This is a response to another thread with user wanting Biab on Linux
Re: BIAB run on Linux
Re: A Sustainable Future of Biab ?
Re: Anyone Use Reaper ?
:

PG should have an interest in getting Biab to run on Linux under Wine.
I have asked many times to have an internal code to play the wma files.
It's the same problem when using the BiabVST under yabridge
Windows Media Player issues as in the dialogs it calls on the WMP.dll then can't find it and gives an error.
PG, please install Linux and try it out under Wine, I bet you can get it sorted !!! this will also solve the issue (on Win) that comes up all the time over the years with users not being able to play the demo wma's because Windows can't access the audio device. Having an internal wma player will solve this issue on Win and Lin. You don't have another 6 months to work on a Lin version as 6 is spent on Win then another 6 on Mac. Unless you go over to JUCE you need to get it working under Wine.

+1 (of course)

This is where just one developer with an interest in Linux could make a huge difference, potentially back into the main Windows development and the Mac development, as well as for we Linux enthusiasts.

+1. More and more people are using Linux.

I can't see why you are not able to have an option to set the play wma demo buttons to an external player if you can't make an internal player for it.
I can't remember on Linux if it was looking for WMP to decompress the wma to wav or if you use an internal decompressor ?
You have the Win version, you have the Mac version, get this sorted and you will have a working Lin version.
The new way the BB VST works now it should work with the Linux version of Reaper.

When I was using BIAB on Linux, I'd used ffmpeg to expand .wma files into .wav files.
PG Music appear already to use ffmpeg.
VLC has a library of modules libVLC. (LGPL 2.1).
I'd like to think JUCE does, but I didn't see it.

I think they won't play DRM-coded data.
VLC itself can be run headless like: vlc --intf dummy filename.wma

what i would like to see is bb n rb running native on linux under the smallest linux distro possible.
maybe pg do their own bundled with upak baby linux distro.
you linux people know better than i.
blue skying it what smallest linux distro do you think rb n bb
could run undr natively ? puppy distro ?
maybe pg could bundle their own baby linux distro on the upak drive they send out ?..pglinux ?
so user just clicks one installer and away you go...linux installed plus pg content OR just run off the upak drive under linux ? so people can keep win on their systems.

oh goodness love the idea.

om

I can't see a huge benefit in "the smallest distro possible" bearing in mind that an UltraPAK is a couple or so hundred gigabytes.
Even AVLinux, which admits to being a pretty rich AV environment is less than 4GB.

On most modern hardware there's no longer any point in using one of the customised real-time kernels, though people occasionally still suggest that; A low-latency is absolutely fine and the standard normal-scheduler is generally OK, despite being optimised for different purposes.

For me, I settled on AVLinux a few years back, having tried several with mixed results. AVLinux mostly "just works" for the user, as Glen McArthur who produces it tests the integration pretty thoroughly and will hold back things that have faults, and there tend to be a few of those in Wine, Wine-staging, YADbridge, mostly because their purpose is a moving target. Glen has also long worked alongside people like FalkTX and others who develop specifically music-oriented applications and shims.

I think Ubuntu Studio should also be pretty good now as it's been around for a few years and probably has most of the wrinkles removed.

If one doesn't need to run Windows stuff on the system, then probably any half-decent Linux would do. Smaller may then be better and there are plenty under 1/2GB.

From PG Music's perspective I suspect they're right not to get too deeply involved in Linux. We already see they have enough to do to keep up with the general BIAB issues and with MacOS issues, without opening a further front. But the Linux community gets on and deals with most Linux issues. Most VSTs I have will run on Linux, or at least did prior to new download managers with 'odd' looks into the OS. But as Musocity says, if someone at PGM was prepared to spend some time addressing a small number of hurdles, BIAB under Wine could be a reasonable reality.

Gordon.

dont mind me im just thinking the simplest way for someone new to music production who isnt interested in tech at all but maybe is weary of win control!ing things.
lots of people these days have no interest in the underlying tech as many have told me 'i just wanna do music'.

so the question ishow to entice such folks to linux ?
my thought therefore is pg ships its upak drive with a one click installer that both installs linux and pg content OR the user can just run from the pg drive within a linux environment so their existing win install on their pc is still available.

all good fun...lol.

om. 🇨🇦. 🇬🇧

A big old -1 from me!

