Audio interface for Linux, an easy way to record guitars and microphones

[Terminal Velocity]

For DAW I have concluded in Ardour, I can do some basic stuff in it but I'm not proficient in it by any means. What equipment I need to buy to do this job in Linux? I use Debian 11

 

[Vimmer]

For DAW I have concluded in Ardour, I can do some basic stuff in it but I'm not proficient in it by any means. What equipment I need to buy to do this job in Linux? I use Debian 11

I don't have much experience with ardour, i just use audacity with debian 12. The operating system matters a lot: Ubuntu Studio boasts low-latency but uses KDE Plasma which has lots of bugs. Also, for whatever reason, the audacity that comes installed is a very old version, and trying to update it didn't work so well for me. Also, Ubuntu and Windows 11 both have a sound driver bug where it records this awful static noise at times, and no it wasn't a hardware problem because switching to debian fixed this completely for me.

As far as guitars go: do you want to record acoustic with a microphone, or plug directly in with effects? If you plug the guitar in with a high-z input, you might have latency issues.

With a microphone, it's theoretically easy: every audio interface with a USB-C input for your computer (the other end is normal USB) works without any drivers. I use a MOTU-M4, but you have a large selection to choose from, it's good to research your options a lot because audio equipment can be extremely expensive. Audio interfaces are pretty much necessary because they are a simple way to get analogue-to-digital (sound to binary for recording) and digital-to-analogue (binary to sound for speakers)
I would love to hear about alternative setups though, even though the way i have it now works for what i'm doing (i'm an acoustic singer/songwriter). No latency issues, i've recorded and mastered three songs now with this setup.

EDIT: one thing i forgot to mention about the interfaces is that i don't think amything steinburg will work with linux. As they've had EULAs for their drivers as far as i can remember.

 

[KGIII]

I just use my MOTU and Audacity. The missus is a Bitwig Studio fan.

 

[GatorsFan]

You could have a look at guitarix - https://guitarix.org/

 

[JasKinasis]

All you need is a USB audio interface, a DAW and some microphones. Or a USB mixer, a DAW and some mics.

Interface-wise, I’m currently using a Behringer UMC1820, which has 8 line-in/XLR mic inputs plus 2 additional line ins. Which I use for recording my entire drum kit.

I’ve also got a Behringer ADA8200 which I can plug into the UMC1820’s ADAT ports, to provide me with an additional 8 XLR mic inputs. Enabling me to record drums and the rest of my band. Guitars, bass and vocals, plus some room mics.

Prior to that, I was just using a Digidesign MBox2 interface which only has 2 inputs.

Compatibility-wise The UMC1820 and the MBox2 just work out of the box in Linux. Literally plug and play. Plug it in and within a few seconds it gets recognised as an audio device.

The ADA8200 kind-of works out of the box. But initially, it only gave me access to input channels 7 and 8. Channels 1 to 6 on the ADA8200 just didn’t work at all.

All of the channels on the ADA8200 appeared in the DAW, but if I plugged a mic into any of the first 6 channels on the ADA8200, no signal was getting to the DAW. I could see there was a signal going through the ADA8200 on those channels because the indicators were flashing. The signal just wasn’t getting to the DAW.

After a bit of DuckDuckGo-fu I discovered I wasn’t the first person to see this problem.
And wasn’t surprised to see that others had already found a way to fix the issue. It turned out to be an ALSA configuration problem. By default, ALSA only mapped the last two channels as audio inputs. I managed to find out what config changes needed to be made in order to make all of the channels available. Once I had it working, I created a script, in case I needed to set it up on another Linux system.

So between those two Behringer audio interfaces, I have 10 to 18 simultaneous mic/line input channels available and something like 28 outs (for monitoring/passthrough).

So if I want to record drums, I’ll break out my UMC1820. If I want to record the whole band, I’ll plug the ADA8200 into the UMC1820 to get the extra inputs I need.

But if I just want to record some guitar-riffs, or some bass ideas, I use my trusty old MBox2.

