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Years ago I ran Gentoo installs, and loved Linux (still do). Eventually I switched over to Mac because of the work I do. There are certain proprietary applications that only work in Mac, and you can't install them with Wine obviously.
I realized I was missing Linux, and so I setup my late 2012 iMac to run dual-boot with arch linux. I've gotten everything set working beautifully EXCEPT for the sound.
Sure, I can get sound to come out of the speakers, and I can hear it, but it sounds really bad. I'm a mastering engineer, so maybe my ears are just more tuned to it, but the sound comes out very wrong sounding.
My dilemma is somewhat complicated. I own three audio interfaces. One is my mastering DAC (Digital to Audio Converter). The DAC is called the "Hilo" and is designed by Lynx. Lynx unfortunately does not write drivers for Linux and doesn't plan to (as virtually none of their client base uses Linux). They claim that if you have the USB version of the Hilo that it will work in Linux with OSS. Alas, I got the thunderbolt version of the Hilo, and after searching far and wide it appears that no one has developed drivers for thunderbolt audio interfaces.
One of my other audio interfaces is the Apollo Twin Duo from UAD. This is also a thunderbolt interface, and no luck there either.
My 3rd audio interface is a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, which is a USB interface. Not exactly high quality, but I figured it would have to do. After plugging it in, it worked right out the gate, but working doesn't mean sounding right. I plugged in headphones into the 2i2 and listened to some music and noticed immediately that something wasn't right. The stereo image was off, it sounded muddier than usual, and the clarity and depth just wasn't there. Sure, it sounded like the songs but the quality just wasn't there.
I booted back into my Mac OS X partition and using the same audio interface and headphones demo'd the same songs and there was an immediate difference that was very apparent. The songs suddenly had way more depths and clarity.
Now, I don't pretend that the Scarlett has a great headphone amp in it, but even with this low budget interface I could tell a huge difference between ALSA/OSS with pulse-audio and coreaudio in Mac.
Can anyone explain why this would be? I figure that audio drivers should be very simple to code. All the computer is doing is delivering pure digital audio to the DAC in the interface which converts the signal to an analog signal, allowing you to hear the audio.
I can't seem to figure out why it sounds so off in Linux. Am I missing something?
Also, is there any other way for me to interface with my Mastering DAC? The DAC can take Toslink input, so I was thinking of getting a toslink cable to plug into the headphone jack of the iMac and send pure digital audio from arch linux to the Hilo that way. Has anyone tried this kind of setup with Linux?
I'd really like to dial in the sound, because other than the sound everything else is amazing. My Linux install runs way faster than my Mac OS X install, and I'm loving the amount of customization and the superb package managers I get to choose from in Linux.
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Could start playing with pulseaudio sample rate first ...
Audiophile
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Hi PrismaPhonic,
I have a 2i2 as well, and while I am neither an audiophile nor a studio engineer, I'd venture to say it works pretty ok on Linux.
Try to bypass/disable/kill with fire PulseAudio and make a proper comparison with jack and alsa instead (and an RT kernel if you're concerned with latency, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ProAudio).
While PA does a fine job if you want to chat with grandma on Skype, it was never designed with serious audio applications in mind - by serious I mean anything more than watching dancing cat videos on Youtube. For audiophile or studio applications I wouldn't recommend it.
It would also be worth checking that your audio player on each platform is not doing any black magic enhancement in the background - at least for the sake of fair comparison.
Maybe you could try with something cross platform like VLC, or just a raw file player...
We were by the way discussing the shortcomings of the 2i2 in the thread below a few days ago on that other forum:
http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14032
Since your ears are very likely a lot sharper than ours, it would be for sure interesting to hear your conclusions ;-)
Cheers,
LX
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Regarding your second question, if you happen to have a second Mac you could maybe try NetJack:
http://www.linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic … 27&t=14159
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