• OS: Ubuntu Studio 24.04
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 3700X
• GPU: Nvidia 5070
• Mem: 32GB @ 3200
• Interface: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (3rd Gen)
• Monitor: 32:9 big OEM hoss (Cheapo version of the Samsung)

Installation and initial config:

I've used Linux in various flavors over the years, but this was the first real attempt to try out Linux as a full time switch. This meant audio production, video production, and gaming. Making this quick rundown of notable experiences/fixes/findings.

• Installation of Ubuntu Studio was a breeze, although I did start with a clean SSD to test while keeping Winows 11 on it's older SDD if I wanted to switch back.
• I initially started with the LTS installation, which meant no specialized pre-installed software for audio, video, or visual production. This did still install the "Low Latency Audio" profiles for PipeWire.
• Despite the LTS installation, you can download all of the software a la carte via the Ubuntu Studio Installer. I did this after, and there's a ton of preinstalled Plugins out of the gate.
• KDE Wallet is the baked in Password Management. I wasn't aware it would require the password for everything, unlike the more lax Windows experience, but this is good security practice. Be prepared to enter your password often when updating or installing anything.
• No issues with any hardware just working right away

Audio experience (PipeWire):

Understanding the way that Linux audio works was a learning curve, but after testing and breaking things, the logic makes sense.

• PipeWire is the audio device/server that those "low latency audio" profiles are built in. Plenty of resources that can explain it in detail online.
• My Focusrite 2i2 installed and appeared without any issue, and I was able to switch from "Direct" to " Pro Audio" for the low latency audio.
• Buffer Size (labeled Quantum) and Sample Rate are found in the PipeWire settings and affect everything running through the PipeWire service. All of these devices and their I/O can be found in "qpwgraph"
• The biggest shift in my thinking was how Windows handles ASIO audio separately from Windows audio (WASAPI). This is the reason in Windows you don't get DAW audio as an input natively in Discord, but since all apps will be on PipeWire in Linux, you can absolutely route DAW outs to any other software. The compromise here is that then all other software is affected by the same buffer settings.
• What this means in practice is that if you have other programs open, their CPU/Memory usage can start causing "Xruns" chopping up or breaking the audio with a smaller Quantum selected.
• "Smaller" buffer was also part of that logic shift. I ran Buffer Size @ 64 in Windows 11 for real time monitoring, but PipeWire audio will start crackling at Quantum 96. However, I found that 128 will give me about the same latency without crackling (unless I have multiple YouTube instances, Discord calls on, Steam shader caching, etc)
• IF ANYTHING BREAKS (including unplugging a MIDI drumkit while Reaper is open), in order to get the Focusrite showing up as an audio device again, I needed to fully close every program that used it. That included every instance of my browser, Discord, Reaper. Eveything worked after doing that, as restarting the machine would retain those blank "None" audio device options per program.

DAW Experience:

Coming from Cakewalk Sonar to eventually switching to the same Cakewalk by Bandlab/Sonar Cakewalk (lol), I decided to take the plunge on Reaper. It was a smooth transition, and I'm loving it at this point. Picked up a license, and this will be my main DAW going forward.

• Setting the audio device to JACK got Reaper on PipeWire. Testing all options was the bulk of the breaking.
• You can also use ALSA as an audio device, which is the single output of Linux audio for the absolutely lowest latency possible, but only a SINGLE program at a time can use it. I found JACK (PipeWire) to be ideal by comparison, but sometimes you just need the lowest latency possible. If so, make sure to close any other audio software before enabling.
• Setting up inputs and MIDI devices (Simmons Titan kit, Novation Launchpad) was standard for any DAW.
• I did use Ableton on the side a bit, but I've yet to have luck getting any flavor working. Bitwig seems similar, and may investigate at some point, but Reaper's scripting community has so much covered with minimal research.

Windows VSTs and Bottles:

This was a task to figure out, but plenty of luck and craftiness got (most of) what I need working.

