LinuxDAW – Quality audio software for Linux

[fractalf]

I made/released this exactly one year ago today.

It's a simple webpage giving an overview over quality software that runs on Linux. It has search and filter to narrow down what you're looking for. Default sorting is latest additions so it can be used as a "news site". There is also a RSS feed available.

I needed this myself, so I used it as a pet project to upgrade my knownledge from Vue2 to Vue3.

Source code is ofc open and contributions/feedback is always welcome. https://codeberg.org/fractalf/linuxdaw.org

Cheers!

[marcodiego]

Highly configurable, safe, extremely stable, very low latency, high performance and throughput and even realtime if one need or want. Pipewire put an end to the mess was the confusing ballet of pulseaudio and Jack and everything else is maturing nicely. These characteristics put (desktop) Linux on a position that the competition simply can't beat.

They may have had a head start because of very popular and critical software that is un-portable, but the technical superiority is on our side.

AFAIK, there have been some professional successful DAWs for Linux and I can only think it will grow over time.

I saw people using OBS with a few USB cameras with reasonable quality making good quality webcasts and I'm sure that is also doable in the DAW-land. The future seems bright for musicians and recorders who can now be free from proprietary software and build a reasonable good studio at home using non-imorally-priced hardware.

[dash2]

This optimism pairs nicely with the next post (“can anyone recommend a sound card… I couldn’t get anything working…”)

[bvrmn]

Next post is a clear trolling. 96 channel card user wants to migrate to Linux. Nice story bruh.

[steve1977]

While the HDSPe MADI FX is certainly RME’s PCIe flagship, it’s not that uncommon, so why not?

It could also be a HDSPe AES (32 channels) or RayDAT (72 channels). These cards are quite widely in use.

Also the fact that the card supports 96 channels doesn’t mean you need to have as many A/D inputs necessarily.

[louthy]

God forbid anybody who wants to use Linux in a professional setting.

[Blackthorn]

> but the technical superiority is on our side.

Linux has a bit of a Thunderbolt audio problem though. Apple dragged the world into compatibility with class compliant USB; there's no equivalent for Thunderbolt though :-( we're back in the bad old days of individual (nonexistent) drivers per device.

[steve1977]

> the technical superiority is on our side

Getting some Betamax vibes here ;)

But I also don’t really see the superiority versus Core Audio or ASIO-based systems to be honest.

[squarefoot]

It's mind blowing the number of quality, often even FOSS, Linux audio software that is appearing these days, I can't wait to try some of these on my latest music laptop installation, which is confined to my own rehearsal room and works only as a plugin host. Unfortunately I had to use Reaper (plus yabridge for Windows plugins compatibility, which works great) as a host because Carla requires Jack which defaults to non usable state at every installation and is a nightmare to set up in a reproducible way, moreover saving in Carla is broken so after an an hour of careful plugins setup one loses everything upon closing. Right now we probably need more a much simpler plugin host that does just that and just works rather than new plugins.

About Jack, let me repeat this one more time Jack is not necessary at all to obtain low latency, ALSA is more than enough; if you're writing audio software, having Jack support is nice, but please don't depend on it as it just complicates things.

[amlib]

> Carla requires Jack which defaults to non usable state at every installation and is a nightmare to set up in a reproducible way

I've been using linux audio for the last 15 years and I've been trough it all. However, things have much improved since I've switched to Pipewire. No more need for a bespoke implementation of the jack daemon, it's implemented natively right there in Pipewire, vastly simplifying setup and removing any annoyances that keeping the Jack daemon working entailed. As a bonus any jack client/jack graph visualizer, including carla, gets a direct view to all Pipewire clients, not just native jack clients. You can then use Carla to route audio directly from your hardware inputs and outputs trough, for example, pulseaudio client (blissfully unaware of whats happening) and then trough as many jack clients as you wish. It's truly a magical™ piece of software.

