Here, if alone. Running Ardour on Debian, and enjoying the feedback in the Mixdown Training Room space.

Yes, I agree it's nice to be able to make the training feel more real :-)
How's Ardour been lately (good, moody)?
I've kinda stuck to REAPER, as I configured it to suit my workflow and I'm not sure I could really do the same with Ardour (midi-controller based shortcuts, using FX Chains & pre-set midi-controller learned controls on the chains)...
But FOSS plugins is where most of it is at, even though I've played a bit with AnalogObsession plugins running through yabridge, their subtle saturation & no-nonsense controls kinda helps me a lot, I have to admit ^_^

Hey, cool, you're still here! Yeah, the Mixdown Training Room is arguably the most valuable thing going here. With just the three free games, I probably wouldn't stick around without it.

Ardour builds are hit and miss (the last 8.0 build I tried had issues seeing the rest of my system, so I dropped it), but I'm pretty happy with the 7.5 build I'm running. Happy to share the installer if you'd like to try it. I'm poor enough that Reaper is out of my price range, so I've never tried it.

Ardour can do midi-driven shortcuts, but can involve creating an XML midi map for some uses. Other controls can be learned. Can't speak to pre-set learned controls on the fx.

You use the LSP suite of plugins?
https://lsp-plug.in/

About Ardour installation, I do have access to the binaries (I am on the lowest subscription tier, just as a symbolic gesture) :-) If I ever get around to it I'll probably try the DAW again someday, I really like its way of displaying and managing the routing - and the post-fader plug-in placement too, I miss that in Reaper ^_^

I understand Reaper may not be in the price range for you, and I'd argue it's no problem (though, if you ever want to try it, the evaluation model they use makes it so that you never have to pay for using it, the demo expired screen is skippable after a 10-second wait or so - they're being really nice about that).

I do use LSP plugins! Analyzer Stereo (as a monitoring tool), ParamEQ16 (Stereo, LR & MS, depending on what I want to achieve), SidechainComp, MultiBandComp & Limiter are the tools I mainly use in all of my work -
They are very precise, and although I really struggled for a long time with learning to set them up correctly, I'm slowly starting to make a better use of them.

Basically my go-to plugins are these, a few of the AnalogObsession suite (the saturation, man, it's sooo good when you put them into oversampling *_*) and some selection of JSFX effects (Volume as a clean volume automation, Dis-treasure from Tukan (it's not a clean copy of the hardware unit, but I like what it brings to my drums), soft- and hard-clippers just to extract a dB or so of loudness (in total) at the mastering stage, and a loudness analyzer that's very useful to aim for specific loudness targets - Soundcloud doesn't normalize to -14dB, so I tend to aim for -11LuFS on my EDM tracks if I can afford it).
I didn't mention AirWindows ToTape6 & CHOW Tape Model, but these are really nice to use too.

I can't justify going analog, so I'll stay in-the-box for the foreseable future - though I'd really like to break the bank and buy a good audio interface, I'm still working on a Presonus Audiobox 96 that's clearly shown its shortcomings already in monitoring & pre-amp quality :-/

Linux will stay my go-to for a while, as the JACK management really helps me a lot- in combination with Agordejo & Carla running inside it I've made my own DSP signal to try an compensate for my speakers & room, and the results, while certainly far from perfect, have helped me quite a lot lately in understanding what I listen to.
I at first I used REW, sox & DRC to try and generate corrective Impulse Response that I then load into 2 LSP Impul Response Mono instances (yet another LSP plugin I use, I'd forgotten about it ^_^), but I've switched to DRCDesigner (which does the same job, but with more automation & a little bit of user-friendliness) and I'm happy with the results - for now at least :-D.

What other plugins do you tend to go to, yourself?

(PS: Sorry for the latency in my answering, I tend not to be able to come & work-out as often as I used to - nowadays 3 to 4 visits a week is the maximum I can do, it seems ^_^)

No worries on latency. This kind of forum is built for async mode!

I'm also a big fan of JACK, and use Carla to run by ordinary system audio (from PulseAudio) through processing. For example, there is some podcast-style content I listen to that doesn't do a great job of keeping levels steady, so for that stuff I run my PulseAudio content through LSP's new AutoGain plugin (or previously a plugin called master_me) for autogain. I also have a weird speaker configuration that, due to geometry and cable lengths, has my left and right speaker swapped. So I swap it back in JACK, no problem.

I'll have to take a look at those Airwindows plugins. I have his plugin set installed, but haven't spent a lot of time with them.

LSP accounts for most of my go-tos outside of synths. For drums I like Robin Gareus' Black Pearl Drumkit, and for general purpose synth I usually go to Dexed, or less often Helm or Surge XT.

Yeah, JACK is pretty much the equivalent of having a fully cabled audio studio that you full control on the computer, it kind of makes me mad that in the proprietary world it's a luxury application (like, maybe, RME's TotalMix) when it should definitely be the default for everyone _

Robin Gareus' plugins are basically amazing, aren't they? from the x42-dpl plugin (that is in all of my monitoring chains, whatever happens) to the drumkits, even x42-eq is so efficient and well laid out... Great plugins, not enough recognition.

I haven't played with any of those synths in a while, lately I happened to do all my work with Monique (great Dub Bass) and Vitalium ; thanks for reminding me they exist, especially SurgeXT which I just do not master at all when I really should ^_^

Also, I didn't mention it but I really need to take another look at PeakEater, I have good memories of it, and I think it was pretty good at doing its job (limiting) - it's on GitHub, if I remember correctly.

Oh, got an RME Babyface (1st gen) coming out in the mail soon, it seems its Class Compliant mode is fully Linux-compatible, and I'm really looking forward to try and see whether it makes a difference compared to my -not that recent- Audiobox 96.
Would you like to place bets ? :-P (I'm only joking here, I really don't think I'll try and measure the differences between the two of them - the Babyface having ADAT expansion capabilities more than justifies the purchase on my part)

Yeah, SurgeXT is big. I don't use it very often simply because it doesn't have a lot of presets I like. So I only end up using it when I'm prepared to build a sound more or less from scratch. Dexed has some nice presets (I particularly like a couple of the stock Electric Piano sounds), so when I don't have something specific in mind I'll go there first.

I'll have to look into PeakEater. I thought I was priced out of the x42 plugins, but I'm seeing now some are free, so I'll have to check those out.

If I'm not mistaken I think basically all of the x42 plugins, except meters & whirl, can be gotten on linux distributions without any trouble :-)