Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz
Hi!
How can I use the software that comes with my VOLT2 sound card?
I can do without them, but I would be curious about it.
https://www.uaudio.com/audio-interfaces/volt-2-usb.html
I'm satisfied with the device anyway, but I'm curious about what it has to offer...
Hi, some of their bundle either reqire i-lok, or it's PACE i-lock software manager*, and some are not linux friendly due to complexity, and poor design.
With a modern wine-staging, the UJAM, Plugin Alliance Ampeg, and LABS might work. Ableton Lite might work, although
I would rather recycle broken glass from a sewer, than use it to make music 
Ardour, Reaper, Mixbus, Qtractor, Carla, Bitwig
and Renoise are fine native linux DAWs with a wide range of features and styles to meet various preferences.
*sometimes the 'ilok software manager' works in wine-staging, sometimes not. The more 'industry standard' your computer is,
the better. wine-staging is found at www.winehq.org There will be 'stable' and testing versions to choose from.
Browse their site for a wine installer for your distro. It will have around 4 copy/paste commands to set up
their repository and install your choice. Works well in debian/ubuntu variants, likely the other distros as well.
If you already have a wine version installed, uninstall it fully first, to avoid conflicts, using your distro package manager, synaptic
is common, Arch, Fedora and, Suse have their own tools for management.
Lately, using the AVLinux distro, the IK Multimedia Product Manager tool has been successfull,
and IK offer many excellent free versions of excellent software as teasers. With the caveats
that they may install gigabytes of (quality) content, and you may need to be online for their
'Custom Shop' and manager tools to do their thing, which is part of their deal. The shop is handy, and allows for testing
and ala-cart purchases from their large catalog. An IK account is needed, but over the years, has proved
to be a valuable resource, with lots of functionality. I've been using the Amplitube and Mixbox plugins together,
to easily craft unique signal chains.
Another avenue is the new Studio One 6.5 linux daw, still in beta, and with a narrow ubuntu distro requirement,
that will be bundled with some of the PreSonus hardware. If a mixer etc is on you purchase list,
or if the Volt 2 is not love-at-first-sight, there are other audio interfaces known to work well in linux.
Cheers
I should add, that once your Volt 2 is working in qjackctl or other patchbay gui,
you can use a basic list of free native linux tools, to create a huge range of music:
Yoshimi synth
Surge synth
Hydrogen drum machine/sample-player
Guitarix amp and pedal system
Rakarrack multi-effects panel
DecentSampler and it's instrument libs
several sfz players
And many more...
@Cafe
How can I use the software that comes with my VOLT2 sound card?
First, the good news with that unit seems to be that there is no "required" Windows-and-Mac-only software setup tool: it looks like all the hardware features are exposed through front-panel switches.
As @glowrak guy notes, getting the "suite" of additional software listed on that page running under WINE might be a bit challenging, and with mixed results. The only one I am currently using myself is the Spitfire Audio LABs instrument-kit (which is freely available, but not "free sofwtware"): it works for me on the current version of AVL-MEX with wine-staging 8.11 (installed in /opt/wine/staging).