As for Carla, make sure you are in the "Multiple Clients" mode, activate the experimental features and check "Enable plugin bridges" and "Run plugins in bridge mode when possible". This seems to make it more stable and make it so that if a plugin crashes Carla will disable it and at worst you will lose the related plugin parameters.

I've been running Carla with Pipewire for more then a year as my system wide DSP stack (almost like a virutal AV Reciever) and its fairly stable.

[bvrmn]

PipeWire is an excellent Jack server BTW. So much headache was gone with exclusive card access from multiple applications.

[jcelerier]

> About Jack, let me repeat this one more time Jack is not necessary at all to obtain low latency, ALSA is more than enough; if you're writing audio software, having Jack support is nice, but please don't depend on it as it just complicates things.

I mean, technically JACK is built on top of ALSA, you can always get lower latency by going through ALSA directly than by involving JACK... but it's pretty hard to implement correctly.

[amadeuspagel]

To me a DAW is a category of software[1], so I'd choose a more general name for the site.

[1]: https://linuxdaw.org/?t=daw

[henriquez]

Right, this site seems to be showing plugins that run in a DAW. But what about Linux DAW software itself? Does anyone have recommendations? I think Renoise is nice but it’s not as easy to puts around in as things like Ableton or Reason which don’t run in Linux.

[fractalf]

Check out Bitwig (https://www.bitwig.com/), it's awesome (started by previous Ableton devs)

[scns]

Second Bitwig, it is really good!

[p0nce]

Notably, REAPER, Studio One (beta) and Bitwig are available on Linux.

[bvrmn]

Unfortunately reaper has latency and stutter issues under Linux. At least in demo.

[kiviuq]

https://itsfoss.com/tracktion-t7-daw/

[marssaxman]

The name certainly made it harder for me to understand what I was looking at when I first clicked the link, expecting to see a Linux DAW.

[badosu]

Well if you take it to the literal meaning of the acronym its exactly what it is a digital audio workstation focused os

[have_faith]

Wouldn't the majority of this be used in conjunction with a DAW? seems in the right ballpark.

[1920musicman]

Mentioned in another comment. DAW is an IDE for music production. Calling Prettier extension for VSCode an IDE would be incorrect.

[qwertox]

I love the information density of this page. Screenshots, proper naming and ownership of the plugins with links, free vs paid including price, links to YouTube.

The best site I've seen so far for this type of content.

[lioeters]

This looks great, I'm going to enjoy perusing the collection.

Nothing by falkTX / KXStudio?

https://kx.studio/

https://github.com/falkTX

EDIT: Oh I see there are some but they're not listed under Developer.

[fractalf]

falkTX is a HERO, no doubt about that! Got these: https://linuxdaw.org/?q=falktx ..kx studio is not really a "plugin" thingy (more a collection/repository) so it's hard to add that in this context. EDIT: I saw your edit :D

[karolist]

Mind blown continuously by the lazy loading which I hoped to stop at the first 10 items. There's this much DAW software for Linux nonetheless? Makes me question what other niche software fields I'm completely oblivious of.

[diggan]

> document.querySelectorAll('.bg-card.text-center.p-2.rounded.relative.h-full')

> NodeList(524)

That's a lot of quality audio software for Linux :) (Edit: I realize now there is a counter in the top right... Oh well)

Happy to see it, although I personally mostly use Windows for audio stuff... If Ableton worked on Linux I'd probably leave Windows behind.

[fractalf]

hehe! ..I come from Ableton on Win7. But, Bitwig (formed by ex-Ableton devs) saved the world for me as it is a) similar but better than Ableton (ofc subjective) and b) it runs on Linux! Check it out, take it for a spin!

[diggan]

Thanks for the recommendation! I've already tried out Bitwig (and most of the DAWs I've come across). It's just a habit thing that I still use Ableton.

[louthy]

O/T: Can anyone recommend a decent PCI based pro sound card with Linux (Mint, Ubuntu, Debian) support?

