Linux music production
Channel: Bren the Navigator
Date: 2022-01-12

Music production on Linux is amazing. With JACK, Cadence and Catia we have immense control over everything whether we're trying to send audio from one DAW to another or to record something straight from the internet into our DAW. Having a huge repository of plugins for audio production is awesome too. Such an astonishing selection of free vst, ladspa and lv2 effects, synths etc. 

With pro level digital audio workstations like Bitwig, Waveform and Reaper available natively on Linux there's rarely a need for Windows or MacOS for music production. Add the likes of Vital, Helm, Waverazor, Miniraze, Surge, and Dexed to the mix and you've got everything you need to produce some quality tunes. Linux is potentially the best OS for music production (if you have the patience to learn it). 

0:00 Versatility
1:23 Routing Audio
2:13 DAW to DAW
3:24 Any Audio to Anywhere!
3:55 Free Software
5:45 Yay, AUR and Debtap
6:55 Simple Updates 
8:37 Downsides
9:38 Gains/Losses
10:43 Tinkering

Yes, it would be nice if we could get support from Ableton, Kontakt, Komplete, MOTU, Reason, NI, Waves, Max/MSP and a few more, but we've got plenty of awesome synths and effects to keep us going in the meantime. Hopefully they'll get around to it eventually. Some of them even work already with WINE!

This setup is so versatile and customisable! I love tinkering to get the most out of my computer and Linux is great for that. Whether you've got an old under-powered laptop or a beast of a machine full of RAM and multi-cores, Linux can coax the most out of it! 

If you’re new to Linux, try Ubuntu Studio or AV Linux. They’re preconfigured for pro audio, out of the box. If you don’t mind rolling up your sleeves and learning about your operating system while typing a few commands in terminal and a text editor, then Arch based systems are amazingly versatile. I’ve been on Manjaro for over a year and I like it a lot. Garuda is great too, or try vanilla Arch if you want to go even deeper and customise absolutely everything.