I was a heavy Logic 9 user. I've been into producing for 18 years or so now, since I was a kid, a die-hard Mac user. I've been through Digital Performer, Cubase and Logic Pro. Apple was holding it down with the pro software after they bought Emagic. It's kinda sad to see that the situation has deteriorated to this level.
Well, I started getting fed up with Apple ~6 years ago now.
After my hard drive crashed, I moved to to producing on exclusively on Linux as a personal, mental and spiritual challenge. This was very difficult in 2011. As much as I wanted Ardour to be what I wanted it to be, the only thing that was stable enough to get stuff done on was QTractor...
Since then, Linux has gotten waayyyy better for music production. KXStudio is excellent. (don't waste time on Ubuntu Studio, it's not configured well). There are plenty of amazing LV2 and LADSPA plugins, and even some good VST plugins like TAL NoizeMaker. Ardour is great if you're lucky to get a stable build. As far as "mainstream pro" music production on linux... it's maybe not quite there yet for a general audience, but if you're a producer/composer/independent artist with some technical patience, Linux audio production is completely amazing. It's a whole different paradigm with plenty of room for professionals. The fact that Jack is totally modular from the get-go is extremely powerful. It means that stuff can be combined in all kinds of ways. (check this thing out if you haven't already: http://moddevices.com/ )
And honestly, Bitwig has completely switched up the whole situation. Right now I'm running Bitwig on Arch and it's beastly. The only thing I miss from Logic are those excellent MIDI editing tools, non-destructive quantize. I'm also missing my favorite LV2 plugins (ZynAddSubFX). But Bitwig has plenty of synths and a fully modular system for creating endless sounds, so I'm set.
Don't need or want Apple at this point. I'm good :)
I'm an amateur in sound and music and only do occasional audio mixing and mastering on a basic level, and only if I need to, for video. Friend introduced me to Reaper and I've been blown away as it was easy (reportedly some people have issues with that, hah!) to use, cheap, and quite nice. Do you know if it will come to Linux as well? I know they've announced something about that.
Interesting. I haven't really checked out Reaper. I have some friends who are at the Garageband level of computer music production. They have struggled with QTractor. Maybe I'll suggest Reaper, since it's only $60.
The cost of Reaper, an i5 thinkpad with KXStudio, 8 gigs of ram and terabyte hard drive is like $200. You could make a top quality album with that setup, no problem.
I consider myself rather smart, but I'm really dumb when it comes to audio software. DAWs especially so. I got reaper, went through their tutorials and I was mixing and mastering for broadcast stereo output, from 0-100, in about a week. I even dabbled with some music ideas and things like that and it's as easy as anything. I've tried Nuendo and ProTools at work, but it was overwhelming (or I was too lazy). Only other DAW that I liked was Digital Performer, but its font rendering on Windows rendered it unusable. I couldn't read anything in the UI.
Well, being a programmer and open source enthusiast, I was curious about the possibility of development. I haven't done much except fix a few bugs here and there. A lot of Linux audio software is made by very small, rolling teams of dedicated individuals. It's a testament to the architecture (Linux, Jack, LV2, LADSPA) that so many eclectic pieces of software are able to work together as well as they do.
If more organizations/companies were to invest in Linux as a serious audio platform, I imagine it could really blossom. The foundations are all there. It's the user interfaces, the workflows and the software design that needs work. And the presence of developers who get non-linear, modular, audio workflows and musicality.
As for plugins, there are a few VSTs that have been ported to Linux via (distrho)[http://distrho.sourceforge.net/]. Bitwig has amazing internal instruments. So I'm set for now. It'd be amazing if more plugin developers made VST/LV2 builds for Linux. Now that Bitwig is around, maybe more will start showing up. U-he has some public betas of linux versions of their plugins.
I wish there were something like a Blender Institute for Linux music software. Or... if the Blender Institute just started making linux music production software :)
Has Ardour come on much? I tried using it for years and years, tried Muse, Rosegarden etc. but switching to Logic Pro X suddenly meant I could get stuff done instead of faffing around. JACK is truly great on Linux and I sponsored Ardour for a while, but last time I used it a few years ago, it was lagging feature-wise.
Well, Ardour has MIDI now, although I never got into it. I'm a producer, so I work with motifs and loops and themes and concepts. Doing this on a timeline, with a complicated interface, really takes it out of me. So I haven't Ardour it much, other than for mixing. In Logic, I used take folders for this, but never figured out a smooth workflow for composing in Ardour.
If you are making linear, arranged music, Ardour definitely has all the features to produce it. Although I can't speak for usability or stability, cause I never really invested the time to learn it.
I think of Ardour as akin to Pro Tools (which I can't stand BTW!). It's linear and clunky. It's got powerful busing features, a timeline with all kinds of markers and annotations. The stuff I did on Ardour always came out sounding real clean.
It's funny, I did most of my work on QTractor. It has a dead simple interface, easily modifyable shortcuts, and is surprisingly powerful. The only thing is that it's missing an obvious bounce feature that works for MIDI instrument plugins. So I'd have to route my master track to a "bounce" track, then record to that.
Linux is missing a quality, simple, open source non-linear sequencer (audio/MIDI). Something like Seq24 crossed with SooperLooper. Something like Ableton or Bitwig, but just the cliplauncher part.
That's why I caved in and went to Bitwig. I was going through some stuff and just needed to make some music. There's also something to be said about having lots of presets and samples ready to go. On Linux, you gotta bring your own settings.
As an amateur music dabbler, that's great to hear. I tried Linux in 2011 or so (Ardour maybe?) and gave up, got a Macbook and Logic Pro. But the idea of moving back to Linux full-time on more powerful and repairable hardware is very appealing.
Check Bitwig or Reaper (recommended by some people in a different comment) if you want something more stable. And yeah, KXStudio has great tools for configuring and managing Jack with Pulseaudio. You can install it on top of Ubuntu via it's deb repository.
Lately I've been using Arch. Arch's audio packages are also very well configured. There's even a Bitwig package in the AUR. That's how I installed Bitwig :) It's the best of both worlds.
Well, I started getting fed up with Apple ~6 years ago now. After my hard drive crashed, I moved to to producing on exclusively on Linux as a personal, mental and spiritual challenge. This was very difficult in 2011. As much as I wanted Ardour to be what I wanted it to be, the only thing that was stable enough to get stuff done on was QTractor...
Since then, Linux has gotten waayyyy better for music production. KXStudio is excellent. (don't waste time on Ubuntu Studio, it's not configured well). There are plenty of amazing LV2 and LADSPA plugins, and even some good VST plugins like TAL NoizeMaker. Ardour is great if you're lucky to get a stable build. As far as "mainstream pro" music production on linux... it's maybe not quite there yet for a general audience, but if you're a producer/composer/independent artist with some technical patience, Linux audio production is completely amazing. It's a whole different paradigm with plenty of room for professionals. The fact that Jack is totally modular from the get-go is extremely powerful. It means that stuff can be combined in all kinds of ways. (check this thing out if you haven't already: http://moddevices.com/ )
And honestly, Bitwig has completely switched up the whole situation. Right now I'm running Bitwig on Arch and it's beastly. The only thing I miss from Logic are those excellent MIDI editing tools, non-destructive quantize. I'm also missing my favorite LV2 plugins (ZynAddSubFX). But Bitwig has plenty of synths and a fully modular system for creating endless sounds, so I'm set.
Don't need or want Apple at this point. I'm good :)