jonahst10 Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 Hey all, first post so I hope I'm doing this right. I've recently joined the cult of Linux, and am looking to make primarily electronic music through Ubuntu 18.04. I know that some more common audio interfaces have plug-and-play compatibility, but I'm interested in connecting my Helix directly to my DAW (Ardour) via its USB cable. At the time of posting this I haven't actually started messing with configuring this on my own, but figured I should crowdsource experiences others may have had: has anyone had any experience/luck getting the Helix to work with any Linux distro in this way? I tried looking in the Knowledge Base but didn't find any relevant information for this situation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunpointmetal Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 Linux is cool if you're willing to do a lot of the "nerd work" yourself. As far as Plug and Play, some class compliant stuff will work just fine, but most stuff with "pro" hardware is gonna require its own drivers for best function. Unless you wanna do your own patching/porting in Linux, it'd probably be easier to find an interface that is known-working with linux and do the analog out of the Helix into that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonahst10 Posted November 19, 2019 Author Share Posted November 19, 2019 26 minutes ago, gunpointmetal said: Linux is cool if you're willing to do a lot of the "nerd work" yourself. As far as Plug and Play, some class compliant stuff will work just fine, but most stuff with "pro" hardware is gonna require its own drivers for best function. Unless you wanna do your own patching/porting in Linux, it'd probably be easier to find an interface that is known-working with linux and do the analog out of the Helix into that. Yeah I kinda figured that would be the case. At the moment I don't have the budget for a decent Linux-compatible interface like a Focusrite (hence the Free Open Source Software approach!), but I was hoping somebody else had already done the "nerd work" for me. Would be a fun community project to collaborate on a compatible Linux driver though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DunedinDragon Posted November 19, 2019 Share Posted November 19, 2019 3 hours ago, jonahst10 said: Would be a fun community project to collaborate on a compatible Linux driver though! Fun for who? Certainly not the developers..and testers if there were any. About 40 manhours to develop and 4,000 manhours to debug. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gsking1 Posted November 20, 2019 Share Posted November 20, 2019 I just posted about this yesterday in another linux thread. Helix Stomp works fine for me with Ubuntu 19.10 and Ardour, both audio and midi over USB. As long as you carefully pick your hardware, I imagine where you'll run into limitations is with third party plugins for DAW. There are some good companies with software for linux, but not alot (Reaper, Bitwig, U-he, others??), but most will just say they don't support it so you may have some work to-do. If you want synths, definitely give u-he a try, everything they make is to shelf. I like Ardour a lot for straight multi-track audio. But with all that said, I'm a Mac guy now and don't expect to change anytime soon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonandtice Posted November 20, 2019 Share Posted November 20, 2019 My Helix LT does not work as a class compliant USB audio interface, however I haven't tried to use it since 2.8 firmware came out and I haven't updated to Ubuntu 19.10 yet. Maybe I'll try again tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted November 20, 2019 Share Posted November 20, 2019 It seems to me that the Helix family things aren't exactly class compliant anyway. It has been said that the Helix would work as a class compliant device for older OSes without dedicated driver support, but that doesn't seem to be true as it simply doesn't even show up on my old Macbook running OSX 10.6.8 (which is working pretty fine with a number of other class compliant devices). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maraconza Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 Tried my HX stomp on Manjaro Linux (Kernel 5.4). Works fine as long as you don't need it to work alongside with another audio interface (e.s Hx stomp as input device, something else as output, to monitors) Hopefully it will be fixed soon, but not expecting it to be done by Line 6 team but rather from Linux developers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunpointmetal Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 On 11/20/2019 at 5:39 PM, SaschaFranck said: It seems to me that the Helix family things aren't exactly class compliant anyway. It has been said that the Helix would work as a class compliant device for older OSes without dedicated driver support, but that doesn't seem to be true as it simply doesn't even show up on my old Macbook running OSX 10.6.8 (which is working pretty fine with a number of other class compliant devices). That's a 9 year old update to an 11 year old OS, I wouldn't expect much new hardware to just work without some help, class-compliant or not. After working on a lot of 2009-2012 MacBooks, I'm impressed your USB ports still work at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaschaFranck Posted January 23, 2020 Share Posted January 23, 2020 Well, pretty much all class compliant devices work just fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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