There is plenty of work still to be done on the Windows and Mac versions and the last thing I'd suggest is for this team to complicate their lives for such a tiny market!

It's 6 months spent on Win and 6 months spent on Mac, it only needs a few tweaks for the Win version to work well under Wine.
Since I bought Biab/RB it has complicated my life no end, but I do it as it had to be done and I didn't give up on it, the result this year has been a massive leap with many things that I spent so much of my own time working out and making demo examples how it could be implemented in Biab/BB VST to lift it to a higher level. I'm sure all here have benefitted by all these improvements.
There were users complaining about all the Reaper info I posted and others saying "just ignore all that crap", "it can't be made better because of old users with old computers", there was about zero support or interest when I posted all the info, but now users don't mind using the new features that this has now given Biab/BB VST.

Mcity.

my only concern with wine is impact on latency.
yes i would like to get out of wins clutches if it simplified my life plus made me independent.
reaps runs on linux right ?
what latency does reaps report for linux ?

i think its fair to say that the not on linux folks have a point re low market share.

im getting 4ms or less latency useing win.
so thats a plus.

btw respect for your contributions here.

om

Most users just use MME with BBWin, I remember there was a wineasio.
I haven't got a Linux running at the moment, I did have Ubuntu Studio when I was trying it all.
Reaper worked very well under wine and the native Linux version should be able to use Open SGU in Reaper if it's set to anything but wma like wav or flac or mp3 etc... the BB VST should work using wav how it is now but could be made to work the same way as Open SGU in Reaper where you can choose any Reaper compatible format to use.
I don't know if Gordon tried the Open SGU in Reaper with Linux Reaper ?

I totally agree that PGM should not be putting any effort into a version for Linux, certainly at this time anyway ... There's enough complexity/disparity/issues in the Windows & MacOS versions already.

What we're asking is if someone, hopefully with an interest in Linux, could try to overcome a few minor hurdles that make it harder than it should be to run BIAB under Wine.

Yes, Reaper runs on Linux.
I'm seeing 2.9ms on an i5-12400F

I have Reaper, Ardour, Mixbus and Renoise all native on Linux. BitWig and Tracktion Waveform are also native. There are several others, not so well known. Most, though not all, of my VSTs work in Wine.

I'm a long-term enthusiast and advocate for Linux et al, but I have to say that, IMHO, it would be crazy for PGM to try a version for Linux, certainly at this point. I think there are just too many existing complications that need rationalising(*) first. There would, I think, be a potential benefit in keeping it in mind whilst doing that rationalisation, where it may focus ideas on more universal ways to do things, but I think it really must not be even remotely a short-term aim.

(*) I don't really understand, for example, why there are four different folders all called Uninstall or uninstall.

Gordon.

i thought i was a pretty decent tech...but your the chap.

kudos. thats a very impressive latency figure.
is this useing jack ? is the 2.9 in wine or native ?
what sound device ? i wonder if my audient interface which i like and yay it was designed in old blighty would work flawlessly.

ive had zero probs with audient in win...super duper drivers...multi client...and ive sent them a list of product ideas.
whats impressed me about audient is their fast response time and how open they are to feature ideas.
i have zero complaints....the songs in my sig were done useing audient and from my experience i hear no quality diff tween songs done useing audient and big studios i once used.

your pg comments beg the obvious question...what could pg do without loads of codeing to get bb n rb going on linux ??
obviously we dont know pg internal codeing but i suspect they are useing wins special audio api's etc ...will they work under wine ? i dunno. i looked at the win api's once and my thought was how complex they were and the learning cycle. im not exactly the dimmest bulb on the xmas tree but my reaction was 'you gotta be kidding'.
maybe im a dunce but take a look sometime at them...
tell me what you think...just google win audio api's.
look at the sdk's.

if i could get that 2.9 under wine with no glitches from the
audio interface ...it would certainly get me interested.
it wouldnt bother me either if i couldnt play the win rt bb demos which depend on core win routines due to wma's ?

what im struggling to understand is ....due to the different hardware architectures how other daws manged to implement on different architectures rapidly...inux...pi...etc etc.
ie cross platform daws.

i do agree that pg shouldnt do a load of work unless a simple way could be found.
also im selfish and want to see the new great pg bb track view concept evolve to add more daw features so i dont waste lots of time like now flitting tween various music apps.

kudos mate. still loving my mini pc.
astounding low core microsecond latency.
also m.2 all the way. amazeing transfer speeds.
win bb n rb load super fast...i had to do little optimising.
turned off the silly net also. i use an old i5 pc for net so no chance recording rig gets contaminated.
maybe if bb comes to linux ill test out on old i5 pc.

respect.

om. 🇨🇦. 🇬🇧

That's native but just Reaper. Jack is at 8.7ms, though I've not tried to tune anything much. It's also on this machine which is also running Firefox, Thunderbird and a bunch of other stuff.


