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Post by thetragichero on Mar 14, 2021 20:35:56 GMT -5
so i've already got two older pcs running linux (ubuntu) distros and i'm considering switching my ten year-old daw to linux studio and running reaper (okay, so i've already made a 500gb partition and have the system setup for dual boot). currently reading up on how to get my interface working and other odds and ends but i figured i'd get this thread started. i know ashcatlt uses it a lot so now he's tagged my reasoning is: this is an old machine running windows 7. whenever i have to bite the bullet and upgrade processor, motherboard, ram i'd likely need to upgrade windows ($$$) and then my ancient pro tools 9 would need to be upgraded. apparently i can pay $200 for the privilege of converting my forever licensed software (purchased for $$$$$$) to an annual license (about a hundred bucks per year?). reaper on the other hand would cost me all of $60 plus another $200 for aatranslator to convert ten years of pro tools sessions to a format usable in reaper (ouch, but i realize developers have to be paid). i figure if i bite the bullet now-ish, whenever i do need to upgrade i'll save the cost of a new os and then having to pay a fee every year for daw software (me no likey). plus windows bloat is certainly not helping anything performance-wise |
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Post by b4nj0 on Mar 15, 2021 9:41:47 GMT -5
Although I'm a long way from being a regular user of a DAW, and therefore hardly one to hold forth with sage advice, I have ProTools 7, Reaper and Audacity, each on its own dedicated fixed disk partition on one Sony lappy, each with dedicated stripped down XP installations . Despite much effort, I failed ever to get my remote control "TranZPort" to play ball with ProTools, so I always go for Reaper at boot time because it was seamless. In fact thinking about it, I only became involved with ProTools at all because my M-Audio firewire mixer had an odd fascination with Avid's ubiquitous costly solution.
Reaper used to allow updates right through two whole major version upgrades at a very user friendly price (and even that was optional but I paid up anyway!) I suspect they still do provide that degree of customer focused friendliness. I'd say go now with Reaper, there was little it couldn't do compared to ProTools when mine were both a little more prescient.
You can still upgrade W7 to W10 free of charge so far as I'm aware, only hardware restrictions get in the way of that path, but for sound reasons that you've already outlined, that's obviously not on your event horizon.
e&oe ...
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Post by ashcatlt on Mar 15, 2021 12:06:52 GMT -5
So here’s the thing. Reaper is a great DAW, and it does come with quite a few very useable plugins, but it is lacking a few things right out of the gate. Mostly, I guess, it’s things like midi instruments. There’s a super simple single oscillator “synth” plugin, an even simpler “drum” plugin, and a decent but limited sampler. Beyond that, you have to find them from 3rd parties. There is a handful of JS synths out there written by users, but otherwise you will have to either find freeware or spend at least some of what you saved on Reaper itself on some other plugins. And that, as I understand it, can be a real pain on Linux. I don’t have any direct experience because I just can’t tolerate Linux at all, but from what I’ve read in forums and stuff, the options are relatively limited compared to windows or even Mac where there are thousands of options that just install and work. Have you got third party plugins that you use a lot or paid for? Do they have Linux versions and how much would you have to pay for those? As for AATranslator I feel like especially if you can’t use most of the same plugins, there’s isn’t much point in literally converting PT projects to Reaper projects. This might be a hint to make some decisions, commit to some things, and finish those projects.  Or at least like go through and bounce/render/(whatever PT calls it) things to .wav stems that you can just import into a Reaper project if/when you decide to work on it more. Or just leave it, and if a time comes when you want to work on one of those old PT projects, hit up the Reaper forum and find somebody who already owns AAT to do it for you. Heck you could probably get somebody to just do your whole library now for less than $200. I kind of question the original premise, though. Like I guess you’d have to try it or at least check that the hardware has Win 7 drivers, but I’ve upgraded my studio machine like three times now just by dropping the XP OS drive into the new machine. It runs Found New Hardware a few times, and then works. Authentication got a little weirder starting with 7, but I’d almost be surprised if you couldn’t make it work. I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a 64 bit OS so that I can use more than 3G RAM at a time (currently using the rest as a RAMDrive where I put page files which made a little more sense when I was working off of spinning discs), but the hassle of having to redownload and install even the relatively few plugs I use has kept me from it. |
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Post by thetragichero on Mar 15, 2021 13:40:58 GMT -5
thanks for the replies!
