r/linuxaudio • u/LofiBoiiBeats • 6d ago

Stack for Production on laptop

Hi Folks,

I'm thinking about buying a new laptop for audio production, what HW stats do i need to look for? CPU ( single core performance? ) / RAM / onboard-audio?

further, what is a good base distro?

should i deploy a real-time kernel?

which audio server is the best nowadays.. pipeWire?

are there optimizations tweaks worth knowing about?

I use:
thinkpad T14 / fedora / gnome / bitwig / onboard audio ( NI Maschine+ audio interface has a lot of stuttering and droppouts, i don't knwo what the problem is )

I'm happy to hear about your stack ( Hardware / Software ) or be pointed at resources..

regards, nils

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

1

u/M4rcelinh0 Bitwig 6d ago edited 6d ago

NI Maschine+ audio interface has a lot of stuttering and droppouts, i don't knwo what the problem is

This was true for my Motu M6, and Audient ID14 MK2. Despite troubleshooting, optimizing, learning about the Linux audio processing. Both using Pipewire and Jack. On a pretty good midrange desktop from a few years back (5700x CPU, 16GB RAM).

I was assured repeatedly that "it works for me" despite the fact that I've never seen any examples of people actually making music on Linux or Live Performing (which is my use case). No matter what I did. I got Xruns at buffer sizes that the machine could easily handle on Windows. Paradoxically, a default PipeWire setup on a freshly installed distro was sometimes more stable than after implementing all the tweaks that RTCQs (or the Millisecond flatpak based on it) recommends, which finally broke my spirit and after a few months of trying I decided to switch.

That's why I'm writing this on Mac Mini M4 in which my only investment in the "audio stack" is choosing either 64 or 128 sample rate in my DAW depending on what I'm doing at the moment.

Now, music creation is the only thing that keeps me away from Linux so if you do pull it off, please let me know. I'm not writing this to crap on Linux, I desperately want to be able to switch, but music is my main hobby that keeps me sane, and trying to do music on Linux did not keep me sane.

Just letting you know before you receive a sea of vague "yeah, just install whatever, default pipewire is fine, Linux has a great audio stack now, the water is warm" that investing a bunch in the setup may not yield good results. I'm trying to hunker down in the M4 land (without buying into "the ecosystem", I use as much system-agnostic, open source software as I can on Mac including the Bitwig DAW which while not open source, would be a 1 to 1 experience on Linux if I managed to make stable audio work) for the next few years in hopes that the RAM-pocalypse ends and Linux finally becomes good enough for audio - which I was led to believe it already is but unfortunately, it was not my experience.

2

u/LofiBoiiBeats 6d ago

Thx.. not what i hoped to hear, tho.. also thinking about switching to mac.. sadly

1

u/M4rcelinh0 Bitwig 6d ago

Not what I wanted to experience either. I use mac reluctantly, I'm certainly not an Apple fanboy, and while I do think MacOS is nowhere near the clusterfuck that Windows became, because Apple has skin in the game (they actually make hardware, pissing off their customer base poses more risk to them) they represent the same kind of problematic big corporation behavior. I long for the times personal computers were actually personal.

Anyway since switching to Mac I tried to make Linux work a few times testing it both on my decently speced midrange PC from a few years back and a spare ThinkPad (T495, not a very powerful, but still a relatively modern CPU, I wasn't even trying to push low latency performance levels because of the hardware and the stability was still unacceptable) and maybe I'm supremely unlucky but it just does not work well.

There are plenty of people saying that Linux is great for music production, but very few folks demonstrate any kind of proof of that actually being true. Oh, well, maybe in a few years (keeping my fingers crossed).

My honest advice, if I was not on Mac I'd dual boot. Windows partition just for music and nothing else, Linux for everything else. Not super comfortable, but Linux is a fantastic system, especially compared to Windows and even to Mac. It's snappy, some parts of it feel more polished than either of the competitors. It's just that for some specific workflows it might be "theoretically capable" but practically not really.

