🧵 So, the #Recording with the vintage #RME #Fireface400 in #Ardour on old #macOS on a #MacBookPro 2017 went well, I guess.

This thread started with me praising #Pipewire on #Linux.

And yes, I still believe Pipewire is what users of Windows and OSX will envy us Linuxers for. One fine day.

As it is for now, none of my professional audio interfaces works with it. The Yamha 01v96i via USB doesn't, the RME Digi9652 (vintage PCI) doesn't, and the Fireface400 (vintage Firewire) used to work well with Jack's firewire backend, but it doesn't work so well with the newer ALSA kernel driver apparently.

It is possible to run these interfaces using a mixed mode of #Jack and Pipewire on #UbuntuStudio 24.04 still, but it means that you lose most of the convenience Pipewire actually introduces.

So, sadly, my conclusion for today is: Class Compliant USB audio interfaces and Pipewire are great. The rest, at lest for me & my gear, is not working.

🧵 So, the vintage #MacBook 2017 still does it with the #RME #Fireface400 and #Totalmix.

Unfortunately, I don't have my plugins installed on it since I only use it as a monitor mixer and recorder with #TotalMix and #Ardour.

Even though Ardour does recognize plugins used in projects that are the same on #macOS and #Linux, so you can copy projects around without any issue – not the case with #Cubase even between #Windows11 and #Windows10 and the very same plugin binaries…

Of course, #Apple enthusiasts will never accept that a #MacBook 2017 can be still used today at all.

Thing is, probably #Firewire via Thunderbolt3 (with adaptors) won't even work on today's Apple computers.

So, Apple folks must be making enough money with recording apparently to buy new computers and new audio interfaces regularly.

Well, things do work now, on #osX. Sadly, the cool #Bluetooth trick with #Pipewire playing back audio over a phone connection now has gone down the drain for this project…

🧵 Having praised #Pipewire…

… the #RME #Fireface400 disappeared from the scene just moments later.

I did a reboot, like if this was #Windows, except this is #UbuntuStudio #Linux.

The Fireface is back up. But not so is #ffadoMixer.

„No supported devices found“

I am not willing to imagine this happening at my client's place.

Perhaps it's time to fetch the vintage #MacBook pro from the storage for this job… like I used to do with the FireFace 400, just because #TotalMix was so much more convenient.

Unfortunately, it is quite unlikely to get such an old tool like FfadoMixer improved, because these #Firewire #FFADO audio devices are vintage gear. Yet, I doubt more recent Fireface UFX devices have different preamps or different converters… so why spending over 1k€ on something new?

I am currently preparing a mobile #Recording session on my #UbuntuStudio #Linux laptop.

I cannot over-emphasize the coolness of #Pipewire, the new Linux audio system!

So while I'm testing a couple of expensive mics with my #RME #FireFace400, the actual result is to be used as a #VoiceBox announcement.

So how to monitor this audio in a realistic way?

Well, turns out I can pair my mobile phone using #Bluetooth with Pipewire. Then I can call up myself from the mobile on my fixed line phone… and simply play back the audio from #Ardour via my mobile all the way through the lousy phone network right into my fixed line phone.

This is just amazing!

(#ffadoMixer still is inconvenient to use when compared to #TotalMix and I still have to figure out how to run it not as root, but oh well, can't have the cake and eat it, I'd say.)

EDIT… or will this go down the drain? (🧵 )