so i'm pretty much treating the daw like a very functional old school recording studio: all instruments are either acoustic (drums, electric guitars, voice) or from outboard gear (drum machine). the daw is just my very convenient mixer, tape, routing/processing, and editing all-in-one. i've pretty much stuck with the stock pro tools plugins (too cheap to shell out money and really just need the compression, eq, reverb. it's better than having racks full of gear and messing too much with my patch bay). i've found a bunch of freeware reaper plugins for linux and there are some that should work via wine. i'm excited to be able to use impulse responses as pro tools 9 does not support them (although i am still a fan of mic-in-front-of-amp, having direct options is nice)
i will admit that i was very hesitant to jump into the linux pool but windows seems to be on par with what iOS in that the updates often make the old hardware unusable, lots of bloat that needs to be removed (when i first set this up, there were known issues between pro tools/m-audio and internet explorer so i had to completely remove from the system. having to have anti-virus even if i'm not downloading sketchy things is a waste of resources, etc). the old pc in our kitchen that my wife uses for zoom meetings is running linux mint right now and save for having to disable some weird intel processor sleep function she's had zero issues. there's icons for browser and zoom along with an office suite so she's good to go even though she's not a techie. laptop i'm typing this on was absolutely unusable with xp, partially because with 1gb ram it was constantly reading and writing to the pagefile. works great for everything but video now. not trying to convert anyone, just enjoying returning ancient hardware to usefulness
somebody in one of the groups mentioned ardour which has some capability of opening pro tools files, might be able to use as an intermediary. last night did a bunch of reading and downloading so we shall see. audio playback worked from jump (just went to a youtube video) so we'll see about getting reaper to recognize daw. i can tell you even with an ssd drive (just for audio) and 16gb ram i was having issues with recording multiple tracks at once in pro tools so something had to give
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Post by ozboomer on Mar 20, 2021 7:42:10 GMT -5
Nothing very helpful I guess.. but I always found Reaper good.. but still overly complex for my 'bedroom studio' situation. I could never get all the JACK and so on in Linux to work without re-doing everything every boot... So, I bit the bullet and stuck on WinXP (for the now 10-year-old PC) and playing almost entirely free VSTs and my guitars + DX7.. but kept the PC machine off-line when running WinXP (except when I booted it into one of the Linux distros I have installed).
Again, from a purely amateur point of view, I enjoyed energyXT (until it lost its way).. and am currently using Mixcraft under WinXP (on the 'music computer') with some Mixcraft 'explorations' on the Win8.1 PC (even THAT PC is 6+ years old now). I used Cakewalk from V1.x when it was a DOS program up through Pro Audio and into SONAR (and when it went back and forth between Cakewalk and SONAR) ...and it all was too complex for me. I can at least get my head around Mixcraft... but there are some things it doesn't do (at least, with my 'archaic' WinXP and Win8-32bit OSes). I'm not looking forward to trying to get my head around 'bridge' technology with 64-bit OSes running 32-bit VSTs and such... *ugh*...
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Post by b4nj0 on Mar 21, 2021 4:19:51 GMT -5
ozboomer- thanks, it's not just me then! It's a given to turn off network connections, and OS sounds too. I used to use "98 Lite" to strip out Internet Explorer from XP too. With XP I had no bandwidth problems with my FireWire mixer (10 in and 10 out- it's an M-Audio NRV10) but now with USB 3 and "C" the FireWire speed advantage has slipped away. What USB will probably never have is the uninterrupted established data pipeline that FireWire confers, and that is worth having even now. S'only me but I maintain that XP is still their best effort. In terms of sheer speed, W95 with IE stripped out is like lightning, but I guess it wouldn't run an SSD? The astute will realise that I'm old school and have little relevant to contribute to modern practices? e&oe ...
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Post by unreg on Sept 21, 2021 18:14:54 GMT -5
S’only me but I maintain that XP is still their best effort. In terms of sheer speed, W95 with IE stripped out is like lightning, but I guess it wouldn't run an SSD? The astute will realise that I'm old school and have little relevant to contribute to modern practices? e&oe ...XP pails extremely vs. Win 10 with Cortana disabled, by registry edit, and using AVG Tune Up. Why? 1.) XP is void-of/against technology improvements (i.e. monitors, drives, etc) 2.) Win 10 is the same price… free 🙂 at least if you are updating from Win 7 or 8 3.) 10 replaces IE with Edge; also disabling Edge is recommended —- Honestly, I use a 4-track recorder machine to assemble music… the same thing the Beatles used! 😀 So, I don’t use DAW. AVG TuneUp scans registry for errors, defrags drives, and clears clutter; extremely helpful it is; especially after a Windows update, it clears all of the pointless items from the registry so the computer keeps working fast. Computer hardware does slow down after being used for a long while (years and years)… this statement does not consider the machine’s software. |
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Post by thetragichero on Sept 21, 2021 19:42:22 GMT -5
haven't gotten any further on this, mainly because of other things going on and when i do have a little time to record i just fire up pro tools. i'm pretty sure my interface issues were related to pulse audio still running on startup (i thought i had disabled it...) so of course there would be issues with that and alsa running. one of these days, maybe....
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Post by Jaga on Sept 23, 2021 15:08:29 GMT -5
There are some free DAWs. Personally, I use Cakewalk Bandlab, but it is only for Windows I think. |
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Or at least like go through and bounce/render/(whatever PT calls it) things to .wav stems that you can just import into a Reaper project if/when you decide to work on it more. Or just leave it, and if a time comes when you want to work on one of those old PT projects, hit up the Reaper forum and find somebody who already owns AAT to do it for you. Heck you could probably get somebody to just do your whole library now for less than $200.
