I've tried so many distros, on multiple systems both PC and laptops. I've tried every suggestion, custom real time kernels like liquorix etc., and no matter what, I'll always get xruns in Linux, often without running any plugins at all. It seems with both Apple and Linux utilizing class compliant drivers, Linux should in theory be capable of achieving the same results as an Apple system, but it never can. At present time, music production in Linux is an after thought at best, when will developers prioritize music production in Linux?
#When will Linux be as reliable as Windows or Mac when it comes to music production?
steel ether
worthy lily
There are no developers of the entire linux desktop, rather hundreds of different developers working on different parts of what makes a full linux desktop so in a way its already prioritised but only by the developers of audio backends and drivers like pipewire and alsa
steel ether
I'm aware of that. What I'm suggesting is they, nor the kernel developers, actually test for xruns, so when will they?
worthy lily
They most likely do, its just that every system is different and it'd be unreasonable to test every single sound card in use
Your best bet is to just submit a bug report
steel ether
I disagree, that's a whack a mole approach. Music production requires the use of real time audio kernels, and one isn't supplied in Mint or Ubuntu repositories, you must manually install liquorix, a third party kernel of which (nvidia issues aside), the devs don't test for xruns, they're just looking at latency, which is to say, implementation and testing of real time kernels in linux is still in its infancy. I'd love to contribute to this end, but I honestly wouldn't even know where to start outside of the Ubuntu Studio community.
dim kettle
Linux still isn’t as reliable as Windows or macOS for music production. Audio issues like xruns are common, and many pro tools and plugins don’t fully support Linux. While things are slowly improving, it’s still not the best choice for hassle-free music production.
steel ether
Are they slowly improving? Where's the road map? When will a real-time kernel be available in Ubuntu/Mint repositories? Because it's been like this for years and I find the videos about making music on Linux to be super misleading as result, verging on dishonest. Youtubers make it seem like all you need to do is configure jack with a real-time kernel and you're set, then you do exactly that and you get xruns/glitches every other second, seemingly at random, while your CPU/PC/DAW/Interface aren't doing anything at all. Nothing in logs to indicate what to troubleshoot etc. You'd think, considering we're working with class compliant drivers, it would be even easier to implement?
dry quail
Have you increased your buffers
Have you disabled power management
Did you change irq priority
steel ether
Yup, on multiple machines, distros and DAWs. Every BIOS setting you can think of, with or without drive encryption, disabling/removing everything that wasn't absolutely necessary for the OS to function like Bluetooth etc. When I say I've spent literal months troubleshooting xruns in various distros I'm not being hyperbolic. So it's this annoying belief it can be utilized for real-time music production, it just needs to stop because it's always the same result. Fiddling around with synths in arduour at a buffer of 512+ isn't the same as trying to record guitar or drum samples at 32, 64 or even 128, you realize your options are random xruns or you increase the buffer to the point where there's so much latency you can't track an instrument like a guitar in real-time anymore.
dry quail
u use the same hardware on windows/apple and got no problem ? or was it different hardware
steel ether
same hardware on windows, I haven't tried the hackintosh route don't think I will, was just mentioning apple as I thought they used class compliant drivers as well but for the interfaces I've tried (motu/steinberg/focusrite) looks like they have apple drivers, so maybe that's where the problem lies.
safe pagoda
Did you tried LMMS?
native needle
Did you tried LMMS?
LLMS over Reaper?
steel ether
I tried Bitwig and Reaper, can't stand Ardour personally but to each their own.
One thing that seemed promising in comparison to Windows was, from a mixing/mastering perspective, if you have a really high buffer like 2048, I could run way more performance intensive plugins like tape saturation (via yabridge) without having to freeze/flatten tracks, so I mean there's at least an argument that you could benefit from a dual setup where you track in Windows/Apple, taking advantage of the proprietary interface drivers, and just mix/master in Linux but I'm just not a fan of a dual boot setup and being able to track with low latency is what's most important.
upbeat swan
I use Bitwig and it worked good. One Problem is the usage of VST Plugins. But u can have u-he, HY, Atlas, and some other Linux Native VST-Plugins.
All the other internal Bitwig Stuff works as expected.
I use MX-Linux-23.5-KDE-ahs
Audio: API: ALSA v: k6.13.8-4-liquorix-amd64 status: kernel-api tools: alsamixer,amixer Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.0 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin 4: pw-jack type: plugin tools: pactl,pw-cat,pw-cli,wpctl
steel ether
What buffer was the daw/interface set to?