LMMS - free cross platform DAW (I think)

Lounge
1

Has anyone used this? Is it any good? Does Rack Pro run in it??

1 Like
2

Looks interesting, I’m gonna give it a try…

3

I looked at it before I went into vcv. The project to me looked kind of dead at that time. Latest release notes are from 2020? Not sure it is worth spending time on when they are not developing on it. I might be wrong.

4

I gave it a try for a while. It’s not bad, and depending on your needs, it could be perfect. I found it quite limited though, or just awkward to use. I remember there was an issue with knowing where in the bar/section is playing.

5

Maybe give Ardour a look as well

6

Or Zrythm perhaps

1 Like
7

I’ve been playing around with it, used it to build a couple of tracks. It feels powerful or flexible in some regards and rather limited in other ways – and a little clunky. For instance: one of its main instruments is ZynAddSubFX, a very versatile synth with a ton of parameters but a rather inelegant, complex UI (kind of a beginner’s nightmare, but fine if you stick to the presets). LMMS allows for a fair amount of automation, stacking of effects, etc., but not all of it is intuitive, and it’s still lacking swing and certain other desirable features. (It doesn’t record audio, either, but that’s the kind of DAW its creators chose to make. It does record MIDI.)

As I understand it, development is still ongoing but fairly slow. Version 1.3 brings some marked improvements, but is still only at the alpha stage: you can download recent builds (there’s a link in the Discord), it’s working all right for me, but I wouldn’t recommend using 1.3 for serious projects.

I would recommend trying it out for yourself (either version 1.2 or 1.3). It’s free, after all; under Linux, you can simply download the AppImage and run it, no installation required.

8

It’s still a little far from a usable DAW by modern standards, definitely want it to succeed though.

Ardour is probably the most mature one in the open source DAW category, but you need to pay for the binary or build it yourself (on linux your package manager may provide it for free).

The last time I check Zrythm it is very slow and buggy. (Update: I tried the latest version, the performance did improve a bit, but it’s still too buggy, and now you need to pay for it too.)