PROCEDURE: FL Studio Under Linux Using Wine

[The Rev. Dr. Mick]

I've had some success getting FL Studio 10.0.9c to run under Linux with the Windows Emulator (WINE) software so I think I will document the steps I used here in the hope that others will follow and perhaps solve some of the minor problems I've been having (to come).

If you have any success at all, I hope that you will do us the kind favour of posting your results here.

Thanks,

- The Rev. Dr. Mick -
- Calgary, Canada -


INSTALLATION PROCEDURES

You'll need root access. This worked for me on a quad-core i7 box with an M-Audio Delta 1010LT multichannel audio interface and dual-screens running Fedora 17 X86 64-bit.

[My apologies to experienced users for the length of this procedure--I am mainly targeting musicians who may not have much experience with the nitty-gritty of Linux administration, so tended on the verbose side. Luckily, I used to write documentation for a living...]


A. Install Wine

A-1. Download and install the Wine software from your distribution. For Fedora:

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sudo yum install wine wine-alsa

The wine-alsa software needs to be installed specifically so that wine will use the ALSA driver instead of its pulseaudio driver (the system default on Fedora). Otherwise you won't see your MIDI devices within FL Studio.


B. Install Wineasio

B-1. Download the free wineasio source code tar file from SourceForge. http://sourceforge.net/projects/wineasio. Click the "Download" button.

B-2. Change directory and untar. For Fedora:

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cd ~/Downloads
tar -xvf wineasio-0.9.0.tar.gz

In order to compile wineasio, we need a header file from Steinberg's ASIO Software Developer Kit (SDK). Steinberg probably could make this easier....

B-3. Surf to http://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/company/ ... count.html and register as a 3rd party developer. This is a free service. You'll need to give a valid email address.

Steinberg will send you a confirmation email in order to activate your account.

B-4. Open the confirmation email and click on the link to activate.

You should see a new web page saying that your account has been activated.

B-5. Surf to http://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/company/ ... ortal.html and login with the username and password you created above.

B-6. Click on the "ASIO SDK" button.

You will see more legalese than anyone should see at one time. What we're doing is perfectly legal according to Steinberg's provisions, but if you're a purist:

B-7. Have your cat accept the SDK licence agreement by jumping on a folded piece of cardboard positioned over your Enter key. Or read the agreement. Your call.

B-8. Click on "ASIO SDK" in the right hand column and save the zip file to your hard disk.

B-9. Change to the directory with "asiosdk2.2.zip", unzip it, and copy the header we need to the directory containing the untarred wineasio. For Fedora:

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cd ~/Downloads
unzip asiosdk2.2.zip
cp ASIOSDK2/common/asio.h wineasio

That's all we need from the ASIO SDK. You can delete it if you want.

B-10. We may need some support programs and libraries to get wineasio to compile. For Fedora:

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sudo yum install gcc glibc-devel.i686 wine-devel.i686 jack-audio-connection-kit-devel.i686

B-11. Compile, install and register wineasio. For Fedora:

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cd ~/Downloads/wineasio
make
sudo make install
regsvr32 wineasio.dll

You'll see a bunch of messages from wine on the terminal. Ignore them.

Wineasio is now installed and integrated with Wine. You may remove the wineasio directory that we made above.


C. Use Winetricks to Change Wine's Audio from Pulseaudio to ALSA

C-1. Download Winetricks and make executable. For most distributions:

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wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks
chmod a+x winetricks

C-2. Run winetricks. For most distributions:

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./winetricks

C-3. Select "Select the default wineprefix" and click OK.

C-4. Select "Change settings" and click OK.

C-5. Scroll down to "sound=alsa" and check it. Click OK.

C-6. Click Cancel until Winetricks exits.


D. Install a JACK Manager and Configure JACK

D-1. But first, add your Linux username to the "audio" and "jackuser" groups. I've heard that in other distributions "jackrt" is used instead of "jackuser". For Fedora:

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sudo useradd -G audio,jackuser your_username

D-2. Logout of your windowing system and log back in so a new terminal shell will reflect the updated group membership.

D-3. QJACKControl is a good choice for managing JACK. For Fedora:

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sudo yum install qjackctl

D-4. Start QJACKControl

D-5. Click "Setup..."

D-6. A "Frames/Period" setting of 1024 seems to work well and set the "Sample Rate" to 44100. Make sure the correct interface is selected--it should be something like "hw:0,0" or "hw:1,0". Also be sure "Realtime" is checked.

D-7. Click "OK" to save your settings.

D-8. Click "Start" to start the JACK server.

If all goes well "Started" should appear in yellow in the status window. Also, "RT" should blink to the right of "Started". This indicates that JACK is running in Realtime mode. If JACK doesn't start then check the Messages window to see if you can diagnose the problem.

D-9. Leave JACK running--JACK needs to be running any time you want to run FL Studio (which we'll do next).


E. Install and Configure FL Studio

E-1. Install FL Studio under Wine. For most distributions:

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wine flstudio_10.0.9c.exe

E-2. Answer the FL Studio install questions. It is not necessary to install ASIOforAll. Leave "Run FL Studio Now" checked.

FL Studio will install and it should start after.

E-3. Click on "Options > Audio Settings" and choose WineASIO from the dropdown menu.

E-4. Try to play the welcome project.

If it works, congratulations! (It did for me.)

E-5. When you're done playing, quit FL Studio.

E-6. Install your registration code (if you have one) so you're not stuck in demo mode. For most distributions:

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regedit FLRegKey.Reg

E-7. Install any plugins that you need. For most distributions, an example:

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wine groovemachine_install.exe

WORKFLOW PROCEDURE

1. Start QJACKControl.

2. Start JACK from within QJACKControl.

3. Start FL Studio. For most distributions:

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wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Image-Line/FL\ Studio\ 10/FL.exe

4. Make beautiful music (or gut-wrenching sludge, ok).

5. Quit FL Studio.

6. Stop JACK from within QJACKControl.

[gamecat666]

thank you for the detailed description, i've be...

[noahadvs]

Thanks for the Info! By the way there are other...

[noahadvs]

Just wondering, how did you get WineASIO to com...

[The Rev. Dr. Mick]

noahadvs, First off, you don't need to compile...

[noahadvs]

The Rev. Dr. Mick wrote:noahadvs, First off, y...

[The Rev. Dr. Mick]

noahadvs, Well it looks like your box's instal...

[draeath]

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