[02:20] <artvivant[m]> Hello!
[02:35] <artvivant[m]> Guys, I've been talking with some people about how Ubuntu isn't doing a good job with audio tasks (realtime, wine, etc). I want to discuss with you about this because I feel the project would do an effort to improve this that Ubuntu devs itself wouldn't care much for understandable reasons
[02:36] <artvivant[m]> Let me know if I should talk about this
[03:04] <malfunction54> maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but I thought Ubuntu Studio was supposed to help address those concerns.
[03:05] <malfunction54> (aside from Wine)
[03:06] <Eickmeyer[m]> Project Lead here. WIne isn't within the scope of Ubuntu Studio.
[03:07] <Eickmeyer[m]> !rt | See this for an explanation about the real-time access issue.
[03:08] <Eickmeyer[m]> artvivant: But this is not a place to argue points. Ubuntu is a mertiocracy, not a democracy. So I'd like some well-reasoned points please.
[03:08] <Eickmeyer[m]> And where did you hear these things?
[03:10] <Eickmeyer[m]> BTW, I don't respond well to rumors and FUD.
[03:12] <artvivant[m]> Hey, no problem! Let's go...
[03:15] <artvivant[m]> Well, I deal with these issues because I've always used and still use Debian/Ubuntu distros and there are discussions on audio related forums on linux about some performance issues. There is something that nobody has figured out the reason yet, like: Xruns that happen with random spikes processing on Bitwig if you use the plugins sandboxed. The "workaround" is to set "within Bitwig" for example, but if a plugin crash it will crash
[03:15] <artvivant[m]> audio engine together
[03:15] <Eickmeyer[m]> BItwig isn't in the repositories, so we can't guarantee supoort.
[03:16] <artvivant[m]> I know, it's just an example.
[03:16] <artvivant[m]> But it's not related to bitwig itself
[03:16] <artvivant[m]> I use Reaper most of the time, for example
[03:16] <Eickmeyer[m]> Again, Reaper isn't in the repositories, so no guaranteed support.
[03:16] <Eickmeyer[m]> Ok. So, that's why Ubuntu Studio exists, because it's optimized. It takes a lot more than installing a few packages to get stuff o
[03:17] <Eickmeyer[m]> Sorry, hit enter too early.
[03:17] <artvivant[m]> And I always do all the realtime setup to get low latency, stability, etc.
[03:17] <Eickmeyer[m]> It takes a lot more than installing a few packages to get stuff working properly in Linux audio.
[03:17] <artvivant[m]> Kernel flags, rtirq...
[03:17] <artvivant[m]> I know
[03:18] <Eickmeyer[m]> Yes, and yes. So, coming in here and saying that Ubuntu doesn't do those things isn't 100% correct when that's exactly what Ubuntu Studio does.
[03:18] <artvivant[m]> But that's why I'm here, because Ubuntu Studio does it
[03:18] <artvivant[m]> Don't get me wrong
[03:18] <artvivant[m]> I really love Ubuntu and I work with it
[03:18] <Eickmeyer[m]> And it's also why Ubuntu Studio Installer exists, to bring it to the other flavors as well.
[03:19] <Eickmeyer[m]> !ubuntustudio-installer
[03:23] <artvivant[m]> Man, i don't want to piss you off... I just noticed that it's happening on Ubuntu, but not on Fedora and other distros I tried with the same audio scenario set up, for example. I just came here to see if it's something related to realtime or kernel configuration on Ubuntu and if it worth to investigate and maybe improve this side in the future.
[03:23] <artvivant[m]> I don't want to use another distro, I want to stick with Ubuntu
[03:24] <Eickmeyer[m]> No, I'm not mad. I just kinda got on the defensive, that's all.
[03:25] <Eickmeyer[m]> And yes, I'm intimately familiar with Fedora. I used to maintain Fedora Jam. In fact, the person I handed it off to is a friend of mine.
[03:25] <artvivant[m]> Sorry for that. I must have expressed myself badly... not my intention at all
[03:26] <Eickmeyer[m]> But their kernel isn't even lowlatency, but it does have the PREEMPT_RT flags enabled. The trick is, and not many people know this, is that it doesn't actually work without the threadirqs kernel boot parameter.