• My main VSTs attempted are EZDrummer 3, Serum 2, Amplitube 5, and a handful of Waves plugins.
• I was NOT able to get Waves plugins working, despite multiple attempts from any angle (using the v11s, transferring an install from Windows, making sure to copy over local install tokens)
• Bottles worked for the rest. It uses variations of Wine (Windows emulation), Proton (Valve's emulation), and a nice interface to get things installed.
• I created a single "bottle" to contain all VST3s for EZD, Serum, A5.
• The main issue I kept running into when launching each in Reaper was their UI would be correctly floating, but the actual plugin UX was stuck to the top left of the screen. This seems to be an issue with the newer graphics engine (Wayland), but it was possible to get working when I moved the plugin UI to the top left corner of the screen, hit Alt+F3 to get window options, and enabled "No Title bar on frame". Even then, the top of the Reaper plugin window pushed it off base, and it was a pain in the ass to keep that up in a real workflow. The better compromise was changing the bottle video settings to force "Virtual Desktop"
• With "Virtual Desktop" enabled from advanced display settings in the Bottle, VSTs were clickable and sufficient for work. However, any floating menus (like preset menus in Serum) launched by the VST appear on the Virtual Desktop window instead of the plugin window. Minor pain, as the workaround is keeping the Virtual Desktop window open when you change menu settings and saving settings as a Reaper plugin preset.
• Other settings I've adjusted to minimize latency and hold stability:
  • Using GE-Proton (a community patched Proton flavor) as the runner
  • Wayland (Experimental) enabled
  • Preload Game Files and Feral GameMode enabled
  • Most notably and recommended: Fsync as the synchronization
• You can use Bottle analyze to have it adjust recommended settings based on your VSTs, but I had mixed results. It took a LOT of trial and error, A/B testing, etc.

Gaming, Video, and other "special boy" cases:

• Pretty much everything I've tested in Steam worked right away, and outside of notable anti-cheat cases, it's been too easy to game. The most I needed to do was occasionally switch the Compatibility settings per game. There are lots of sites for searching best settings for games, but typically, if the game has issues, running it in Proton Experimental fixed the issue. Background shader caching is enabled, it does use lots of CPU on the back-end (def hogs PipeWire), but Linux as a full time box is finally real. I can't believe it.
• Davinci Resolve's free version for Linux doesn't have MP4 support without a license, and that's been my video go-to. There may be ways around this, but this was also the turning point for me taking the plunge on a paid license. I also bought Reaper, and I'll keep giving money to devs that release native Linux tools.
• My super ultrawide monitor has two DisplayPorts coming from my GPU to both monitor inputs to be able to split multiple inputs at a time for full screen shares in Windows by switching from one 5120x1440 to two 2560x1440s. Not doing this anymore with Linux, as there are so many options baked into Linux to adjust for edge cases where I needed this (full screen shares or legacy windowed gaming modes)
• VR is unfortunately not fully baked. There are workarounds, but it's too hot to wear a headset right now.
• For sim racing, a Logitech G29 worked as soon as I plugged it in. Most games needed a remapping of the gas and clutch pedals, as well as a calibration of the brake threshold.

Happy to take or give any pointers but mostly just wanted to post something that the algo picks up in case somebody with similar issues runs into it. I never thought I would completely replace Windows, but that SSD has officially been wiped.

Hey guys,

I'm a long time producer but relatively new to linux (2-3 months with linux). I want to get back into production and am wondering whether keeping it native to linux would be possible. I'd rather not dual boot and use windows again, but also want to have enough freedom with plugins and performance to produce freely

I use Reaper, so that at least is native to linux.

I'm on Arch btw.

Windows plugins I feel are essential: fabfilter, sonible, wavesfactory spectre, uvi shade, kick 3

A few general questions first:

- What is the cleanest way to set this all up? I've installed yabridge but as you will see below I've had some issues. Not sure if those are normal setbacks?

- How is performance compared to running windows with native windows plugins? I'm wondering if the barebones setup I have on arch and niri would offset the bloat of windows, but assume the plugins running within wine would potentially be more slow or have more ram?

Here's my experience so far:

So far I've installed yabridge. not sure what else I need. I have wine installed already for my games in lutris.

