Hello guys and gals, it's me Mutahar again! Massive improvements have been happening in the Linux department since last year where it seems for most of us it might be more than good enough. It's time ...
Linux-native you are stuck with I believe LMMS, Reaper or Cubase iirc.
Plugins are awful. Any external plugins will be a 50/50 shot and plugin licenses can be a huge factor. Even with wine and a very popular plugin.
When it comes to audio interface drivers you might also be stuck with one specific one that runs a server in the background (can’t remember the name). Also I reckon using an interface might be it’s own can of worms.
Windows VM is slow af because you have to emulate things like TPM2.0, their background services and the system itself is already extremely bloated (I have not tried more minimal editions or versions tbf like microwin or some other edition than professional.
Also the audio passthrough can be annoying. My best shot currently is either parsec (very roundabout way to go about it but you take what you get) and I have a let of faith in spice remoting tools.
If you wanna try it with windows VM I can help you with a bunch of stuff I learned about like virtio drivers and shit (I used proxmox for the virtualization but the kvm underneath is the same you probably would use) just shoot me a message and we can also talk on matrix or discord or whatever ^^
This is my first time doing pass through and idk what other optimizations I could do or if I’ve done anything wrong/sub optimal. I’d like your input. I’ll send you a message later
For anyone curious if this is an option (running windows in a VM for audio), I’ve had good luck so far. Feels native, but I have more tests to do before I say it’s viable. Without passing through (iommu) the audio interface, it’s unusable.
I installed Linux and set up a Win 10 pro VM yesterday. I did GPU pass through (although I doubt that was necessary). I also did pass through of my audio interface (MOTU 8pre-es). Windows saw it and it showed up in the proprietary MOTU software after installing the drivers in the VM, however I couldn’t get audio to play. I then tried passing through the USB root hub (built in to mother board) that the MOTU was connected to and then it worked. It worked just as it would running on bare metal. I tried playing a couple projects in Cubase and had no audio dropouts. Cubase has a meter that shows you if you missed audio buffer deadlines and why (CPU, disk) and it didn’t, to my surprise.
Things I still want to try:
How low can I get my buffer size / ASIO latency?
Can it handle 192KHz sample rate and at what buffer size? The tests I did yesterday were 48k and 44.1k projects.
How does it feel (in terms of latency) when using a MIDI controller keyboard.
Can I do multi channel recording without dropouts?
Does the VM break Cubase’s audio latency compensation when recording (this determines recording latency and automatically aligns the recording to where yiud expect it tobel). I have a feeling that the VM may introduce a latency that Cubase doesn’t account for.
Does iLok or another license that I need fail in VM? I only used Steinberg licenser based software yesterday.
Probably some other stuff I’ve not thought of yet.
What I’ve not figured out is a way to sort of boot my existing windows install. I’m sure there’s a way, but idk. I know it’s possible to pass an entire disk to the VM, but my host Linux install is on the same nvme. I guess what I’d want is a way to create a virtual block device that maps the other partitions from the nvme and then pass that virtual block device to the VM. Alternatively, install Linux to a different drive, but I’d rather not buy another nvme at this time.
I recently tried Yabridge. It still needs a lot of work, but many plugins seem to work well there (if we ignore often broken UI and temporary fixes that aren’t for everyone). Still pretty much WIP, but probably the best way to run plugins.
I’ve looked into it a lot.
I use Ableton with a pile of additional plugins.
Linux-native you are stuck with I believe LMMS, Reaper or Cubase iirc.
Plugins are awful. Any external plugins will be a 50/50 shot and plugin licenses can be a huge factor. Even with wine and a very popular plugin.
When it comes to audio interface drivers you might also be stuck with one specific one that runs a server in the background (can’t remember the name). Also I reckon using an interface might be it’s own can of worms.
Windows VM is slow af because you have to emulate things like TPM2.0, their background services and the system itself is already extremely bloated (I have not tried more minimal editions or versions tbf like microwin or some other edition than professional.
Also the audio passthrough can be annoying. My best shot currently is either parsec (very roundabout way to go about it but you take what you get) and I have a let of faith in spice remoting tools.
If you wanna try it with windows VM I can help you with a bunch of stuff I learned about like virtio drivers and shit (I used proxmox for the virtualization but the kvm underneath is the same you probably would use) just shoot me a message and we can also talk on matrix or discord or whatever ^^
You should try Bitwig it runs natively on Linux and has a great modular synth/fx system that is so good that you dont need a lot of plugins.
This is my first time doing pass through and idk what other optimizations I could do or if I’ve done anything wrong/sub optimal. I’d like your input. I’ll send you a message later
For anyone curious if this is an option (running windows in a VM for audio), I’ve had good luck so far. Feels native, but I have more tests to do before I say it’s viable. Without passing through (iommu) the audio interface, it’s unusable.
I installed Linux and set up a Win 10 pro VM yesterday. I did GPU pass through (although I doubt that was necessary). I also did pass through of my audio interface (MOTU 8pre-es). Windows saw it and it showed up in the proprietary MOTU software after installing the drivers in the VM, however I couldn’t get audio to play. I then tried passing through the USB root hub (built in to mother board) that the MOTU was connected to and then it worked. It worked just as it would running on bare metal. I tried playing a couple projects in Cubase and had no audio dropouts. Cubase has a meter that shows you if you missed audio buffer deadlines and why (CPU, disk) and it didn’t, to my surprise.
Things I still want to try:
What I’ve not figured out is a way to sort of boot my existing windows install. I’m sure there’s a way, but idk. I know it’s possible to pass an entire disk to the VM, but my host Linux install is on the same nvme. I guess what I’d want is a way to create a virtual block device that maps the other partitions from the nvme and then pass that virtual block device to the VM. Alternatively, install Linux to a different drive, but I’d rather not buy another nvme at this time.
I recently tried Yabridge. It still needs a lot of work, but many plugins seem to work well there (if we ignore often broken UI and temporary fixes that aren’t for everyone). Still pretty much WIP, but probably the best way to run plugins.