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Comment by reactordev | Hacker News Reader

Reaper is just as good as FL Studio or Logic Pro. VSTs are really your biggest hurdle. Depending on how they are compiled, they may rely on platform specific code. Most big plugin makers have VSTs for all platforms though and your license works on all.

The pathway is there should you choose, one day. Linux is quite good now. That being said, I know a lot of niche plugins that some guy wrote that only works on windows because that’s all he/she has access to. Some 8-bit synth bitcrushers come to mind.

Also Steinburg made VST 3 sdk open source so you have a path to a free music production studio.

https://github.com/steinbergmedia/vst3sdk

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"as good as" (debatable in the first place) isn't enough justification to switch. Everyone has their own workflows, settings etc that they used over many years, which they are not going to give up, just to "switch to Linux". This is about real loss in productivity.

Yes but readers may be reading and think that Linux isn’t capable. It is. There’s plenty of DAWs available. You can also use WINE with proton to run FL Studio on Linux. My suggestion is just that, a suggestion to explore the possible.

If we just learn one thing and never change then we wind up being left behind. While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what most people know. There’s ways of running ALL of them on Linux.

> While FL Studio and Logic, Cubase and Ableton are what most people know. There’s ways of running ALL of them on Linux.

As I just managed to get VR working with HP Reverb G2 in my Linux environment, quite literally the only reason I have Windows still installed on my computer is because of Ableton, and not being able to run that properly on even workstation hardware.

How exactly do I get Ableton running with an external USB soundcard and everything running exactly like it runs on Linux? I'm quite literally ready to give you money if you manage to give me an answer that actually leads to me being able to run Ableton on Arch Linux, because for years I have tried, and waited for the moment it's possible. So please do tell, how do I get it running?

Windows VM with USB passthrough. I haven't had any issues with USB devices this way.

I've tried to passthrough Behringer audio interface, as well as HX Stomp (to, of course, avoid dual-boot) and it stuttered like crazy. Maybe there is a way to make it more "realtime" but it's not the default, at least in VirtualBox.

Yeah passing through usb devices to a VM for audio seems to be a dark art like working with a bunch of analog equipment. Everything has to be tuned. I do understand why a bare metal windows and/or mac computer is always in a studio, one can skip the head ache. Even if main DAW is Linux.

VirtualBox is the worst VM software.

QEMU on Linux with kvm is gold.

> Windows VM

That's not wine, and I'd rather keep dual booting that running Windows VMs that barely can keep up. Have you tried doing music production inside a Windows VM before?

Yes Ableton, VST and usb. I have used the Coreweave windows VM with Nvidia to run everything audio and video, though haven't routed USB devices to it.

Cognitively it's easier to just buy a second PC for windows. But threadripper pro etc have so many cores and pcie lanes it's easy to run multiple OS VMs with dedicated GPUs at close to native speed in one box.

https://github.com/BEEFY-JOE/AbletonLiveOnLinux

https://hanez.org/document/ableton-live-linux-wine/

https://github.com/wineasio/wineasio

The biggest thing with any Linux and Wine mix for DAWs is using JACK and WineASIO for low latency

This doesn't work like everyone makes it out to. The first problem is overcoming the plethora of build errors. Then if you're lucky enough to actually get Ableton launched and working, you'll run into weird issues like Ableton crashing as soon as you attempt to add a MIDI track. When you find a work-around for that, you then run into random crashing in the middle of playback with absolutely atrocious latency despite the claims of "low latency". It's not worth it. I gave up

It does work and no you don’t need to fiddle with build errors and crap unless you have some weird hardware.

It works for me plug n play with my scarlett devices. Many tracks.

Core i9, RTX 3080, Fedora w/ Proton on Vulkan. USB-C Scarlett.

I think your issue might be that you aren’t using an ALSA device.

Thanks, I've seen that repository before, but when I last saw it it boiled down to basically "create a prefix with these winecfg values" and not much more, but it seems a lot more fleshed out now, will give it another go.

Would be great if we'd eventually get some PipeWireASIO thing, sounds like a missing piece of the puzzle still, although not strictly required I suppose.

You can't, I've tried. The "passthrough" is bullshit, it doesn't fucking work and I wish people would stop recommending this time wasting "advice". That's not even the main issue as 90% of your VSTs will probably not work either and latency will be through the roof.

> VSTs are really your biggest hurdle.

And that is unfortunately the place where I spent my big bucks.

I do however use Linux for my work, and have for more than a decade. If all the plugins (plus FL Studio, I've tried Reaper but it might be not for me) worked, I'd switch my personal desktop in a heartbeat. It's honestly the only thing locking me to Win10. Maybe I'll try a Mac through work (we get to keep the machines).

And yes, I've tried running FL using Wine, and it works surprisingly well! Just not _well enough_, and some plugins do not work at all. Most do, and that's great, but not enough for me at least.

I fully understand, that’s me and basically all those Native Instrument packs. You’ll have to pry guitar rig from my cold dead hands.

I still remember the first time I stumbled across Logic Pro X. For the price of $200 I got a complete package that contains about 200 plugins and instruments. The DAW itself was maybe 7% of the full contents of that package.

That is unbeatable value for money in the DAW market and that was before Logic Pro 11 came out and added a ton of new plugins.

It's not the apps, it's the drivers. I've got expensive high quality audio hardware (RME Fireface 800) that doesn't have Linux drivers. Oh sure, I could invest $2000 to get a newer version, but that would just mean a steep learning curve to get drivers, hardware, and DAW working anywhere near as seamlessly as my Windows setup. It's not that I'm a Windows fan, I'm just looking for the most cost- and time-effective solutions. I'd rather spend my time recording and making music than sweating over driver and software issues.

FireWire is dead. Apple moved on to Thunderbolt

"As good as" is highly debateable. Have you used Logic Pro 11 in the past two years?

Yes, I own Logic Pro

> Most big plugin makers have VSTs for all platforms though and your license works on all.

Most??? I can’t find Arturia, Korg, Reason Rack Plugin, FabFilter, Native Instruments, Softube and those are just from the top of my head.

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