[03:26] <artvivant[m]> Oh, that's lovely! I didn't know...
[03:26] <artvivant[m]> Yeah
[03:26] <Eickmeyer[m]> That's part of the Ubuntu Studio magic.
[03:26] <artvivant[m]> I always use the threadirqs flag
[03:27] <artvivant[m]> and edit rtirq file to put usb before everything and it does improve a lot
[03:27] <artvivant[m]> things
[03:27] <Eickmeyer[m]> Ubuntu Studio has threadirqs enabled by default, and as long as ubuntustudio-lowlatency-settings and a lowlatency kernel is installed, it's good to go.
[03:27] <malfunction54> artvivant[m], I started with the full Studio distro, but couldn't adjust to Plasma.  then I found the Studio installer and now I'm pretty happy
[03:28] <artvivant[m]> Ubuntu Studio now has what I really like: Plasma and Ubuntu base
[03:28] <Eickmeyer[m]> But there are tradeoffs. For instance, lowlatency kernels and threadirqs use more power, so not ideal for laptops unless plugged-in.
[03:29] <artvivant[m]> and all stuff tweaked too! it's really a time saver
[03:29] <artvivant[m]> Yeah, not a problem here
[03:29] <malfunction54> gotcha
[03:29] <artvivant[m]> I'm using a thinkcentre m70q
[03:29] <Eickmeyer[m]> That's why, on my laptop, I install the generic kernel too so I can switch back and forth when I need to.
[03:29] <malfunction54> artvivant[m], so, when you mention wine, are you talking about lack of native apps for Linux?
[03:30] <malfunction54> leading to the necessity of wine?
[03:30] <artvivant[m]> So Eick, yesterday I installed Fedora here and did everything I always do on Ubuntu
[03:30] <artvivant[m]> And it's flawless
[03:30] <artvivant[m]> But I don't want to stick with fedora just because of it
[03:32] <artvivant[m]> malfunction54: Kind of... I try to use only native plugins the most I can, but I have some wine stuff  through yabridge when I can't find a plugin I need
[03:32] <artvivant[m]> Everything works very well most of the time
[03:33] <malfunction54> ok.  Not much for that, except lobby plugin makers for LV2 or Linux VST support?
[03:33] <artvivant[m]> What you mean?
[03:35] <Eickmeyer[m]> FYI, yabridge is something I have on my to-do list for packaging. I've been asked by the creator of Ardour (the DAW) himself.
[03:35] <artvivant[m]> Man, I can't use Windows... and there is a lot of goodies in the lv2/linux vst universe i miss everytime I need to work with another plataform
[03:36] <artvivant[m]> Eickmeyer[m]: Yeah! It's pretty good...
[03:37] <malfunction54> I mean, other than running non-native plugins in wine or by some other means, you can't do much to improve the situation other than ask plugin developers to port to Linux-friendly formats
[03:38] <artvivant[m]> Fedora has a copr by Patrickl with yabridge just to easily install. Would be great see this on Ubuntu Studio...
[03:40] <Eickmeyer[m]> To be fair, it'd be in the Ubuntu repositories, but I probably can't put it on the Ubuntu Studio image because pulling wine onto the image would bloat it bigger than it already is, and it's huge.
[03:41] <Eickmeyer[m]> And of course, it's all time-dependent because I have about a million things going on too.
[03:42] <artvivant[m]> Eickmeyer[m]: Yeah! But even so, only packaging yabridge wouldn't be a bad idea. People usually install wine through winehq repos
[03:42] <artvivant[m]> Eickmeyer[m]: I can imagine!
[03:45] <artvivant[m]> I read at Ubuntu Studio website about pipewire deprioritized and I confess I can't see myself not using pipewire anymore. It's good to see as default in this 22.10 release, but I'd been using since the existence of ppa
[03:48] <Eickmeyer[m]> It wasn't something we didn't want to do, it's something that just didn't happen. Bugs happened, and those came first. And then we got thrown a major curveball with ffmpeg 5 breaking a lot of things.
[03:48] <malfunction54> oh dang. I was really looking forward to trying out pipewire as part of Studio
[03:48] <malfunction54> but I totally get it :)
[03:48] <Eickmeyer[m]> We literally ran out of time. And all of us have lives.
