EP recorded in Linux

[eric71]

Hi,

I just wanted to post a link to an ep my friend and I have recorded. I engineered, recorded, and mixed exerything in REAPER running with wine and wineasio in PCLinuxOS and Mageia (I did some distro hopping halfway through the recording). I find PCLinuxOS's standard BFS kernel or Mageia's TMB Desktop kernels give great performance with Reaper running under wine. I used an Alesis Multimix 4 USB, which works great with alsa and jack, great bang for the buck. It can send 2 tracks to the computer. It seems to require the -S (synchronous) parameter to be added to the jack line in Qjackctl for best performance in Jack2. It doesn't do as well with Jack1 for some reason. To be able to record drums with 4 tracks at once, I used alsa_in to add my friends Edirol USB interface and pick up two more inputs. Jack/wineasio/Reaper handled this pretty well on a fairly modest old Thinkpad with a 1.8 ghz Centrino. I used mostly Reaper's included effects, along with a few other free VSTs (Kjaerhus, Bootsy stuff, etc.). For something recorded in practice rooms and apartments via cheap interfaces, I'm very happy with the results. It's kind of garage power pop or jangle pop. I think the songs are the best part, rather than our playing or my admittedly rudimentary attempts at singing. I'm happy we were able to record this for free aside from 40 some euros for the Reaper license.

http://thedownstream.bandcamp.com/

Eric

[danboid]

You recorded it under Linux so why use REAPER? I know that Cocko's support reaper under wine, wine works great and so lots of people do this but there is no question you'd be getting significantly better performance by running REAPER under real XP, w7 or OSX.

There is still the odd app with no real Linux alternative that I may use wine for sometimes but if you're running a DAW then surely you need the best and most performance you can muster which means native software only. Like many on here, I prefer (Debian) Linux over Windows or OSX as an OS despite the relative lack of apps but if I insisted on using REAPER over Ardour, qtractor, mixbus, renoise or whatever then I wouldn't consider running it under wine for a second unless I was only using it for some light sequencing or test purposes.

Have you done any tests to compare the performance of REAPER and plugins running under say real XP versus running it under wine on the same hardware? I did a similar test for A3 when using VST dll's via wine and REAPER under real windows gave over 2x the performance as in I could use over twice as many softsynth plugins before dropouts started as under A3/wine.

[StudioDave]

Hi Eric,

Hey, good work, keep it up !

If Reaper works for you then keep on using it. I've used it before under Wine + wineasio, it performed very well.

Use what suits your workflow and promotes your creativity.

Best,

dp

[eric71]

As regards my use of REAPER in Linux, it mainly comes down to the workflow. I became used to it in Windows XP and when wineasio came along I continued using it in Linux. There is a bit of a performance hit - I can't work live with with quite as many tracks or plugins in Linux. But an upside is I can get much better latency with my Alesis USB mixer with Jack2 and wineasio than I could with ASIO4All on XP. But it mainly comes down to work flow. I've used Ardour and mostly used Rosegarden for a while maybe 5 years ago - but I just get better results faster with REAPER. Maybe Ardour 3 will change that. I do appreciate the fact that the REAPER developers have worked to maintain WINE compatibility and seem open to the idea of a native Linux version.

[danboid]

Hi Eric!

So you get better latency under Linux? OK, I'll let you off this time then!

I would suggest you give qtractor another ago in about a month or so as Rui has promised to implement some suggestions I made which will mean most people won't have to manually create and assign input buses after the next dot release (0.5.6) which was the main reason my band decided we didn't want to use it yet as it hampered our workflow. If Ardour is the FLOSS Pro-Tools I'd say qtractor is shaping up to be the FLOSS REAPER- but even more lightweight, faster and truly free!

I've trawled the REAPER forums recently for news on the mythical native Linux port but the general consensus seems to be its pretty unlikely it'll happen soon, if ever but at least they support running it under wine.