DAW-wise, I’m using Ardour on my Debian laptop. I’ve used Pro-tools, logic and cubase on windows in the distant past, so Ardour hasn’t been too tricky to work out / understand. Reaper is another good DAW I’ve been using. Some of my band-mates use Reaper. So using Reaper makes it easier to send entire sessions back and forth to each other.

 

[MikeWalsh]

If I want to mess around with anything audio-related, I just fire-up the final build of 10wt3ch's Studio 13.37.....the one that's based around 18.04 'Bionic Beaver'. 10wt3ch included just about every DAW & audio-processing app you could think of (and THEN some).

The name hints at its origins; early builds were based on one of the 'Slacko' Puppies, itself based around Slackware 13.37. Although the OS base changed over the years, the name stuck...

Amongst these are both the Linux build of Reaper AND the Windows version running under WINE. So, yeah; Reaper would certainly work for sharing between band-members where almost certainly most will be using Windows....

Originally, 10wt3ch used to sell it for just the price of a flash drive, all set-up and ready to boot......to make a bit of baccy money. Eventually, he dropped that and just offered it free-of-charge; the links disappeared some time ago, but I snagged a copy and uploaded it to my MEGA.nz a/c. If anybody's interested in trying it out, drop me a PM.


Mike.

 

[gvisoc]

For DAW I have concluded in Ardour, I can do some basic stuff in it but I'm not proficient in it by any means. What equipment I need to buy to do this job in Linux? I use Debian 11

I have a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (2 XLR inputs, 2-channel output thorugh USB) that I bought about 5 years ago, and works well for my podcasts and streams --although I don't do much with the two inputs at the same time. Not sure if newer generations will work this well.

 

[Frank-Son-Of-Jimmy]

All you need is a USB audio interface, a DAW and some microphones. Or a USB mixer, a DAW and some mics.

Interface-wise, I’m currently using a Behringer UMC1820, which has 8 line-in/XLR mic inputs plus 2 additional line ins. Which I use for recording my entire drum kit.

I’ve also got a Behringer ADA8200 which I can plug into the UMC1820’s ADAT ports, to provide me with an additional 8 XLR mic inputs. Enabling me to record drums and the rest of my band. Guitars, bass and vocals, plus some room mics.

Prior to that, I was just using a Digidesign MBox2 interface which only has 2 inputs.

Compatibility-wise The UMC1820 and the MBox2 just work out of the box in Linux. Literally plug and play. Plug it in and within a few seconds it gets recognised as an audio device.

The ADA8200 kind-of works out of the box. But initially, it only gave me access to input channels 7 and 8. Channels 1 to 6 on the ADA8200 just didn’t work at all.

All of the channels on the ADA8200 appeared in the DAW, but if I plugged a mic into any of the first 6 channels on the ADA8200, no signal was getting to the DAW. I could see there was a signal going through the ADA8200 on those channels because the indicators were flashing. The signal just wasn’t getting to the DAW.

After a bit of DuckDuckGo-fu I discovered I wasn’t the first person to see this problem.
And wasn’t surprised to see that others had already found a way to fix the issue. It turned out to be an ALSA configuration problem. By default, ALSA only mapped the last two channels as audio inputs. I managed to find out what config changes needed to be made in order to make all of the channels available. Once I had it working, I created a script, in case I needed to set it up on another Linux system.

So between those two Behringer audio interfaces, I have 10 to 18 simultaneous mic/line input channels available and something like 28 outs (for monitoring/passthrough).

So if I want to record drums, I’ll break out my UMC1820. If I want to record the whole band, I’ll plug the ADA8200 into the UMC1820 to get the extra inputs I need.

But if I just want to record some guitar-riffs, or some bass ideas, I use my trusty old MBox2.

DAW-wise, I’m using Ardour on my Debian laptop. I’ve used Pro-tools, logic and cubase on windows in the distant past, so Ardour hasn’t been too tricky to work out / understand. Reaper is another good DAW I’ve been using. Some of my band-mates use Reaper. So using Reaper makes it easier to send entire sessions back and forth to each other.

Hi @JasKinasis,

Would you mind to tell what you exactly did, to enable all ports with the ADA8200 connected to the UMC1820?
I have that exact same problem right now - only ports 7 and 8 are working on my Linux recording PC.
Thank you!