Great article, I wish I'd seen the mid-project posting to HN. I was skeptical about the Alexa integration but that seems to work well.
ludicrously difficult to set up. Laptop + low-latency Linux + Ardour + QLC+...
This resonates [sorry] with me. Linux sound today seems painfully reminiscent of Linux X-Windows 20 years ago. There's a lot of painful voodoo, competing control systems and legions of mostly out-dated forum threads of dead-ends, anecdotal advice, misinformation. I'm hoping that the next Ubuntu Studio will Just Work on the laptop that I have put aside for it and that I won't have to waste more time in the Pulse/Alsa/Jack soup.
I was aware of Guitarix but have not yet played with it. My youngest is learning electric and we've got to the point where we can play together, with me pounding out the bass line on an old classical we had lying around(!). That is a blast but I wasn't really intending to become a bassist. If I were to pick up an electric guitar to fool around on, can Guitarix drop me down an octave and make me a pretend bass player? (I had a quick poke around the Guitarix wiki, couldn't see anything). There must be DAW processing plugins to do this, but I'd really like to be live. Are there other solutions? (apart from buying more instruments I mean...).
Oh, and I love this:
So I bought a 3D printer and became a CAD guy, I guess
"I had a hard problem to solve... so I... casually nuked it" :)
There's a lot of painful voodoo, competing control systems and legions of mostly out-dated forum threads of dead-ends, anecdotal advice, misinformation. I'm hoping that the next Ubuntu Studio will Just Work on the laptop that I have put aside for it and that I won't have to waste more time in the Pulse/Alsa/Jack soup.
Along with cadence to manage Jack and alsa and Catia/Claudia for managing studios and ladish sessions.
It can be installed on top of an existing Ubuntu based system without much trouble and after setting it up it works flawlessly for me. I've been using this setup for a few years now.
legions of mostly out-dated forum threads of dead-ends, anecdotal advice, misinformation
I completely agree with this. Any guide that still recommends qjackctl or manually fucking around with alsa and midi bridges should be completely disregarded. There's zero reason to need to do this any more and there hasn't been for at least half a decade now.
It's really too bad, honestly the flexibility offered by Jack and the huge range of audio software on linux allows for workflows I'd never been able to do on windows. It's pretty much the entire modular linux philosophy applied to making music and it's closest i've come to the same kind of workflow you get with hardware equipment.
Just fiddling around with different plugin routings can give you some pretty cool sounds that can be patched into any Jack aware software you have.
FYI: Yamaha's advanced synths (Motif and Montage) are based on real-time linux.
I bought an MX49 and they include the GPL and a download link.
But if you're expecting a random linux flavor to just work with audio, I don't know if that's reasonable, since nobody packaged or tested it with that in mind.
I've tried kxstudio and still struggled. Is it easier to buy a separate audio interface for studio audio, to avoid having to route Pulse/ALSA and JACK into each other?
Guitarix is really, really impressive and I'm eternally grateful, but it is raw. It takes a lot of work to get it to sound the way you want and is inconsistent from sim to sim. However, by having control over the hardware and the sessions (i.e. presets, basically) and totally bypassing the Guitarix GUI, I was able to make it work for this project.
BTW, I'm not using any of guitarix's cab sims. Instead I purchased a commercial license to professionally-shot proprietary cab simulation IRs which make all the difference in terms of tone quality. That metal portion of the demo is all about the cab sims.
What you want to do is possible, but the sound won't be anywhere close and what's more important, you will probably still play as a guitarist, due to smaller scale length and lighter strings.
I know you specifically asked for other options, but everyone reading this: grab a used bass from craigslist or a pawnshop! Something like an older Peavey will do just fine. A decent instrument can be found for a hundred bucks (or less!) and you can always flip it again later.
Any guitarist should fiddle with a bass from time to time. It will make you see the known tunes from the other POV and appreciate some nuances you've never paid attention to.
Or grab a little short scale bass like an Ibanez Mikro Bass. Cheap and a dream to play.
The scale length on the Mikro bass is only about 28-29 inches so coming from a “real” bass guitar it feels barely any bigger than a Stratocaster. I carry mine in an old Strat gig bag and it fits fine.
rtaudio (https://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtaudio/index.html) works pretty well in linux. I built a small shim with it for a pi zero that allows me to embed a vcv module on the pi which acts as a USB Audio device (in gadget mode). makes for an interesting eurorack environment.
Comments
Great article, I wish I'd seen the mid-project posting to HN. I was skeptical about the Alexa integration but that seems to work well.
