Music production
Digital Audio Workstation and plugins
Linux native

Real-time priority scheduling

Make sure that the Linux sound system uses PipeWire with JACK replacement provided by packages like pipewire-jack or pipewire-jack-audio-connection-kit or similiar, depending on distribution.

1. Install package realtime-privileges or realtime-setup or similar (distro dependent) or manually modify /etc/security/limits.conf (wiki)

2. Add user to realtime group
   $ sudo gpasswd -a $USER realtime

3. Set optimal audio latency based on hardware (periods / sample rate), e.g. in ~/.bashrc
   export PIPEWIRE_LATENCY="512/48000"

Host application

Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software for instrument and effect plugins, recording, editing, mixing, etc.

• REAPER

• Renoise

• Bitwig Studio

• Tracktion Waveform

• Ardour, Qtractor, LMMS, Radium, Studio One (as of 2023 in beta and Wayland-only)

Configure the DAW application to use JACK audio system.

Plugins

User installation locations for VST (1 and 2) and VST3 plugins respectively:

~/.vst/pluginA.so
~/.vst3/pluginB.vst3

There are more legacy and new development plugin formats which go into directories like ~/.lv2 or ~/.clap and others.

Free instruments

1. TAL-NoiseMaker (synth)
   https://tal-software.com/products/tal-noisemaker
   
   ~/.vst3/TAL-NoiseMaker.vst3
   
   Look inside ~/.toguaudioline/TAL-NoiseMaker/presets

2. Dexed (synth)
   https://github.com/asb2m10/dexed/releases/
   
   ~/.vst3/Dexed.vst3

3. Odin 2 (synth)
   https://thewavewarden.com/pages/odin-2
   
   ~/.vst3/Odin2.vst3

4. OB-Xd (synth) – old no-cost release 2, not version 3
   https://demo.discodsp.com/Obxd214.zip
   
   ~/.vst/OB-Xd.so
   ~/Documents/discoDSP

5. Tunefish 3 or 4 if it works on your system (synth)
   https://www.tunefish-synth.com/download
   
   ~/.vst/tunefish3.so
   ~/.vst/tf3programs

6. Xhip (synth)
   http://xhip.net/synth/
   
   ~/.vst/xhip.so
   
   Look inside ~/.xhip/synth

7. Speedrum Lite (drum sampler)
   https://www.apisoniclabs.com/freeware.html#speedrum-lite
   
   Use own sample audio files to create a drum kit.

8. Geonkick (drum synthesizer)
   https://geonkick.org/
   
   ~/.vst3/Geonkick.vst3
   ~/.local/share/geonkick/presets
   
   Extract presets from the .tar.gz file inside path  share/geonkick/presets

9. Decent Sampler (sampler) – similar to Native Instruments Kontakt
   https://www.decentsamples.com/product/decent-sampler-plugin/
   
   ~/.vst3/DecentSampler.vst3
   ~/.config/DecentSampler/Sample Libraries
   
   Sample libraries are downloaded separately and are generally 200 MB - 600 MB in size.

Other popular free synths new and old: Helm, Vital, Surge XT, Tyrell N6, Podolski, Triple Cheese, Zebralette

Windows© VSTs

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge