kubuntu-users Digest, Vol 30, Issue 57

[D. Michael McIntyre]

On Saturday 21 July 2007, Richard Innes wrote:

> Tim: No need to get a sound card, Audacity should work with your on
> board sound. If you had sound before then the sound chip works with your
> OS.

I haven't double checked every post on this thread, but I think it missed the 
suggestion that his KDE sound system might be preventing Audacity from 
gaining access to the audio hardware.  On cheap AC97 chipsets like that one 
(or even expensive ones like the ice1712 for that matter), only one 
application can access the hardware at a time, and if KDE has its sound 
server running, that application will be artsd, to the exclusion of 
everything that doesn't know how to talk to artsd.

That's the simple explanation anyway.  For the sake of simplicity, try turning 
off KDE's sound server on Sound and Multimedia -> Sound System, then see if 
Audacity gets happy.

> I have to confess here, I do most of my sound work in Windows simply
> because I get better results.

Just to offer another voice here...  When I came to Linux, it took another 
couple three years before I could accomplish the same things I used to do on 
Windows ME, of all things.  I thought Linux was ridiculously confusing, even 
once I finally had it working, and I thought the mixers, especially, were 
just astonishingly horrible, and impossible to use.

Then I got a laptop with Windows XP on it, and played around a bit.  I have 
concluded that using computers to try to create music is the road to sorrow 
and frustration, regardless of your platform of choice.  I have some unproven 
belief that if I just had the money to buy a Mac and a pile of commercial 
software for it, all my problems would go away.  I don't do music often 
enough to justify this expense though (neither a tricked out Mac, nor 
commercial alternatives for Windows to replace my battered collection of 
quasi-functional Linux applications), so I suffer, I plod, I torment myself 
with that wretched, evil, three-eyed beast known as JACK, which is supposed 
to be the answer to all prayers, and instead feels more like a venomous 
monster intent on pricking me to death one drop of blood at a time with its 
many-tined tormenting fork.

I've devoted a lot of time and effort to sorting this out for the regular dumb 
kids of the world.  I wrote a book, which is more than most of these genius 
know-it-all gurus who crap 64-bit floats have ever done, but my book only 
reveals my inability to complete my quest.  I can't explain this to the 
regular dumb kids of the world, because I'm too stupid to grasp it myself.  
Any piece of music I successfully create is nothing short of a happy 
accident, because I'm not really in control of any of this.  Not on Windows 
either.

After just a couple months shy of five years at Rosegarden, it starts to feel 
like I've been pissing my time away for nothing all these years.

/rant
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre