LinuxMusicians

Hello everyone, I'm finishing my bachelor work about music production software under GNU/Linux and I would like to ask you about your gear (hardware) and the software that you work with. It would be a nice addendum to my work, the experience from other people, not only my own. So the format would be like this:

Name: Filip (optional)
Usage: home studio, professional recording studio, sound design, live performance etc.
Hardware used: laptop Dell Latitude E6400 with Ricoh fw adapter (if you have a fw device), M-Audio ProFire 610
Software used (software you use the most - DAW, synths, sequencers.. also with distro you use): Linux Mint with KXStudio, Ardour, LMMS, Hydrogen, Musescore, Zynaddsubfx
Issues with the system (problems, complaints): system is unstable when using the fw adapter by Ricoh
Overall rating (satisfied, works like a charm, has stability issues.. add what you feel fits your feelings the most): has its ups and downs, but works for me

Thanks to everybody

Guitarix, Hydrogen, Ardour, Qjackctl, Qsynth, Seq24, LMMS, IR, Calf, Invada.. Almost anything that works for the current need.... on a Sony Vaio... ArchLinux..

Name: Antanas
Usage: home recordings
Hardware used: laptop Dell Inspiron 1720 with Tascam us-122l usb audio interface.
Software used: Arch Linux, QjackCtl, Ardour, Hydrogen, guitarix, LV2 plugins and more.
Issues with the system: Needed simple .asoundrc file to get usb soundcard working.
Overall rating: everything's fine

Usage: StartFM radio broadcasting
Hardware used: AudioScience 6012
Software used: OpenSUSE 11.4, Rivendell 2.02, Audacity
Issues with the system: Rivendell has a lot of bugs and system crashes sometimes.
Overall rating: Usable but needs lots of tweeking.

Usage: StartFM recordings
Hardware used: RME Hammerfall DSP 9632
Software used: Ubuntu 10.10, QjackCtl, Ardour, Renoise, etc
Issues with the system: Needed to write simple script to run on startup to get soundcard working.
Overall rating: satisfied.

These are the machines I use the most. We also use icecast, darkice and lots of another stuff for StartFM radio. I could give you more detailed info if you need something

Name: Steve
Usage: home studio
Hardware used: Home-built tower PC. AMD X2 4600+, 2GB, 23" LCD. Zoom H4 (as interface), M-Audio UNO, Korg nanoKontrol
Software used: Kubuntu, Jack, Ardour, Hydrogen, Rosegarden, Qsynth/Fluidsynth
Issues with the system (problems, complaints): We use multiple accounts for the family and sometimes one account gets sound and others can't have it. For audio work I generally log everyone else out. Haven't optimised Jack for latency yet and get the odd xrun. Otherwise very stable.

This: http://www.louigiverona.ru/?page=projec ... _livesetup

The only difference is that these days instead of HarmonySEQ currently I use my own sequencers written in Pd and QMidiArp.

Thanks everyone, this helps a lot.

Name: Federico
Usage: home recordings/bedroom studio
Hardware: assembly AMD phenom X6 3.3 GHz, 4 Gb RAM, Asus motherboard. M-audio Fast Track, in a few days i'll get an evolution mk249-c midi/usb keyboard
Software used: Kxstudio over Ubuntu 10.04, realtime kernel, using klaudia and other tools - so jack and ladish, ardour, rosegarden, hydrogen, LV2, DSP, LADSPA, some VST's, zynaddsubfx, and some others.
Issues with the system: with a little help, very stable. Kxstudio has really improved my audio experience, no big issues at all - some minor problems with synths as instrument plugins. Had to tweak a little rtirq as my sound card is USB, but now i can play with MIDI and relatively complex mixes with a latency of 11.6 ms without having to worry much about xruns, and i can record with 5.(don't remember) ms of latency without troubles. I use this system on a dedicated partition just for audio, for home use with multiple accounts etc i have an Ubuntu 11.04 installation.

Name: MattKingUSA
Usage: Indie label music production
Hardware used: HP TC4400 Tablet, Behringer mixer, mxl mics 990/991, 24bit pcmcia sound card from creative
Software used: LMMS, Audacity, Ardour, Hydrogen

Issues:no 24bit compatible driver for the sound card. But there is 0 latency.

MattKingUSA wrote:
Issues:no 24bit compatible driver for the sound card. But there is 0 latency.

damn, that gotta suck

Capoeira wrote:

MattKingUSA wrote:
Issues:no 24bit compatible driver for the sound card. But there is 0 latency.

damn, that gotta suck

It sucks but it's not as sucky as recording on a windows machine.

Hello all,

Quick question for those of you using zynaddsubfx with Rosegarden - do you use zynaddsubfx-dssi? If so, could you tell me where you downloaded it (what repository). Thanks!

(I apologize if this post is a little out of place, but I'm new here and I couldn't find a better place for it. If there is a more appropriate forum please let me know!)

Name: Stijn
Usage: home recording
Hardware: assembly Intel i5 3.30 GHz, 16 Gb RAM, Asus motherboard. RME Multiface2+behringer ADA8000. M-audio Axiom 49 keyboardcontroller and Behringer BCF2000 daw controller.
Synth: MFB-522, Korg-Er1, x0xb0x, Roland JP-8080, Microkorg, Novation KS5, Novation Bass station rack, Novation Drumstation v2,
Software used from Debian testing/unstable and self compiled : Ardour 3 Beta, DrMr lv2, Invada lv2, Distrho Pack plugins, Linuxdsp de-esser(will buy other plugins too in future), Yoshimi, swh-lv2,so-synth-lv2, Hydrogen, Bristol,...
Issues with the system: None, everything is running smooth and stable at 2.8ms latency.

Name: Nacho
Usage: home recording
Hardware used: laptop Compaq CQ50, USB microphone Samson G-Track
Software used: Puppy Linux, QjackCtl, Ardour, Hydrogen, Rakarrack, ZynaddSubFX.
Issues with the system: All great.
Overall rating: happy penguin

Usage: live performance
Hardware used: Compaq Presario CQ61
Software used: Ubuntu Studio 12.04, favourite programs: Ardour, Guitarix, LV2rack, Calf.
Issues with the system: Need to run a script to avoid xruns clusters at every 2 minutes. Follow this page, "Disabling everything you don't need" section: http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php ... imits.conf
Overall rating: SO GOOD!!!

Usage: Home studio
Hardware used: Assembled penguin: Asus K8V-MX motherboard, AMD Sempron, 512 Mb of RAM, Behringher Uca 202, Creative SoundBlaster 5.1, M-Audio keystation 88es
Software used: Ubuntu Studio 10.04
Issues with the system: No one (is better to run LXDE and WICD)
Overall rating: 9 years old + 5.33 ms of latency = he's my PRIDE AND JOY!

After a long layoff, I'm building something up again around a laptop.

Name: Ben
Usage: home studio, maybe live performance eventually, focus is on Akai EWI USB as main instrument.
Hardware used: Acer 5684 laptop - T5600 C2D @ 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, 750GB HDD, USB2MIDI x2, USB Audio x1
Software used: UbuntuStudio 12.04, Jack, Patchage, experimenting with Zyn, Fluid, Hexter, AMS and a stack of other stuff whilst I get the hang of things, including Wine for the EWI software by Garritan - which is not running right, yet.
Issues with the system: Pretty stable so far, except for AMS which has crashed once, during the Tutorials! Main focus is to get the breath/aftertouch Controller working well with a range of synths, evaluate their merits and then sort out a DAW.
Overall rating: Happy as a pig in the proverbial!