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11-21-2007, 10:33 AM
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#1
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Reaper Fine Arts Department
Posts: 1,607
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Reaper. Linux, and a journey of discovery...
After taking the plunge and deciding to install linux on the box, alongside vista, i offer the following.
My install distro of choice was originally JAD, as much to support the efforts of people who are trying to bring together a total audio solution, as an interest in seeing how far linux has come.
Sadly, and i assume because of my inexperience with linux, I couldn't get this going at all. Install stalled, and wouldn't play with my amd64 dual core. Graphics vanished, and the programme just wouldn't play.
I continue to offer these chaps my support and encouragement, and hope that new linux users like me can, one day soon, have a relatively trouble free install of what seems to be a fine effort at giving us a complete audio solution. I wish them well.
I then turned to Ubuntu, and to the contrary of the above experience, it installed relatively painlessly.
(A note here. If you own an ATI graphics card, there is a known problem with the install and regular boot. At boot, simply hold down Ctrl+Alt+F2, or Alt+F2, and the graphics will work. Thanks to the chaps at JAD's forum for this tip.)
After install,i explored the distro fairly extensively in a short time, including running Reaper with an initial wine setup. My thanks go to Justin, Christophe and the reap team for their linux support. Reaper performed well, even with the horrendous latency that, after some internet perusing, seems to be almost accepted as part of the current Alsa infrastructure, without extensive tweaking and some degree of linux knowledge.
All attempts on my part to install and configure wineasio failed, and despite some late night sessions trawling the net for info, i failed to get this working, or even seen in the programme.
I rather enjoyed the speed and smooth operation of the standard ubuntu package (7.10), and decided to uninstall that and go for the audio,vid specific package UbuntuStudio.(7.10)
Again, a fairly easy install, and i was mildly impressed with the range of audio and vid programmes available. Linux has come a long way since our last meeting some years ago.
Again, Ubuntu Studio has, and relative to the alsa challenges, is,performing well. No crashes to date, and it boots and performs quite a deal faster than win. (I'm using the amd 64bit version.)
But again, i face difficulties with the wineasio setup. According to US, it's installed, and i can see it in the wine folder. It shows up in Reaper as an asio option, but with no ins and outs to choose from. It doesn't show up in wine config (nor does jack, but i'm betting i've yet to set that up properly as well.)
To my delight, even with these ongoing challenges, most of my VST's show up in Reaper on Ubuntu, and work well with no noticeable degradation of performance over Win.
As i'm predominately a midi and vst user, this isn't quite so bad, as i can adjust audio device settings when playing back or rendering,but it's still disconcerting, to say the least. I hope to sort this out over the next week or so, with some hard study, and hopefully some input from those linux gurus who so generously share their time and expertise.
So, for an initial gambit, and in my humble and limited linux experience, pretty ok so far. Reaper performs well with UBStudio, and continues my ongoing respect for this programme and it's developers. It's not only good, but tough, and adaptable too.
Now I'm going back to the linux/wine/asio audio setup journey............
Just two roubles worth.
Alex.
p.s. Shup works in Ubuntu/wine as well.
Excellent.
EDIT 1/1/2008:: A big thank you to Justin, Christophe, and the Reaper team for allowing this thread to grow, and, in a sense, mature. It hasn't always been directly related toward Reaper, yet it still.....lives, lol.
Cheers chaps, your openminded perspective is much appreciated. I'm learning much from all the input, and i hope others interested in the topics we're discussing get something out of it too.
Great attitude.
Last edited by Alex Stone; 01-01-2008 at 09:53 AM.
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11-21-2007, 10:48 AM
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#2
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: NYC
Posts: 906
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Alex, thanks for the post. I've been contemplating putting Linux on my PowerMac G4 500mhz dual processor for which I need to at least jack up the ram. I was wondering what distro to try , I guess I'll check the ubuntu studio, hopefully they have a PowerMac port.
