FM3-Edit + Wine

nota

nota

Member
I'm using a recent version of Wine and 64 bit bottle (on Manjaro XFCE).

Both audio drivers, FM3 Edit, and Bot all installed fine. I can fire up FM3 edit, but it does not connect by default. It DOES let me connect with the "MIDI Through Port-0" option, but it has messed up into like garbled presets and no options, can't do anything. The FM3 works fine as an audio interface so far, it's listed under aplay -l and all that.

I know people have gotten this setup working!
 
Exactly the same issue here. Running FM3-Edit through Wine always brings option "MIDI Through Port-0" regardless of FM3 being connected or not. After connecting FM3 it shows up in Ubuntu as:
/dev/ttyACM0
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which makes it a regular serial device, but after following instructions on Wine page for serial devices set up, FM3-Edit doesn't want to show any connection with FM3.

I was trying to recreate entries in registers:
wine regedit
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to create similar FM3 entries as on Windows, but these seems to get deleted with each run of Wine. I am bit stuck.
 
I spent a huge part of two days troubleshooting this and returned the FM3. My discoveries after many hours of research:

- Wine will not work. Even if you set up the serial port correctly (I tried various ways) there are custom drivers which won't work.

- Eventually I gave up and set up a Windows 8.1 VM in Virtualbox. After hours of updates and then setting up the serial port correctly (I had to set permissions of the ttyACM0 and then associate it with the correct serial port in VM) it did work. I was excited until I realized my audio was crackling every 10 seconds or so (common problem with firmware 1.05). So I went through the update process, and 1.06 update worked. Then there was no USB audio at all. I even downgraded and then upgraded again, same problems.

- Note that the serial ports and USB audio are totally separate, the software controlling the unit uses only serial, USB audio is only for playback and recording.

- Sent Fractal help request, they will not touch Linux (even though it's a class compliant USB audio device, at least on paper). I needed the FM3 to be everything for my setup, including an interface, so I returned it.

I'd be happy to get hired by FAS to be a Linux liason and tester! But until enough people (especially musicians) use Linux they have no real reason to support it.
 
Linux (and especially for musicians) is really not that common ... if you dig linux in general, maybe a Mac is something for you?
Even an old Mac works truly good and no headaches about drivers and stuff ... just my two cents :)
 
I was an Apple fanboy back in the day too. I know the system pretty well, in college was when I made the switch from OS9 to the brand new X, which was Unix based with a nice GUI. In fact that's what got me into learning Unix. But Linux is far better for me, for several reasons. In fact I'd recommend it for you, because I used to be like you :)

Edit: Linux doesn't give you any headaches about drivers either, that's a Windows thing. The FM3 is supposed to be a class-compliant USB audio device that "just works" for audio - and it did under 1.05. The crackling was a problem on other platforms too, and they "fixed" it but also broke it on my system. No idea why, but not because of drivers. The drivers are only for the serial side of things AFAIK.
 
nota said:
I was an Apple fanboy back in the day too. I know the system pretty well, in college was when I made the switch from OS9 to the brand new X, which was Unix based with a nice GUI. In fact that's what got me into learning Unix. But Linux is far better for me, for several reasons. In fact I'd recommend it for you, because I used to be like you :)
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I used Linux as a desktop workstation for years. Back when having plug and play USB working was a nightmare; or when getting your WiFi chipset to connect to the network was a 3 hours task. I understand that now it’s a little easier and most of the stuff works right away, but it’s still a pain to use Linux as a workstation. I used it every day (on servers) at work, and there’s nothing better.

But as far as workstation is concerned, IMHO nothing beats a Mac. Been using it for the past 13 years and I am so happy I switched.
 
Is this really the case, that you cannot get FM3-edit to work in linux with either Wine or a virtual MS Windows installation? Very bad news since I run a linux DAW and just signed up on the European waitlist. I have a great working firewire audio interface so I can live without the USB audio. Presets can be tweaked on the unit I suppose, but if there is no way of uploading new stuff there is not much point.

@nota: Were you able to control the unit with FM3-edit and the latest firmware even though the audio was out? Nice to see a fellow linux user btw.
 
Sorry for the tech issues, but I find the Fractal stuff works great with bottle of Malbec or Shiraz. ;)
 
I returned the unit, so I have no idea if the issue is fixed. It was very close, but fairly unusable to me without USB support. It may be fixed in a future patch!

But yes, everything worked fine once set up correctly, except for the things mentioned above.
 
