
Fedora Muscian's Guide - brudgers
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/18/html/Musicians_Guide/index.html
======
rwmj
As a Fedora developer and amateur musician, I really couldn't recommend Fedora
(or Linux in general) for music. The DAWs I've tried are terrible. They all
have horrible UIs, trouble doing basic stuff and are crash-prone (hint to
developers: the DAW should _never_ _ever_ _ever_ crash!) My band uses free
GarageBand on Mac which is not very good but night and day better than any of
them I've tried. Setting up Jack instead of Pulseaudio is horrible and
invasive. Routing USB midi is an exercise in command line randomness.

Can we make this better? Probably. And I guess I should work on it. But right
now it's not there.

~~~
stefanha
I use Fedora to jam online several times a week and to record a few times a
year. The open source Linux music software ecosystem is behind proprietary
software available on Windows and macOS but it can do what I need.

Audio system: JACK

DAW: Ardour 5

Synthesizer: zynaddsubfx

Pianos: PianoTeq 6 (proprietary)

Drum machine: Hydrogen

The lack of good drum kits and patterns is my current pain point.

I haven't tried Reaper or Bitwig on Linux yet, but they should be decent if
you are willing to use proprietary software.

The Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 USB soundcard that I use is a class-compliant USB
audio device and I've never had trouble with it.

~~~
vibrafox
Reaper and Live have spoiled me. I tried to like Ardour, and it would be great
if it's all I had, but it has too many rough edges.

LMMS is good though. I must have made 200+ songs in it before switching to
Reaper. I could get by with LMMS and the included synths if I had to. It makes
me wish Reaper supported LV2.

~~~
hfdh434535
I would agree, re: rough edges, if we were talking about Ardour 2 or 3, which
both missed some important features and weren't as stable as I'd like. But in
the last few years, ardour has improved. I do most of my work in it now. Would
recommend it to anyone who wants a FLOSS DAW and isn't too dependent on mental
models from other audio software.

If anything, LMMS has the rough edges. The interface lacks polish and
consistency. There are some awkward things about using it (why do I have to
make a blank bar before I copy and paste a bar into it?). And I've noticed
some glitchy behavior - for instance, I just made a ZynAddSubFX patch that
sounded different as a plugin in LMMS than when I used it in Zyn's own
application. Strange behavior like that, but fortunately it's rare.

But all that considered, LMMS is still great, and I appreciate the work it's
authors put into it. I don't think of it as a daw; more of a sequencer. But if
your music is 100% digital synths and samples, it serves all your needs.

Right now I'm using: LMMS (sequencer), Ardour (daw), JAMin (mastering suite),
and Audacity (swiss army knife). I like Reaper. I've used ableton live many
times, and I still don't get it - I guess the workflow is optimized for live
mixing? I found it less than ideal for recording in a studio.

~~~
vibrafox
>> _" Would recommend it to anyone who wants a FLOSS DAW and isn't too
dependent on mental models from other audio software."_

I recommend against this kind of framing. It comes off as judgmental. My
mental models form based on my needs and experience. They're just as valid as
your mental models, needs, and experience. Your way of seeing my perspective
leads to faulty assumptions about my experience and models.

For example...

>> _" I would agree, re: rough edges, if we were talking about Ardour 2 or 3,
which both missed some important features and weren't as stable as I'd like.
But in the last few years, ardour has improved. I do most of my work in it
now."_

I tried 5 from Mint's repos. Yesterday. I try every version to see if it'll
work for me. Ardour continues to be critically lacking for me, based on my
needs. Take a step back any time you want to assume someone's view is based on
not knowing something you know. It's much more likely you don't know what they
know.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
> My mental models form based on my needs and experience

Except that the workflow for e.g. Live or FL Studio or Bitwig is entirely
different from the workflow for e.g. ProTools or Logic or Ardour.

So the extent that your needs and experience dictate a Live-style workflow,
then sure, you're right. But if you don't actually know what you're doing or
alternatively actually need the linear-timeline recording model of PT/Ardour,
then there's no judgement here, just a correct observation.

------
smcphile
Be warned that this guide was written in 2013 for Fedora 18. A few months
back, I tried using this guide with Fedora 31 and I found things have evolved
since the guide was written. For example, I gave up on installing the Planet
CCRMA packages separately and just used the Fedora repository version. For
some programs, in order to get a recent version, I installed from source code.
Etc.

Also, there is currently no Fedora Jam Audio spin, so be prepared to fiddle
around a bit if you want to use Fedora for music.

------
montalbano
Music production software is the only thing keeping me from going 100% Linux.
Unfortunately this guide doesn't help me much with the key issues

I don't know any production-grade sound cards that have Linux drivers (my RME
ADI-2 Pro certainly doesn't) and the DAW that I use (Reaper) only has
experimental Linux support. I would guess the Linux compatibility of other
DAWs is worse. Audacity can only get you so far.

