Ardour + Harrison + OS X = Mixbus

mrc · Post by **mrc** » Thu Nov 04, 2010 5:08 pm

Linux would be cool.

Kevin Kitchel · Post by **Kevin Kitchel** » Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:00 am

Yes, linux would be AMAZING, especially if we could use DSSI-VST, or if it had native support for VST. I doubt it could be built with VST support.

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 11:12 am

Harrison Mixbus 1.5 for Linux just released:

http://www.harrisonconsoles.com/joomla/ ... &Itemid=42

This might just be the final impetus I need to make the jump to 100% Linux...... w00t!

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:49 pm

Good luck getting Linux drivers for whatever interface you happen to be rockin'.

dawhead · Post by **dawhead** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 1:06 pm

Snarl 12/8 wrote:Good luck getting Linux drivers for whatever interface you happen to be rockin'.

well, err, lets see. I tend to use RME PCI(x|e) devices ... check, Linux drivers for all of them. Lots of people I know run M-Audio Delta series devices ... check Linux drivers for all of them. Hmm, wait a second, what's this ... goodness ...

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main

a complete list of all audio device drivers available for Linux. Yeah good luck finding anything in there.

Err, not quite. that doesn't cover firewire based devices. They get coverage here: http://ffado.org/?q=devicesupport/list

The big hole right now is "USB2". Like USB1, there is a class specification for USB2 audio devices which would allow such devices to work without per-device drivers on all platforms (OS X, Linux, Windows). Unfortunately, there are at this time precisely ZERO commercially available USB2 devices that actually implement the class specification, and instead they all come with their own platform- and device-specific drivers.

So the summary is:

* desktop system that can take PCI(x|e) cards: LOTS of excellent choices
* USB1 devices: just about everything will just work
* Firewire devices: some good devices are supported, though it can be a hassle
if you use the wrong distribution of Linux. Many are not supported
* USB2 devices: no support until manufacturers start following USB specifications

Oh, and a special shout out to my friends at MOTU, who once told me (in person, at AES) that "you fucking linux hippies will never get any support from us" [sic]. It was a while ago to be fair, but they seem to have been be right. In return, the Linux community has attempted to return the favor.

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 1:18 pm

dawhead wrote:
Snarl 12/8 wrote:Good luck getting Linux drivers for whatever interface you happen to be rockin'.
well, err, lets see. I tend to use RME PCI(x|e) devices ... check, Linux drivers for all of them. Lots of people I know run M-Audio Delta series devices ... check Linux drivers for all of them. Hmm, wait a second, what's this ... goodness ...

http://www.alsa-project.org/main/index.php/Matrix:Main

a complete list of all audio device drivers available for Linux. Yeah good luck finding anything in there.

Err, not quite. that doesn't cover firewire based devices. They get coverage here: http://ffado.org/?q=devicesupport/list

The big hole right now is "USB2". Like USB1, there is a class specification for USB2 audio devices which would allow such devices to work without per-device drivers on all platforms (OS X, Linux, Windows). Unfortunately, there are at this time precisely ZERO commercially available USB2 devices that actually implement the class specification, and instead they all come with their own platform- and device-specific drivers.

So the summary is:

* desktop system that can take PCI(x|e) cards: LOTS of excellent choices
* USB1 devices: just about everything will just work
* Firewire devices: some good devices are supported, though it can be a hassle
if you use the wrong distribution of Linux. Many are not supported
* USB2 devices: no support until manufacturers start following USB specifications

Oh, and a special shout out to my friends at MOTU, who once told me (in person, at AES) that "you fucking linux hippies will never get any support from us" [sic]. It was a while ago to be fair, but they seem to have been be right. In return, the Linux community has attempted to return the favor.

Just because a device is listed on a page of drivers doesn't mean a mere mortal can get it working in Linux. Please don't take this as Linux bashing. I've been using Linux since late last century, but drivers is the achilles heel when it comes to applications like audio. I tried, for example, to get my M-Audio 2496 card working on my MythTV client for a couple days and it never worked. Pop a soundblaster in there and boom. So, now I take "M-Audio Support" with a grain of salt. There are a zillion half-assed linux drivers out there that don't offer comparable features to the mac/pc drivers, but sortof get the job done. I've also come across Linux drivers that appear to be more feature rich than their mac/pc counterparts, but not in media drivers and not very often.

