LMMS is a music production software. I use it on my PC. Is it good as an alternative for paid DAWs?
It has some cool features that aren’t available even in some of the leading industry DAWs like key/scale note highlight, but it also lacks some absolutely essential basic features like showing the playback position in beat mode (it means when you writing beats you can’t see where playback is at currently).
I am not an audio professional and I personally am not in love with the interface in my limited use of the thing – though my basis for comparison is only much-simpler software packages – but I have consistently seen Ardour recommended as a DAW under Linux.
If you have not considered it, I’d probably at least have it on your list to look at.
Yeah as someone who’s been producing for 6y I haven’t looked into LMMS a lot but that’s also because I did not really like what I saw particularly. Ardour looks a bit more robust.
There’s the argument that you can make every type of tool have the same effect if you use it properly, but imo it’s a big difference in the end. So plugins will always be a bit of a struggle for compatibility in Linux (I’m sorry Linux power users, but I’ve been there and had to go back). Otherwise it might be a viable option.
As an amateur who used it for a year before switching to FL Studio, I could only recommend it as a way to explore DAW-based music creation for free before switching to something paid and better.
It’s just not feature complete enough, missing basic features like VST3 support (or VST support at all in the Mac version,) time signature changes, sample manipulation capabilities, or in-DAW recording, and it’s built-in effects plugins are overly hard to use. I’ve also seen claims it’s rendering engine is flawed and causes a minor distortion effect, but I can’t verify that myself.
I find it pretty basic and it doesn’t support VST3 plugins, but you might find that the limits help you to become more creative. I’ve also heard of Ardour which is more comparable to other high end DAWs like Ableton when it comes to features. It’s technically free since you can attempt to compile it yourself but you can get an installer for cheap.
I use LMMS with simple soundfonts instead of VSTis, and it sounds just as good as the garbage I made with FL Studio back when I pirated it and didn’t have to care about publishing.
If you don’t want to pay, LMMS is the best option in my opinion.