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11-21-2007, 11:22 AM
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#3
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Berlin, GER
Posts: 199
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Is the Jack server running? Did you run
regsvr32 wineasio.dll
after installing wineasio?
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11-21-2007, 11:25 AM
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#4
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Reaper Fine Arts Department
Posts: 1,607
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 404NotFound
Is the Jack server running? Did you run
regsvr32 wineasio.dll
after installing wineasio?
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404, yes i did. Wineasio shows up in Reaper/wine as an Asio audio device, but i get an error message telling me there's a prob.
The Jack server runs without RT, but with RT it stops soon after it's started.
Message reads:cannot send request type 7 to server
cannot read result for request type 7 from server (Broken pipe)
cannot send request type 7 to server
cannot read result for request type 7 from server (Broken pipe)
jackd: no process killed.
Alex.
Last edited by Alex Stone; 11-21-2007 at 11:28 AM.
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11-21-2007, 11:30 AM
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#5
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Lincoln, UK
Posts: 1,034
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Funny!
I've been battling with Ubuntu (with a view to using Ardour) over the last few days, but ultimately the fact that it's a HUGE PAIN IN THE ARSE to get dual monitors running (with an ATI card) has put me off.
The Ubuntu desktop (with the flashy cube thing) is simply awesome for about 20 minutes until it gets boring.
I uninstalled. Probably try again if they ever get dual head stuff running without requiring huge config editing.
A word of warning, if you're running grub (for booting), uninstalling (Ubuntu) will break your master boot record and you'll need to repair it using the XP/Vista disc.
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11-21-2007, 12:03 PM
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#6
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Berlin, GER
Posts: 199
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@Alex:
The Jack behaviour you reported is quite strange. Seems like you aren't running a realtime-capable kernel, but since you installed UStudio, that kernel must be running by default... I must admit that I have no experiences with 64bit systems, so your problems can also be related to your amd64 system. I heard somewhere that wine wouldn't even run on 64bit PCs, but this seems to be wrong Just post your problems to the Ubuntu forums, they're pretty good.
@Zargon:
I also had problems with dualhead since the Gutsy update, but I figured out that it has become ridiculously simple - one tweak in the xorg.conf (set virtual screen size to an appropriate value) and one command (xrandr --output VGA [or whatever] --right-of LVDS [or whatever else]).
@Charles:
Ubuntu is available for PowerPC, but wine (and Reaper) will never run on it.
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11-21-2007, 01:23 PM
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#7
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: north australia
Posts: 18
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In Winecfg you have to set the audio to alsa anyway, according to the wineasio instructions (or was it the JACK instructions? i forget)..
I recently installed Ubuntu as well (not the studio version or anything, just the regular one), and have managed to get REAPER working with JACK/wineasio alright. I installed the realtime kernel, but JACK doesn't work with the "realtime" box checked. It gives "cannot use real-time scheduling (FIFO at priority 10) [for thread -1210099008, from thread -1210099008] (1: Operation not permitted). cannot create engine"
REAPER runs alright, though the graphics are very slow to update (even when WINE is set to emulate virtual desktop). Every time I use scrollbars or open a window, the sound starts breaking up.. I usually have to hit stop and play, and then it's fine again.
This is all using my laptop's onboard sound btw, my audio interface doesn't work in linux.
I'm not sure if the audio breakup and slow gfx are because I have something setup incorrectly, or if it's just because my pc is a bit old.. (pentium-m 1.86ghz, 1gb, 64mb ati x300).
So i'll keep tweaking it and see what happens..
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11-22-2007, 07:44 AM
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#8
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Lincoln, UK
Posts: 1,034
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 404NotFound
@Zargon:
I also had problems with dualhead since the Gutsy update, but I figured out that it has become ridiculously simple - one tweak in the xorg.conf (set virtual screen size to an appropriate value) and one command (xrandr --output VGA [or whatever] --right-of LVDS [or whatever else]).
