FreeBSD Home Audio Studio
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It's very powerful, which means there is a bit of a learning curve, but it can do everything you want it to, and it has nice stuff like really solid scripting support (lua, python, and some DSL).
I record like 20-30 audio tracks at a time from my rackmount setup and reaper handles it no problem.
Very much worth the $60.
It also has a comprehensive API that can be manipulated with Lua.
I support reaper, here’s an opinion. My problem with reaper is that I think it was trying to be protools for people who couldn’t afford protools.
The thing is, most people aren’t recording 32 ADC channels and 1024 midi tracks on rackmount stuff. I think I have my dad’s last MIDI cables, and it makes me feel either ancient or hipster. Even pro studios are slimmer, cause it’s not 2003. Workflow is at a premium, and reaper… kinda feels like an expensive version of FOSS.
Still so great in the ecosystem, and aw, a DAW love of mine. A chisel for the days when the 3D printer just isn’t robust enough.
I use Logic Pro and bitwig. Bitwig fails the same test. I rarely say this, but this niche could inspire nerdy moments a bit less, and creative workflows a bit more to be attractive to a prosumer.
I've considered doing a crazy-simple version of Ardour (nominal name "arb" for "Ardour Recording Button"), but I'm still not convinced that writing a tool that will only be useful to most of its users for a couple of months makes sense.
The same could be accomplished also in software, and it would have a huge success, however packing it with features can only slow down the work; everything should be thought without the idea of turning it into a full DAW but just putting it there the minimum necessary to be productive without distractions. Think about a mini Linux distro (Alpine?) that boots in seconds on a small netbook to directly load the "music scratchpad" at full screen and no other software in the background. Plenty of devices are out there ready to be repurposed for that, and good external USB audio card can be found for cheap.
Years ago I used my old Samsung NC10 netbook to record my band. The internal mics were crap like with every laptop, but once I built a small stereo jfet preamp to connect two external dynamic mics, I got quite good results. It was a bit slow to operate, and more so managing the long files we created (~3 hours at 44.1KHz 16bit stereo .wav) but I used a full Debian plus Audacity without any optimization for speed and size.
2.
> The same could be accomplished also in software, and it would have a huge success
Odd how none of the proprietary DAW manufacturers believe this, isn't it?
I've already described the basic problem with this idea: it starts out as being precisely what someone wants, but every few months, their desires/expectations expand. What "productive without distractions" means looks very different after you've done a bit of computer audio production for a year than when you're just starting out.
2. Yes, that is odd (although I seem to recall Dr. T's did something like that ages ago). It doesn't bring money apparently, so they concentrate on much bigger overcomplicated software that does everything except simple things but shines when showed in ads. It seems to me this one could become the right niche in which FOSS can surpass commercial software: do 3 things and do them well.
sure. But we take your 3 things, then Ben over there's 3 things, then Maggie's 3 things, and then Olafur's 3 things and add in Vieux's 3 things and pretty soon we're talking about a real DAW!
Googling "reason vs X" just turned up ad-loaded drivel.
Anyone know of any good guides that lay out the land? Venn diagrams of where DAWs (digital audio workstation), Mixers, etc overlap or how they relate/compare with each other?
Not really qualified because I am not a musician and I was only using lmms to play around with a midi dials and buttons box, openbsd's sndio. and to see if I could get them to work togther. So in my case it was more of a systems integration exercise than making any music with it.
EDIT: Also, if you're a command line and text file weirdo like me:
Mixer4: http://www.acousticrefuge.com/mixer4.htm (From the homepage: "Mixer4 is an audio mixer and processor that can be controlled through simple text files. Over a dozen accessory programs complete what can be a very solid recording studio." I can confirm that it is extremely fast and very interesting to use. Nice, responsive and friendly solo developer, too.)
And Ecasound: https://ecasound.seul.org/ecasound/
10 years ago, I used to run Linux as my effects processor for my guitar and keyboard synth when I was in a band. That same laptop also ran projectm to display realtime visuals on our backdrop.
