Rock solid. Better than Pro Tools.
How?
I chose my hardware wisely. In my case, I've got two Presonus Firepod FP-10 interfaces, which work out of the box with JACK. Truly superlative Firewire audio interfaces, and I chalk that up to the fact that the Bridgeco chipset used in these devices was developed in a pro-Linux environment.
Of course, ymmv .. especially if you fall into the PulseAudio trap, which is designed - imho - to make Audio suck on Linux as much as possible. Not so with Jack and Firewire audio - in this case, its the best possible combination of audio hardware and software components, given superlative latency and multi-channel I/o capabilities ..
It would also be great to see some audio latency numbers for ubuntu vs the rest on common hardware
JACK has a reputation for being fiddly to set up, but puts great emphasis on low-latency/real-time and other professional use-cases. I'd expect it to be competitive, but don't really have the knowledge to make the comparisons myself.
I did find this unfinished review of latency in JACK from a few years ago: http://apps.linuxaudio.org/wiki/jack_latency_tests#does_late...
I was looking into whether I should purchase Windows or buy a Mac to run a DAW, but if you're saying that Ardour is good enough, then I can just install that this weekend!
One of the simpler things is to customize the look and feel. E.g. you could try out different desktop experiences and WMs (window managers). Most of them are just an `apt-get` away and when you logout and login again you can choose and try out a different desktop.
This is really the great thing about Linux: we've got tons of options when it comes to audio I/o routing .. but its a liability too. My advice: commit to setting up Jack and learning it - definitely the best thing about Linux Audio.
I have a new workstation PC I just recently put together. It's currently running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS but I plan to switch over to Arch Linux in the near future. Because I want to use LUKS (a.k.a. full disk encryption) and ZFS (and multiple ZFS pools) on it, I decided to work through the installation procedure on a laptop first (just to make sure I've got the steps down right -- an installation w/ the root filesystem on ZFS is "non-standard", and LUKS throws additional issues into the mix) before I wipe out my primary work machine.
First, by default, the LUKS setup only supports "unlocking" a single encrypted drive at boot. Since the laptop has a pair of SSDs (in a ZFS mirror), I need to unlock both of them (and my workstation has an NVMe, two SSDs, and two HDDs, so that'll be an even bigger problem!). I had to "hack on" the initramfs stuff so that I could unlock both drives when the system boots up.
In addition, I have several Yubikeys and wanted to use them with LUKS. I set them up in Challenge-Response mode, programmed them with a "secret key" that I generated, and then came up with a (relatively) short(er) passphrase that I can use to unlock the disks. I also had to create a custom (initramfs) "hook" to prompt for my passphrase, detect if a Yubikey is attached and, if so, send the "challenge" to the Yubikey, receive the response from it, and use that to unlock the disks. If a Yubikey isn't attached, then I have to provide a (much longer, more secure) "backup" passphrase to unlock (each of) the disks.
On the laptop, this means I can enter in my (relatively) short(er) passphrase once and unlock both disks. On my workstation, it means I'll enter it once to unlock all five disks. The alternative would be to type in my much longer, more secure passphrase FIVE separate times every time I boot the system up.
None of this was very hard or time consuming, but it was necessary in order to meet my exact goals and I'm glad that Linux allows me the opportunity to do exactly this type of non-standard stuff.
And have you tried Bitwig yet? With its similarities to Ableton Live, I'm sure it has the potential to push audio production on Linux to some degree.
You'd be surprised just how many VST's work smoothly and reliably under Linux.
>Bitwig
Tried it, but not a fan - I have too many external hardware sequencers to be bothered with setting it up with the rest of my system. (Hardware sequencers run forever!) I do, however, have Ardour set up for perfect multi-channel recording, so every instrument has its own digital tracking, and this has been wonderful ..
https://www.linuxvoice.com/issues/003/LV3bitwig.pdf
As plugins go, many good ones are available in LV2 or similar formats so no problem on that front.
Well, it's not that impressive compared to something like Live or Cubase.
Your point being? "A subpar DAW should be enough for everybody in 2017 as long as it's better than 70s era studio technology"?
Not to mention that you compare apples and oranges. These people did rock, punk and/or jazz, not modern r&b, pop or electronic music that are usually more demanding of a DAW for one.
Second they had tens of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars as a budget for a single record, great facilities with top-notch acoustics, multiple producers, access to orchestras and top-notch musicians, and crazily expensive consoles with people to operate them for them.
Third one doesn't compete against Louis Armstrong era sound but against their own's generation's sound and production techniques.
Heck, the more advanced users end up going with a lot of hardware-based solutions and analog equipment.
There's also another meaning of freedom: freedom from having to care of worry about the platform, and being free to create, because you have a thing that "just works".
For musicians that's more important than "route everything to everything" (for which there are solutions even for commercial DAWs, e.g. Rewire for those that do care for it).
It's all about tradeoffs, but Jack and "freedom to modify DAW code" is pretty down on the list of priorities for 99% of musicians.
Also, a lot of time using FOSS is a choice we make not because of the price or principals but for convenience. I simply don't want to juggle licenses and dongles between home and studio computers, or for that matter be forced to install licensing software that is more or less a rootkit...
But the more essential question is: does it matter?
If one is experimental electronic musician / sound artist, it might be worth it.
But the average musician wants a good environment with the features they need built-in (and easy access to quality third party plugins etc for FX etc), not to tinker (and even less so, in C/C++) with their DAW.
If Pure Data was as mature and polished as Max (which it is not) we just as well would.
If not, those things matter more than openness when you have music to record and work to do.
The problem for me is not superior VS inferior or impressive VS unimpressive software but free software VS closed software.
The problem for most people is good and inferior, or "getting my work done with this" and "this is lacking".
Free vs closed doesn't even come second to most people's concerns, and I'm not even sure it should.
My main problem has recently been "why can't I open these songs anymore" vs "can still edit old productions anywhere, any OS, no need for intrusive DRM that takes over my entire laptop just because Steinberg"
There simply isn't any operating system as conducive to creative tinkering and progressive enhancement of key software as Ubuntu Studio. Its way, way ahead of the pack in this regard, and I think anyone who scoffs at the idea needs to be taught the lesson that Ubuntu - and of course, Linux and the ecosystem it promotes - is really worth the effort to know, learn and understand.