Linux Music Production Essentials 2024

[@kellywshere]

Thank you so much for this treasure trove of amazing info! You are so generous to share all that!

[@satyarsh665]

Oh the KZbin algorithm finally recommended me a fellow Linux metal musician! although i run my plugins with yabridge and most of them are not foss... Non the less great song and video 🤝

[@dljohnsonmusic]

Great video, will be implementing some of these, though not a metal artist, many of these will transfer over to my blues work and workflow. Thanks for share this!

[@Sebastian-yl5vz]

This is Gold

[@omarmoreira86]

You're amazing. Thanks for sharing this knowledge!

[@pelennorDSP]

Nice work, and I'm glad that github NAM model repository I put together is still getting some use! Speaking of NAM models, having hung around the discord and NAM facebook whilst tonehunt was being developed, I can assure you there's nothing nefarious going on with user accounts / user signon. It helps the end user, because then you're able to do things like follow certain capture creators and so on, and it helps the admins because they have to make sure people aren't uploading captures that would violate TOS of other companies (eg captures of amp sims like Neural DSP, or captures from modellers like Quad Cortex or Kemper). Up until relatively recently, the tonehunt source code itself was open source.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

I kind of expected that you'd need an account already to download them, so having a registration/login without requiring it is actually a bit confusing 😅

[@SudoMetalStudio]

I actually cut that stupid babbling about Tonehunt login. I should have scripted that part as it really didn't come out with the respect it should have been. I'll be making better video about ToneHunt once I get into capturing some models myself first :)

[@needsLITHIUM]

I use it constantly. I have paid plugins that work on Linux, but I made NAM captures of my actual gear that I use alongside that plugin for double and quad tracking.

[@PatrickMann-ic4er]

Oh, Boy! Am I gonna learn a LOT from you! Excellent Channel, brother! Thanks

[@brianbergmusic5288]

The metal mix sounds just as capable if not better than some mixes I've heard in Mac/PC using a lot more $$ invested.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

Thanks! The tools are all there. It's just matter of learning how mixing is supposed to be done. I'm sure a professional mixing engineer would do still much better with these than amateur-me 😉

[@oMikekiMo]

Great video, you certainly pointed out some things I didn't know about, namely the NAM stuff, so now I have something new to go play with, nice one.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

I can also recommend the Facebook group "Neural Amp Modeler (NAM)". Over 18k members and growing very rapidly, including some "big players" in plugin dev field giving freebies every now and then 🙂

[@IsmaelMulti]

Thanks bro, nice work!

[@simpletunetv953]

love this😊🥰

[@Grunfeld]

Excellent info. Thanks.

[@ospifi]

Hyvää settiä ja hyvä miksaus! Ardour ja pitkälti samoihin plugareihin/paketteihin itsekkin päätyny tässä vuosien saatossa. Hydrogenin tilalla Drumgizmo ja lisukkeena vielä Dragonfly reverb, jossa nyt tuskin suurempia eroja noiden muiden pakettien kaikuihin, mutta kerran tottuneena ni ei pääse irti 🙂.

[@resofactor]

That's bad ass man

[@SuedwestlichtMusic]

For those who play with standalone Guitarix and got the problem that bufsize/latency is too big because the DAW project they are running to record it demands it, there is a solution. If you have 2 audio interfaces then you can start 2 jackd instances, one with the big latency for the DAW and one with a small latency (on my machine down to 32 samples bufsize) for Guitarix.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

32 buffer size sounds completely unneccessary for me. Even 64 is mostly overkill but well-trained drummer could probably notice jump from 64 to 128. I personally use 128 and have absolutely no issues with latency. Buffer size 128 @ 48kHz = 2,7ms x 2 = 5,4ms DSP latency, and buffer size 32 @ 48kHz similarly 1,3ms. Plus hardware latency constant of ~3ms for both so you have approx 9ms vs 4ms roundtrip latency. Sound travels 1,7m in 5ms, so unless you can hear difference in latency standing 2m vs 4m away from amp, there's should be no audible difference in 32 vs 128 buffer size (and this was very generously rounded). But there is huge difference in CPU load. This is why you should use highest reasonable buffer size in DAW, and switch even higher (1024) once you go from recording to mixing. Also note that jack uses triple buffering (2,6ms x3= 7,8ms) instead of double buffering, unless it's configured to be in synchronous mode.

[@CyrilAndrieu]

​@@SudoMetalStudiobest analyse and explanation about latency measurement i've ever seen !

[@bransby]

what version of Ardour are you using? I 've moved to 8 and now Calf plugins don't work, they apparently haven't been maintained for ages 😞, it's a shame because I really liked them, plenty of alternatives available but I did like Calf

[@SudoMetalStudio]

@@bransby I'm still on 6.8 due using Ubuntu Studio 22.04 but I noticed Calf plugins wasn't preinstalled even on that. But you should be able to just install them separately. If you're on Debian based system such as Ubuntu, try "sudo apt install calf-plugins" in terminal.

[@_DRMR_]

While the Calf plugins look really nice, their DSP isn't particularly good and there are some issues with how their UI embeds into other hosts with clashing library versions. They give the impression of looking very professional, but in their actual usage I would not recommend them any more.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

@@_DRMR_ I've heard similar things, but at the same time usability vs x42's plugins is just better because of simplicity.

