Recording - August 2010 - 33

• Install and run every one of my DirectX plugins, something I never would have expected to be possible • Install Native Instruments Reaktor, and more impressively, authorize it transparently with the Native Instruments Service Center authorization app • Install the Windows version of energyXT v1.x and run VST plug-ins inside it • Install commercial VST plug-ins like Waldorf Edition, VirSyn Minitera, and Applied Acoustics Systems Ultra Analog. There were a few programs that I could never get to work reasonably under Ubuntu and Wine, but nearly everything else I threw at it seemed to work splendidly or with minimal and tolerable limitations. There is still one area where the Linux pro audio offering needs some work. While it is fairly simple to achieve low-latency audio performance in Linux itself—by tweaking the ALSA and JACK settings for the audio driver—it is less simple to extend this low-latency audio support into the Wine environment where Windows apps can take advantage of it. There is a package called WineASIO that works well and does provide low latencies to Windows apps running under Wine... but alas, WineASIO is not bundled directly through Ubuntu, forcing me to research it on the Internet and do a manual installation of the package. It worked, but for music users who aren’t adept at that sort of research and installation work, it’s a rough edge that needs to be smoothed out.

An (almost) happy ending Unfortunately, my story doesn’t have a completely happy ending. Despite my best efforts, I could never get my beloved LynxONE PCI audio interface card to work well under Ubuntu, mostly because the folks at Lynx Studio Technology have kept the hardware interface to their card proprietary, with only an obsolete OSS driver available. I would really like it if Lynx would publish the documentation for their hardware interface so that the Linux community could write a real ALSA driver for it. In the meantime, I was faced with the choice of staying with Ubuntu but throwing away an audio interface I truly love, or with keeping the LynxONE and reluctantly switching back to Windows XP. I ended up splitting the difference. For my main studio machine, where the LynxONE was vital to my audio work, I went back to using Windows XP. However, in the course of my tests, I discovered that my two portable USB audio interfaces, a Behringer U-CONTROL UCA202 and an Edirol UA-25EX, were instantly recognized and ran beautifully under Ubuntu. The Behringer now lives on the computer I use for streaming audio to my Internet radio station, which has been converted to Ubuntu and is running smoothly. The Edirol will go with my brand-new laptop computer; it’s currently running Windows 7 (for reasons not related to my music), but I’m considering an Ubuntu install for when I put the machine to work doing audio chores in the field. The lessons from the experience stay with me, and I think they will be useful for others. It really is possible nowadays for mere mortals to use Linux as a studio platform, given the remarkable ability of the Wine subsystem to run some of the most challenging Windows applications there are. If you are using an audio interface that is supported directly by Linux and don’t mind a little bit of learning curve, you might consider this third path forward as an alternative to the Windows PC and the Mac. Darrell Burgan (burgan@recordingmag.com) is a composer, recording and mastering engineer, and audio software designer, best known as the creator of impulse response files for convolution reverb plug-ins sold by his company Spirit Canyon Audio (www.spiritcanyonaudio.com) and as the creator of the Earth Mantra download netlabel (www.earthmantra.com). He’s been waiting for years to be able to write this article; previous versions all came out as, “Nope, not there yet.”

http://www.spiritcanyonaudio.com http://www.earthmantra.com http://www.gracedesign.com

Recording - August 2010

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