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For those that might have struggled with Ardour or were looking for something just a bit more professional on Linux, I recommend Reaper - it's a one time purcha

For those that might have struggled with Ardour or were looking for something just a bit more professional on Linux, I recommend Reaper - it's a one time purchase and in my opinion about as good as it gets on Linux: https://www.reaper.fm/ https://www.reaper.fm/

chrisjc 4y ago
Thanks, I was recently trying to figure out what audio app use for some very amateur toying around. I used to play around with a version of Reason I had long ago and recently just started playing with Garageband. It's pretty difficult trying to understand where to get started and what to use, esp as just a hobby. Googling "reason vs X" just turned up ad-loaded drivel. Anyone know of any good guides that lay out the land? Venn diagrams of where DAWs (digital audio workstation), Mixers, etc overlap or how they relate/compare with each other?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rhizome31 4y ago
Also check Bitwig, Renoise, Tracktion , U-He, AudioThing... Plenty of commercial audio software running on Linux nowadays.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Bitwig specifically is very known and exceptional. It isn't just a "daw for linux", it is a major cross-platform DAW that is being developed by a bunch of ex-Ableton people. Been following it since the initial release, and by now it became clear that they are clearly shooting (and really promisingly) for the "top DAW overall" status rather than something more narrow like "top Linux DAW".
dizhn 4y ago
If one is not against proprietary software, Reaper can actually be tested (for quite a while) free with all the features enabled.
b33j0r 4y ago
“I want to record audio” should not require even 2 hours of work. It’s still a 10 year learning experience in some circumstances. I’m at 20, hopefully I’m saying something useful. I support reaper, here’s an opinion. My problem with reaper is that I think it was trying to be protools for people who couldn’t afford protools. The thing is, most people aren’t recording 32 ADC channels and 1024 midi tracks on rackmount stuff. I think I have my dad’s last MIDI cables, and it makes me feel either ancient or hipster. Even pro studios are slimmer, cause it’s not 2003. Workflow is at a premium, and reaper… kinda feels like an expensive version of FOSS. Still so great in the ecosystem, and aw, a DAW love of mine. A chisel for the days when the 3D printer just isn’t robust enough. I use Logic Pro and bitwig. Bitwig fails the same test. I rarely say this, but this niche could inspire nerdy moments a bit less, and creative workflows a bit more to be attractive to a prosumer.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  The problem is that after your typical singer/songwriter spends a month or two working with the sort of tool they "really need", their sense of the possible expands. And expands. And expands. They may never get to 32 hardware channels, but they will get to automation, VCAs, plugin favorites, grouping, and much, much more. I've considered doing a crazy-simple version of Ardour (nominal name "arb" for "Ardour Recording Button"), but I'm still not convinced that writing a tool that will only be useful to most of its users for a couple of months makes sense.
  - squarefoot 4y ago
    You probably mean the equivalent of a scratchpad for writing down ideas without caring about formatting, typos, small details etc. This is often accomplished much quicker in music by using a hardware platform such as a portable recorder with a set of effects and sometimes instruments too: plug mic and guitar, start drum machine and start recording, then add a few tracks, mix down to .mp3 and the quick demo is ready, when done you export the result into the DAW where the real work work happens. Zoom and Tascam have some really nice devices in their catalog. The same could be accomplished also in software, and it would have a huge success, however packing it with features can only slow down the work; everything should be thought without