This resonates [sorry] with me. Linux sound today seems painfully reminiscent of Linux X-Windows 20 years ago. There's a lot of painful voodoo, competing control systems and legions of mostly out-dated forum threads of dead-ends, anecdotal advice, misinformation. I'm hoping that the next Ubuntu Studio will Just Work on the laptop that I have put aside for it and that I won't have to waste more time in the Pulse/Alsa/Jack soup.
I was aware of Guitarix but have not yet played with it. My youngest is learning electric and we've got to the point where we can play together, with me pounding out the bass line on an old classical we had lying around(!). That is a blast but I wasn't really intending to become a bassist. If I were to pick up an electric guitar to fool around on, can Guitarix drop me down an octave and make me a pretend bass player? (I had a quick poke around the Guitarix wiki, couldn't see anything). There must be DAW processing plugins to do this, but I'd really like to be live. Are there other solutions? (apart from buying more instruments I mean...).
Oh, and I love this:
"I had a hard problem to solve... so I... casually nuked it" :)
I've had a lot of success using kxstudio
https://kx.studio/
Along with cadence to manage Jack and alsa and Catia/Claudia for managing studios and ladish sessions.
It can be installed on top of an existing Ubuntu based system without much trouble and after setting it up it works flawlessly for me. I've been using this setup for a few years now.
I completely agree with this. Any guide that still recommends qjackctl or manually fucking around with alsa and midi bridges should be completely disregarded. There's zero reason to need to do this any more and there hasn't been for at least half a decade now.
It's really too bad, honestly the flexibility offered by Jack and the huge range of audio software on linux allows for workflows I'd never been able to do on windows. It's pretty much the entire modular linux philosophy applied to making music and it's closest i've come to the same kind of workflow you get with hardware equipment.
Just fiddling around with different plugin routings can give you some pretty cool sounds that can be patched into any Jack aware software you have.
Does anyone have a good guide to understanding the Linux audio ecosystem?
I know Linux fairly well from a server standpoint, but I tried to do some audio stuff recently and couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
FYI: Yamaha's advanced synths (Motif and Montage) are based on real-time linux.
I bought an MX49 and they include the GPL and a download link.
But if you're expecting a random linux flavor to just work with audio, I don't know if that's reasonable, since nobody packaged or tested it with that in mind.
What's the problem with qjackctl? What do you recommend instead?
Cadence is used for setting up and managing the audio environment and jack session.
https://kx.studio/Applications:Cadence#Interface
Catia is a much more intuitive and straightforward graphical patchbay.
https://kx.studio/Applications:Catia
Claudia is similar to catia but includes built in LADISH session management.
https://kx.studio/Applications:Claudia
I've tried kxstudio and still struggled. Is it easier to buy a separate audio interface for studio audio, to avoid having to route Pulse/ALSA and JACK into each other?
Guitarix is really, really impressive and I'm eternally grateful, but it is raw. It takes a lot of work to get it to sound the way you want and is inconsistent from sim to sim. However, by having control over the hardware and the sessions (i.e. presets, basically) and totally bypassing the Guitarix GUI, I was able to make it work for this project.
BTW, I'm not using any of guitarix's cab sims. Instead I purchased a commercial license to professionally-shot proprietary cab simulation IRs which make all the difference in terms of tone quality. That metal portion of the demo is all about the cab sims.
What you want to do is possible, but the sound won't be anywhere close and what's more important, you will probably still play as a guitarist, due to smaller scale length and lighter strings.
I know you specifically asked for other options, but everyone reading this: grab a used bass from craigslist or a pawnshop! Something like an older Peavey will do just fine. A decent instrument can be found for a hundred bucks (or less!) and you can always flip it again later.
Any guitarist should fiddle with a bass from time to time. It will make you see the known tunes from the other POV and appreciate some nuances you've never paid attention to.
Or grab a little short scale bass like an Ibanez Mikro Bass. Cheap and a dream to play.
The scale length on the Mikro bass is only about 28-29 inches so coming from a “real” bass guitar it feels barely any bigger than a Stratocaster. I carry mine in an old Strat gig bag and it fits fine.
Oh my. Barely the price of two drop pedals, has great reviews, and I can even pretend it's for the kid! Maybe I will become a bass player after all.
It’s a hardware solution, but digitech make a drop tuning pedal.
That would definitely work (and we could also use it in "Cobain emulation mode"!). Thanks for the tip.
rtaudio (https://www.music.mcgill.ca/~gary/rtaudio/index.html) works pretty well in linux. I built a small shim with it for a pi zero that allows me to embed a vcv module on the pi which acts as a USB Audio device (in gadget mode). makes for an interesting eurorack environment.