[@inso80]

What are the distros and audio subsystems I should be looking at when picking which one to use?

[@SudoMetalStudio]

Basically all modern distros come with PipeWire as default. It works as both PulseAudio and Jack server, uniting them under the same audio subsystem. Previously, installing Jack was recommended for pro audio, but that is no longer the case as PipeWire serves also for jack applications. Some still prefer the og jack server as it's more mature and might serve specific use cases better, but PipeWire will likely be the only future for Linux audio. Audio routing wise PipeWire is just objectively better, and based on my own benchmarks it's slightly better also performance-wise (lower latency than with jack). I've heard good things about AVLinux but I find Ubuntu Studio to be my favourite. TLDR; Install Ubuntu Studio, all defaults and everything just works 🙂

[@inso80]

@@SudoMetalStudio Thanks, I have dabbled a bit with ubuntu back in the day, but I think I'll be giving ubuntu studio a go. Another question. I wanna do some basic desktop stuff and light gaming too. Is it possible on ubuntu studio or should I pick up another distro on the side for that?

[@SudoMetalStudio]

@@inso80 I'm gaming a bit (Steam) and all works well in Ubuntu Studio; except that with multiple display -setup many games tend to "leak" the mouse to other displays while gaming full screen. So, I always disable all extra displays before gaming. Ubuntu Studio comes with KDE Plasma desktop environment so it might be related to that too. Otherwise I really like KDE! Also no issues with NVIDIA RTX (using proprietary driver), except that Wayland wasn't working at all last time I checked. X11 works great and it's also the default.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

@@inso80 Oh and you can also go fully standard Ubuntu and just run the Ubuntu Studio Installer! I haven't tried it but apparently it does all the pro audio tweaks for you and installs recommended packages. ubuntustudio.org/ubuntu-studio-installer/

[@inso80]

@@SudoMetalStudio Thanks for the info. Is a big help.

[@user95395]

have you used wine to use windows plugins?

[@SudoMetalStudio]

No, I prefer Linux native plugins. But I know it's possible through something called "yabridge".

[@user95395]

@@SudoMetalStudio interesting. there is probably enough there then.

[@SudoMetalStudio]

@@user95395 definitely 🙂 in my opinion, yabridge is for those who have already brought some VSTs for windows, and want keep using them in linux. The only non-native plugin I ever wanted for Linux from other platforms was NeuralDSP (I don't think it even works with yabridge), but also it became redundant when NAM happened 🙂

[@zeebpc]

how do you use Neural amp modeler and the UI and tone hunt?

[@SudoMetalStudio]

I explain the installing in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hIulpaGHeqmXh7csi=iQMquCofED5DpKZW I download some models from different source in that video, but tonehunt lets you search and download specific amp captures and so on.

[@davebuz4197]

Thanks for your videos,I am a fellow Linux+Ardour user. I am curious, why you use Hydrogen and then transfer the midi+mix to Ardour? Wouldn't it be better to write the drum part directly in Ardour using DrumGizmo (in this way you have more direct control on the final drum mix)?

[@SudoMetalStudio]

I simply like Hydrogen better for drum pattern creation than Ardour. It's especially fast when riffing with guitar and quickly drafting some beats to complement the riff. I don't always use it like that as I tend to switch between doing patterns and playing live using e-drums, but I just want to stay in one context and mix even when swapping my production methods. When doing Hydrogen patterns, I export them as Midi to Ardour. When I play e-drums, I record that directly to Ardour as midi. In both cases I still route the Midi from Ardour to Hydrogen and back to Ardour as audio, so I get the same samples and mix from kit I have loaded in Hydrogen. So, I use its mixer to do the mixing of drums against everything else in Ardour. And when I'm ready to export my song, I just need to remember to record the drums as audio first. Until that point I still have full control on everything. Btw, Hydrogen could also fan out all the samples to separate outputs tracks like DrumGizmo does, but I just don't need that level of detail in my drum mixes (yet). Also with DrumGizmo sets you need to control the bleeding sounds etc exactly like when recording real drums and I'm just not that good. Having "pure" sounds as samples is just easier :) DrumGizmo is still the one recommended by pros to my knowledge.

[@davebuz4197]

@@SudoMetalStudio Thanks, I am gonna try your production method for drums...definitely Hydrogen looks better for pattern creation (for me doing it in Ardour Midi edit is a chore) and I like the idea to have a less cluttered DAW because all the drums are dealt with in another application. By the way, I play guitar and I am involved in a rock/metal project, so your channel is a godsend.

[@vetribull8318]

which OS is the best for linux, can you share with me?

[@SudoMetalStudio]

Best is always subjective. I enjoy using Ubuntu Studio. There are also good alternatives such as AVLinux and Manjaro 🙂

[@JPSardinha]

Nice tools, I can't believe that some people spend money on fab filter and other shit like this

[@TommyTantrym]

Also I am an Ardour user. I use Linux because it is more stable than windows

[@Hun_Uinaq]

Last I knew, Ardour used an antiquated library for their widgets. GTK. Not GTK plus but, old-fashioned GTK. That makes them a Knogo for me because I use software that relies on at-spi which is the accessibility framework on Linux. Literally drove me away from the operating system. These days, I use reaper. Works good on windows, if you can believe it.