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Hmmm. I tried and failed a number of times - I think it might be my specific card (9250)...
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11-22-2007, 05:37 AM
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#9
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 211
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linux and reaper
Always nice to see someone jump on the ship. Welcome aboard, and please let me know if you need any specific help with Linux. I've been using it since ~1995, it's been my main OS since 1999, and I do all my music and sound production on it. Typically I use native tools (Ardour, JOST, various synths & plugins), but I like a lot of the VST/VSTi plugins I've run with Reaper, so I feel I'm getting the best of both worlds by being able to use Reaper under Linux.
Anyway, yes, there's a bunch of Linux Reaperites here, they seem like good people, ready to assist. And if you're in the mood to read some articles about Linux music and sound software :
http://www.linuxjournal.com/user/800764/track
Have fun.
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11-22-2007, 07:10 AM
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#10
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 998
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Quote:
Originally Posted by StudioDave
...Typically I use native tools (Ardour, JOST, various synths & plugins), but I like a lot of the VST/VSTi plugins I've run with Reaper, so I feel I'm getting the best of both worlds by being able to use Reaper under Linux.
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Ooh, JOST looks cool. Can you actually route audio out of Reaper, into JOST and back?
Must try.
__________________
Get Dropbox! (Bonus space for both of us with that link)
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11-22-2007, 07:21 AM
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#11
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Berlin, GER
Posts: 199
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Of course you can - that's the advantage of the whole linux audio thing
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11-22-2007, 07:49 AM
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#12
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 998
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 404NotFound
Of course you can - that's the advantage of the whole linux audio thing
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Other than the completely free OS, and run headless, and stuff like that
I've always wondered what it would take to make your own guitar/vocal effects processor with a linux box, like a rack unit or even something like a Mac mini form factor.
CF card (or USB drive) booting, USB or Firewire inputs so you can use your own interface, MIDI I/O, LCD display... If it can be done for about the price of a PODxt (or X3) it would be a superb alternative! Of course it would need to run ReaPlugs somehow.
Sounds like a good LJ article.
__________________
Get Dropbox! (Bonus space for both of us with that link)
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11-22-2007, 09:56 AM
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#13
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Human being with feelings
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Reaper Fine Arts Department
Posts: 1,607
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And the journey still continues..........
UbuntuStudio 32bit is really starting to settle in now, and after figuring out how to install win progs into wine (doh) a few of my fallback favourites have responded, and others have died.
Ce La vie. :P
Wineasio with Jack is pretty impressive. Further tweaking, and i've found that 'sweet spot' that we all lust for, and never appears to be in the same place from one comp to the next.
After an inital hiccup with a ttf-opensymbol file not working properly, (and my reinstalling from the net after dumping the cd-rom build of that file), everything's going well. The latency from my modest onboard card is even better with linux, than i ever enjoyed in vista32. Some food for thought there, for me at least.
I'm still a new user at installing from the terminal,and the file structure, and downloaded location, has me scratching my head from time to time, but slowly and surely the lights are coming on the grey matter. I'll continue to persue this, and thanks to all who have contributed for the tips, stories of woe, and links.
Dave, the vst list is enlightening to say the least, and i never dreamed half of the successful vst's would perform as they do. Credit to the devs of wine and wineasio. I hope to post pics soon, as soon as i figure out how to get shup and stashbox working properly, and maybe some of my mistakes will serve as a visual prompt forsuggestions and ways to avoid crashing and burning (which fortunately i've managed to avoid so far.)
I'll keep posting observations from the perspective of a new linux user, and i hope, embittered old tuxheads aside , that those who may be interested get something from this thread, and put their toe in the linux pond with a little more confidence.
(Note: The graphic issue at boot with ATI drivers is present in the 32bit version of ubuntu gusty 7.10, as well. And the Alt+F2 trick at boot works for this version too, so all is not lost.)
Alex.
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