A New Adventure - Ubuntu Studio or AVLinux?

[drtechno]

It's been a while since I worked on this project. This afternoon, I moved everything down to the basement studio and hooked up the Tascam interface. It was time to play around with Jack, ALSA and Pulse.

Using Jack, things were set at 1024 buffer and 44.1K. Latency was enormous. I hunted around and couldn't find where to change it. No options in the menu, time to move on. I switched to ALSA, and it gave me options for buffer, sample rate, bit rate. I selected the Tascam with a pro audio setup. My standard settings with my Win machine is 88.2K/24 with a 128 buffer. Worked fine. I did a quick recording with my acoustic and didn't have any issues.

Latency was checking in at 1.4/2.9ms which is very low. So I recorded the metronome for about 10 seconds, loaded a second channel and put the mic about 8 inches from the speaker for a loop back. Hit record... It recorded the clicks fine. When I compared them, the second channel was about .003 seconds behind the first. I don't know if the system is setting up for the delay and moving the track automatically by the calculated value, but even if it was, that would only be a total of 6ms. That's more than good enough for monitoring and syncing.

What I haven't figured out is how to select the input. All my tracks were pulling from Input 1. With my Win machine, I can click the input and choose between 1 and 16. If I were to record multiple channels at once, I'll need at least the first 8. Looks like I've got some studying to do on this one.

In any case, I've got it working. I'm not ready to ditch my Windows machine yet, but it's progress.

FYI, I'm not convinced that this version of Ubuntu is as "ready for prime time" as the Linux people claim. It might be the way the desktop and menu system is laid out. I'm still having to fumble around and hunt for settings that I can find in Window in a couple of clicks, even with the changes from 7 to 10 to 11. My brother is a Linux fan... maybe I should throw him at this and see how do does navigating things.

Newer versions of Ubuntu has its issues. I use Debian 13 instead for OBS and Harrison Mixbus. Ubuntu a couple of years ago had Microsoft programmers brought into its fold and ever since their OS has issues off and on. So its a hit or miss with your hardware. I run a Digigram ALP-DANTE-LE card.

You wouldn't want to run Windows 11 because its constantly is connected to the microsoft eco system and screen shots and sends it to them on a constant bases. Plus syncing one drive constantly. Its been known to cause SSD drives to fail do to exceeding the read/write life span of the media. Its caused a lot of people to either get a Mac or switch to Linux.


Alternatively, I have ran Windows Server successfully without issues on a 2016 Acer laptop and without the force upgrade BS they shoved down the consumer's neck. But I would recommend 2019 Server standard. You can get a single workstation license for around $3 at places like www.gamers-outlet.net. Microsoft used to offer this version free for non profits and students, but now they charge the distributors a fee for activation they pass to the consumer. I run Reaper with Dante Virtual Sound Card on that machine without issues.

 

[TalismanRich]

OneDrive is turned off and uninstalled. Recall is turned off and uninstalled. Two of my 4 Win machines are unsupported, one being a 2nd Gen Core I3 laptop, the other a 4th Gen Core I5.

I'm one of those luddites who thinks all this AI crap is stupid for the home/personal user. Heck, on my phone this morning, G-mail popped up an AI summary of an email thread for my golf group. How stupid is that? "Many users think they will play golf on Saturday, but others think it's too f***ing cold to play". If this is "intelligence", then I'm Albert Einstein!