Mastodawn

Current view. Have now fully adopted Ardour 9 as my main DAW app for my mastering, as this update contains a few vital navigation & gui improvements, as well as allows for region (aka object) based plugin fx now. I believe mine one of just a very few professional dedicated mastering studios using Ardour as my main DAW app. FOSS ftw!

#audio #music #musicproduction #mastering #ardour #foss #daw #digitalaudio #apps

flosillermastering Feb 15

@sberson Hi Steven, cool to see other MEs unleashing the power of FOSS!
Is Ardour running on Linux at your studio? Region fx caught my eye since object-based processing is what I‘m fond of.

My main capture DAW that I mostly use Ardour on is an M4 MacMini, and I have it running on a MacMini M2, and a couple boxes running Windows 10. I have Ardour running on a backup DAW running Ubuntu as well though. MacOS really annoys me for many reasons, but I need to run some proprietary software like Izotope RX 11, and my Antelope Amari main interface does not have Linux drivers either. I also have had issues with reliable lockup of audio clocking in my Linux setups too, but I continue to experiment with it, and things like Pipewire and the latest versions of Wine are certainly making it easier to do pro audio work on Linux. The thing is, relative to Mac & Windows it still isn't quite able to run all the stuff I need yet, nor with the least amount of learning curve and downtime for me yet. But I am hoping that can change for me over the next few years.

flosillermastering Feb 15

@sberson seconded on the learning curve and downtime. Looks like you‘ve got all bases covered. I‘ve got plans to test if WINE or Winboat can make apps like RX work reliably. It‘s very helpful to have companies like DDMF and Toneboosters jump on the Linux train when trying to stay native.

Cool to learn that DDMF supports Linux, I have a few of their plugins, and they make great stuff - I will have to install their Linux native versions on my Ubuntu DAW.
There are reports of older versions of Izotope RX working with Wine - but definitely not the latest version of RX. I have Sonoris DDP Creator and SAWStudio working well under Wine though. Plus Linux DAW apps like Ardour, Reaper and LLMS are certainly very capable.
But yeah, plugin compatibility is still not quite always there, and my take in mastering is that I choose the tools I use for the best sounding end results, even if they are proprietary. I also still pick my daily work DAW OS for greatest plugin compatibility rather than for it being foss. But again, I can see a day where I will be able to run everything I need in a Linux DAW, it's just that day isn't quite now yet.

flosillermastering

@sberson yep, no reason to brute force into it and sacrifice quality and workflow. Coming from Sequoia, I‘ve found REAPER provides a suitable home base to explore and learn new ways.
Give https://linuxdaw.org/ a shot if you want to see what‘s out there in terms of native tools, it‘s well maintained and easy to navigate.
Atm dongles like iLok are a big bottleneck, at least for some devs. But initiatives like @linuxaudiodevelopment are trying to change that.

Linux DAW

Quality audio software for Linux Audio Production such as LV2, VST2, VST3, and CLAP effects, synthesizers and sampler plugins.

Linux DAW

flosillermastering Feb 15

@sberson And I‘ll happily pay for proprietary native software the same I did when using a closed OS 👍

David W. Jones Feb 21

@flosillermastering @sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment Hmm, listing neither Ardour nor Rosegarden... Forget it.

They did list Ardour on a second post in reply to the first. (I use Ardour myself, and have been happy to see all the feature additions and bug fixes with version 9 that was recently released)

David W. Jones Feb 21

@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment I was responding based on what I saw on their web site.

Their website is enormously long, I have a feeling the listings are on there, you just have to scroll for an hour to see it.

David W. Jones Feb 21

@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment I tried using my browser's Find in Page feature. No trace of Ardour or Rosegarden.

Linux Audio Development Feb 21

@dancingtreefrog @sberson @flosillermastering Are you talking about Linux DAW? Ardour is there. You can also use the Search on the top left. Rosegarden, I believe is indeed missing. I will add it soon.

Funnily enough Ardour is the very first listing (1 out of over 800 of them) on that website

David W. Jones Feb 21

@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment Wasn't visible to me, and not found by Search in Page function.

David W. Jones Feb 21

@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment Small suggestion for their site. Maybe a button or two at the top to do basic filtering. Like a flood of audio plugins drowns out the trickle of DAWs...

