The next AVLinux with Ardour8 and pipewire?

[Cafe]

Hi all,
I am very satisfied with AV distribution.
Sometimes ardour crashes due to plugin loads, but everything is promising.
Can I expect a new distro with pipewire and the latest Ardour coming out soon?

[glowrak guy]

STRICTLY a guess , but I suspect a new AVLinux in December. It probably won't include pipewire, because the AVLinux
blend of jackd and pulseaudio, with modern kernels, is both very efficient, and has few new requirements. Less work, more play!
That doesn't mean you can't add pipewire to AVLinux by synaptic package manager, and find some connections gui tools.

There are several distros you can try with a default pipewire included, and pick what works best for your needs. Fedora might be a good choice.
It's always good luck to be familiar with, and maintain multiple distros, so you can use one or more for testing,
without risking your stable recording setup.
Cheers

[GMaq]

Hi all,
I am very satisfied with AV distribution.
Sometimes ardour crashes due to plugin loads, but everything is promising.
Can I expect a new distro with pipewire and the latest Ardour coming out soon?

Hi,

AV Linux 23 should be out in a month or so based on Debian Bookworm and will provide the latest releases of Ardour, Reaper (demo) and Harrison Mixbus 32C (demo) available at the time, however it will not be using PipeWire for various reasons.. Since it is based on Debian you can optionally install PipeWire but it will break the default JACK/Pulse/pajaconnect setup because of dependency conflicts..

If you insist on something fast and stable that is specialized for Audio work then AV Linux should be to your liking, if you insist on PipeWire for the sake of having PipeWire then better to use something else..

[sirjohndfox]

@GMaq
When and why did you decide to change to pipewire?

EDIT:
Apologies, just saw the bit in the video.

Pipewire makes me want to claw my eyes out...

I managed to remove it from one bookworm install.

I'm gonna have to lie down for a while before i can try the new AVlinux

[GMaq]

@GMaq
When and why did you decide to change to pipewire?

EDIT:
Apologies, just saw the bit in the video.

Pipewire makes me want to claw my eyes out...

I managed to remove it from one bookworm install.

I'm gonna have to lie down for a while before i can try the new AVlinux

Hi,

It's a PipeWire world now...

Could you elaborate about what makes you want to claw your eyes out?

Have you tried it on the AV Linux Live ISO as suggested in the Video?

Lastly I can not reiterate enough.... If you're simply using Ardour, Mixbus or Reaper unto themselves then there is the simplest solution in the world... Use the ALSA backend... no JACK, no PulseAudio, no PipeWire just direct access to your Soundcard..

[tseaver]

@GMaq

It's a PipeWire world now...

I'd say we aren't quite there, yet.

Could you elaborate about what makes you want to claw your eyes out?

The major one is that there is no central point for configuring PW. There are still way too many cases where I have to find / tweak config files, scattered across my filesystem in multiple, confusing formats.

• Want to set up the "pro-audio" profile, so that all your device's I/O channels are available without whatever weird DWIM ATMOS setup is the default? I spent a long time trying to find the config file, and ended up punting to installing pavcontrol (I think) and using its GUI instead. Why is that super important option not surfaced anywhere more obvious?

• Want to name those inputs something other than capture_AUX#, so that Ardour shows the expected value in the UI? Good luck with that one: trying to write the weird, Haskel-ish program which passes for a config file for that broke me.

Without a single, well-established "Pipewire config dashboard" GUI, and / or waaaay more documentation than scattered forum posts, I don't think the "everything is just fine with Pipewire" story is here, yet.

Lastly I can not reiterate enough.... If you're simply using Ardour, Mixbus or Reaper unto themselves then there is the simplest solution in the world... Use the ALSA backend... no JACK, no PulseAudio, no PipeWire just direct access to your Soundcard..

Please quit hammering on the "just use ALSA" bit: it is an utter regression from AVL's previous smooth integration of JACK and PulseAudio[1]. I'm not giving up being able to play / record a reference from YouTube while running Ardour, or using a standalone synth or other audio app. E.g., what if I want to do an Ardour screencap video using OBS, narrating as I go? The Ardour devs push "just use ALSA" because it makes their support burden simpler, which is understandable. I get that you've gotten it working well enough for your own use cases, and that you don't want to take on the support burden, either.

[1] The scenario where the "just use ALSA" advice makes most sense is when running a large-ish multi-track recording session, where I would want the lowest possible latency and the least distractions possible on the machine (I'd likely turn off networking, too). But 99% of the time, I'm working by myself, at the desk, and want the DAW to interact smoothly with other audio-using apps.

[GMaq]

Hi,

Yes pavucontrol was just added to the revised ISO released over the weekend.

I'm no expert on PipeWire I'm learning too, as far as 'hammering' ask Paul Davis and Robin Gareus what they recommend and have been for years...

I get it people don't like change... I'm getting a bit tired of people shitting in my cornflakes about it but that's what you sign up for I guess (even though I didn't actually sign up for anything...)

[sirjohndfox]

For my part - it's the re learning of configuration of devices that's been stable for years. I don't even know the names of the utilities i need to use.

I have a bunch of keybindings that interact with pulseaudio and jack - I'll need to spend weeks researching alternatives.

Does pipewire offer transport sync between apps?

I'll admit I might be curmudgeonly but jack, pulseaudio and module-jack-sink just worked.

[GMaq]

For my part - it's the re learning of configuration of devices that's been stable for years. I don't even know the names of the utilities i need to use.

I have a bunch of keybindings that interact with pulseaudio and jack - I'll need to spend weeks researching alternatives.

Does pipewire offer transport sync between apps?

I'll admit I might be curmudgeonly but jack, pulseaudio and module-jack-sink just worked.

Hi,

It was not an easy decision and as I said in the Video... what was wrong with what we had? 100% agree!

To my knowledge PipeWire doesn't have JACK transport but it's not like you absolutely can't install 'old JACK', in fact if you install Qtractor it's going to pull in jackd as a dependency.

What I don't know is exactly how you access old JACK and since the system is linked to call for 'pipewire-jack' I'm not exactly sure what is supposed to happen because like everyone else I'm sifting bits and pieces of info here and there and taking my best guesses.

On a system with jack and pipewire-jack you at least can continue to use PipeWire for the PulseAudio duties so you don't want to reinstall PluseAudio..

[rncbc]

To my knowledge PipeWire doesn't have JACK transport [...]

not true

PW does have JACK-transport alright, although it might not strictly on par to genuine and good-ol'JACK

hth.

[GMaq]

To my knowledge PipeWire doesn't have JACK transport [...]

not true

PW does have JACK-transport alright, although it might not strictly on par to genuine and good-ol'JACK

hth.

Thanks for the correction!

[mk1967]

Can I expect a new distro with [...] the latest Ardour coming out soon?

Debian-based LibraZiK 4 Studio has been including Ardour 8 for several weeks (or even longer) already: https://librazik.tuxfamily.org/base-sit ... nglish.php . LibraZiK works very well on several of my machines.