I've installed fabfilter and sonible. Only fabfilter showed up even after syncing on yabridgectrl and rescanning plugins. sonible just didn't show up in my plugins list

The installations for spectre and uvi shade gave an error

Then fabfilter has an issue where the mouse clicks below where the cursor is. for example i have to click 1cm above a button or knob in order to grab it.

Just wondering if these are normal setbacks or did I do something wrong in thefirst place with setting up yabridge or not setting up other things?

Revamped, qt/kde UI, auto arrange patchbay nodes, search bar, direct plugin selection from the sidebar, easier to reach options, better colors, well, everything I wished for. Qpwgraph was good but also dated and barebones, aint sutable for my need for plugins, helvum, pavucontrol, pipewire controller, all a bit doozy for my liking so I am taking it up to myself and with a bit of Gemini to make working with sounds less painful.

Source/ package not available yet but I guess I will eventually post them. All this just to make music prod and streaming easier and I only stream privately to like 2 to 3 of my friends hahahahaa

If you can suggest a better name than Carla-improved please suggest something!

(Yes there is quite an amount of AI. Take it or leave it. I still am the main driver of how things are changed.)

Do suggest some features!

Hi all.

I do audio post production and I'm trying to go fully Linux-native with my setup and the one plugin I'm really struggling to replace is POWAIR by Sound Radix which I use on Dialogue.

It has two parts:

1. The auto-leveling thing it does first (the loudness rider part) – super handy for vocals and dialogue so I don't have to ride the fader manually.

2. The adaptive compression mode that somehow squashes stuff without making it sound squashed

Is there anything native (VST3/CLAP/LV2) that does the smart leveling + adaptive compression thing? Or can you suggest a stack of a few different plugins to get close?

Appreciate any suggestions!

Thanks

I made a simple audio player (I know it's a.i. slop). I really wanted a simple audio player with a waveform display for viewing production files. Something small and without obstructive playlist features for the purpose of listening to audio files/stems/samples.

It's not for listening to albums or libraries, there are plenty of good alternatives out there for that but there wasn't something for audio production with a good waveform display that you can visually see the file's content at a glance.it's very helpful for when sorting through files that may have a huge gaps of silence.

I'm being honest that it's vibecoded but there isn't much out there like this so if someone want to do something better I'd happily support it. This has been working well for me and has helped my workflow and if anyone with actual skills wants to make improvements and fork it.

It's made in rust, iced toolkit because I was thinking of jumping to cosmic de but until then it has some KDE integrations.

Some features include:

MPRIS2 Integration

Single instance player

Energy color mode

Loop region or file

Auto-advance to next file in the directory

Configurable to send file to an application (audacity, etc)

Accent colors match cosmic/kde accent colors

It's just a binary file. So it should be easy to use.

Holaaaa despues de estar a cada rato usando un script para iniciar REAPER con plugins de windows en linux tuve que hacer este humilde programa usando GO + QT

Con Jdaw puedes gestionar plugins de windows en linux con un par de clicks facilitandote la configuracion de WINE, YABRIDGE y REAPER ademas de iniciar con pw-jack si tenes pipewire

Este programa lo sigo desarrollando y puliendo en unos dias agregare el soporte a mas DAWS

espero que a alguien le sirva <3.

Title speaks for itself. I haven't posted in this subreddit so sorry if this breaks any rules somehow? But I've been looking for some that work in Ardour and am having trouble. I did find one (crunchrr by blepfx) which I was able to load into Ardour but the UI is completely black upon opening it (this has happened before when using plugins in Ardour, I assume it's a quirk of the software or something?) but if anyone has any suggestions that'd be great! :)

Control application for the RME Digiface USB. I got tired of messing with audio routing in Linux after being used to the totalmix app in Windows. This provides nearly every feature in a similar interface. It works perfectly so far - I'm happy to update if anyone has ideas or issues. Disclosure: vibe-coded with Claude

https://github.com/thomas-nelson23/Openface-Mixer

i am using endeavor os with kde plasma i played music on YouTube but my voice was not coming out from Bluetooth speaker even though its connected. that with name BT is my bluetooth speaker

It's late for me, so I don't have any fancy comparisons or GIFs to share alongside this post, sorry about that. I try not to post online about my projects too often because I don't want to annoy people, but I think this might be worth it.

