Thanks a lot. I would like to offer some praise. You are brilliant at teaching. I've been an IT guy for decades, I took an education as teacher to run classes in different IT related tech. You have this awareness to explain the steps from A to B. Most people can't. They skip parts, leaving the student stunned "How do I .... ?". I really enjoy your videos. You take me from "I don't know" to "I got it". You're a born teacher and communicator. (and I know how exhausting it is to do good teaching )
it's more about how well the interface is supported, which can be difficult on Linux sometimes. plugins as well. therefore even though I really like Linux, for my audio production stuff I love my Mac
Long text, sorry. There's a lot to say here. All class compliant interfaces, which are those, that don't need a dedicated driver on a mac, work just fine on Linux. I have a Behringer interface, several USB-MIDI adapters for my vintage synths, a Rode Go II, several systems with USB-MIDI, like a Zynthian, or a E-Drumkit, etc. Everything works just fine with Linux. My only piece of hardware, that doesn't work with Linux as a USB device, is the built in interface of one of the vintage synths, an M-Audio Venom, which never has been class compliant anyway. Since I can talk to the Venom with MIDI, and have enough IO with the other interfaces, I don't bother. AFAIK current Windows and Mac drivers aren't available any more as well, so I'd be screwed there anyway. More of an issue for beginners is the multitude of different sound protocols, you can choose from. Reaper talks the protocols of ALSA, Jack and PulseAudio, and therefore I concentrate on options, that implement these. There are other audio systems around, but not only aren't they an option for Reaper, most of them are pretty niche anyway. If you use only a single interface, you'll still be best of with Jack for professional audio. Though you might also use the kernel layer ALSA directly, if nothing else, but your DAW is supposed to use that interface at the same time, like your browser, your desktop, etc. Reaper has to exclusively use the interface with ALSA. Jack is old, well established and known to work very, very reliably, but it also gets a bit cumbersome to configure it with multiple interfaces. It's possible though, but I'm happy I don't have to any more (see below) PulseAudio is only an option, if you don't really care about latency. Therefore I wouldn't consider it in this context. It's simple and easy to set up and use, and really great for the standard user. But its whole approach isn't designed for predictable and short latencies. You can think of it as non ASIO drivers for Windows. For pro audio combining multiple interfaces, you can either start a hell of a configuration orgy with jack, or resort to Pipwire. Pipewire is relatively new, and hence not as well tested as Jack. For me it runs pretty stable, but your mileage may vary, of course. It has no issue handling multiple interfaces smoothly, and can talk PulseAudio, and Jack protocol, as well as its own. So you can use it with any existing Jack, or PulseAudio software. The only real downside of Pipewire compared to Jack, except for it being younger, and therefore less tested, is, that it doesn't support jacks networking features. Jack comes with netjack, that can communicate to other netjack instances on your local network. This allows you to directly transfer audio streams between multiple computers. You could think of it as being somewhat similar to Dante, but AFAIK it was around before Dante. I don't need it, but if that's crucial for you, use Jack. The whole idea of audio daemons might seem alien to Mac, or PC users. But I really don't want to go back from that any more. Just having watched a friend of mine, a sound engineer, fighting with getting his guitar signal through his DAW with his virtual amp plugin to a videochat in his browser for guitar lessons, was horrible. With audio daemons like Jack, or Pipewire, that's just a few clicks, and you've routed every signal everywhere, it should. And yes, plugins can be a PITA on Linux. While there are tons of really good open source plugins available, the commercial ones need some workaround, and sometimes don't work at all. You can install WIndows versions of them with Wine, but then Reaper can't use them directly. You have to use a plugin, that acts like a plugin host, and can embed Wine plugins, like e.g. carla. But even then some plugins won't work with Wine. I got TwoNotes Wall of Sound working, but e.g. up to now I couldn't get the Izotope plugins to show their UI, that I got for free with some hardware I bought. It might still be possible, by configuring Wine to simulate other Windows versions, but I haven't found the time to try yet. Usually I just use the open source plugins, which are great for at least 99.99% of all cases. Because, what you really need most of the time are standard tools, like eqs, compressors, gates, reverb, deessers, etc. Maybe some synths. Those are all very well covered with the open source plugins. The few Windows-Plugins I have, came bundled with hardware. I never actually used any of them in a real project. But, of course, if you rely on some special plugins, that can't ever be replaced, that'll be an issue on Linux.
