ubuntu studio 10.04 and novation x-station - trying to record audio 1 and 2
Neil Jensen
neilevanjensen at gmail.com
Mon Jul 19 07:39:01 BST 2010
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 <pablo.fbus at gmail.com> 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
> Ubuntu-Studio-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-users
>
>
More information about the Ubuntu-Studio-users
mailing list