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Re:Ableton Live 13 by lewispollard on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @09:22AM (#50440808)
Depends what you mean by audio drivers, if you mean the audio subsystem, Jack has always been good for pro audio, and pipewire (the modern default) can be configured to be good too with the right packages. In terms of timing (latency you mean?) I have zero complaints using Jack via pipewire on a proper audio interface.

If you mean device drivers, it can be a bit hit or miss, generally stuff works but for example I have an SSL audio interface and while the audio works, it's missing a lot of the configuration options that the Windows drivers give you around customisable audio routing.

Re:Ableton Live 13 by criddell on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @10:12AM (#50441524)
[delayed]
Re:Ableton Live 13 by MrDrMcCoy on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @10:46AM (#50442013)
Linux can run specific apps with realtime priority since 6.12. Just gotta configure your audio stack to run that way.
Re:Ableton Live 13 by anthk on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @01:47PM (#50444457)
At the grub config, append to the end of the "kernel" line:

      preempt=full
Re:Ableton Live 13 by criddell on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @03:10PM (#50445639)
I would think that's the kind of thing the installer would take care of for you or that the app would modify on first launch. It's not reasonable to expect DAW end users to make those kinds of changes.
Re:Ableton Live 13 by lewispollard on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:40PM (#50447886)
I don't know if any DAWs do any modifications for you, but I know Bitwig at least pops up a warning if realtime privileges aren't detected with a documentation link.
Re:Ableton Live 13 by lewispollard on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @11:18AM (#50442473)
Ah yes, I understand - yes as the other comment says, kernel supports it but most distros aren't configured that way out of the box, but it's pretty simple in most of them - on Arch you install the `realtime-privileges` package and add your user to the `realtime` group, the audio server and DAW software takes it from there.