Hacker News Reader

Comment by tcrenshaw | Hacker News Reader

I've been working on a similar project but several layers of abstraction higher. Instead of using microcontroller level DSP I'm using Linux running a real-time kernel on a nuc type device and using the DAW, reaper, as the primary mixer component. IO is done via USB soundcards; right now I'm using a tascam 2x2 interface but plan to expand to a 16x8 interface soon. I'm eventually targeting around 2 milliseconds of latency, but for now I'd be happy with around 10 (need to tinker more with real-time priorities and pipewire configs).

I'm mostly using it as a bass rig for now, feeding either my headphones or speakers with an SVT sim with IR cabinet sims or straight out of the SVT sim out to a QSC power amp and a 2x10 cab. When I get my studio space finished I'll hopefully use it as a mixer/ recorder for band practice.

View on HN

... and you could of course use a libre open source DAW like ardour to gain even more control over your signal path, interactions with the hardware and more. But that might not be necessary, depending on your actual goals. There are also smaller projects like Carla, which would allow you to host plugins as part of the signal processing chain (up to and including things like PlugData or Rack/Cardinal), but that make no attempt at "DAW-like" features.

Disclaimer: I'm the lead author of Ardour.

I actually encountered just this sort of setup recently: a Linux PC with a real-time kernel running JACK and Ardour, connected to an 18x20 USB interface. It was part of a live translation setup that was routing English audio to up to four translators, receiving their foreign language audio, sending it to IR headsets, and recording everything with Ardour.

Unfortunately, it didn't work very well; I tentatively put the blame on JACK but some other part of the system could have been interfering, or maybe the PC itself just wasn't powerful enough. I didn't have time to troubleshoot properly so I just substituted in my MBA running Reaper, ironically.

Ardour is epic. I'd love to start building something as solid as it for web-based audio tooling purposes on https://linuxontheweb.github.io/.

You port our build stack[0] to wasm, we'll port Ardour.

[0] https://nightly.ardour.org/list.php#build_deps

I've used ardour in the past and enjoyed it but I initially chose reaper because I'm more familiar with it. I've been fighting some routing issues in reaper, I'll give ardour a try this week and see how it fits. Appreciate the work you do!

Ardour may well turn out to be less immediately well suited to whatever you're doing than Reaper is. But the point is that you could tune Ardour however you need to, something that even with its "endless" scriptability and tunability, you can't do with Reaper.

Don't be afraid to reach out for help/advice on our forums or IRC (the latter is best during daytime US mountain, in general).

I'm interested in doing the same thing but using PipeWire only. What kind of processing do you use Reaper for?

I'm using reaper for the mixing / routing portion, along with EQ and FX, though I'm going to take a look at using ardour this week instead. I imagine you could use pipewire by itself to achieve this, but if you're looking at more complicated routing and mixing, a DAW would be helpful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com