@@christofdonat2702 TL;DR: Class-compliant interfaces work fine on Linux, but non-class-compliant ones might not. Plugins on Linux are a mixed bag. Open-source options cover most needs, but commercial plugins may require workarounds like Wine and tools like Carla, with varying success. Need a simpler take? *Use Pipewire* (if you're a normal user), or JACK (if you want pro audio). I've been using Pipewire on Arch (btw) for about 2 years now and it's honestly worked better than Pulseaudio.. Well, it uses Pulseaudio (Pipewire-pulse), or I think ALSA (Pipewire-alsa). Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong lol.
my big thing is... processors. i'm looking at a risc-v single board computer with an ssd socket to possibly replace my pi4, for portable stuff, also got a pinebook pro. my at home setup is the old junk i got laying around and am building a new x86_64 ryzen thing dedicated to stuff at home(freecad on the side). so, that's a lot of low power stuff on odd processors and a reasonably hefty system, there's lots of efficient music making programs for linux, i'm only investigating reaper, knowing what it can do is good.
OMG!! Thank you so much for explaining this!! I've been wondering about this a lot lately... "Should I buy a new laptop in order to have better audio quality on my productions?" Now I understand the answer is "No". :)
I have pc fast windows trying to record sensory percussion plus audio from computer like you tube drum less music. Haven’t found a way to do this and sharing a file on line
Thanks a lot. I would like to offer some praise. You are brilliant at teaching.
I've been an IT guy for decades, I took an education as teacher to run classes in different IT related tech.
You have this awareness to explain the steps from A to B. Most people can't. They skip parts, leaving the student stunned "How do I .... ?".
I really enjoy your videos. You take me from "I don't know" to "I got it".
You're a born teacher and communicator. (and I know how exhausting it is to do good teaching )
Thanks so much for this content! As an avid (no pun intended) Reaper user, I can’t wait to learn from someone with so much experience in the field.
it's more about how well the interface is supported, which can be difficult on Linux sometimes. plugins as well. therefore even though I really like Linux, for my audio production stuff I love my Mac
Long text, sorry. There's a lot to say here.
All class compliant interfaces, which are those, that don't need a dedicated driver on a mac, work just fine on Linux. I have a Behringer interface, several USB-MIDI adapters for my vintage synths, a Rode Go II, several systems with USB-MIDI, like a Zynthian, or a E-Drumkit, etc. Everything works just fine with Linux. My only piece of hardware, that doesn't work with Linux as a USB device, is the built in interface of one of the vintage synths, an M-Audio Venom, which never has been class compliant anyway. Since I can talk to the Venom with MIDI, and have enough IO with the other interfaces, I don't bother. AFAIK current Windows and Mac drivers aren't available any more as well, so I'd be screwed there anyway.
More of an issue for beginners is the multitude of different sound protocols, you can choose from. Reaper talks the protocols of ALSA, Jack and PulseAudio, and therefore I concentrate on options, that implement these. There are other audio systems around, but not only aren't they an option for Reaper, most of them are pretty niche anyway.
If you use only a single interface, you'll still be best of with Jack for professional audio. Though you might also use the kernel layer ALSA directly, if nothing else, but your DAW is supposed to use that interface at the same time, like your browser, your desktop, etc. Reaper has to exclusively use the interface with ALSA. Jack is old, well established and known to work very, very reliably, but it also gets a bit cumbersome to configure it with multiple interfaces. It's possible though, but I'm happy I don't have to any more (see below)
PulseAudio is only an option, if you don't really care about latency. Therefore I wouldn't consider it in this context. It's simple and easy to set up and use, and really great for the standard user. But its whole approach isn't designed for predictable and short latencies. You can think of it as non ASIO drivers for Windows.
