Hi All, Along this subject line, I too have been struggling with audio connections for jack. In particular I want to either use Ardour, QTrackter, Muse, and Rosegarden.
When I connect my midi keyboard,m-audio 88es, to these applications I can get them to play and imported audio file track, but can't get it to record AND play my keyboard. I do have Qsynth and ZyAddSubFx hooked up to jack to get sound from the keyboard just to use it. Can anyone either make a dummy proof diagram or flow chart on how to get this running? I would be so grateful. Neil On Sun, 2010-07-18 at 23:47 -0500, jay gallivan wrote: > > > On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 6:34 PM, Pablo <[email protected]> wrote: > jay gallivan escribió: > > Thanks for your reply. I'm a total newbie to all of this. > > Hi Jay, > > > Greetings. Long couple of days growing my understanding of audio on > Linux. I've worked with micros since 1981, UNIX since 1988 and Linux > since 1996. I've never had to pay attention to audio before now. Is > this what happens when computer people find themselves in a band? > That's how I came to this. I play bass. It's tough to get the the > three of us together. So, the plan was to record the leader - who does > the singing and plays acoustic guitar - so i could practice. The > X-Station was lying around (bought for one of the kids years ago) and > I have 'extra' Linux boxes. So, the adventure began.... > > Pulseaudio is a linux sound system (audio server) desktop > oriented and > Jack (Jack Audio Connection Kit) is another one, oriented > towards music > production (low latency, anything to anywhere connections...). > Both use > the alsa drivers (jack can also use the ffado drivers for > firewire audio > devices but this is not your case) but apart from that, they > are very > different beasts. > > ALSA had been just another four letter word to me. No more. > > > > Timidity is a default midi server. It can do jack, but it > doesn't by > default. In a musical environment timidity is not as used as > qsynth for > example, which is "jackified" by default. But you must load a > soundfont > in qsynth. > > I'm beginning to get the idea of MIDI. Another protocol. In Rosegarden > I can seen MIDI message flow. That's helpful in the same way that > looking at network packet traces are helpful. "Oh. So that's what's > going on." > > > In order to use Rosegarden (the audio part) you need the jack > audio > server and forget about pulseaudio interfaces (once jack takes > hold of > your soundcard, pulseaudio is useless, and, hopefully, > harmless). You > launch the server by means of a graphical front-end called > qjackctl > (Jack Control in the sound and video menu). First, you press > "setup" to > configure the jack audio server. In the interface field you > select your > usb audio card (you will see a generic usb-audio or similar, I > guess). > Then press start to activate jack. > > Pulseaudio drops out of the picture but the motherboard audio i/o > still seems to be there. This appears to be the path to my external > speakers for monitoring. So that would be something like.... > Ardour/Rosegarden -> Jack -> ALSA -> chips -> speakers? > > > If jack does not start, this is the first problem you should > solve (more > below). > > I had quite a bit of trouble with Jack. First, a very slow box - eight > years old. I moved to a newer box - maybe three years old - and found > i had way to little ram. 1GB. Went to 2GB today and things are much > better - with Jack grabbing 1.5GB. Ouch! Do i need to get more? > > > If it starts, then the jack audio clients, like rosegarden, > and many > more (most music oriented programs are jack-aware by default) > will show > their ports in the connect window, audio tab, when you launch > them. > The MIDI tab stands for jack MIDI which is not used by > Rosegarden > nowadays. The alsa tab refers to alsa sequencer or alsa MIDI. > It has > nothing to do with jack but it is there for convenience > because several > synths and sequencers use the alsa sequencer for MIDI and jack > for > audio. Some newer ones use jack MIDI and jack audio but not > Rosegarden. > This explains that you could capture midi in Rosegarden > despite the jack > server was not active. > > > So both ALSA and Jack do MIDI? Can you point me to some data flow > diagrams? > > > > Also, take into account that Rosegarden does not make sounds > by itself > and it has not any default synth that makes it work out of the > box.. It > needs either a software synth plugin or an external synth, > either > software (say, qsynth, zynaddsubfx...) or hardware. But this > is a > second step. The first step is jack setup. > > > I'm do have Jack running in RT mode. The Ubuntu Studio installation > installed a preemptive kernel. First time I've ever needed that! I did > come across some documentation describing what you outlined. That > certainly caused me concern re memory. > > In order to have jack working in realtime mode (recommended) > you need, > as a user, some priorities that you can check in a terminal > with: > > ulimit -r (this is realtime priority for the user) > ulimit -l (this is memlock limit for the user) > > You need the first one at ninety-something and the second one, > unlimited > or a reasonable amount of your RAM, in kB. In turn, to gain > these > privileges, there must be a file called: > > /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf > > with the relevant lines. So please, do a: > > cat /etc/security/limits.d/audio.conf > > and you must have something like: > > @audio - rtprio 99 > @audio - memlock unlimited > > Now you (you the user) have to belong to the "audio" group. > Check in a > terminal with: > > groups > > If you see audio (between others) you are done. If you don't, > you must do: > > sudo adduser user audio > > where "user" is your login name. Then reboot and you will have > the > system prepared to use jack > (check again with the ulimit commands) > > > > > > > I don't see anything in Patchbay. In PulseAudio Manager I > see > > X-Station analong stero as a sink and the same as sources > for stereo > > and stereo monitor. > > > Just don't use pulseaudio. > > > > When I connect (via Connect) X-Station to Timidity I am able > to play > > the keyboard and hear the results via my computer's > speakers. And I > > can record and playback via Rosegarden when I connect > X-Station to > > Rosegarden. > > Don't use timidity unless you do it jack-aware. > > > > > I've tried Audacity on my Windows XP box and I've been able > to > > pickup/record from the X-Station audio ports - though merged > into a > > single track for some reason. > > > > So it seems that the X-Station is doing what it's supposed > to do. But > > that (some component of ) Ubuntu Studio is dropping the > X-Station > > audio. Any thoughts on that? > > See above. > > Cheers! Pablo > > So here's where things now stand. I bought an Alesis iO2 with a view > to being able to capture the mic and guitar at the same time. I've > been able to demonstrate that to myself by using the Puluseaudio > volume controller and the Sound Recorder application. Sound Recorder > created an ogg file which I then converted to wav. I was able to read > the file into Ardour. Then I ran out of weekend. > > Right now I'm in a good place: I can make the recording I need to > make. But I've also discovered a whole new area of interest! I've > always like Linux - and avoided MS and Apple. It's wonderful to see > how much amazing work has been done! > > Thanks very much for taking the time to reply. > > Regards, > Jay. > > > > > -- > > Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list > [email protected] > Modify settings or unsubscribe at: > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users > > -- Ubuntu-Studio-users mailing list [email protected] Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
