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
@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.
@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.
@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 @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)
@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.
@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment I tried using my browser's Find in Page feature. No trace of Ardour or Rosegarden.
@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
@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment Wasn't visible to me, and not found by Search in Page function.
@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.
@sberson @flosillermastering @linuxaudiodevelopment I never looked at it on mobile, just on desktop.