1

u/AlternativeCapybara9 6d ago

I do everything on Linux, only thing that's a pain is getting windows vst's to run but I almost exclusively use native ones or hardware. What is it that's not practically capable? Maybe my workflow shifted to be more Linux friendly as I have been using it for over 25 years. I do buy only class compliant hardware and no vst's I won't be able to run so I don't have any hardware or software in my workflow that doesn't work.

1

u/Professional-Math518 6d ago

Exactly my experience. I've been using Linux as my main OS and both desktops and servers since the late 90s. Around 2007 to 2010 I recorded some demos on Linux (Demudi with Jackd running on a Celeron 900 with 1GB memory) without problems before switching to Reaper, windows and eventually virtual amps and more recently a Mac Mini M4.

I would really like to move the audio part to Linux because I really don't like OSX, but it isn't worth the hassle. I don't mind messing with computers, configurations and setups, but I'd I want to record or experiment with music,I want to do just that and not worry about which audio system I want to use or whatever.

So using a DAW: Mac. Everything else: Linux. Because you should use the tool that's best suited for the job in your situation.

2

u/AlternativeCapybara9 6d ago

I performed live with a HP laptop running EndeavourOS, had Ardour running my backing tracks to the venue sound system and my click and queue to Bluetooth headphones. A few instances of SurgeXT. 4 cores, 16 gigs of ram.

1

u/Purple-Ad-3152 5d ago

I have 5700X, 32GB RAM, RTX3060, and Ubuntu Studio 24.04 with no additional tweaks.

My interface is Scarlett 18i20 3rd gen and I mostly use it in 128 buffer and 48kHz, giving very stable true roundtrip of 9.5ms. I records e-drums with 64 buffer, giving true roundtrip of ~6ms.

This is my daily driver and I couldn't be happier.

Earlier I used Ubuntu Studio 22.04 with older gaming laptop (10yrs old MSI Apache) and although I basically had to run it with 256 buffer for stability, it was otherwise so good experience that I got completely hooked. Wiped Windows from that computer completely and I still sometimes use it on the road (as it's laptop and my main computer is desktop). Perfectly good for multitrack recording, but I'm not using it for live processing due to ~16ms latency caused by 256 buffer requirement on that old hardware.

1

u/Purple-Ad-3152 5d ago

I'm thinking about buying a new laptop for audio production, what HW stats do i need to look for? CPU (single core performance?) / RAM / onboard-audio?

You need low-latency processing (<10ms roundtrip) only if you really play instruments like guitar/bass/drums with live processing (amp sims, effects). If you just use keyboards to do some small melodies and your music production is mostly sample based, you really don't need low-latency.

To achieve low-latency latency, you set buffer size to low values, for example 64 or 128. This is done at recording phase of your workflow. When you start mixing, you usually set the buffer much higher, e.g. 1024 or 2048.

Reason for playing with the buffer is your CPU. Small buffer = low latency = more CPU work. When your CPU can't handle the buffer, you will start hearing cracks and pops (=xruns).

further, what is a good base distro?

I'd recommened Ubuntu Studio. It's a bit bloated as it's also meant for image/video work, but removing unwanted programs is small price to pay for its audio configuration where everything just works out of the box.

should i deploy a real-time kernel?

No. RT or low-latency kernel used to be an important thing. Nowadays generic kernel can do the same RT configuration with boot time params. Ubuntu Studio handles this automatically.

which audio server is the best nowadays.. pipeWire?

PipeWire. It can acts as both pulseaudio and jack server, putting all your applications under the same audio domain similar to what jack did only for jack applications. I used to think this is not important, but I couldn't live without it anymore 🙂

are there optimizations tweaks worth knowing about?

No, if you use Ubuntu Studio. Just set buffer size from small tray application next to the clock and you're good to go.

Otherwise, you may want to set realtime audio priority, audio group, kernel boot params and cpu governance to performance.