I’m trying to de-Windows myself, but my pro-audio setup is the gap I can’t seem to fill.

I currently have an RME HDSPe MADI FX [1] which allows me to bring in 96 channels of 96khz audio via 3 MADI connections. They connect to my AD/DA convertors [2].

I found source for a driver [3], but couldn’t get the thing working, and it doesn’t seem particularly well supported/documented.

Moving toward Dante or AES67 is also an option (because my AD/DA convertors support those formats) if there’s any software solution that can support those formats, but there’s minimal online info. So if anyone’s gone this route I’d love to know how you got everything working!

[1] https://www.rme-audio.de/hdspe-madi-fx.html

[2] https://www.ferrofish.com/portfolio/a32pro-dante-converter-m...

[3] https://github.com/adiknoth/madifx

[fractalf]

Why do you want/need a PCI based card? Most audio interfaces run off USB these days and Linux supports almost all USB audio class-compliant cards.. Personally I use NI Komplete Audio 1 and Behringer UMC 1820 (yes, on Linux with pipewire and Bitwig you can use multiple cards!)

[louthy]

> Why do you want/need a PCI based card?

Because I don’t know of any USB device that can do 96 channels of pro IO. Also, it always seemed preferable to me to avoid the issue of ‘yet another wire’ and ‘yet another source of latency’.

Being attached to the PCI bus always felt like the most robust approach to getting audio in with the lowest latency (which it is on Windows).

I’d probably prefer to look at Dante/AES67 before USB, unless there’s a compelling reason not to. Mostly because it gives room for future expansion where a fixed soundcard doesn’t.

> yes, on Linux with pipewire and Bitwig you can use multiple cards

How are you clocking the cards? If they don’t share a single clock then you’re gonna get phase issues. The idea of going back to a word-clock does not appeal to me! I’d much prefer a single device with one clock. The fewer moving parts, the better.

[fractalf]

> Because I don’t know of any USB device that can do 96 channels of pro IO

Holy crap, that's a lot of input channels, didn't know it was possible. I also have a Behringer ADA8200 that connect to the 1820 (ADAT) which gives me 16 inputs. I'll admit it's not enough to run all of my gear in at once and this is just a home studio. I can imagine 96 channels is very useful. Maybe 6x my setup would work = 96 inputs ;)

> How are you clocking the cards?

You are obviously more advanced than me, not sure what you mean here. I'm using the NI card basically just for the output and the Behringer for inputs, 24/48. When recording, if there is a latency (which normally Bitwig can "fix") it's just a matter of moving the audio a couple of ms.

> PCI

I've had earlier problems with PCI cards, in that they pick up a lot of internal noise from the motherboard, so I've stayed away from that after firewire/usb cards became available

[louthy]

> Holy crap, that's a lot of input channels

96 output too. I have a lot of outboard gear, my SSL Sigma Delta alone is 32 in/out for mixing, that's before I get onto all my outboard compressors, EQs, reverbs, synths, drum machines, and modular gear. I use the soundcard pretty much as a virtual patch-bay, I can send and return to any piece of gear in my studio like a plugin (get Bitwig to measure the latency and automagically everything syncs).

> You are obviously more advanced than me, not sure what you mean here.

Because digital audio is in discrete time-slices, you need to sync the slice starts so all devices are aligned. Otherwise you can have subframe issues where phasing becomes a problem - in the worst cases it can cause audio glitches (which I've had with older AD/DA convertors).

This can be solved by using a Word Clock [1], which is the 'old' way, or via AES/MADI/Dante - which all have their own clocking protocols. The devices all need to be clocked by the same source, which you can't do by pairing devices in software.

My current soundcard is connected, via MADI, to my 3xFerrofish-A32-Pro AD/DA units. The soundcard is the source of truth for timing. The AD/DA devices all sync to the soundcard and therefore have no phasing issues. This gives 96 channels of analogue audio in and 96 channels of analogue audio out.