That sucks to hear that about MOTU, cause that's what I've got and I'd be willing to try Linux for Audio again if I had some anecdotal evidence that my setup could work really well without a whole shitload of tweaking and kernel compiling. Maybe because I come at it from the web/file/etc server end of things I'm completely off base about how multimedia has evolved for linux. I'm not overly familiar with Linux on the desktop.

dawhead · Post by **dawhead** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 1:54 pm

Snarl 12/8 wrote: Just because a device is listed on a page of drivers doesn't mean a mere mortal can get it working in Linux. Please don't take this as Linux bashing. I've been using Linux since late last century, but drivers is the achilles heel when it comes to applications like audio. I tried, for example, to get my M-Audio 2496 card working on my MythTV client for a couple days and it never worked.

The problem is that one only ever hears about the devices with ... problems. The 2496 is a particularly egregious example of that, since it has a series of quirks that, for whatever reason, are not present in the Delta series. The Delta series is actually probably one of the best support multichannel device ranges on Linux, in fact. I wish the 2496 had not deviated from their design as much.

That sucks to hear that about MOTU, cause that's what I've got and I'd be willing to try Linux for Audio again if I had some anecdotal evidence that my setup could work really well without a whole shitload of tweaking and kernel compiling.

there are videos on youtube that show a full linux install on a barebones machine all the way to having Ardour running in less than one hour, no magic wands, no kernel compiles. i used to do that sort of stuff years ago, but i haven't built a kernel in more than five years and i rarely build any software except Ardour and JACK (since I'm the lead author of both.)

it matters a LOT which Linux distribution you choose. people have the unfortunate notion that "its all just Linux", and end up picking a distribution based on attributes other than the ones that are going to make for the best out-of-the-box music/pro-audio experience. its regrettable that the proliferation of distributions has caused this sort of thing to be such a common problem, but really, if you do just a little homework on hardware and install something sensible for the task (AVLinux comes to mind for beginners), I think that about 97 out of a 100 people will find very little issue in getting things running.

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:41 am

hi Paul (dawhead), welcome to TapeOp....

I'm interested in running Mixbus on a new, fresh install. Any suggestions? I use Linux Mint for everything but audio production and love it, so I was thinking of installing Ubuntu Studio.

I want something that is smooth, stable, and just works. M-Audio hardware.

I've avoided CCRMA so far because I vastly prefer Debian infrastructure to Fedora.

Which distro do you suggest? I'm also going to try 64Studio.

dawhead · Post by **dawhead** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:04 am

JWL wrote: I want something that is smooth, stable, and just works. M-Audio hardware.

which M-Audio hardware?

Which distro do you suggest? I'm also going to try 64Studio.

I generally prefer to not recommend any distribution in particular. I have more than 10 years experience of using Fedora (and RedHat before Fedora existed), and I vastly prefer it to any of the Debian-related distributions. But I don't expect other people to share my preferences. More importantly, I've learnt from years of listening to users experiences that there is no single version of "how things work". I hear stories from one person who has an extremely smooth hassle-free experience with product X, and another person for whom it turns out to be a nightmare. Product X here could be a Linux distribution, it could be Ardour (or Mixbus), it could be a specific release of OS X or Logic, you name it. Neither of these stories are wrong - they are both right, and its pointless to engage in an argument over which one is "righter".

What I will say is that although I have not tried it myself, I hear good things about ease-of-use for AVLinux (which is debian-based) and less remarks but equally good ones about KXStudio. At the same time, installing and using Fedora has been painless for me, and I generally don't use CCRMA anymore because the only notable thing they have that is not in the regular Fedora repositories is a realtime kernel. I tend not to need that myself.

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 8:49 am

dawhead wrote:
which M-Audio hardware?

2 Delta 1010LTs, for 16channels of analog i/o.

I generally prefer to not recommend any distribution in particular. I have more than 10 years experience of using Fedora (and RedHat before Fedora existed), and I vastly prefer it to any of the Debian-related distributions. But I don't expect other people to share my preferences. More importantly, I've learnt from years of listening to users experiences that there is no single version of "how things work". I hear stories from one person who has an extremely smooth hassle-free experience with product X, and another person for whom it turns out to be a nightmare. Product X here could be a Linux distribution, it could be Ardour (or Mixbus), it could be a specific release of OS X or Logic, you name it. Neither of these stories are wrong - they are both right, and its pointless to engage in an argument over which one is "righter".

What I will say is that although I have not tried it myself, I hear good things about ease-of-use for AVLinux (which is debian-based) and less remarks but equally good ones about KXStudio. At the same time, installing and using Fedora has been painless for me, and I generally don't use CCRMA anymore because the only notable thing they have that is not in the regular Fedora repositories is a realtime kernel. I tend not to need that myself.

Thanks for the advice, I'll poke around and try a few different ones. AVLinux does look cool, but in general I prefer GNOME.

