Linux Audio Driver Improvements On The Horizon

[NaNaNa]

I really hope the KLANG concept gets matured soon, this is one of the lots of lacks for making Linux a proper desktop system.

Are you trolling?

The person behind KLANG has repeatedly demonstrated publicly (with his posts on Phoronix) the he's not even remotely qualified to come up with a replacement for ALSA.

And Pulseaudio SUCKS.

Oh, yeah, you are.

Nevermind.

[ChrisXY]

Windows and Mac have a strong ecosystem with multiple DAW vendors, and legions of plugin developers. Most plugins and instruments for Linux pretty much suck too, but the reason probably comes down to the lack of good DAWs to run them in. In Windows and VST, there are about 1000 plugin developers for every DAW developer, and everything usually just works. In Linux that ratio is perhaps just 4 to 1, because more people saw the need for to write a DAW to run plugins in, than writing plugins with no reliable DAW to run them in, although none of them seem to be able to write that magical stable DAW.

Actually it's quite cool what some people have done with vst plugins with wine and jack. I had a look at this stuff recently and it's not really hard to setup:

Some presets don't seem to initialize correctly and when inputting too much at the same time the sound gets scrambled but maybe I just need to run jack with realtime priority, this was just run as user, everything set to default.

Also, I'm not sure how well this interacts with other audio software.

[ninez]

Actually it's quite cool what some people have done with vst plugins with wine and jack. I had a look at this stuff recently and it's not really hard to setup:

Some presets don't seem to initialize correctly and when inputting too much at the same time the sound gets scrambled but maybe I just need to run jack with realtime priority, this was just run as user, everything set to default.

Also, I'm not sure how well this interacts with other audio software.

Ah, looks like you are using festige in the screenshot. I use a few of my commercial VSTs (or their standalone versions) in Linux. Mainly my Native instruments plugins, but a few others as well. (and i ported all of Battery3's drumkit libraries to linuxsampler, which is sweet). If the sound is getting scrambled (and i assume a bunch of xruns), you do probably do need both a rt-kernel and (for sure) to be running jackd with realtime priorities. ~ but its also possible that it is the plugins themselves that are problematic (some can be, some will run perfectly).

As far as it's interaction with other audio software, it should work fine. (assuming your plugins, work perfectly - ie: do not invest too much in any plugin which can have bad behavior ~ it's a waste of time). After all, they use MIDI and can be routed like any other jack client ... Anyway, there are many windows VSTs (and standalone apps + WineASIO) that will run very well under linux...

[pankkake]

A lot of years passed since the first hardware accelerated sound card appeared (the SB Live!) and still there isn't a Linux implementation that takes advantage of that via OpenAL.

Nor Creative with Live!, Audigy, X-FI, nor Cirrus Logic with Crystal Media chips on Maxi Sound Fortissimo, nor Asus with Xonar ...

I don't think they actually have that feature in the hardware anymore, hardware mixing does not exist on many modern cards.

[ShadowBane]

When I attempt to run Ardour3, it usually crashes before I can do anything useful. It doesn't crash because of Jack or ALSA, it crashes because it has garbage code full of coding errors, they would do better to scrap what they have and start over again, like Cubase has done several times in it's history.

Windows and Mac have a strong ecosystem with multiple DAW vendors, and legions of plugin developers. Most plugins and instruments for Linux pretty much suck too, but the reason probably comes down to the lack of good DAWs to run them in. In Windows and VST, there are about 1000 plugin developers for every DAW developer, and everything usually just works. In Linux that ratio is perhaps just 4 to 1, because more people saw the need for to write a DAW to run plugins in, than writing plugins with no reliable DAW to run them in, although none of them seem to be able to write that magical stable DAW.

I think if one good project can go the distance and compete with Windows, then more top talent from Windows and Mac will consider crossing over to Linux. As far as proprietary DAWs, Reaper seems to have renewed work on a native Linux port, which could be it, but then again the Reaper devs have a legacy of not finishing what they've started, broken promises and so on, so I wouldn't wait on them. Nor would I wait on Bitwig Studio, I'm beginning to think they're not serious, they've been in beta for a long time, and seem long on dreams and short on actual product. I'm pinning my hopes on some of the newer projects that began as native Linux applications.

I'm just going to point out that there are some /very/ nice instruments for linux. The gui isn't the best, but zynaddsubfx is a beast of a synth, AMS is just one of the awesome modulars, and Bristol covers all of the classic sounds. The plugin instruments are largely not the greatest, but that isn't really how linux sound is designed. The entire point of Jack is that applications can be tied together.


Also, Ardour doesn't really need midi, that is Rosegarden's job. :P