> I've had earlier problems with PCI cards, in that they pick up a lot of internal noise from the motherboard

Sure, if you plug analogue sources directly into the device. But my analogue inputs/outputs are all going into my AD/DA convertors, which are separate units. They are digitising the audio and by the time it arrives (via MADI) into my soundcard it's already digital. That means no chance of any noise from the computer.

Probably what I need is something like this [2], it seems to have Linux support, but unfortunately isn't produced any more! I seem to find that a lot with these Dante devices. Maybe I'd be better with AES67 as that's an open-standard that is compatible with Dante, just I haven't found anything yet!

In theory (because Dante/AES67 is over IP) a virtual soundcard can be written, I certainly have a powerful enough machine to run it, but again I haven't found anything yet. I'd write it myself, but I have a million things going on, and that's a distraction I don't need!

It does seem like there's a bit of a gap when you get to the real pro end of audio, which is a shame because the stability of Linux would is a huuuuuge selling point when producing music.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_clock

[2] https://www.audinate.com/products/dante-enabled/four-audio/f...

[fractalf]

Hey man, thanks for elaborating, I do understand the limits you are presenting much better now. Aaand, this actually makes me want one of those cards myself! I could just have one of those PCI cards and 3-4 of the Behringer ADA8200 and I could run ALL of my synths into my PC.

[1920musicman]

To my knowledge all VST plugins can be used on Linux (via Wine). Is that not the case? Here is a page that describes the process of using a single Wine instance to wrap all VSTs in the system: https://z-uo.medium.com/vst-and-vst3-on-linux-mint-20-with-l...

There could possibly be a clearer name for this effort, since both Reaper and Bitwig run on Linux natively and are top notch DAWs (actual DAWs, not VST plugins). Plus VCV Rack, which is not technically a DAW but close.

Linux native VST plugins is a way more precise description. DAW is a very specific software category. It's like calling Prettier extension for VSCode an IDE.

Edit: seems like both linuxvst.com and linuxvst.org are available.

[squarefoot]

> To my knowledge all VST plugins can be used on Linux (via Wine). Is that not the case?

Yes, although I would recommend Yabridge rather than linvst.

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

It should be already packaged in some Linux distros, but building and installation are straightforward. Basically it installs some libraries and an executable which once called will convert a Windows plugin in .dll form to a Linux+WINE loadable .so library. You install a windows plugin through WINE the usual way: setup.exe etc (or just drop the dll if that's the way it is distributed), then once it is installed, call yabridgectl adding the path of the new plugin dll, then call yabridgectl again but this time adding the option to convert plugins (going from memory, can't test it here), then you'll have the Linux loadable .so library in the same path of the windows one. now just add the same place to your Linux DAW plugins path and it will automatically see and load the converted plugins. If you install a new windows plugin, just repeat the two above steps.

One nice and often overlooked feature of loading plugins through the WINE compatibility layer is that many 15+ years old still great plugins that stopped working on Windows ages ago now are perfectly usable again on Linux, with the only problem of having to work with a much smaller GUI since they were created when 1024x768 or smaller desktops were a thing, so they can appear stamp sized on today's monitors, but size aside they work fine.

[rcarmo]

Yep. I used Bitwig with Yabridge for a year or so. There are a few weird ones that really don't work, but things like the Arturia suite worked OK.

[1920musicman]

How is audio interface driver/console support on Linux? Would something like UA Apollo work out of the box?

[malermeister]

Shouldn't that last point be fixable by specifying a scaling factor in winecfg?

[squarefoot]

Possibly yes, but I'm not sure how to do that on a per plugin basis, as it would otherwise break modern ones with larger GUIs.

