Excellent Linux DAW software roundup

Tonedef

Head on over to www.tomshardware.com for this article. They have mini-writeups on all the DAW apps available, including some info on Ubuntu studio, the DAW-optimised Ubuntu distro. Makes me wanna dig out a spare hdd and give it a bash.

G-Man

I've tried it before and it's jam packed full of apps, but I installed it to my office machine (P4 2.8 with 1 GB DDR 400) and it craaaaawled so sloooowly. I'm toying with dual-booting it with my main system but to be honest I find reaper / asio4all works well. I'm getting 16ms with my on-board sound card so I'm not noticing any lag at all when recording.

But I'm still reading the article, thanks for the post ?

Gearhead

I was hoping they would compare any of the Linux DAW solutions to Windows+Cubase but unfortunately there is nothing like that...

Mo-Facta

G-Man wrote I'm getting 16ms with my on-board sound card so I'm not noticing any lag at all when recording.

That is still quite slow but I'm sure that for your purposes it's OK. I personally wouldn't be able to run my studio on latency that high. It would definitely be noticeable by most discerning musicians, especially pianists on a VST piano.

As far as a Linux-based DAW goes, the best are most definitely Ardour and Harrison Mix Bus. I don't know about Ubuntu Studio. It must be new.

There are always new DAW's coming out for different platforms. They all pretty much do the same thing, albeit in different ways. The trick is to pick one that suits your workflow and accomplishes the tasks you need it to.

Cheers ?

kayDUB

Ubuntu Studio is just the distro that is geared for running video/graphics and sound apps. It has a realtime kernel (though it seems they not updating it anymore) for optimised sound recording and a different look and feel. You can have the same software running on a normal ubuntu machine.

I've used Ardour on Ubuntu Studio for a while now, but really just scratched the surface. Was a mission to get everything setup in the beginning with my presonus fp10, but it works now! Still have occasional issues with xruns (recording glitches basically) when doing all 8 channels and also when mixing lot of tracks with effects, but think that's also cos I run it on an old P4 2.8 with around a gig of ram too.
Actually leaning towards going the Reaper route when I upgrade my pc.

But all in all I think its a great thing, its free and it enables me to record music! I've used it for some of the weekly challenges a while back, recording the band to get ready for studio and also recorded the scratch tracks for the studio.

Mo-Facta

kayDUB wrote Ubuntu Studio is just the distro that is geared for running video/graphics and sound apps.

Ah, yes, I figured that out after a little googling. Thanks for the info.

Cheers ?

Mo-Facta

And while we're talking about Linux...

Are any of you guys familiar with Harrison Mixbus?

http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=108&Itemid=42

This is basically DAW (for Linux and Mac) with the "sound" of a Harrison console modeled into it. Each component of the DAW emulates it's counterpart on the Harrison, like the orininal EQ, saturation, filter, compression and summing circuits, and also the sound of tape emulation. Therefore, it greatly differs from other DAW's in that it has a "sound" of it's own (based on the Harrison sound, of course). One could say that it's like vintage modern digital!

And it's only $79.00. :applause:

I know Linux software is usually free but I think if you are so bold as to be on the Linux platform, it's worth taking a look at.

Cheers ?

G-Man

G-Man wrote I'm getting 16ms with my on-board sound card so I'm not noticing any lag at all when recording.

?

Probably still slow by studio standards (duh ?) but I tweaked my recording rig and its sitting at 5.8/5.6 ms now. Now I just have to learn how to play guitar ?