Scarlett 2i2 gen1.


I had the 64-bit 2023 version running under Wine last year, with a few obvious caveats ... There's no proper wmp substitute in Wine, so demos wouldn't play, and all the RealTracks WMAs need conversion to WAVs (WMA quality, of course). There were a few small dialogs that also wouldn't work, but nothing significant. It seemed, then at least, to run a bit faster under Wine than on Windows.

That WMA->WAV expansion was what persuaded me to part with the money for the Audiophile version ... I figured if I was using the disc space, I might at least get the quality. I rebuilt the PC with a faster CPU, more RAM and M.2 and installed a slightly newer AVLinux. When I went to get BIAB running on it, I had a few fails. I'd already become a bit disillusioned with BIAB for my practice wants (too much time trying to make BIAB work with melody and arrangement, not enough actual piano practice) and I gave up at a violation pop-up. In fact it was a write-failed error because the filesystem was write protected. Having tried again since, that may have been the final hurdle. I may try again. There seem to be quite a few bugs in 2024 so far and I'm loathe to get involved with them at present.

Yes, some seem arcane just for the sake of it.

Gordon.

not just arcane but whoever thought those api up must have been trying to find the best way to make things most difficult fo win daw and music app programmers...lol.

what im trying to understand is reaps has only a couple of programmers ?...so how the hey did they go cross platform so fast ? which would seem to suggest it cant be that difficult to go cross platform ?
what i mean is reaps is not just on win but also mac ,linux and the cute pi etc. thats rather impressive.
other daws the same. maybe theres a toolkit ?
ps pi 5 is out ?

best.

om. 🇨🇦. 🇬🇧

It took the Reaper people a few years to do it, so it wasn't that quick. I don't know how many people they have.

FWIW, for my own developments on PCs, I've usually developed on linux with Windows and Mac in mind as I develop, then polish for Windows because that's the big market. I've had a few products used on Macs, but it's been a small market for me. I've not had anyone say my products don't work on a Mac, but I could just have been lucky. Note: My main environment is embedded real-time-ish and I do only a few things for PCs, usually not too complex and usually with a high-ish level language like Python or Tcl, where there's good cross-platform support and decent GUI support. Some of my embedded systems used dozens or hundreds of semi-autonomous modules co-operating over wired and wireless networks almost before the latter existed (my first such wasn't long after ALOHAnet and pick-a-backed over a fire services speech radio network).

It was 3 years ago I was trying all this, and found this http://www.geocities.ws/jovi9200/
"Extreme Beta Testing to keep it bug free"

EDIT: It may need the windows drivers so may not be any good ???

FFMPEG should be able to do it, they were using that in Reaper to play wma before using Media Foundation.
I don't know if there is anything here:
https://github.com/DelphiForBroadcasting/ffmpeg-delphi/blob/master/Examples/+simple-sdl2-player/Unit1.pas
https://torry.net/author/delphi-ffmpeg-vcl
http://www.delphiffmpeg.com/

will look more tomorrow....

FYI, I've just looked to see what latency I have with Reaper on Windows on the asame machine, same buffer size, also no special tuning:

9.0ms/11ms

"Oh, wait a minute, I think I remember this...." ... noises off.

I do. I'm pretty sure this is a combination of an operational feature in Windows11 (possibly others) and a safety feature in Linux.

What I remembered was learning that if one doesn't shut down Windows with a shift-click on the shut-down icon, Windows leaves some files in a non-closed state to help speed up the next boot up. Meanwhile, Linux will not open the filesystem in a writeable state if the filesystem contains unclosed files.

I've just run Windows and shut it down with the shift-click. The filesystem mounted writeable and the DAW plugin, at least, seems to be working a bit, but not setting styles or playing, but as I'd uninstalled from Linux, that may not be surprising. I shall reinstall and explore more later.