Hey everyone,
When I was previously on windows I had a lot of fun doing music production. My workflow took place in FL studio and used a lot of software synthesizers (VST files mainly).
After my switch to Linux, I am 95% better off. Everything is great except I have to rediscover a music workflow.
It’s quite painful because I had licenses to some very expensive software synth libraries (The Arturia V collection for example). I have done some reading and have found that while it is possible to get FL studio working in Linux, it still doesn’t have the greatest of results.
As far as that goes, I am not terribly concerned - Reaper, Bitwig, and other Linux DAW’s exist and I am fine using those instead even if it means purchasing a license for the paid ones.
But the real problem is the software centers/Licenses/installations for my software synths. It would be such a shame and a waste of money if I couldn’t get these working, but I don’t know much about dealing with this on Linux, so I am appealing to your collective knowledge.
I wanted to ask if anyone has successfully installed the Arturia V collection on Linux for use in a DAW, and if so, what you think I should know about it. I thought I read somewhere about some software these could be emulated/installed through (not wine), but I’m just really open to hearing about recommended options for something like this if anyone knows.
Otherwise, I wanted to ask my musical Linux friends here what they have for VST’s and what their workflow is on Linux, because it’s always fun to develop new work flows.
Thanks
So this is kind of going to be weird advice. Maybe not exactly what you are looking for.
You don’t need all those synths and plugins. You really don’t. You can get so, so far just by learning to use the tools that are built into Reaper or Bitwig.
There are really only a handful of audio effects that “really exist” a lot of FX plugins are just complex chains with fancy UIs. But if you understand what they’re doing “under the hood” you can reproduce almost any sound from from the basic building blocks you have.
The same is true for synthesisers. You truly only need one synth as long as it is a flexible, general purpose modern synth. Learning to use one specific synth to it’s full potential will let you make almost any sound you can imagine. Vital synth is a perfect candidate here btw.
Overall I kind of think part of the Linux mindset in general is kind of about doing things your self based on an understanding of the core principals at play.
That being said, there are tons of plugins coming out with native Linux support all the time and it’s getting better every day.
I’m actually about to drop some Linux builds of some plugins myself but I don’t want to dox myself here so that will have to remain a mystery for now.
It’s an ungodly amount of trouble to make an additive synth work like an FM synth and neither of those can accomplish what a wavetable synth does without even more work so I really have to disagree. Vital is great, but it would take way too long to make it do what Arturias Vocoder V does for example, or even at that, as easy to use for that specific purpose.
Technically you are correct, but I would rather spend my time making music instead of spending hundreds or thousands of hours setting up automations and almost unnoticeable tweaks to make each effect and each instrument work in a way I want them to (like if I want a specific sound of known instruments).
Like, I could make a full song with several “instruments” using one sample of a spoon falling off of a table too, and that’s neat, but it’s also not what I want to be doing. If I wanted this involved of a workflow, I would probably be making my music in a tracker or on a physical, fully modular synthesizer.
Inspirations come a lot easier when you have many synths with many presets in my experience, and tweaking a lot of their parameters for the sounds they make are usually simple if you are using the actual thing you want instead of something else.
Furthermore, most of Arturias V collection are emulations of the real physical hardware, and this is why I like them. I could use vital to try to emulate a Juno-106 with degraded voice chips, but the Arturia Juno emulation lets you do this with 2 clicks.
Anyway, I know what you are trying to say, but it is not what I am looking for most of the time. For stuff like that I play around with my Roland P-6 and Korg Monotrons.
Thanks.