the idea of turning it into a full DAW but just putting it there the minimum necessary to be productive without distractions. Think about a mini Linux distro (Alpine?) that boots in seconds on a small netbook to directly load the "music scratchpad" at full screen and no other software in the background. Plenty of devices are out there ready to be repurposed for that, and good external USB audio card can be found for cheap. Years ago I used my old Samsung NC10 netbook to record my band. The internal mics were crap like with every laptop, but once I built a small stereo jfet preamp to connect two external dynamic mics, I got quite good results. It was a bit slow to operate, and more so managing the long files we created (~3 hours at 44.1KHz 16bit stereo .wav) but I used a full Debian plus Audacity without any optimization for speed and size.
wyager 4y ago
Reaper is awesome! I did a bunch of research before buying a DAW and Reaper struck me as the most principled and generally well-designed option among those I found. It's very powerful, which means there is a bit of a learning curve, but it can do everything you want it to, and it has nice stuff like really solid scripting support (lua, python, and some DSL). I record like 20-30 audio tracks at a time from my rackmount setup and reaper handles it no problem. Very much worth the $60.
- sprkwd 4y ago
  Isn’t there a plug-in database where all sorts of folks have created effects, automations, etc?
  - delgaudm 4y ago
    Reaper Stash is probably what you're thinking of, stash.reaper.fm, and it has its own package manager, ReaPack that helps manage all that. It also has a comprehensive API that can be manipulated with Lua.
marttt 4y ago
I would also add Non DAW. Great example of modular design, extremely lightweight, non-destructive editing. The session files of Non Timeline are also comfortable and fun to parse or even modify with sed/awk etc scripts. http://non.tuxfamily.org/ http://non.tuxfamily.org/ EDIT: Also, if you're a command line and text file weirdo like me: Mixer4: http://www.acousticrefuge.com/mixer4.htm http://www.acousticrefuge.com/mixer4.htm (From the homepage: "Mixer4 is an audio mixer and processor that can be controlled through simple text files. Over a dozen accessory programs complete what can be a very solid recording studio." I can confirm that it is extremely fast and very interesting to use. Nice, responsive and friendly solo developer, too.) And Ecasound: https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/ https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/
- ladyanita22 4y ago
  It seems to be somewhat abandoned or unmaintained, does it?
shams93 4y ago
Reaper isn't bad however qtracktor is really good and now supports the CLAP plugin format.
7speter 4y ago
Earlier this year I was struggling with just trying to get an audio recording workflow together on linux mint. It was really eye opening and disappointing, considering that to get some tools to work optimally, you have to get into the weeds and see if you have the right kernel. Adjusting mic levels are painful, everything is painful. I thought we moved beyond having to dualboot windows and linux, but now that I’m here for the coding, other techie pursuits (bash scripting, homelabbing and the like), and gaming, I come to find out that if you still probably need to dual boot if you want to do content creation. Oh and the only seeming distro thats setup out of the box thats focused on content creation is ubuntu studio, and I don’t want to be run up against a wall because of the snap eco system.
- ladyanita22 4y ago
  You should give Fedora a try with the stock kernel.
somat 4y ago
I am not really qualified to access it's quality, but there is also lmms, which looks like it works well enough. https://lmms.io/ https://lmms.io/ Not really qualified because I am not a musician and I was only using lmms to play around with a midi dials and buttons box, openbsd's sndio. and to see if I could get them to work togther. So in my case it was more of a systems integration exercise than making any music with it.
chuchana 4y ago
Could you expand on how Reaper is "more professional" than Ardour?