I'm going to start playing with Ubuntu Studio first and see how that does.

Thanks for the advice, and again I'm glad to see you here on TOMB...!

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 6:59 am

Gah. What a PITA.

As much as I love Linux, I still have to concede that it could be a lot easier to get it to work with multimedia. After many hours of tweakage, I still have yet to get a peep of sound out of Ubuntu Studio.

M-Audio soundcards have been supported under Linux for many years (a decade?), yet Ubuntu Studio isn't smart enough to autoconfig it.

I think I'll try AVLinux, even though I prefer using Gnome.

I really, really want to get this to work, and I'm willing to go through all of the usual "early adopter" pains, but sheesh....

JWL · Post by **JWL** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 9:25 am

As an update to the research I did last night, this page looks promising for my situation, in terms of getting 2 Maudio Delta 1010LTs running.

Also, I found out that MixBus was NOT compiled with VST support. This is somewhat surprising/disappointing, but on the other hand if MixBus works as well as I hope it does, along with other Linux plugins (JaMin, LinuxDSP, etc) I may not even need VST plugins.

John Jeffers · Post by **John Jeffers** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 10:32 am

JWL wrote:Gah. What a PITA.

As much as I love Linux, I still have to concede that it could be a lot easier to get it to work with multimedia. After many hours of tweakage, I still have yet to get a peep of sound out of Ubuntu Studio.

"Linux is only free if your time has no value."
- Jamie Zawinski

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:46 am

John Jeffers wrote:"Linux is only free if your time has no value."
- Jamie Zawinski

Windows 7 Home Edition only costs $129 if your time has no value.

- Carl Keil

Edit: It's a funny little human contradiction that people are more likely to invest in learning something (and not notice the time it takes) if they've already invested financially.

I've spent days troubleshooting little 2 little buggy crap problems (known bugs that you can read about on the M$ site.) in my new Windows install. More than I've spent on my last several linux installs combined. But I haven't tried to do media on those Linux installs, aside from media serving and playback, that is. I'm not trying to do media (beyond playback) on this Windows 7 install either.

markmazoo · Post by **markmazoo** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 5:32 pm

I was dual-booting Win XP and Ubuntu, using Nuendo 1.6 (w/Delta 1010 and Omni Studio
[O/S] I/O and 7 mic pres from 7th Circle and Hamptone) on XP for several years (Win 2000 before that) and was very happy with my setup and recording results. Computer is Athlon 64 X2 dual core 5000+ with 2 gigs of Ram, and several 500 GB Sata drives.

I didn't really use Ubuntu except for very occasional web browsing. Somehow, I did something to XP that locked up my computer so I couldn't boot at all. I wanted to just uninstal/reinstall XP but couldn't because of the order I had installed XP and Ubuntu....problem involved the windows bootloader (what a POS).

So, with my 20 year old son's (he has at least 4 years of very extensive Linux experience) help I just dropped Windows altogether and am using Ubuntu (Gnome) with Ubuntu Studio (US), Ardour, Jack, and Envy 24 control utility. It was quite a steep learning curve (making a total abrupt switch) at first even with his sometimes grudging assistance in getting the whole system set up. (He knows how to use the Terminal blindfolded which seemed to be essential in the US, Jack and card setup). Either that or he was just showing off and doing things so fast....well you know how it is with the younger computer whippersnappers.

Anyway, I've been using US/Ardour for about 5 months now and can do most of the stuff I could do with Nuendo. I'm pretty happy with the recording results I've been getting...except the occasional clicks and pops I get. I am still trying to fine tune the Jack and the Envy24 soundcard Control Utillity. I think I have the buffer settings big enough but I still get the random clicks and pops. It seems that they occur mostly when I have quite a few tracks going and a few plugins..........but I can't say that's the cause for sure since they can happen with just a couple of tracks open.

Initially I tried to use my Omni Studio and Delta 1010 sound cards together with SPDIF like I did with XP and Nuendo, but it was just too hard to configure without a huge hassle with my limited Linux knowledge...and my son didn't want to be bothered farting with it. So, I'm just using the Delta 1010 and somehow have the Omni hooked up enough so I can use it for my monitors and the two headphone hookups.

I guess my point in all this blubbering is that, even though I have DIY assembled my own computer systems (hardware and software) since I outgrew my Mac IIsi years ago, I couldn't have gotten Ubuntu Studio going without my onsite helper. Ardour is a very fine program once its properly installed, and I am hopeful that I can get the random popping solved soon.

I'd be happy to hear other experiences Tapeoppers have had with similar setups. Mark

Message Board

Ardour + Harrison + OS X = Mixbus

Who is online