Just received my FM3 yesterday, no issues discovered so far with either Fractal-Bot or FM3-Edit using Windows 10 in a VirtualBox VM under Linux. Using a Roland UM-ONE as the MIDI interface.
Have already installed the 2.0 beta in this environment. It looked like their might be an issue with FM3-Edit as there was no connection at first, but then I realized I needed to install the FM3 Windows drivers.
 
Note that although I haven't tried it I'm guessing that the Linux amidi application would probably work just fine in place of Fractal-Bot, not need to use another OS to send/receive sysex. It, amidi, works fine for updating my Strymon gear.
 
The issue I had was not MIDI, which worked fine natively, but the FM3-Edit communication, which does not use MIDI but a USB protocol.

I was using VB with Windows 8, so maybe 10 could have fixed the problem, but I refuse to install that trainwreck :)
 
Also works fine running Windows 10 as a guest in a KVM VM (still need to install the FM3_USB_Serial_Driver in the guest for FM3-Edit to connect).

The reason it doesn't work under Wine is probably that the Windows version of FM3-Edit specifically hooks to the Windows USB serial driver, and therefore cannot use the capabilities exposed naively to the Linux OS.

As the FM3 under Linux is Mac-like in that it doesn't need any added drivers it seems that Fractal could, without much trouble, provide a Linux version of FM3-Edit. But I wont hold my breath.
 
I am really sorry to see this thread only now.. :rolleyes: after running successfully with Fractal-Audio on Linux and Wine for the last 6+ years I just did not assume there would be any problem.

Just my luck that I purchased the FM3 and let it sit here without connecting to the computer for two weeks, to realize now that I am f..cked. This is quite disappointing, might ask G66 very nicely for a return..
 
Ingo said:
I am really sorry to see this thread only now.. :rolleyes: after running successfully with Fractal-Audio on Linux and Wine for the last 6+ years I just did not assume there would be any problem.
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I know, real bummer! I have the option of a delivery from g66 end of January and I'm not sure what to do because of this regression in compatibility (have been using axe standard+edit under Linux/Wine for ages). Did you try connecting through Wine yourself? I'm still a bit unsure of what works and what doesn't. Managing firmware, banks and presets shouldn't be an issue from linux/wine (I hope?) but connectivity over the USB driver seems more problematic. If the audio part of the driver really is class compliant it could merely be a case of adding the HW details (id's and stuff to a generic linux driver). If control through fm3-edit also requires that specific USB driver then we do need a native linux version (or detailed specs, maybe sources for the windows counterpart). Still, there's a user (@AlGrenadine) who has managed to make 3rd party control software for fm3 and I suspect that is through MIDI but could be wrong.

As much as I'd love to reverse engineer the protocol/USB driver and code a minimal but native linux editor myself I'm probably not going to install a virtual Windows 10 for the "snooping" process. Have been Linux booting for 25 years now, dual boot free for about 15, VirtualBox free for 8 years. My photo scanner was the last thing that kept me hooked.
 
MistyViolet said:
<snip>As much as I'd love to reverse engineer the protocol/USB driver and code a minimal but native linux editor myself I'm probably not going to install a virtual Windows 10 for the "snooping" process.
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As with a Mac no driver is necessary, the device is class compliant. Fractal could become heroes in this space by being the first to finally support Linux by writing a Linux editor for their products, and as a driver is not required I think it would be a generally minimal effort on their part. Leave Helix, QC, etc. in the dust.
I do get it that to see what the editor is doing you need a working platform with editor to snoop with and maybe a Mac would be more helpful, but that has its own issues as you probably need actual hardware as Mac's on a VM are poorly supported. Really shouldn't be an onus on the user community to do this.
 
AlGrenadine said:
Fm3 uses raw serial communication, doesn't wine support this?
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I gather this is a driver issue. Wine emulates "user space" windows programs on Linux but hardware drivers often need to be natively supported. Some previous Axe-edit versions worked because of generic midi messaging (or so i imagine) but the FM3 apparently has it's own USB driver for audio and serial communication with FM3-edit. It might just be a case of identifying the unit correctly in an existing driver with hardware ID's but I couldn't say since i don't have the hardware nor the insight.
 
MistyViolet said:
I gather this is a driver issue. Wine emulates "user space" windows programs on Linux but hardware drivers often need to be natively supported. Some previous Axe-edit versions worked because of generic midi messaging (or so i imagine) but the FM3 apparently has it's own USB driver for audio and serial communication with FM3-edit. It might just be a case of identifying the unit correctly in an existing driver with hardware ID's but I couldn't say since i don't have the hardware nor the insight.
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Then try with a 3rd party midi interface
 
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