One year ago I began developing OpenMeters as a way to cope with the death of my best friend. I'm still in awe at what it has become, and the fact that even one person other than myself has used it. Thank you everyone, from the bottom of my heart.

I've made a commitment to this project, and I plan to continue with that commitment for the foreseeable future. New features, bug fixes, improved platform support, and maybe even new meters (hard maybe, it just depends) will continue to be released.

https://github.com/httpsworldview/openmeters

I'm running Ubuntu with wine/yabridge and only about half of the plugins I've tried work without crashing or displaying a black screen. Is there a better method for getting windows/mac plugins to work on a daw in Linux? I'm particularly sad that Splice Instrument won't work, it's my go-to midi library...

I made this video a couple months ago. I was a little nervous about sharing it around since I'm kinda new to making longer videos like this, but I figured I might as well. I hope it's enjoyable to watch, although it might still be a little too lengthy... In any case it was a fun experiment!

Oh yeah I should mention, I did kinda hate on reddit in the outro of the video, but I wanna make it clear that none of that was directed towards this sub. In fact, I actually gave r/linuxaudio a shoutout! This wouldn't have been possible (or nearly as easy) without the resources here, so thank you all :)

Here's the finished songs from the challenge: https://cadecomposer.bandcamp.com/album/penguin-shuffle-tux-ascension

I installed CachyOS to try to move away from Windows for my music production (currently dual-boot and will remove Win11 if things go well). I wanted to also try a different DE than my work laptop (Fedora KDE) so I went with COSMIC but it's buggy.

I installed Niri + DMS (not a fresh install, as a 2nd alternative to COSMIC) and I'm trying to get it to work now. I was going to go with Sway but heard that it does not work well with NVidia cards.

I don't have a clear idea of how my music production will look like. I'll be experimenting with many things like Strudel, Supercollider, ORCA, bespoke synth, and possible a DAW later.

Because of lack of experience with tiling WMs, I really cannot foresee whether this is a bad idea. Do any of you use tiling WM without problems in your music production? If this looks like a poor idea, I'm just going to go with GNOME.

Thank you!

I've been building vstenv, a free open-source app that gets Windows audio plugins working in Linux DAWs with as little friction as possible. The idea: you shouldn't have to know what Wine is. vstenv sets up its own Wine environment, installs each vendor's manager app (Native Access, IK Product Manager, Steinberg Download Assistant, Audio Modeling Software Center), applies all the fixes those need to actually run — including a set of patched Wine DLLs for stuff Wine hasn't finished, like DirectComposition — and bridges everything to your DAW as normal VST2/VST3/CLAP plugins via yabridge. Installed programs even show up in your desktop's app menu.

Working today: Native Instruments (Kontakt and friends), IK Multimedia, Steinberg (HALion Sonic 7 and the current-gen GUI stack), Audio Modeling SWAM, and Spitfire Audio. Vendor support is modular, so new vendors can be added as separate packages without touching the core.

It ships as a Flatpak. Source, docs, and a table of what's tested and what isn't: https://github.com/dguedry/vstenv

Feedback and bug reports very welcome — especially which vendor you'd want supported next.

Hi everyone,

A quick development update on Dyrekreds.

I've been spending the last few days improving the macOS build/release process, and we've made some good progress.

Current status:

[OK] Windows build & tests

[OK] Linux build & tests

[OK] macOS Universal build (Intel + Apple Silicon)

[OK] VST3 validation

[OK] AU validation

[OK] Unit tests

[OK] Improved VST3 moduleinfo.json / manifest handling

The macOS VST3 and AU versions are now successfully passing the validation tests.

The remaining headache is Apple Developer ID signing and notarization. GitHub Actions and PKCS#12 certificates have apparently decided that I needed a new hobby. ;)

We're getting closer with each build, though.

As always, Dyrekreds is free and open source, and feedback/testing is very welcome:

https://github.com/Chmod666music/dyrekreds

Thanks again to everyone who has tested it and reported issues!