What's your reasoning for this statement? I find poudriere[1] handy for compiling one's own packages from ports configured to fit one's goals, but I see nothing outstanding in plain pkg.
It has issues when there's an IPv6 address up (even link-local) but no egress v6 routing. It would hang and wait for a timeout when an IPv6 address is selected from resolved addresses. After a timeout - pkg connects to v4 endpoint but if there's several packages to be downloaded, it can fall back to trying to connect to v6 with the next package.
On the other hand, I've recently had Ubuntu 22.04 register Python-related packages which were not successfully installed, resulting in all dpkg/apt/apt-get commands failing due to py3clean script throwing tracebacks, until /var/lib/dpkg/status was edited and these packages were in fact installed and then removed.
I have multiple FreeBSD machines, all of them with IPv6 up on link-local, and pkg doesn't hang at all. Even without valid globally unique IPv6 addressing, but valid ULA addressing (unique local address) and valid routing for IPv6 on an internal network, no issues.
It sounds like you've got some globally unique IPv6 addresses assigned to an interface somewhere and address selection (and thus the addresses returned from getaddrinfo) will return IPv6 first and try that before falling back to IPv4.
You can configure this address selection by using the ip6addrctl tool which will allow you to validate and change that address selection.
It is based upon https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3484
FreeBSD also has predefined policies you can set in /etc/rc.conf:
ip6addrctl_enable="YES" # Set to YES to enable default address selection ip6addrctl_verbose="NO" # Set to YES to enable verbose configuration messages ip6addrctl_policy="AUTO" # A pre-defined address selection policy # (ipv4_prefer, ipv6_prefer, or AUTO)
Single inet6 address up is fe80::xxx. My outdated ISP does not provide any v6 connectivity. But my cellular (other) ISP provides v6 and I use tethering while traveling, so would like to avoid disabling INET6.
> addresses returned from getaddrinfo) will return IPv6 first and try that before falling back to IPv4.
It's random with no v6 preference.
ping6 fails immediately upon attempt to reach outside world:
ping6: UDP connect: No route to host
ping6 2606:4700:4700::1111 0.00s user 0.00s system 50% cpu 0.005 total
If you follow Debian testing or sid, you will experience a lot of dependency breakage that I've never seen on a BSD, but that may not be dpkg or apt's fault so much as ongoing package maintenance causing those issues.
I don't know whar Debian does for the above.
I haven't used IPv6 with pkg though. (stupid ISPs).
jackd_args="-r -d oss -r44000 -p1024 -n2 -w16 -i4 -o8 -C /dev/dsp0 -P /dev/dsp0"
Especially in comparison to the new Z13 model[1] in which Lenovo has ditched buttons-buttons on top of the touchpad in favor of an area of touchpad acting as buttons for both trackpoint and touchpad. My T-series has physical buttons-buttons for the trackpoint on top of the touchpad and bottom area of the touchpad acting as buttons for the touchpad. I haven't tested neither Z13 model (not yet released) nor the old W-series but I think Z-series may be a downgrade.
Seriously, the trackpoint/touchbar from MacBooks is the only thing I miss after switching to ThinkPads.
Here's an image of one with the monitor slid-out:
http://www.tabletsnlaptops.com/laptop-images/lenovo-thinkPad...
I recommend a good USB-powered dynamic microphone, such as the Samson Q2U or Samson Q9U. If you're going to buy an interface (maybe to drive some monitors as well as a microphone) and an XLR microphone for exclusively spoken-word stuff, the "buy a dynamic" advice still applies--I like the sE Dynacaster but I'm also the type to spend $300 on a microphone, you don't need to be--but you really don't need more than something like a Behringer UMC22 for an interface. Not a UM22, that's different and a bit below-the-bar, but you don't need to spend more than $60-$70 for an interface that will do everything you need.