I completely agree with that suggestion . The sites's search function was also only available on the desktop version, not on mobile. On the other hand the amount of listings that has been compiled is quite impressive. But to be user friendly search functions need to be made way easier to access.

David W. Jones Feb 21

@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment I never looked at it on mobile, just on desktop.

Ardour is on there - https://linuxdaw.org/?q=ardour
and to add in Rosegarden someone just needs to fill out there form https://linuxdaw.org/new

Linux DAW

Quality audio software for Linux Audio Production such as LV2, VST2, VST3, and CLAP effects, synthesizers and sampler plugins.

Linux DAW

David W. Jones Feb 21

@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment Ok, but if it can only be found using the site's search functionality, it doesn't work for me.

Linux Audio Development Feb 21

@dancingtreefrog @sberson @flosillermastering It's a dynamically loading website. Perhaps not ideal.

David W. Jones Feb 21

@linuxaudiodevelopment @sberson @flosillermastering Agreed!

Morten Mosgaard Feb 21

@dancingtreefrog @linuxaudiodevelopment @sberson @flosillermastering personally I use it a lot, I just select a tag and watch the plugins/software in groups. Works fine!

Let me know if there is another better source.

flosillermastering Feb 22

@mosgaard @dancingtreefrog @linuxaudiodevelopment @sberson same here!
I‘ve started out with https://linuxmusic.rocks/ and contributed some entries, but Linuxdaw seems more comprehensive and up to date.

database - linux music.rocks

Linuxmusic.rocks aims to be musician friendly database of linux available software and plugins.

Morten Mosgaard Feb 21

@flosillermastering @sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment great talk! Inspiring listening to other people searching out Linux as a pro audio option.

I have RX 10 Advanced running in Wine installed with the latest version of Native Access.

I did a blogpost about my approach to Wine the other day: https://mortenmosgaard.dk/run-windows-plugins-on-linux-using-yabridge/

I used this approach to make Native Access work: https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=41820

I use wine-cachyos, but Wine 11 is already much better for audio plugins than the previous version.

Run Windows Plugins on Linux using Yabridge

If you ever wanted to try out using Windows versions of audio plugins on Linux, you might have heard about Yabridge and Wine, which can be a close-to-magical combo… sometimes. The short version Wine is a Windows compatibility layer that lets you install and run Windows software on your Linux computer. Yabridge creates a digital…

Morten Mosgaard

flosillermastering Feb 22

@mosgaard @sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment Hi Morten, thanks a bunch for chiming in! Skimming your blog for now, it looks like a very helpful resource.
Do you know by chance if older versions (pre NI) of iZorope RX are executable? My license for 9 sits firmly on an iLok and I was hoping to bring it to Linux via WinBoat.
I‘m still on the fence about WINE/yabridge since it has been adventurous enough to learn how to keep a native system stable so far…

Morten Mosgaard Feb 22

@flosillermastering thanks! Happy it looks helpful to you.

I haven’t checked out Winboat, looks interesting!

Wine is running quite fine. If by any chance you have a plugin which makes it hard to start your Linux DAW because of Yabridge, you can always remove the plugin in wine and re-sync Yabridge.

I haven’t installed RX9 in Wine, but I presume you can install the version you own through Native Access. Older plugins are actually often more stable in Wine.

@sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment

myhovertime Feb 23

@mosgaard @flosillermastering @sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment

Did you manage to get iLoK working?

Morten Mosgaard Feb 23

@myhovertime for Cloud and machine authorization yes, I don’t have a USB I can check (luckily).

@flosillermastering @sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment

myhovertime Feb 23

@mosgaard @flosillermastering @sberson @linuxaudiodevelopment
I'm struggle with it. I could use native linux plugin but i'd like to play some of my neural dsp plugin.

Can i ask which version of ilok do you install?

Morten Mosgaard Feb 23

@myhovertime what distro and version of Wine do you use?

I have installed the latest version. I actually broke it by letting iLok update by itself, but I just reinstalled it and it worked.

myhovertime Feb 23

At the moment I'm on Secureblue (is a silverblue secured focus distro) i mainaly a kind of dev.

But i had issue also with arch. I use the staging wive version proposed in yabridge github repo. If I remember correctly it should 9.21 staging

I'll try to update it to the 10 version

Morten Mosgaard Feb 23

@myhovertime I think you should try the normal Wine version, version 11.2 if possible.