Hi everyone,

I’m getting fed up windows and want to switch my laptop to linux. My laptop also doesn’t meet windows 11 standards so I figured nows a good time to switch. I don’t do a whole lot on my laptop, but there are some programs that I do need to use. I have an E drum kit and right now I use reaper and Steven slate audio center to play and record my drums through my laptop. I looked at reaper, and I see linux options for download. But for Steven slate , I only see windows and Mac. This is pretty disappointing and so I figured I ask to see what would work for me.

I was going to go with Ubuntu, because it seems to be the most user friendly and has good support. I also use mullvad VPN on my laptop very frequently, which was another reason I chose Ubuntu.

Any help is appreciated. I’m willing to look at other distros too if there is one that better fits my needs.

EDIT: I have successfully migrated to linux mint and have reaper working with yabridge. Thanks, everyone, for your help and suggestions!

  • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I work in music and audio post, and everyone I work with would love to be able to use Reaper (or Logic, or Nuendo) instead of Pro Tools, if Pro Tools didn’t have the post industry completely captured in the US.

    Reaper is a world-class product, and the team could easily charge 10x as much for the pro licenses, and get it. Stick with Reaper.

    There are alternative drum triggers for Linux, I’m sure. Even SPL makes a drum exchanger. There’s got to be one out there.

    VMR shouldn’t be a problem to run, I just don’t know what the install process would look like.

    I’m pretty sure Airwindows plugs are Linux compatible, probably Audio Obsession too.

    In any case, Reaper’s stock plugins are awesome. My only real complaint about them is the EQ cramping in the hi-end, which is typical for stock plugins.

    • WeebLife@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I would prefer to stick with reaper since I’m familiar with it and going off other comments, it seems that I can still use windows vsts in linux so I think that is the route I’m going to go

    • WeebLife@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Hi, I ran into a problem with reaper taking over my audio driver and I’m not able to play YouTube, or any other music, while reaper is open. I didn’t have this problem in windows because I had the aiso4all driver. But doing some searching, I’m not sure that driver will work on linux. Do you have any insight as to how to fix this?

      • stewie3128@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        While I don’t have personal experience with this, I did find this from the bad website:

        Install pipewire-jack and use JACK audio device in Reaper. Also, yes make sure that wireplumber is installed.

        Link to post.

  • MinekPo1@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    not exactly a DAW/VST but VCV Rack is a open source (though with a pro version , the pro version can work as a VST though I never used it in that way) eurorack modular synthesizer symulator if you want to experiment a bit

    • WeebLife@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      That sounds pretty awesome. But it’s probably more than I’m needing right now. I will keep it in mind in case I want to do more later on

  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    you’ll be fine.

    do a dual boot install and play around with reaper. setup wine and see how it does with steven slate.

    people are saying use ardour. i don’t like it, but you might. my computer music needs are limited to midi and recording inputs, not performing actual synthesis and sampling “in the box”.

    • WeebLife@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I have been using the “try ubuntu” option from my Bootable USB, I downloaded ardour but was disappointed that their demo was only 10 min… while I was setting up my e kit to make sure it worked, it kept bugging me every 10 min to pay for the software. That was pretty off-putting. I think I will keep using reaper.

      • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        it really reaps the llamas ass.

        were you able to get the steven slate vsts running in some host?

        • WeebLife@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Not yet unfortunately, I’m still new to linux so it’s still taking me longer to figure things out. I got reaper up and running really easy, but wine took a while to figure out. But I eventually got that working and was able to install Steven slate audio center and I git my drum kit to register in reaper. But I wasn’t able to get Steven slate working, I think I’ll have to use yabridge, which several other comments brought up. But I’m making progress!

          • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Good luck. If Steven slate keeps fucking up your christmas it might be possible to duplicate what you use it for using a native effects package.