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Can anyone recommend a good DAW for Ubuntu?
- Thread starter CaptainWally
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- ubuntu
Hi CaptainWally,
if you install Ubuntu Studio you not only get the low-latency-kernel but also Ardour and LMMS preinstalled for free. Have a look and pick your favorite.
Of course you can also install those packages on a vanilla Ubuntu system, but the low-latency-kernel certainly won't hurt and you get a bunch of useful audio tools like the JACK system that let's you connect your interface to the DAW or the Calf Plugin Suite and several synths and Guitarix and...
Commercially I only know of Harrison Mixbus (which builds onto Ardour) and Bitwig, but either Ardour or LMMs should get you pretty far...
Have a nice day, Walter
Subbed. I'm trying to migrate to Linux but the choice of DAW is the great deal breaker for me right now. Been working with Ableton so far, though I don't use the live music features.
Hi Nashrakh,
you can start Ubuntu Studio from a Live-CD or a USB-Stick and try out the included DAWs (Ardour and LMMS). Bear in mind that this is slower than a real install. For a first look it should suffice.
Apparently Bitwig is similar to Ableton in terms of workflow, but I've no experience with either. You could download the demo version of Bitwig to see if that suits your needs.
If you rely heavily on third party plugins you might want to stick to Redmond or the Cupertino Cult. Installing those under Linux via wine is a hassle at best, and utterly impossible when they are copyright protected via iLOK (unless I've missed some recent development). There is a wide range of plugins native to Linux (I've yet to explore those myself) but many much-hyped plugins are unavailable.
Have a nice day, Walter
Another vote for Ardour here; I've been using it for years.
Between it and Jack there's a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth it for the flexibility they provide.
That said, I've been happy with Ardour for so long I haven't even tried Reaper or Bitwig, so have no opinion about them. Rosegarden could also be worth a look if you're more about MIDI and sequencing.
Harrison Mixbus is built on Ardour, and there's a friendly sharing of development effort between them. It has a good reputation, but again I've yet to actually try it. Among other things, I'm not sure my mixing skills are at the point at which it'd make any noticeable difference.
Between it and Jack there's a bit of a learning curve, but it's worth it for the flexibility they provide.
That said, I've been happy with Ardour for so long I haven't even tried Reaper or Bitwig, so have no opinion about them. Rosegarden could also be worth a look if you're more about MIDI and sequencing.
Harrison Mixbus is built on Ardour, and there's a friendly sharing of development effort between them. It has a good reputation, but again I've yet to actually try it. Among other things, I'm not sure my mixing skills are at the point at which it'd make any noticeable difference.
I have been on Linux since 2003, using Ardour since the 0.xx days and switching to Mixbus around 2014.
Harrison Mixbus is absolutely fantastic if the things you want to do are not too far from the things one might have done with a tape based Studio back in the day. The built in EQ, dynamics, and saturation sound great. If you are looking to do Pro Tools style comping of dozens of takes or hundreds of tracks it is probably not for you. I understand the MIDI stuff to be a bit clunky but I only use it for real instruments so I can't speak to that from personal experience.
Reaper is now available for Linux and works great. It's a really nice cross platform DAW.
Ardour is Mixbus without the fancy built in mixer.
Never tried Bitwig, it looks to be an attempt to emulate Ableton. Not my thing, no idea how good it is.
Harrison Mixbus is absolutely fantastic if the things you want to do are not too far from the things one might have done with a tape based Studio back in the day. The built in EQ, dynamics, and saturation sound great. If you are looking to do Pro Tools style comping of dozens of takes or hundreds of tracks it is probably not for you. I understand the MIDI stuff to be a bit clunky but I only use it for real instruments so I can't speak to that from personal experience.
Reaper is now available for Linux and works great. It's a really nice cross platform DAW.
Ardour is Mixbus without the fancy built in mixer.
Never tried Bitwig, it looks to be an attempt to emulate Ableton. Not my thing, no idea how good it is.
Mixbus is currently my favorite DAW, and I have used most of them over the years. I've had some grief with MixBus and latest Ubuntu Studio - Ardour still runs fine on it though. (Mixbus was OK on the 16.04 US, but things went very sideways with the 18.04 upgrade).
I mostly use Mixbus 5.2 on Windoze 10, where it runs fine, but my next high-powered linux DAW will probably be based on AVlinux. I just did an AVlinux install tonight on a friend's old (ancient!) 2008 iMac (no longer supported in Appledom), and while the installer system for it is a bit goofy, it did install quite quickly and runs great! Among other things, AVlinux does come bundled with latest Ardour and Mixbus pre-installed (demo version of mixbus)...
I mostly use Mixbus 5.2 on Windoze 10, where it runs fine, but my next high-powered linux DAW will probably be based on AVlinux. I just did an AVlinux install tonight on a friend's old (ancient!) 2008 iMac (no longer supported in Appledom), and while the installer system for it is a bit goofy, it did install quite quickly and runs great! Among other things, AVlinux does come bundled with latest Ardour and Mixbus pre-installed (demo version of mixbus)...
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I have a box with AVLinux (The latest the built before pausing development) with Reaper and Tracktion (and Waveform 10) and all work great. I even have a good amount of Windows based plugins running on wine with no problems.
If you're planning to use Win plugins make sure you read some forums, Reaper's forum has a lot of helpful information.
Harrison's Mixbus is another great choice, they are constantly improving and the DAW really sounds different to any other DAW (In this case this one really has a sound). Midi is a bit iffy but still works very well and you can get really good offers for the DAW from time to time.
If you're planning to use Win plugins make sure you read some forums, Reaper's forum has a lot of helpful information.
Harrison's Mixbus is another great choice, they are constantly improving and the DAW really sounds different to any other DAW (In this case this one really has a sound). Midi is a bit iffy but still works very well and you can get really good offers for the DAW from time to time.
Given that this is what they're really selling here, how would you describe that sound?
Admittedly, I see this very much as adding a film-grain filter to a digital photo (being old enough to have made that transition) but I'm curious about whether to invest the time into getting Mixbus to work on Nixos.
Interesting. Even on headphones, there's a difference. Subtle, but noticeable. And happily, I picked it the right way around on the blind comparison.
My mixing will need to get better before this difference will matter, but now I know it's there to reach for.
Thanks for those links!
Always, Mixbus it is definitely a great choice and there are more choice of plugins for it than Reaper (I use Reaper with a good number of Win Vst) but there are a more for Mixbus (Ardour).
