Where are my linux users out there?

Hopefully this is the right place for this, I figure general discussion meant discussion related to renoise in general sooooooo.

Currently I’m running Xubuntu + Renoise. Just recently been diving into the world of linux and the fact that renoise was already natively supported made the decision so much easier. My only complaint is the lack of VSTs, but of course there are work arounds for that. I’m dualbooting windows so I still have access and backwards compatibility with my old shit, but now instead of using any plugins I’ve just been trying to go native for my effects (which I was mostly doing already anyway) and using the bulit-in sampler as a synthesizer. So far I’ve been really impressed with the capabilities. My only gripe is no pitch bend as far as I know and I have no idea how to get portamenteau to work if that’s even a future currently available to the sampler, but other than that it’s actually a lot powerful than most other synths out there tbh. Infinite options for voices, effects, everything. Very powerful.

Which works out in the end cause that means smaller file sizes, less CPU usage, cross compatibility with all environments, etc.

Oh, and another weird thing I just remembered, for some reason renoise likes to steal the audio thread on linux (at least xubuntu for sure) and not let any other programs use it which is, well bizarre to say the least. I’m sure that’s something I just have to look up and fix like everything else with linux that doesn’t quite work right out of the box or if renoise does this on purpose nevermind, but yeah.

As far as hardware I’m just rockin the KB+M and an Alesis Q25 that I only occassionally use. That and an ok mic.

How is your setup out there in linux land? How do you guys do it?

Can you give a step by step method for installing Linux via Linux bash terminal? I’ve tried it, not gotten anywhere :frowning:

emerge -av gentoo

:dribble:

What do you mean?

Hopefully this is the right place for this, I figure general discussion meant discussion related to renoise in general sooooooo.

Sure, what the hell it works.

Currently I’m running Xubuntu + Renoise. Just recently been diving into the world of linux and the fact that renoise was already natively supported made the decision so much easier. My only complaint is the lack of VSTs, but of course there are work arounds for that. I’m dualbooting windows so I still have access and backwards compatibility with my old shit, but now instead of using any plugins I’ve just been trying to go native for my effects (which I was mostly doing already anyway) and using the bulit-in sampler as a synthesizer. So far I’ve been really impressed with the capabilities. My only gripe is no pitch bend as far as I know and I have no idea how to get portamenteau to work if that’s even a future currently available to the sampler, but other than that it’s actually a lot powerful than most other synths out there tbh. Infinite options for voices, effects, everything. Very powerful.

I do pretty much everything inside renoise, and I tend to use renoise native tools to do weirder things for maximum portability. Portamento is most easily handled with phrases in instruments - look for the fuzzy slide instrument which comes with renoise for an example. Pitch bend can be done in main track using the same approach as portamento in the instrument phrase.

Which works out in the end cause that means smaller file sizes, less CPU usage, cross compatibility with all environments, etc.

Oh, and another weird thing I just remembered, for some reason renoise likes to steal the audio thread on linux (at least xubuntu for sure) and not let any other programs use it which is, well bizarre to say the least. I’m sure that’s something I just have to look up and fix like everything else with linux that doesn’t quite work right out of the box or if renoise does this on purpose nevermind, but yeah.

That’s an ALSA thing. If you integrate renoise with Jack, then you can get renoise to play nicely with other things, by having Jack manage the audio routing. Myself, I rarely bother since I’m happy to have renoise do its thing.

As far as hardware I’m just rockin the KB+M and an Alesis Q25 that I only occassionally use. That and an ok mic.
How is your setup out there in linux land? How do you guys do it?

Mostly I laid out cash for a good computer. I already had the KORG nanoseries, so my note entry and automation management needs are adequately met. I don’t do live performance. I got a decent condenser mic on USB, for occasional vocal materials. I do use a USB hub to help string things together, but other than that it’s speakers and headphones, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I’m running Renoise on Trinity Desktop (a revitalized KDE 3.5) that sits on Ubuntu 10.04. (I also run Renoise on Windows 7 pro 64 bit, OSX Yosemite, and am rebuilding a desktop machine to run TDE on Ubuntu 14.04).

