Ardour, the FREE DAW for Linux

[abarnett]

Has anyone used Ardour?

Anyone interested in It? (free and open source DAW)

I'm in the middle of setting it up and will keep this thread updated as to my progress.

So far....
Pros
-ultra low latency
-free!
-built in cpu monitor that doesn' t put a noticable load your cpu
-lots of people building free plugins

Cons
-requires some work in the terminal to get it running. (If you're using Linux you should be familiar with this)

Current Summary:

If you're going to have headaches with your operating system and software anyways, why not do it for free!

[abarnett]

Phase 1, installling Linux.

If you are a PC user. Linux is very safe and easy to install these days.
I decided to go with the Ubuntu 7.04 from feisty fawn because it has sort of a Linux-for-dummies install, runs well with music, and has a lot of community documentation.

The install itself was totally easy. Just burn it to a disk and then reboot. You can even test out how it runs from the disk without installing anything.

The disk will walk you through everything including the partition. This is great for me because I haven't totally given up on XP and Microsoft. I was able to devote half of my 160 GB hard drive to linux. I then tested XP to make sure everything was still cool over there. XP was suspicious, but after looking around it decided to run as usual.

Great, so far nothing lost but one CDR!

[abarnett]

Phase 2: Adding programs to Linux

The way that Ubuntu is setup is far easier than a lot of older Linux builds to add and remove programs.

There is a general section called the Synaptic Package Manager. This is an area of program groups that are recommended as stable and secure by Ubuntu. You can scroll through the programs and each one has a description. If you check the program, it will list everything to be installed. So easy.

There is one key package called "Ubuntu Studio" which contains Ardour, the major DAW, everything you need to make it work, and a bunch of recommended plugins and soft synth tools, including SuperCollider. All I had to do was click ok and everything I needed was downloaded and installed quickly.

There is another section called "Add and Remove Programs". This is very similar to the XP version of a similar title, except that the list of possible adds is huge. I could just as easily have picked out only the Audio programs I wanted and installed them that way. You definitely will need JACK, the main routing program for Ardour.

I made the mistake of initially downloading Ardour and Jack Control, both of which were giving me errors because they could not find JACK. getting the Ubuntu studio package solved this problem quickly.

Now that I can open Ardour, the GUI is mostly black and full of information. It looks like a cheap VB or Java interface with some added color. This is a good sign to me, because I don't want to be wasting valuable cpu on eye candy.

[abarnett]

Phase 3: getting my interface to work.

Now, most of you know that most companies are making specific Drivers for Mac and Windows and not making anything for Linux. A good deal of companies are starting to open up to Linux and give people coding information.

More info on this can be seen at The Alsa project:
http://www.alsa-project.org/
And the Freebob project:
http://freebob.sourceforge.net/index...ported_Devices

I'm still saving up for a decent interface, so I decided to set up my old Tascam US 122.

Just by doing a google search for "US122 Linux", I was able to read several tutorials on exactly what to command in a terminal to make it work. The standard format is to set up code to be copied and pasted. All of the tutorials had me doing different stuff and none of them worked. However, I eventually found a tutorial that worked on the Ubuntu documentation site, which is where I should have looked in the first place.

Now my interface is playing all my sound, which is what I want it to do. Jack also recognizes the Tascam. According to most people, this is the most difficult part of the Linux switch. I was pretty frustrated in the middle of it.

[dagosto]

I was able to get Ardour to work on my intel mac book. It runs within X11 and uses JackOSX to patch drivers out to the interface. The only problem is there are no plug-ins and it terminates out of nowhere all the time. I found a download for a mastering plug-in suite but there is some weird coding I have to do and I couldn't follow the instructions. Eventually I gave up.

[mathew]

I had a similar problem. Could load it up using Jack, but no plug-ins, no audio.

Did this through Ubuntu Studio, not much different except it comes with all the programs pre-loaded - still based on 7.04.

I am a massive advocate for the Linux movement and particularly the idea that you can have an entire OS designed specfically for audio production (low-latency, and not wasting CPU for eye candy etc.). I was very excited when I saw Ubuntu Studio, but unfortunately I think it still has a way to go. It's only a matter of time before it gets there.

[abarnett]

Phase 4: Recording.

Thanks for chiming in guys. It took a lot of coding to get the interface to work, but getting the 40+ plugins to work was no problem. The general recommended package is LADSPA. I actually downloaded this before I downloaded the Ubuntu Studio package, but it is claimed to be included with this package.

I first messed around with recording simple mic checks in a bunch of tracks in Ardour. There was an immediate warning when I opened ardour that the Latency would be 23 ms and the sample rate would be 41k. I assume this is because of the Tascam 122.

I noticed the latency while recording, but no buffer pops.

Later I mixed some things down from my 8 track Otari and that went very well. Plugins can be accessed through the mixer sends/inserts or you can route your tracks through Jamin or Rezound, two mastering programs. Apparently, Rezound is limited to 16 bit, which will probably disappoint a lot of people.

Everything ran really well except a couple of the built in plugins on Rezound.

With Linux, there are always going to be some weird bugs, but I still think its worth it. I really like the layout of Ardour and apparently there is a modification to allow other official plugins to work on Ardour. I'm going to continue experimenting, but for now it feels pretty stable.

[smopo24]

I don't have either the time, or the patience for all that work. I'd rather spend a few hundred on something that I know will work without all the hassle. Too bad people steal software so often (great rant about it in an old tape op a while back); if they didn't, the price wouldn't be so high.