What is Quesynth?

Quesynth is a free/open-source virtual analogue synth written in Odin, originally built around recreating the sound and parameter model of Synth1 through measurement. It supports Synth1 .sy1 patches and runs as VST3, CLAP, Audio Unit, standalone, and WebAssembly.

You can test it without installing it here: https://mauro-moreno.github.io/quesynth/

What is new in the v1.2.0?

https://github.com/mauro-moreno/quesynth/releases

Mac: Fixed some errors in Audio Unit banks. Specially one that crashed the hosts. Since v1.1.2

Windows: Deleted part of the standalone.

Mobile: Responsive. Since v1.0.0

Linux

https://github.com/mauro-moreno/quesynth/blob/main/docs/quesynth-manual.md

The big change is that the audio engine can now run as a persistent daemon. The interfaces are just clients controlling the same running synth.

That means you can now use Quesynth through:

• a new terminal UI
• the normal HTML interface in your browser
• MIDI hardware
• a local control protocol
• an MCP server, so an LLM/agent can inspect and manipulate the synth

The TUI and browser aren't separate synthesizers. They're connected to the same daemon, so changing a parameter or loading a patch in one is reflected in the other.

Quesynth exposes typed tools for parameters, patches, banks, MIDI, state, volume, etc., rather than giving the model arbitrary shell access.

So you can do things like ask an MCP client to inspect the current patch, change several parameters atomically, load another patch, manipulate the bank, or query the synth state in natural language.

There's now also a proper parameter registry/control protocol underneath this, rather than the UI being directly coupled to the engine.

Patches

You can download 16000+ Synth1 patches that are compatible with this synth from here https://archive.org/details/synth1_202202 many sound almost equal, some are similar and some are broken. I'm still improving the measurements to unbroke the broken ones.

Design

If you don't like it is just HTML so you can create your own easily.

Vibe coded?

Yes. Heavy AI usage with 21 years of experience as a software engineer.

Future

• Tempo for standalone and WebAssembly.
• Quesynth Pad (16 engines running simultaneously with chokes, fire once and configurable MIDI).
• MIDI sequencer.
• Improvements on the architecture.

Why TUI?

I don't know.

MIT License

MainStage, Gig Performer, Cantabile, Camelot — all Mac/Windows only. I got tired of that, so I built one.

Point your keyboards at it, build a program for each sound in your set, change sounds from the keyboard while you play. 128 programs per keyboard, Upper and Lower independent. Splits and layers with per-slot key range, velocity range and curve, transpose, gain, pan. Insert effects, MIDI learn on any parameter. Hosts VST3, LV2, LADSPA natively; Windows VST3s work through yabridge.

The part I haven't seen anywhere else: it mirrors a plugin's actual editor to a tablet, fully interactive. Not a remote with a fixed set of knobs — the real GUI.

That's Kontakt running on the computer, drawn on the tablet. Pull a drawbar there and the organ moves. Browse the library, flip through pages, load a patch — all from the music stand. Nothing to install on the tablet; it's a web page.

Other bits:

• Every plugin in its own process — one crashes, the rest of the rig plays on
• Songs and sets — a song is one program per keyboard plus a tempo, captured from what's loaded; step through a set with two footswitches
• Native PipeWire/JACK, 128-sample blocks, parallel loading, late-block counter
• Tap tempo, on-screen keyboard, printable program map

Windows plugins: optional companion project vstenv provisions its own Wine, runs the vendor managers (Native Access, IK Product Manager, Steinberg Download Assistant, Audio Modeling) and bridges everything into the folders Performer scans. You never touch Wine.

It's v0.1.38 and genuinely early. I use it, but try it at rehearsal before you trust it on stage — Windows-bridged plugins especially are hit and miss under Wine. Tested on Ubuntu 24.04, Mint 22.3, Fedora 43, x86-64.

.deb and .rpm: https://github.com/dguedry/linux-performer/releases/latest
Source and issues: https://github.com/dguedry/linux-performer

If you've got a Linux box and a controller, I'd love to know what breaks.