I have the same audio-grabbing issue. It’s not a big deal (or I’ve just gotten so used to it) except when I’m sorting out samples and I want to run Reaper at the same time.

I’ve read someplace about getting Jack to handle all audio but getting every audio-producing program to play nice became yet another issue. So I gave up. : )

Jack is pretty easy and a nice solution, I have it constantly running and anything that needs alsa specifically gets bridged to jack. Doesn’t xubuntu come with pulseaudio? I though pulseaudio has a way to deal with alsa’s exclusiveness. Pretty sure you can get around it with alsa though, maybe look in to dmix as I think that was supposed to overcome the one audio source at a time problem (I haven’t tried it though).

I use jack, too. It’s very comfortable, and you can even route audio/midi between applications, even from a renoise track into another with the line input device. The “stealing audio” thing is because realtime apps need realtime access to the soundcard. Jack can take care of this, though last time I’ve tried it wasn’t so easy to make jack offer pulse/alsa sinks for other apps. I actually like the way that when jack is running only the audio apps will work, it eleminates one big source of distraction for me.

Like there are standalone synthesizers like zynaddsubfx or phasex that don’t exist as plugins in their full form, it is easy to route their output into renoise for sampling purposes via jack. I currently began to use them to generate samples for use in renoise this way, it works out quite nice.

What do you mean?

Btw l’m running Linux Mint, but l thought BaSh terminal commands were pretty much the same across all Linuxes.

Bash is universal, yes. What does “installing linux via Linux bash terminal” mean though, especially if you’re already running linux? You want to install a distro step by step from a terminal? You want to install a new kernel? If you already have a “linux bash terminal” to work from then why would you need to install linux from it?

Every time I try to switch to Linux, I have infinite problems with using my audio interface, which by all accounts is supposed to be the most supported interface for Linux (scarlett Focusrite 2i2). Sometimes there’s really bad noise problems, sometimes there’s subtle noise problems, sometimes there’s latency problems, sometimes there’s no problems, and it seems to be completely 100% random whether it’s going to just fucking work or not. I’ve tried low latency kernals, different distros, lighweight window managers, following the directions in the Renoise Linux FAQ to set up RT threads, and it just doesn’t seem to make the slightest difference. Just sometimes I launch Renoise and it works fine, and sometimes it doesn’t work fine at all, and nothing I seem to do to it makes any rational difference.

Like on Windows, you have a balance between buffer and latency, and you find the sweet spot with acceptable latency with no artifacts. In Linux there’s not sweet spot, there’s just randomness and insanity. All the buffer settings do the same thing, or different things at different times.

I feel like software availability is no longer a real problem in Linux, and I feel like it’s completely fine to use for composing music, as long as you’re just plugging in headphones and using all virtual instruments. But if I want to use my monitors or record guitar, that requires an audio interface, and unless I’ve just missed something that aspect of Linux is still far from solved. In the least it requires some configuration that I couldn’t figure out after quite a bit of work was put in. Or I can use Windows where I just install the driver and it just works.

edit: I still maintain at any one given time at least a half dozen linux VMs of varying distros that I just screw with because I’m fascinated by it, and I recently rededicated an entire SSD (old smaller one, I got a new 1 TB one for storage so I’m using my old 128 GB for linux experiments again) to an Ubuntu install (I’d never really tried Ubuntu much before). Seems every few months I just go back to it and try the same old thing all over again, and make progress in different areas of solving problems each time, but always hit the same brick wall of instability problems with my audio interface.

Oh l see! I meant: how do l install Renoise via Bash?

It comes with an install script. So, just extract the tarball and within the folder run ./install.sh or better: sudo ./install.sh

Every time I try to switch to Linux, I have infinite problems with using my audio interface, which by all accounts is supposed to be the most supported interface for Linux (scarlett Focusrite 2i2).