I wrote this near the start of COVID when at a previous company and my advice still holds.
> If you plan to use your USB mic with its own headphone jack, then most of what is written here does not apply to you, and you can regard the microphone as a small, not particularly good, simple audio interface just like one of the boxes you might otherwise connect to you computer.
Yup. This is true. I recommended the Samson Q2U or Q9U in no small part because of this. It is a single-purpose audio interface and it's fine for people who want a good-sounding Zoom presence. They are also both microphones that provide some nontrivial improvement when they are used over XLR, which can rationalize later buying an interface once you've decided that you want to do so.
> If you're making a podcast, or working with some audio where the highest possible fidelity to the original sound isn't particularly important, you're probably going to be just fine with this resampling taking place. You can use your USB mic, the operating system will resample one or both audio streams, things will seem to just work, and you'll probably be happy with the results.
As it happens, I agree with the general thrust of what they're saying--for music. This is a reason why I have a very large and moderately expensive digital mixer. But they themselves are not intending to cover general-purpose, spoken-word uses, like podcasts (which I think one can reasonably expand to "teleconferences"), with their criticism.
So can you enlighten me as to your point?
I think the document speaks for itself. USB mics are a mistake, in general. If they do duplex (record & playback), they are sufficiently less of a mistake to maybe warrant no concern. Manufacturer's took the easy path ("easy! just plug it in!") when they should have been encouraging people to stick to the existing path ("not that easy, but not hard either!")
semi-pro/more serious: MOTU 828
pro/studio level: PRISM Sound Lyra or Titan
- I had a consumer M-Audio interface that was always a bit weird. One day well outside the warranty period I popped the lid off and discovered a tombstoned resistor and two bodge wires on the PCB. I reached out to M-Audio on Twitter and the best they could do was offer me a $20 discount on another interface. Very unimpressed.
- I replaced it with a Behringer UMC404HD and the very first thing I did when it arrived was pop the cover off. I'm an EE by trade and I was very impressed by the design. The board layout etc was nice, but the part that really surprised me was the pre-amps for the mic inputs. Maybe I'm weird for feeling this way, but the folks who designed it have taste. The pre-amps are designed around some NJR op-amps; NJR parts are notorious for being slew-rate-limited for a lot of applications, but to my ears they sound absolutely buttery smooth. The fact that the designers used those parts instead of some jelly-bean "flat" op-amps really made me appreciate the consideration that went into the design.
Edit: and yes, I know Behringer has a bit of a reputation for being "kinda cheap and kinda crappy" but I have zero complaints and I've had this unit for a few years now.
Behringer has gotten a lot better, their early days (20 year ago) they made cheap junk clones. Now they have some good gear as well.
Though the company itself has other operating practices people don't like. You should for sure do your research on them. I have some of their gear, but I'm not sure I'll buy more.
Software is atrocious though. Their spyware DRM crashes any windows VM I try to install it on.
Universal Audio recently released some really nice made-in-taiwan desktop interfaces in the same price range as the Scarletts. I have scarletts on my rackmount setup, UA Volt on my desk.
UA's software is atrocious though. Their spyware DRM crashes any windows VM I try to install it on.
Scarlett's software is relatively good by comparison, although you have to start their server by hand from the terminal if you don't want it running all the time.
Without going into tons of nitty-gritty details, the major ones are the number of inputs/channels, size, and price.
Scarlett 2i2 is more than enough for most people, with its 2 channels (both with independently controllable headphone and monitor outputs).
Motu 828, the one listed as semi-pro tier, has 20 input channels.
I suggest reading reviews of each of them, but basically the rule of thumb is that if the review is listing bajillion things that you have no understanding of at all, you don't need that tier and can safely move to the tier below.
No shame in that at all. Even the home/hobby level of audio equipment today is functionally crazy, and priced insanely cheap compared to just a couple decades ago.