[03:48] <malfunction54> I hope so!
[03:49] <artvivant[m]> On the other hand, that tool for pulse/jack always have been a plus of ubuntu studio
[03:49] <Eickmeyer[m]> Studio Controls has become the heart of the audio part of the project.
[03:51] <artvivant[m]> It will support pipewire natively, right?
[03:54] <Eickmeyer[m]> The idea is that it will be able to switch between 3 modes: the (eventual) default Pipewire, JACK/Pipewire bridged (for professional setups since Pipewire's JACK implementation lacks some features of native JACK), and JACK/Pulseaudio bridged like now.
[03:55] <artvivant[m]> Wow, pretty good!
[03:55] <Eickmeyer[m]> The problem is in the implementation. We're not sure how to get there.
[03:57] <Eickmeyer[m]> The documentation is sparse right now.
[03:57] <artvivant[m]> I still run my daw's desktop file with "pw-jack -p 128" at start if you ask me
[03:58] <Eickmeyer[m]> Right, but for some people that's not good enough.
[03:58] <artvivant[m]> And it's not the ideal
[03:58] <artvivant[m]> I don't like it
[03:59] <artvivant[m]> but it is what it is
[04:00] <Eickmeyer[m]> Yeah. We're working on it, but 22.10 just wasn't the release for it. There were too many bugs to squash and it kindof overwhelmed us.
[04:01] <Eickmeyer[m]> Not just in 22.10, but we had to go back and fix bugs in 22.04, it being the LTS and all.
[04:01] <artvivant[m]> I opened a few issues on pipewire's gitlab before and since so pipewire improved a lot, but it's not quite there yet...
[04:01] <Eickmeyer[m]> Yeah. It's getting there. I've been playing around with it in an Ubuntu instance I have installed, but nothing using JACK.
[04:02] <artvivant[m]> True
[04:03] <artvivant[m]> Well... maybe it will give you time to figure it out how to implement things in Studio Controls
[04:04] <Eickmeyer[m]> Right. I think this next cycle we'll be able to do that. I see far fewer issues popping up, but I could be wrong.
[04:04] <Eickmeyer[m]> Anyways, it's getting late. Have a good night.
[04:05] <artvivant[m]> At least I can say that I'm actually more comfortable here with pipewire at this current stage than with windows/mac
[04:05] <malfunction54> good night!
[04:05] <artvivant[m]> Ok, mate! Have a good night you too.
[04:05] <artvivant[m]> Thanks for the chat
 "I mean, other than running non-..." <- Yeah, but if developers refuse to port and you use their plugins through wine/yabridge because you refuse to use windows or mac to work they will end up bothered with people asking for support and they'll see it would be easier to port their plugins to run natively on linux and profit from it than say "buy a mac or windows, i can't help you".
[04:35] <artvivant[m]> Man, I bought a Reaper license because I use it on Linux. You'll see people buying license for their plugins if they run on Linux.
[04:40] <artvivant[m]> I'm a member of yabridge's Discord server and I tell you if it wasn't for iLok issues or DRM content under wine people there would buy a lot of plugin they love but unfortunately can't run natively on linux.
[04:44] <artvivant[m]> Oh, so sorry. I think here it's not the place to chat about this. My bad!
[05:34] <OvenWerks> artvivant[m]: sandboxing plugins solves many problems but does not scale. Sandboxing includes running a plugin through wine. If you use one sandboxed plugin, it will do fine but sw like Ardour is designed to work well with hundreds of plugins all at once. It is not uncommon for ardour to be with 150 plus channels for live recording.
 "rain_man, do you have any way of..." <- my colleague recently got the same machine as me and he would have installed straight ubuntu. He said he had a similar issue.
 "This much I do know: X11 doesn't..." <- would it be easy / advisable for me to make this switch ? 
 "But hard to know as based on..." <- is there any other information i can add to make it easier to diagnose ? Perhaps i can take a video with my phone to illustrate the problem ?
[08:18] <gordonjcp> artvivant[m]: they may not be able to port it to Linux
[08:18] <gordonjcp> artvivant[m]: when I wrote audio plugins I got a lot of folk asking if I'd port them to Windows