I feel your pain. I do most of my work on my Linux laptop, with headphones. Works great, mostly. Sometimes, though, the sound form Renoise gets all crackly. The solution I have is to shut down Renoise and restart my sound system. (Not sure if switching form Jack to ALSA or vice-versa helps.)

However, my desktop machine has a nice set of recently acquired monitors attached so I thought I would do final mixing and mastering on that machine. It’s also an Ubuntu machine. However, I get crackling noises from Renoise way more often. It might be related to the number of tracks or samples or effects or something. In any event, the solution for me is to just use Windows.

I’m close to finishing up building a new desktop machine so perhaps Ubuntu on that box will not have that issue. But it will dual boot into Win 7 as well, so I have that escape.

It comes with an install script. So, just extract the tarball and within the folder run ./install.sh or better: sudo ./install.sh

I’ve had perfectly fine Ubuntu setups borked by poorly designed installed scripts that end up screwing with key libraries. I try to avoid running external script as root. I think too many devs have gotten sloppy and just fall back to “grant me all-powerful permissions so I can do whatever and install where and what I please”.

I have found zero reason for Renoise to require sudo. I’m the only user of my machine so a local install is just fine. I edit the Renoise installer to not need root. So far, so good, all installed under $HOME folders. But this really should be an option built into the installer.

OMG, working with audio on linux without jack? seriously? That is insane, my friends, not linux :slight_smile:

Try jack and forget about all the audio problems. There’s a few very good tools to work with jack - qjackctl (available in any linux distro repos) and cadence (available in kxstudio repos).

I had three audio cards on linux : TC Electronic Desktop Konnect 6 (firewire) and two Presonus audioboxes ( Audiobox USB and Audiobox 22VSL ) - all three work like a charm (except the fact that alsa driver does not support more than 96khz). Also I used to try Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 but it was capricious a bit (same problem on windows though).

Since I have KXstudio installed I preffer Cadence (it also has few advantages in comparison to qjackctl in controlling midi and pulseaudio bridges)

My only gripe is no pitch bend as far as I know and I have no idea how to get portamenteau to work

I can’t help you with Linux, but for this part: 0Gyy is your friend

don’t want to hijack thread and out of curiousity, is there an ARM-linux version available of renoise? i have an odroid-U3 patched with rt kernel running pure data & supercollider quite smoothly… had to build some things from source though. Dunno what dependencies R3 has & how graphically demanding it is (devs i’m noob but want to give building a go if you think it is possible and worthwile)

My only complaint is the lack of VSTs, but of course there are work arounds for that.

I’m not currently using Linux (used to until a few years back, when I had ran ArchLinux for a couple of years), but I always wondered if the lack of native VSTs wouldn’t be a creative advantage. I’ve only bought audio-related software lately that has a Linux version or is likely to get one (like u-he’s stuff), since I keep wondering if I shouldn’t dive back into Linux for a change of pace and to mix things up a little. (But it’ll probably be OSX instead since I’m not that much into tinkering with the OS anymore, fun though it is.)

@Carbonthief: I’ve got a Focusrite 2i2 and experience none of the things you describe.

That audio interface is dead stable on linux - not even talking specifically about Renoise.

With an RT kernel I can run reliably at ~4ms 96Khz full duplex (Guitarix, Jack, Ardour).

My install is pretty light though (Arch 64+ RT kernel, no DE, no Pulse Audio), and I assume properly tuned for audio.

This suggest there really is something wrong with your setup (SW or possibly HW), even if that doesn’t show up on Windows.

Just a few ideas you could try:

  • Change the crappy USB cable that came with it (should be some thin grey thing if memory serves), and get a properly shielded USB2 certified cable (the shorter, the better).

  • Use the fastest USB port on your computer (the one that double as USB3, if any, should be the best choice).

  • Make sure your CPU is set to performance mode (not powersave or on demand).