I went with the Scarlett because A) it was relatively cheap and B) it had quite good reviews, but I'm curious what I'm losing on a technical basis by going for the $500 option over the $1000 option.
Because they seem to have great performance and stability on Windows.
Note that, while the BabyFace Pro doesn't have native Linux or BSD drivers, it does have a USB class-compliant mode that, while feature-limited compared to the proprietary drivers, may be sufficient for DAW use — AFAIK, the primary limitation is limited control over the hardware mixer, so problematic if you need low-latency monitoring of multiple input channels simultaneously, but possibly irrelevant otherwise.
There's also a full-featured iPad mixer app that works in class-compliant mode, so full control is at least theoretically possible, lack of published details notwithstanding, and there appears to be at least some support for this in the Linux kernel,
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/2eb29d59ddf02e39774ab...
I love Linux, but feel a bit of whiplash after Ubuntu's feeping commerce creaturism, charging for things that it seems like should be in the core product. (live kernel patching, for example)
So if you went for a Snow Leopard audio/music machine you'd be in good company :)
I put Linux on old Macs precisely because I cannot go a day on older MacOS without hitting 10 applications whose latest versions I cannot install on MacOS.
If you are not having that problem, I would like to know more.
All that stuff is old, the laptop's air-gapped and never talks to the internet, and I bring the code over on an SD card to the Mac Studio where I do the signed versions of AU and VST, make the videos, etc.
I also resist 'latest versions' of things quite hard. Generally that's not what I want. I want stuff where it's working consistently. Even my web browser is a Chromium picked specifically so I can be sure it will get old and go out of date until _I_ have a reason to change it, which will doubtless happen but it'll happen when I want.
I can't imagine running Snow Leopard but also feeling like you have to run the newest of everything. It can't even run a remotely current web browser. You have to already have programs that will be exactly what you want and need. Then, you use those and get used to them, like cooking with an old chef's knife you've had for decades :)
Though honestly, on Linux I just use ALSA for everything and don't think about it after that. By definition neither Jack nor Pipewire can be faster than the ALSA they are talking to.
> By definition neither Jack nor Pipewire can be faster than the ALSA they are talking to.
Sure, but that's like saying that you don't need an operating system when you can compile to baremetal. Both Jack and Pipewire are slower, but offer pretty substantial routing options on top of that. Furthermore, I believe both protocols support ALSA connections too.
I use Bitwig on NixOS and it's not too bad with PipeWire. Latency and routability generally rivals CoreAudio, which is good enough for me.
And I don't want to sound like I'm dumping on Pipewire; I think the work Wim has been doing is absolutely awesome and (unlike a lot of what FDo puts out) actually solves existing problems rather than hypothetical ones. It's just not quite (yet) what I need as a DJ and looper.
When I want to make or record music, I don't want to spend time debugging the system. I just want it to work, and I don't want have to worry if a plugin runs on my system. *nix/*bsd don't come close to achieving that, and windows is not stable enough for audio systems for my taste. IOW what is the hobby here? Making music, or tinkering with my *nix/*bsd system?
The parent article show a small number of config files to set and a package to install. It is not more complicated than installing ASIO4ALL driver and setting it up on a windows box.
And I can show you countless of threads in music forums about people asking how to solve their midi connections / sync / latency / clipping problems on macOS and windows.
I literally use linux every day on my pc, work laptop, and personal laptop. It's not outdated at all, it's part of using linux. Granted it's a lot better than before.
MacOS having occasional issues is not comparable to having to mess around with alsa/jack/pipewire and debug linux issues in general. Obviously no system is perfect.
The only things that makes me pull my hair sometimes are pairing bluetooth devices but that is regardless of the OS. It may just be that some hardware/firmwares of bluetooth devices are just shitty because it is the same misery regardless if I am on mobile, windows, linux, whatever.
What do you think the readers of this space do? What is your vision of this "non-working" hacker news reader? I legitimately can't imagine anything here but a 90's era stereotype.
hmmm