I would guess many of the audio plug-ins I rely on within Reaper would also
have issues running on Linux.

~~~
johnr2
> I don't know any production-grade sound cards that have Linux drivers (my
> RME ADI-2 Pro certainly doesn't)

Most of the RME HDSP/HDSPe PCI/PCIe cards work on Linux using the ALSA snd-
hdsp or snd-hdspm drivers. The ADI-2 can use the generic Linux USB audio
driver AFAIK.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Many studios use USB interfaces these days and the majority of them work on
Linux. I'm the lead developer of Ardour and for the last couple of years I've
been using a MOTU UltraLite AVB, which works out of the box (24 channels of
I/O, and a totally web-based configuration utility).

Many, many production-grade devices (another example: the Behringer (Midas)
X32) work right of the box. The fact that the iPad did not allow drivers
forced almost all audio interface manufacturers to clean up their act and get
fully compliant with the USB audio specification. The side effect of this is
that they Just Work (TM) with Linux too.

(*) the one issue is that this particular device requires a specific version
of the firmware to avoid a bug that only shows up on Linux. This is not true
in general.

~~~
stefanha
Hi Paul, I just wanted to thank you for all the effort that legends like you,
Rui Nuno Capela, Nasca Octavian Paul, and others have put into getting the
Linux music ecosystem to where it is. Thanks for helping us play music (when
we're not programming)!

------
taylodl
I'm a professional developer and amateur musician. Honestly, I believe this is
a case where the "Apple tax" is well worth it. You can get far with GarageBand
and where that falls short you can use Logic Pro, which for $200 is still a
far sight cheaper than the other commercial DAWs. Interested in hearing other
people's experiences.

~~~
Bootwizard
I feel like the audience this article was written for would do well to try out
Reaper. It's a FOSS DAW that has almost every feature you wpuld ever need, but
also has a steep learning curve.

~~~
squeaky-clean
Reaper is neither free nor open source. Cockos (the company behind Reaper) has
several open source libraries used within Reaper, but Reaper is proprietary
software that costs $60 for a personal license. The developers don't believe
in wasting time on anti-piracy checks, so it's very easy to use Reaper without
paying. Kind of like Sublime Text.

Reaper is a great DAW, and I would recommend it to everyone. Whether a
beginner looking for their first DAW, or a pro with a million dollar studio.
Just pointing out it's not free/foss because that's something I've seen people
claim about Reaper for over a decade.

~~~
taylodl
Thanks for the feedback on Reaper

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cupantae
Ok so many people are commenting that this article is out of date. I've been
searching for what the best out-of-the-box music Linux distro would be, so I
can dual boot that for any music work. Namely it must have:

\- jack set up and default for everything

\- complete DAW solution: synth set up etc

\- updated, stable software

\- MIDI set up fully

\- real time kernel is definitely a plus

\- acceptable performance on modest hardware

A lot of the recommendations online like Musix are not current at all! I
wonder if Ubuntu Studio is the answer, just purely based on the website being
updated and professional-looking. I've considered KXstudio but cannot confirm
that it is a distro rather than a software repo. AVLinux?

Any firsthand experience? I will test Ubuntu Studio today and report back

~~~
rudenoise
So after trialing a few of the "audio-centric" distro-flavours I couldn't find
any that were particularly compelling (most, Ubuntu Studio included, were
installing huge quantities of tools that I was never likely to explore).

I've ended up using Manjaro, with Jack, Reaper, Renoise, Airwindows plugins, a
real-time kernel and very little else. It's pretty good.

I found this guide was helpful
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Professional_audio](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Professional_audio)

------
beat
Ugh. I've been using Linux since the .9 kernels/SLS distro days (1995 or so),
and I've been producing albums for 13-14 years and recording longer than that,
and I wouldn't even _consider_ doing real music production in Linux. It is
absolutely not worth the bullshit and the spoons. I want to be _recording
music_ , not putzing around with device drivers or scrounging for plugins that
don't completely suck.

I mostly use Reaper on a Mac, and pay a monthly subscription for Plugin
Alliance plugins. It's well worth the money, because it _works_ , sounds
great, and is straightforward to use. Given a choice between spending two
hours improving the eq/compression/reverb of a mix and two hours trying to
figure out why no sound is coming out, I know which one I prefer.

~~~
zwieback
Yes, Reaper is great. I played around with various options and Reaper is the
winner for me. I found a 8 channel Firewire Presonus interface in a cabinet at
work and that still works great with Reaper.

------
me551ah
Making electronic music is so much more than just operating system support.

You need a DAW and most of the ones that you get on Linux are horrible, except
Bitwig. So you would be forced to use only one DAW.

Most of the well known plugins like Serum, LFO Tool and Massive are not
available either so you would be limited to the ones included in Bitwig or the
basic VSTs that you find for Linux.

And while JACK is pretty good at low latency audio you would miss out on the
ASIO control panel provided by your sound card driver. While its possible to
get asio working on linux using wineasio, it's a cumbersome process since you
need to compile the asio dlls which have licensing restrictions.

You would have a much better experience if you just install Windows on KVM and
use PCI passthrough for your sound card.

