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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.
How would you improve the interface?
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.
I have never heard of it although I lurk the major audio forums daily. From what I see on their site I think Reaper + free plugins will get you farther.
Lmms is a good Foss replacement for FL studio.
Ardour is a decent replacement for ProTools. As others have said, it can be daunting or cumbersome but if you're looking for a complete DAW it is worth taking the time to learn.
If you want "just basics," lmms will work for programmed sounds & you can use audacity for a more robust live recording interface.
I haven't tried LMMS, but I stumbled across Bitwig a while back, and I started using that when I decided to pick up music making again. I love it. I tried using Ardour for a while, but I found it overly cumbersome.
I have used LMMS for quite a bit. It's fairly stable, and I really like the UI and the general experience, plus, it comes with basic samples and plugins with presets, which is nice.
The biggest drawback in my opinion at the moment is the lack of native support for lv2 and vst3 plugins, which limits the access to some usefull plugins like Surge. That and the lack of a record audio tool.
I tried Ardour which is much more complete. It's alright, but i'm not a fan of the user experience and it is far more complex.
ZRythm is very promising, but is not really stable right now.
So yeah, LMMS is defintely a good FOSS option and a good DAW despite the lack of some features in my opinion
Tracktion Waveform is free and has unlimited tracks, seems pretty nice, and is much more modern looking than last I checked on LMMS. I've been meaning to check it out more. It's the parts version, just 1 version behind the paid product.
Otherwise, I will probably just get the cheap Reaper license. The Commala theme has made that pretty sharp and it seems to do more than I know what to do with at this point
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.
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).