chrisjc 4y ago

Thanks, I was recently trying to figure out what audio app use for some very amateur toying around. I used to play around with a version of Reason I had long ago and recently just started playing with Garageband. It's pretty difficult trying to understand where to get started and what to use, esp as just a hobby. Googling "reason vs X" just turned up ad-loaded drivel. Anyone know of any good guides that lay out the land? Venn diagrams of where DAWs (digital audio workstation), Mixers, etc overlap or how they relate/compare with each other?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rhizome31 4y ago

Also check Bitwig, Renoise, Tracktion , U-He, AudioThing... Plenty of commercial audio software running on Linux nowadays.

filoleg 4y ago
Bitwig specifically is very known and exceptional. It isn't just a "daw for linux", it is a major cross-platform DAW that is being developed by a bunch of ex-Ableton people. Been following it since the initial release, and by now it became clear that they are clearly shooting (and really promisingly) for the "top DAW overall" status rather than something more narrow like "top Linux DAW".

dizhn 4y ago

If one is not against proprietary software, Reaper can actually be tested (for quite a while) free with all the features enabled.

b33j0r 4y ago

“I want to record audio” should not require even 2 hours of work. It’s still a 10 year learning experience in some circumstances. I’m at 20, hopefully I’m saying something useful. I support reaper, here’s an opinion. My problem with reaper is that I think it was trying to be protools for people who couldn’t afford protools. The thing is, most people aren’t recording 32 ADC channels and 1024 midi tracks on rackmount stuff. I think I have my dad’s last MIDI cables, and it makes me feel either ancient or hipster. Even pro studios are slimmer, cause it’s not 2003. Workflow is at a premium, and reaper… kinda feels like an expensive version of FOSS. Still so great in the ecosystem, and aw, a DAW love of mine. A chisel for the days when the 3D printer just isn’t robust enough. I use Logic Pro and bitwig. Bitwig fails the same test. I rarely say this, but this niche could inspire nerdy moments a bit less, and creative workflows a bit more to be attractive to a prosumer.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
The problem is that after your typical singer/songwriter spends a month or two working with the sort of tool they "really need", their sense of the possible expands. And expands. And expands. They may never get to 32 hardware channels, but they will get to automation, VCAs, plugin favorites, grouping, and much, much more. I've considered doing a crazy-simple version of Ardour (nominal name "arb" for "Ardour Recording Button"), but I'm still not convinced that writing a tool that will only be useful to most of its users for a couple of months makes sense.
- squarefoot 4y ago
  You probably mean the equivalent of a scratchpad for writing down ideas without caring about formatting, typos, small details etc. This is often accomplished much quicker in music by using a hardware platform such as a portable recorder with a set of effects and sometimes instruments too: plug mic and guitar, start drum machine and start recording, then add a few tracks, mix down to .mp3 and the quick demo is ready, when done you export the result into the DAW where the real work work happens. Zoom and Tascam have some really nice devices in their catalog. The same could be accomplished also in software, and it would have a huge success, however packing it with features can only slow down the work; everything should be thought without the idea of turning it into a full DAW but just putting it there the minimum necessary to be productive without distractions. Think about a mini Linux distro (Alpine?) that boots in seconds on a small netbook to directly load the "music scratchpad" at full screen and no other software in the background. Plenty of devices are out there ready to be repurposed for that, and good external USB audio card can be found for cheap. Years ago I used my old Samsung NC10 netbook to record my band. The internal mics were crap like with every laptop, but once I built a small stereo jfet preamp to connect two external dynamic mics, I got quite good results. It was a bit slow to operate, and more so managing the long files we created (~3 hours at 44.1KHz 16bit stereo .wav) but I used a full Debian plus Audacity without any optimization for speed and size.

wyager 4y ago

Reaper is awesome! I did a bunch of research before buying a DAW and Reaper struck me as the most principled and generally well-designed option among those I found. It's very powerful, which means there is a bit of a learning curve, but it can do everything you want it to, and it has nice stuff like really solid scripting support (lua, python, and some DSL). I record like 20-30 audio tracks at a time from my rackmount setup and reaper handles it no problem. Very much worth the $60.

sprkwd 4y ago
Isn’t there a plug-in database where all sorts of folks have created effects, automations, etc?
- delgaudm 4y ago
  Reaper Stash is probably what you're thinking of, stash.reaper.fm, and it has its own package manager, ReaPack that helps manage all that. It also has a comprehensive API that can be manipulated with Lua.

marttt 4y ago

I would also add Non DAW. Great example of modular design, extremely lightweight, non-destructive editing. The session files of Non Timeline are also comfortable and fun to parse or even modify with sed/awk etc scripts. http://non.tuxfamily.org/ http://non.tuxfamily.org/ EDIT: Also, if you're a command line and text file weirdo like me: Mixer4: http://www.acousticrefuge.com/mixer4.htm http://www.acousticrefuge.com/mixer4.htm (From the homepage: "Mixer4 is an audio mixer and processor that can be controlled through simple text files. Over a dozen accessory programs complete what can be a very solid recording studio." I can confirm that it is extremely fast and very interesting to use. Nice, responsive and friendly solo developer, too.) And Ecasound: https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/ https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/

ladyanita22 4y ago
It seems to be somewhat abandoned or unmaintained, does it?

shams93 4y ago

Reaper isn't bad however qtracktor is really good and now supports the CLAP plugin format.

7speter 4y ago

Earlier this year I was struggling with just trying to get an audio recording workflow together on linux mint. It was really eye opening and disappointing, considering that to get some tools to work optimally, you have to get into the weeds and see if you have the right kernel. Adjusting mic levels are painful, everything is painful. I thought we moved beyond having to dualboot windows and linux, but now that I’m here for the coding, other techie pursuits (bash scripting, homelabbing and the like), and gaming, I come to find out that if you still probably need to dual boot if you want to do content creation. Oh and the only seeming distro thats setup out of the box thats focused on content creation is ubuntu studio, and I don’t want to be run up against a wall because of the snap eco system.

ladyanita22 4y ago
You should give Fedora a try with the stock kernel.

somat 4y ago

I am not really qualified to access it's quality, but there is also lmms, which looks like it works well enough. https://lmms.io/ https://lmms.io/ Not really qualified because I am not a musician and I was only using lmms to play around with a midi dials and buttons box, openbsd's sndio. and to see if I could get them to work togther. So in my case it was more of a systems integration exercise than making any music with it.

chuchana 4y ago

Could you expand on how Reaper is "more professional" than Ardour?