My test was incorrect, I'm newbie in Linux and I'm sure that tested system was not configured right.

 

As much as I'm loving Debian lately,
in my experience, the difference in Audio performance between Win and Linux is abysmal..

There's a few things one can do to improve stability tho, but ymmv a lot.

I had to:
Set Audio process CPU affinity to first core.
Set IRQ priority at max (in fact I wonder if I should/could disable ACPI and manually assign IRQs since it's shared...)
Prioritize Audio Threads

Install a low latency RT Kernel,
I tried Debian stock RT, but settled with XanMod kernel which gave better results as it handles the AMD-FX platform better..


With all of this, I can play One Piano instrument and a couple of effects in Reaper without cracks/clicks/pops..
Goal achieved, and I'm Loving the experience.


But yeah, in W7 I can load a TON of instruments/plugs before things start to click/pop..
I can have a project with a thousand+ tracks, lots of Kontakt instances and other VSTis, lots of plugs and effects.. you name it.
W7 just goes through absurd levels of load it like it's nothing.

But ofc, that's with a pretty old AMD-FX 8350 and ancient M-Audio Delta 66 (Evy24) soundcard..

With a proper modern CPU things may be a bit different,
things may be better optimized, and the Audio interface/driver may be a factor too.

 

Had the same experience with RT kernel.
Much better option is to run generic with preempt=full

ALSA or worse Pulseaudio adds a ton of latency too, which one has to compensate with lower buffer sizes leading to pops.

BUT
Configure a preempt scheduling with threadirqs, use pipewire instead of jack and the performance actually surpasses windows, and round trip latency is even better than with ASIO or WASAPI.
It's also useful to configure yabridge to run single instance - better thread utilization and lower RAM usage (plugins are not isolated).

PS: I'm actually looking into Clear Linux to be used as main audio workhorse, phoronix benchmarks are actually intriguing

 

So you're positive Pipewire should perform better than ALSA?

For some reason it seems the opposite in my system,
but yeah M-Audio Delta (Envy24) is Ancient at this point..

I thought Pipewire was more for modern multimedia stuff, like Wasapi or something;
while ALSA was more professional like ASIO..


Here running ALSA directly in Reaper works,
but I found going through Cadence (a QJack alternative) made it more stable and clean..


-Right now I'm wondering two things tho:
Will the stability/performance of M-Audio Delta increase Disabling ACPI and manually assigning a unique IRQ to the soundcard?
Will this blow the computer? (since acpi is power management related.. lol)

Why not use the internal soundcard on my Radeon RX6600 for monitoring?
Maybe there's some kind of HDMI to Spdif converter, and that's all I would need for piano practice..

Performance could be good, as it's running on a x16 PCIe slot..
But it could Suck because of poor Drivers, or too much shared resources and stuff?

 

Pipewire is basically streamlined jack. You get the same functionality with qpwgraph as with qjackctl.
Technically integrated or PCIe sound card should perform best for latency (integrated usually shares lanes directly to the CPU).
USB does add some pooling latency, but a great deal is actually added in hardware and software.

Drivers imho don't do much - they seem they do, but only because for the longest time windows had big issues with it (no UAC2 driver for 15 years and the Thesycon generic one not being integrated well with the kernel), to the point where only RME got it right. On linux, as long as it's UAC compliant, the interfaces should match in latency terms (not counting potential hardware added delays).

PS: On another note I wonder how would Kontakt performance compare, with samples loaded from ext4 file system compared to ntfs.

 

Last edited: Sep 26, 2024 at 12:08 PM

Does Kontakt work well on Linux? What do you recommend, use the licensed version or one from sister site ?

 

Kontakt portable from sister site works well. Can't speak about legit Kontakt player, never tried it.
PLAY on the other hand has issues under latest wine-staging.

 

been test driving the latest ubuntu lts. wanted to game and make music. failed both miserably. back to win

 

What do you mean ?

 

Play must be EastWest's library sampler/engine..

Well apparently Games can perform better on Linux than on Win,
but I guess that's with the really compatible stuff like Steam games..

One may get a certain mileage with Wine,
but depending on your system config the Native stuff is gonna perform better in the end..

It would be advisable to have an AMD Radeon card tho,
Nvidia drivers have quite a reputation in linux, so better to avoid complications..

 

Thanks

Agree. Steam working hard on Proton to provide best experience on Linux base Steam Deck