[davidthewatson]

I've seen a lot of bad marketing copy, but this deserves to be placed on a pedestal of achievement for its tongue in cheek projection of how seriously they took the creation of such a funny thing:

"The Fart Machine is not just any ordinary guitar pedal or plug-in. Using our unique rectal microphone technology, we have modeled every component of the human bowel system, and now the Fart Machine can turn any sound into flatulence. This technology provides an unprecedented level of control over your fart sounds, enabling you to create a range of unique and unforgettable sounds that will leave your audience in awe."

I miss music software and its sampling and remixing culture.

[kingwill101]

Thank you! As a musician I often complain about having to dual boot to get access to all the really good plugins. Mostly due to me not knowing where to find decent enough plugins without having to rely on hacky workarounds using wine

[fractalf]

You're most welcome! Yea, I know _exactly_ how you feel. This is why I had my last Win7 partition for so long, but now it's gone as there all I really need is available on Linux. Bitwig + u-he, what more do you really need ;)

[p0nce]

Proud to be listed here :) Nice website.

[fractalf]

Ofc, your stuff is awesome man :) ..thanks!

[frabbit]

As an aside: can anyone recommend books/tutorials for getting started with DAWs on Linux? I was thinking of starting with Ardour¹ to get the handle on basic concepts before looking at anything else.

Basic use case is being able to take input from an old MIDI keyboard and feed it into a DAW so that a simple melody can be turned into something more exciting.

I would appreciate someone being able to point a complete beginner towards a path (if one exists) in which initial work getting familiar with an interface will not be wasted if more advanced functionality is desired later.

I don`t mind paying for tutorials and/or books or the software (and I see Bitwig has some tutorials) but I want a rich environment that is going to reward investment of time. I would prefer something without lock-in and strongly favor FL/OSS.

1. https://manual.ardour.org/introducing-ardour/understanding-b...

[lioeters]

A couple of links that might lead to more information.

Linux Audio Wiki - https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/start

KXStudio : Documentation - https://kx.studio/Documentation

[dijksterhuis]

This is fantastic. Wish I knew this existed before. Already spotted a few alternatives for things that are keeping me on a dual boot.

[MrDrMcCoy]

I opened an issue to get some more projects added:

https://codeberg.org/fractalf/linuxdaw.org/issues/44

[fud101]

These are pretty sophisticated pieces of software. Is there anything for a rank beginner who just wants to make some nice music?

[CrypticShift]

Spent ages awhile back delving deep into sorting audio tools into a multi-dimensional framework, convinced that deciphering their taxonomy would unleash their full potential. It's frustrating how there are no comprehensive directories for these tools (Linux or not for that matter)

I applaud your initiative and suggest you give more thought to categorization.

[fractalf]

The good'ol "organize your stuff" problem. The problem with "categories" is that a) usually a "thing" can only belong to 1 category and b) a category often belong in a hiarchy of categories and can only be 1 place. So that is why I've used _tags_ instead, which is more of a many to many "flat" releation. Not sure I understood your comment correctly? ..I've certainly given this quite some thought already, but nothing is perfect

[CrypticShift]

> Nothing is perfect.

I agree, and moreover, the more complex the taxonomy, the more likely you'll find people who disagree with it. So perhaps you're right that a simple tags list is the best "simple" solution, and I'm not saying your list is deficient.

One thing I had in mind is allowing an "AND" operator, like searching for "vintage" AND "eq"

> a) usually a "thing" can only belong to 1 category and b) a category often belong in a hiarchy of categories and can only be 1 place

That's why I love hierarchical tags (where tags can have multiple parents) : You can put a "thing" under more than one category/tag while a tag can belong to more than one parent. However, it's true that this is rarely implemented.

[chaosprint]

It would be great if we can submit a new entry from the webpage.

Also, perhaps add a CLI format?

I know some people use Glicol CLI on Linux:

https://github.com/glicol/glicol-cli

[narag]

Useful (at least for me :)) and great interface, thank you!

[bwanab]

I noticed that SooperLooper is missing. One of my all time favorites.

[hammyhavoc]

Sweet!

[kiviuq]

Clap! Clap! Clap!