-With Jack or Pipewire you don't need to fool around with virtual cables like on Windows. In QJackCtl, you can route all audio and midi between jack clients. You can route Pulseaudio to Jack clients with pulseaudio-module-jack.

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

gabtram wrote: Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:22 pm

[...]
1) There are many linux distros for music?

I my opinion: too many. :wink:

Linux starters like you use 'm because they think it's a quick an elegant way to get into Linux and Music Production at the same time. In my opinion it's more like or. That is: either you know your way around Linux and you use a special "Linux Music" distro. Or you don't know your way around Linux yet and then you'd better use something like Ubuntu. Why? Because you're gonna ask a lot of general Linux questions and the average basic general Linuxer only know things work in general. They are bound to not know how to get things done in Music distro's. That goes for any "special" or "exotic" Liux distro. I've been using Linux for over 15 years and I never, ever will use an exotic Linux distro. That's because, unfortunately, Linux changes (a lot sometimes) from year to year and I still have to ask basic questions in all kinds of Linux forums and I have to look up info on the internet. That info is, of course, never about exotic distro's, only for Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

On the other hand, the makers of some of those distro's are active here and you might get lucky. Choose wisely. Everybody here can help you with Ubuntu. Some with, for instance, Ubuntu Studio.

gabtram wrote: Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:22 pm

[...] And on real time and low latency kernel.

AFAIK that's not necessay with modern kernels anymore.

gabtram wrote: Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:22 pm

Which are your config?

An Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) distro. I unfortunately have to add some software via repositories that do not come out of the box w/ Ubuntu like the latest version of Qtractor, Ardour, Chrome and some more.

gabtram wrote: Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:22 pm

[...] What type of hardware do you use?

Concerning audio and Midi on Linux: try to only use "class compliant" hardware. It's hard to determine if hardware is class compliant. If it doesn't need a driver on an Apple computer it usually is. Avoid hardware that needs a Windows utility to configure it like the plague!!!!. Don't let others tell you otherwise!!!

gabtram wrote: Wed Nov 23, 2022 3:22 pm

[...]
2) I'd like to try ardour,

I had to jump to hoops to get the latest version of Ardour to work w/ my distro (separate repo or someting...). And then I learned that some time ago they changed the format of their save files (or someting like that) which to me means that it is a little bit to far from a finished product. And it crashed etc. Reaper was more stable and easier to install. Reapers menu structure, however, is incomprehensible to me. I use Qtractor, who's developer is active on this forum.

Choose wisely and good luck! :)

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by tseaver »

@gabtram

I would recommend you try the most recent version of AV Linux, available here:
https://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

You can even boot it from a USB key and play around with the already-installed apps (Ardour for recording, for instance), to verify that it recognizes your audio interface, etc.

Ubuntu, Mixbus32C; acoustic blues / country / jazz
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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by RyanH »

I agree with Imposter - the computer you have should be powerful enough.

I hear AVLinux is great. I use Ubuntu Studio, which I quite like, and usually QTractor for recording. I haven't used Pipewire, but Jack works well and allows you to connect basically anything to anything, like this...

sample.png
sample.png (65.52 KiB) Viewed 2785 times

The only thing I don't know about is routing your browser through Jack. When I turn on Jack, Firefox stops making sound. Maybe a different browser would work, but if not, you can always turn off Jack and use Pulseaudio with whatever software you're using. You don't have to do anything - Pulseaudio is the default when you don't have Jack running.

Both AVLinux and Ubuntu studio come with Jack and Pulseaudio already set up.

A lot of Windows plugins will work natively on Linux, and for those that don't, I think some people use something called Yabridge to make it work. I'm sure you'd find lots of help on this forum for that.

Good luck!

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

I'm afraid the topic starter may have lost interest in the topic... :roll:

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by Impostor »

RyanH wrote: Fri Nov 25, 2022 8:31 am

The only thing I don't know about is routing your browser through Jack. When I turn on Jack, Firefox stops making sound.

Install pulseaudio-module-jack if you haven't already, add

pacmd set-default-sink jack_out

to "execute script after startup" in qjackctl's options. Then in the graph you'll have a PulseAudio JACK Sink box with audio ports.

I also get a PulseAudio JACK Source box which can be used to route audio from Jack to applications which use PulseAudio (for example, I can route audio in this way to CoolEdit wave-editor, which runs in wine, if I wanted to).

EDIT: It seems adding pacmd set-default-sink jack_out isn't even necessary (anymore).

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by RyanH »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:56 am

I'm afraid the topic starter may have lost interest in the topic... :roll:

Haha, I wonder sometimes when someone new asks something and we slam them with a bunch of details. Hopefully Gabriele comes back and completes the Linux transition. I'm certainly glad I did.

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by RyanH »

Impostor wrote: Fri Nov 25, 2022 3:40 pm
RyanH wrote: Fri Nov 25, 2022 8:31 am

The only thing I don't know about is routing your browser through Jack. When I turn on Jack, Firefox stops making sound.