  • Kill all crappy daemons (Pulse Audio, ugly desktop indexation stuff, etc…), best is of course not to have anything superfluous running in the first place.

  • Needless to mention the RT thingy should be working - this has been covered in great length, follow the relevant guide for your distro.

All of this before starting jackd and your audio app(s).

But I didn’t test specifcally with Renoise, or alsa though, I’ll give it a try in a few days and report back…

The rtirq script and/or a lowlatency kernel with enabled softirqs can work against certain problems. Might also need some tuning so only relevant devices get better priorities. Graphic card drivers can mess up stuff also, both nvidia and fglrx can mess up rt stability. For fglrx for example rtirq tuning could fix xruns for me. Don’t know about nvidia now though. The open source graphics drivers seem to handle easiest with lowlatency or realtime kernels, they behave much less aggressive. Some Wifi hardware can also be a culprit of messing up with realtime lowlat device communication.

@Carbonthief: I’ve got a Focusrite 2i2 and experience none of the things you describe.

That audio interface is dead stable on linux - not even talking specifically about Renoise.

With an RT kernel I can run reliably at ~4ms 96Khz full duplex (Guitarix, Jack, Ardour).

My install is pretty light though (Arch 64+ RT kernel, no DE, no Pulse Audio), and I assume properly tuned for audio.

This suggest there really is something wrong with your setup (SW or possibly HW), even if that doesn’t show up on Windows.

Just a few ideas you could try:

  • Change the crappy USB cable that came with it (should be some thin grey thing if memory serves), and get a properly shielded USB2 certified cable (the shorter, the better).

  • Use the fastest USB port on your computer (the one that double as USB3, if any, should be the best choice).

  • Make sure your CPU is set to performance mode (not powersave or on demand).

  • Kill all crappy daemons (Pulse Audio, ugly desktop indexation stuff, etc…), best is of course not to have anything superfluous running in the first place.

  • Needless to mention the RT thingy should be working - this has been covered in great length, follow the relevant guide for your distro.

All of this before starting jackd and your audio app(s).

But I didn’t test specifcally with Renoise, or alsa though, I’ll give it a try in a few days and report back…

  • I’m already using a different USB cable than the one that came with it.

  • It’s a 2.0 interface, and a 2.0 cable, plugged into a 2.0 port, why in the world would plugging it into a 3.0 port possibly make a difference? (I’ll try it though)

  • Already done

  • I don’t know how to do this.

  • Can you point me to the relevant guide? I’ve tried Mint in the past by my current install is the latest Ubuntu. I don’t even know what to search for, because I don’t know what kind of guide you are talking about. I really don’t know what else to do, and I’ve tried so much stuff in the past that I can’t even remember all the things I’ve tried. One time I did something to try to kill Pulse Audio and it completely borked my entire Mint install.

Renoise is set to ALSA, and I’ve done the Renoise FAQ’s editing of limits.conf, and to the best of my understanding that’s just supposed to just work, but it never has for me across 2 different computers and with Mint and Ubuntu. I’m sure there might be something I can do to fix it but I’ve already put so much time into trying to figure it out and tried so many suggestions from so many different people and it’s really getting frustrating.

What makes it particularly frustrating is how random results are. Sometimes it will actually be fine, and I’ll think I’ve fixed it, only to reboot or come back a few hours later to find the problem is back. It’s really hard to chase down, because it’s not an error message, it’s a behavior that can be described a lot of different ways, and it makes it really hard to troubleshoot and do searches for.

the command “ulimit -r -l” gives you some number above 95 and “unlimited”? otherwise rt scheduling and memlocking isn’t working properly. It’s the most basic step for tuning for rt audio to grant these rights. Some steps suggest adding the 2 lines to limits.conf, others include for ubuntu for example automatic generation of an auxiliary file “audio.conf”, usually done automatic when installing jack. If the thing doesn’t work, and it lists “@audio” in the .conf file, you’ll need to add your user to the group “audio”.

I’ll try the ulimit command when I get home today and report back.