~~~
justaj
> Most of the well known plugins like Serum, LFO Tool and Massive are not
> available either

Though everything that those VSTs can do, can also be done in Bitwig Studio
starting from v3.

> miss out on the ASIO control panel

What does this add that the usual tools in Linux can't fix? Also, it's
recommended to go with class compliant USB audio interfaces or otherwise
interfaces that are supported on Linux. Going with MOTU gear for example is a
bad idea.

~~~
casion
"Can do" is not particularly useful. You "can" sit there and sequence
thousands of sine waves in audacity to create any sound that you want... but
nobody wants to do that.

Bitwig's grid is capable, but the ease of access for particular workflows is
burdensome. Replicating Serum in the grid isn't possible practically, both
because of filter designs and the wavetable capabilities, and getting close
requires some significant acrobatics.

Massive... much easier. LFO Tool, basically impossible to replicate in Bitwig
because the main draw is the _workflow_.

Bitwig is a very capable, fun and useful product for electronic music creation
but I think your response to the OP is correct on a very technical, and
pedantic level, but extremely unhelpful regardless.

~~~
cycloptic
Complaining about some missing functionality is also extremely unhelpful.
Those of us who've been doing it for years know what the state of things is,
and the developers of those closed source plugins know what their stance is.
You ask them to do a Linux port and they say "no that would cost too much
money and we can't support it". You ask them for source so you can port it
yourself and they say "no you're going to steal it". You try to clean-room
reverse engineer and write a clone of the plugin and they still get angry at
you for "stealing". I don't bother anymore. People just have their workflow
that they learned on plugins from 10 years ago, they aren't going to change
unless something breaks horribly, and that's that. Those who are brave can
still fiddle around with running VSTs in Wine.

------
ptah
>[https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/18/html/Musician...](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/18/html/Musicians_Guide/sect-Musicians_Guide-USB_Sound_Cards.html)

this is completely wrong. internal audio interfaces tend to be worse than
external audio interfaces. what internal soundcard can compete with a
universal audio apollo?

~~~
johnr2
>this is completely wrong. internal audio interfaces tend to be worse than
external audio interfaces. what internal soundcard can compete with a
universal audio apollo?

Audio engineer here. It isn't wrong. PCI and PCIe cards with external AD/DA
converters have better performance, reliability and higher channel counts.
Eg.: [https://www.rme-audio.de/hdspe-madi.html](https://www.rme-
audio.de/hdspe-madi.html)

64 channels in, 64 out. Works fine on Linux.

~~~
ptah
genuinely curious: what daw software are you using with this on linux?

~~~
johnr2
> what daw software are you using with this on linux?

I used Ardour for ~8 years, then switched to Non DAW ~6 years ago:
[http://non.tuxfamily.org/](http://non.tuxfamily.org/)

------
nightfly
Can someone please fix the typo in the title?

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jfengel
That would be "Musician", not "Muscian". The actual link spells it correctly.

------
deeblering4
For me music creation is a process of capturing lightning in a bottle.

When I'm ready to record something, my kit needs to work and get the idea into
a track right away while I have the idea and the juices are flowing.

If I have to troubleshoot or configure anything while in this mode the
creative idea is lost and I get super frustrated.

This is why I've shied away from linux as a music platform, setup and
troubleshooting is the last thing I want to do when feeling creative, I just
want to plug-in and hit record.

With that said my approach is around physical instruments, maybe it's
different if your studio is entirely in the box.

------
emmelaich
This is Fedora 18, which is very old .. 2013

------
AdmiralAsshat
Props to Fedora for their thorough documentation, but to a musician looking
for a prospective Linux distro to serve their needs, this looks dense as all
hell.

I wonder if they might be better served taking a page from something like
Ubuntu Studio[0], and just making a spin that tries to preconfigure all of
this stuff out-of-the-box for the end-user, so that they can simply install
the ISO and get going.

[0]
[https://ubuntustudio.org/tour/audio/#](https://ubuntustudio.org/tour/audio/#)

------
cies
Check out "Unfa" on YT, he makes vids on opensource music production. Very
good quality content IMHO.

He uses KXStudio iirc.

------
mushufasa
section on training yourself to listen [https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/18/html/Musician...](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-
US/Fedora/18/html/Musicians_Guide/sect-Musicians_Guide-Solfege-Training.html)

------
LeonB
Reading this i didn’t feel it was addressed to me as a musician. But as an
engineer I felt it was addressed to me.