Install pulseaudio-module-jack if you haven't already, add

pacmd set-default-sink jack_out

to "execute script after startup" in qjackctl's options. Then in the graph you'll have a PulseAudio JACK Sink box with audio ports.

I also get a PulseAudio JACK Source box which can be used to route audio from Jack to applications which use PulseAudio (for example, I can route audio in this way to CoolEdit wave-editor, which runs in wine, if I wanted to).

EDIT: It seems adding pacmd set-default-sink jack_out isn't even necessary (anymore).

My last install had the PulseAudio sink option in the Audio tab, but this one doesn't. However, in that last install and also in this one, Firefox videos stop automatically when I start Jack. Not just the audio, but the video won't play. The play button changes to a pause button, as it normally would, but the video is frozen until I stop Jack. Strange.

On a semi-related note, I remember how nuts it drove me back when I was happily using KXStudio distro and Firefox decided to drop ALSA for sound. Then trying to install Pulse destroyed all my audio. :roll:

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by Impostor »

RyanH wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:17 am

My last install had the PulseAudio sink option in the Audio tab, but this one doesn't. However, in that last install and also in this one, Firefox videos stop automatically when I start Jack. Not just the audio, but the video won't play. The play button changes to a pause button, as it normally would, but the video is frozen until I stop Jack. Strange.

Weird. When starting Jack while running a yewtu.be video in Firefox, all I experience is a momentary pause in sound...

Do you at least get a ~/.config/pulse/number-default-sink file, with contents jack_out? Otherwise, try to change the output of Pulseaudio manually to Jack (eg with Pavucontrol).

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by RyanH »

Impostor wrote: Thu Dec 01, 2022 11:30 am

Weird. When starting Jack while running a yewtu.be video in Firefox, all I experience is a momentary pause in sound...

Do you at least get a ~/.config/pulse/number-default-sink file, with contents jack_out? Otherwise, try to change the output of Pulseaudio manually to Jack (eg with Pavucontrol).

I do have that file, but it only contains "alsa_output.usb-LOUD_Technologies_Inc._Onyx_Producer_2-2-00.analog-stereo", which must be an old entry because, in the test I just did, I was using the laptop's on-board sound card rather than the Onyx. Also, I would have only been outputting to the Onyx when I was using Jack set to use a separate interface (Behringer) as the main card, which was a while ago. So no jack_out entry.

Also, there doesn't seem to be an option in Pavucontrol or Settings-Audio to set Pulse to use Jack. Actually, in my tinkering, I did something which momentarily allowed Firefox to play through Jack, but then Pulse crashed (not sure what I did). This must be a quirk of the current Ubuntu Studio build because, as I mentioned, my previous install did have Pulse source and sink entries in the QjackCtl audio tab, whereas this one doesn't. I might try that trick you mentioned in your previous post.

For my purposes, just using ALSA/Pulse for Firefox is fine, but maybe Gabriele would have a need to use the browser with Jack.

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by gabtram »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Fri Nov 25, 2022 9:56 am

I'm afraid the topic starter may have lost interest in the topic... :roll:

Hi sorry!! No i don't! I read with great excitement. Sorry i have had days of full programming! Sorry
So i think i want to try first to use 2 or 3 distros from usb pen (ubuntu studio, Archi linux and avlinux).
I take with pleasure all of your advices about exotic distros, also i use linux from 20 years (my first gui version was a novell with first version of gnome if i remember) but i didn't ever go deep.

I like also jack2 but i tihnk i wanbt to try a config with pipewire, i read something and it seems more promising.
Then using all the software linux native like ardour, qtractor, hydrogen and so many. I'm using extensely Carla and recorded one demo with carla vst, i'm interested now to use Calf plugins, there many tools to try.

Many thanks all of you. I hope i will have some moments to extensevely try something during the holidays or in the next days and report my impressions!

Thanks so much
Gabriele

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

gabtram wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:01 pm

[...] i tihnk i wanbt to try a config with pipewire, i read something and it seems more promising.
[...]

Pipewire, indeed, seems to be the ideal one-stop solution to replace all the various audio servers. However, AFAIK one needs a very recent distro to obtain a recent version of PW because the "early" versions of PW don't work well.

Good luck with Linux! :)

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Re: How to find a good configuration to be a linux muscian

Post by wjl »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Tue Dec 06, 2022 11:44 am
gabtram wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 10:01 pm

[...] i tihnk i wanbt to try a config with pipewire, i read something and it seems more promising.
[...]

Pipewire, indeed, seems to be the ideal one-stop solution to replace all the various audio servers. However, AFAIK one needs a very recent distro to obtain a recent version of PW because the "early" versions of PW don't work well.

That's true I think - it worked well enough for my limited use on Arch, but according to a talk between Unfa and Paul Davis (Ardour) on Youtube, short before the release of Ardour 7, they said that Pipewire has a higher latency when used with more channels. Which I normally don't see, using only a handful (like 6-8 channels at most)...

And yes, good luck to Gabriele, didn't want to go too much offtopic here...

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