#418

What audio interfaces are you all using with Linux? Based on my research it sounds like no one officially supports it but anything class compliant should work.

#419

Pretty much this. The safest bet is anything that is class compliant and doesn’t require any kind of manufacturer specific control panel / mixer application for setting up routings or changing device settings (eg. is simple enough not to have configurable routing, or allows it to be done either via front panel or web interface on the device itself).

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#420

That’s pretty much right in my experience. My A+H zed-i10 and Behringer UMC 204HD both work great.

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#421

I was using a TC Electronic Impact Twin firewire soundcard for many years which worked particularity well once ALSA just started recognising it with no configuration (I did have to use the Windows software to set up the routing for an external ADAT preamp connected to the IT though). However, as it’s just keeled over at last, I’m probably going to be heading in the direction of a Focusrite 18i20 as i gather they work fine too.

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#422

For any heavy cron users, I built a simple iOS app to generate crontab expressions. It’s also my first Swift app, so open to feedback on my likely garbage code.

Thanks @fever606 for providing feedback!

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#423

just ordered a thinkpad t14 (amd) and starting my hunt for the perfect distro. moving from osx after almost 20yrs. i’ll primarily do the normal stuff with some bitwig (e.g. recording hardware with a allen heath qupac and iconnectivity mioxl for midi), vscode and the occasional steam game.

currently these are my distro picks:

  1. opensuse / tumbleweed
  2. pop_os

i’m leaning towards opensuse at the moment. also not quite sure where to begin with audio; jack(2?), pulseaudio, or pipewire?

any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

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#424

I’ve been running debian stable for ages, although I’ve tried quite a few others.

What I love about debian is

  1. it’s super stable
  2. the slow release cycle (normally about three years), can be seen as an disadvantage, but it’s great that you don’t have to worry about things changing in the middle of something. obviously you update the system along the way (I update a couple of times a week), but its just security updates and fixes…
  3. very common, meaning it’s well supported, well documented and easy to google solutions.
  4. it’s easy to setup a lean, light environment that fits you, your workflow and your computer power

Add a realtime kernel from liquorix and you’re ready to make music.

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#425

I’ve been on Void for a few years, before that I used Arch for a while. On paper they’re both tinkerer’s distros, there’s a lot of stuff you have to do manually, but Arch has a great wiki with years of knowledge in it, and I’ve never really felt lost. Rolling release sounds like trouble in theory, but in practice my experience is if don’t wait to long between running updates, all in all there’s a lot fewer issues than I’ve had e.g. moving between major Ubuntu releases. All in all my experience with these two distros has been very, very smooth and “out of my way”, where with Ubuntu (in the time that I ran it, 2009-2013ish) I remember having somewhat regular “I installed a package and apt removed my bootloader” and other catastrophic events.

3 Likes
#426

@a773 @rvense
what are y’all using for audio; jack(2?), pulseaudio, or pipewire?

#427

jack when it’s serious, whatever otherwise :crazy_face:

Edit, yeah jack2! In my experience it’s just a matter of trying the various versions of jack out that’s available in the repo, sometimes one performs better than the other. That’s said i thinks they performed equally well here for years, I’m just on jack2 because it’s the new one…

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#428

I use jack2. But as far as I know there is not really much difference between jack and jack2 (info from Filipe Coelho, current maintainer and developer in a talk a few years ago; not sure but I think it was this one).

I also use pajackconnect to make pulseaudio work while using jack; I have a very simple bash script to start jack in different combinations (e. g. with Tidal Cycles) and then launch the mentioned script via qjackctl. This has proved to be reliable since a few years now.

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#429

Maybe I should check out pajackconnect, although I’m not sure I need it. As mentioned I pretty much devided my audio uses into serious and casual, and it works great…

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#430

Yes, me too. But it quite often happens that, let’s say, I am working with Cheat Codes (using jack and my USB audio interface) and want to check a video online (Firefox is still not able to work with jack). And this is a very conveniant solution…

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#431

is there any need for jack2 considering i don’t plan piping audio from one app to another? would pulseaudio not suffice?

#432

If you don’t care about latency or connecting audio/midi things together (ie don’t make/produce anything on your machine) pulse is fine. Also if you’re just starting and just want to explore some stuff you can start with just pulse. Most pro audio applications also support ALSA, depending on how it’s implemented they might just work on pulse. If you’re serious about making music/music production then you want JACK.

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#433

ah okay, seems like pipewire isn’t quite yet ready either.

#434

Regarding distro, tbh it doesn’t matter that much. There are some audio specific distros but personally I don’t see much point in music production specific distros, the same can be achieved on any distro.
For proprietary (graphical) software like Bitwig Ubuntu is pretty much the main supported distro nowadays , so depending on your needs, the availability of packages for applications you want to use and your willingness to mess around you might want to start/stay with Ubuntu or use another distro.

Generally I’d say pick Ubuntu if you’re starting, if you want more control and configure more yourself use Arch. Arch has the advantage that it has pretty much the best docs/wiki and a very active team of maintainers of proaudio applications.There are more (niche) distros but these are good starting points.

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#435

yah, i’m still on the fence a bit. i think i’ll go for either pop or opensuse (tumbleweed).

i guess my next step is to look into jack2 and how to configure it. wish me luck :crossed_fingers:

@simonvanderveldt the author of JACK chimed into this thread and talks about how there’s typically no need for JACK especially if you’re not piping audio from one app to another. i guess JACK is performant in regards to audio compared to things like pulse etc?

edit: ahh

PulseAudio is focused on desktop and mobile audio needs. It doesn’t try to address low latency usage, but does provide seamless device switching, network routing, global per-application volume control and lots more great stuff.
JACK is focused on the needs of pro-audio and music creation users. It offers the lowest possible latency, complete routing flexibility between applications and audio hardware, and all audio is always sample synchronized - apps don’t run ahead or behind of others. It doesn’t provide the smooth desktop experience that PulseAudio is aiming at.

#436

I’ve used pop_os since the first release. I just started using BitWig as my main DAW a month ago. Everything was a breeze, but I do have some distortion issues related to software instruments with a fast attack. I’m not sure where in the signal chain it’s coming from.

I’m using pulseaudio and I still need to troubleshoot what’s going on. I use it with a MIDI keyboard over USB with no problem. I can jam along with the bass lines my mate provides me.

It’s worth noting I don’t track digital audio on this machine.

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#437

seems as if JACK could fix those problems for you as per:

edit:
p.s. if you’re also considering the jump, i’d love to beat our heads against the wall together…lemme know.

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