For pro audio combining multiple interfaces, you can either start a hell of a configuration orgy with jack, or resort to Pipwire. Pipewire is relatively new, and hence not as well tested as Jack. For me it runs pretty stable, but your mileage may vary, of course. It has no issue handling multiple interfaces smoothly, and can talk PulseAudio, and Jack protocol, as well as its own. So you can use it with any existing Jack, or PulseAudio software.
The only real downside of Pipewire compared to Jack, except for it being younger, and therefore less tested, is, that it doesn't support jacks networking features. Jack comes with netjack, that can communicate to other netjack instances on your local network. This allows you to directly transfer audio streams between multiple computers. You could think of it as being somewhat similar to Dante, but AFAIK it was around before Dante. I don't need it, but if that's crucial for you, use Jack.
The whole idea of audio daemons might seem alien to Mac, or PC users. But I really don't want to go back from that any more. Just having watched a friend of mine, a sound engineer, fighting with getting his guitar signal through his DAW with his virtual amp plugin to a videochat in his browser for guitar lessons, was horrible. With audio daemons like Jack, or Pipewire, that's just a few clicks, and you've routed every signal everywhere, it should.
And yes, plugins can be a PITA on Linux. While there are tons of really good open source plugins available, the commercial ones need some workaround, and sometimes don't work at all. You can install WIndows versions of them with Wine, but then Reaper can't use them directly. You have to use a plugin, that acts like a plugin host, and can embed Wine plugins, like e.g. carla. But even then some plugins won't work with Wine. I got TwoNotes Wall of Sound working, but e.g. up to now I couldn't get the Izotope plugins to show their UI, that I got for free with some hardware I bought. It might still be possible, by configuring Wine to simulate other Windows versions, but I haven't found the time to try yet.
Usually I just use the open source plugins, which are great for at least 99.99% of all cases. Because, what you really need most of the time are standard tools, like eqs, compressors, gates, reverb, deessers, etc. Maybe some synths. Those are all very well covered with the open source plugins. The few Windows-Plugins I have, came bundled with hardware. I never actually used any of them in a real project. But, of course, if you rely on some special plugins, that can't ever be replaced, that'll be an issue on Linux.
@@christofdonat2702 TL;DR: Class-compliant interfaces work fine on Linux, but non-class-compliant ones might not. Plugins on Linux are a mixed bag. Open-source options cover most needs, but commercial plugins may require workarounds like Wine and tools like Carla, with varying success.
Need a simpler take? *Use Pipewire* (if you're a normal user), or JACK (if you want pro audio). I've been using Pipewire on Arch (btw) for about 2 years now and it's honestly worked better than Pulseaudio.. Well, it uses Pulseaudio (Pipewire-pulse), or I think ALSA (Pipewire-alsa).
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong lol.
Thanks man, love the series
thank you for this series im looking forward to upcoming arts very much
my big thing is... processors. i'm looking at a risc-v single board computer with an ssd socket to possibly replace my pi4, for portable stuff, also got a pinebook pro. my at home setup is the old junk i got laying around and am building a new x86_64 ryzen thing dedicated to stuff at home(freecad on the side). so, that's a lot of low power stuff on odd processors and a reasonably hefty system, there's lots of efficient music making programs for linux, i'm only investigating reaper, knowing what it can do is good.
OMG!! Thank you so much for explaining this!! I've been wondering about this a lot lately... "Should I buy a new laptop in order to have better audio quality on my productions?" Now I understand the answer is "No". :)
I have pc fast windows trying to record sensory percussion plus audio from computer like you tube drum less music. Haven’t found a way to do this and sharing a file on line
Smiths enter the chat - "Stop me if you've heard this one before" 😁
In a nut shell, use what you're happy with.
Question? I am trying to change my interface on Reaper but when I go to preferences it just shows the present interface. How do I change it@
the only difficulty i have with macs is transfering files to windows, its a convoluted crap shoot.
Once you go Mac you don't go back!!
bla, bla, bla