On 06/05/2011 03:42 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: yes. don't forget to also build alsa-lib, alsa-tools, alsa-utils and alsa-firmware from the latest alsa version.

On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 1:46 PM, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote: <SNIP> Welcome to Linux audio I think... Anyway, as this device is part of the HDSP family - I own an HDSP 9652 - I can say that if you don't successfully run hdspconf & hdspmixer you'll almost certainly never produce sound. The HDSP family has a rather large and somewhat daunting internal audio router and without running the mixer and configuring it nothing is routed and sound goes nowhere. There is no command line way to access the router, TTBOMK and ONLY *MY* OPINION, but with Thomas Charbonnel long gone from Linux audio development I'm unsure whether anyone has the depth of knowledge and, frankly, interest in tackling the tasks to do anything new in this area. It would be great to find another developer with the interest that we had when Thomas was here. I'll work with anyone wanting to do development by testing code here, as I did with Thomas. That said, it's possible that all you need is a new PCI device IDs added to the existing HDSP driver and possibly it would work. Not sure. Sorry for such a negative report. Cheers, Mark

On 06/06/2011 03:16 AM, Mark Knecht wrote: just as a small reminder before we all go misty-eyed over the horrible state of linux audio: in the universe i live in, there's this basic assumption that hardware vendors should care for proper driver and userspace support, because they want to sell their gear. if they don't, that's their problem, take your money elsewhere. this whole situation where people hack up drivers in their free time to open markets to ignorant vendors is totally ass backwards. it's what we've gotten used to, and i'm happy to have open-source drivers for the pro gear i have to use, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that it's all fine and dandy this way. don't whine here, whine on <vendor mailing list>. hdspconf won't support the new AIO and raydats afaik, use alsamixer instead. i've tried to hack it a bit and actually got it to support the hdsp madi, but it's messy and not really worth the effort imho... but not rocket science either. the problem is that everyone i talked to told me fltk is on its way out, fast, and i don't really feel motivated to redo everything in gtk when i only have two rme cards and can do everything i need with alsamixer, if less conveniently. i know for certain that hdspmixer supports at least the hdsp pci devices and the hdspm madi pcie, and i'm pretty sure it also supports the AIO and raydat. i guess the problem is that rme are a bit difficult to work with - there's no-one in particular you could talk to, it's just a bunch of freelance designer hotshots and a marketing department. they have been helpful with specs on and off (sometimes quite late, as in the case of the firefaces), but there has been no established relationship to any team of driver maintainers... get in touch with adi. do you have any of the recent pcie rme devices? i heard the raydat and aio drivers basically work. there used to be the problem that they would only run at 1024 frames, but looking at the commit log, adi tackled that one a while ago. frankly, with bug reports like "As expected, now ALSA is broken.", what do you expect? that's really a huge waste of time. i've seen alsa break in a hundred shiny different ways from the subtle to the spectacular, and unless the OP gets his act together and provides some real information, PEBKAC is what i'll be assuming.

On 6 June 2011 10:09, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote: don't you know how to use ls?

Hello, I have a Zoom H4n recorder and would like to use it as an interface on a laptop with Ubuntu 10.04.. I've succeeded in using it to record and to play audio independently via jack but not together in duplex mode. I've read on the web that people have used the H4n with full duplex. Can anyone suggest what might be wrong with my set up? No problems using the built-in sound card of the laptop in duplex mode with jack. I'll paste below the verbose messages from qjackctl. Cheers, Iain 07:23:26.322 Patchbay activated. 07:23:26.334 Statistics reset. 07:23:26.339 ALSA connection change. 07:23:26.356 Startup script... 07:23:26.357 artsshell -q terminate 07:23:26.402 ALSA connection graph change. sh: artsshell: not found 07:23:26.829 Startup script terminated with exit status=32512. 07:23:26.830 JACK is starting... 07:23:26.830 /usr/bin/jackd -v -dalsa -dhw:1 -r48000 -p256 -n3 -Xseq jackd 0.118.0 Copyright 2001-2009 Paul Davis, Stephane Letz, Jack O'Quinn, Torben Hohn and others. jackd comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_oss.so getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_net.so getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_dummy.so getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_alsa.so getting driver descriptor from /usr/lib/jack/jack_firewire.so 07:23:26.845 JACK was started with PID=5059. no message buffer overruns JACK compiled with System V SHM support. server `default' registered loading driver .. registered builtin port type 32 bit float mono audio registered builtin port type 8 bit raw midi clock source = system clock via clock_gettime new client: alsa_pcm, id = 1 type 1 @ 0x84ea9c8 fd = -1 apparent rate = 48000 creating alsa driver ... hw:1|hw:1|256|3|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit control device hw:1 configuring for 48000Hz, period = 256 frames (5.3 ms), buffer = 3 periods ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 16bit little-endian ALSA: use 3 periods for capture start poll on 3 fd's ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 16bit little-endian ALSA: use 3 periods for playback new buffer size 256 registered port system:capture_1, offset = 1024 registered port system:capture_2, offset = 2048 registered port system:playback_1, offset = 0 registered port system:playback_2, offset = 0 ++ jack_sort_graph ++ jack_rechain_graph(): +++ client is now alsa_pcm active ? 1 client alsa_pcm: internal client, execution_order=0. -- jack_rechain_graph() -- jack_sort_graph registered port alsa_pcm:Midi-Through/midi_capture_1, offset = 1024 registered port alsa_pcm:Midi-Through/midi_playback_1, offset = 0 ALSA: could not start playback (Broken pipe) DRIVER NT: could not start driver cannot start driver starting server engine shutdown server thread back from poll stopping driver unloading driver freeing shared port segments stopping server thread stopping watchdog thread last xrun delay: 0.000 usecs max delay reported by backend: 0.000 usecs freeing engine shared memory max usecs: 0.000, engine deleted cleaning up shared memory cleaning up files unregistering server `default' 07:23:26.937 JACK was stopped successfully. 07:23:26.939 Post-shutdown script... 07:23:26.940 killall jackd 07:23:27.032 ALSA active patchbay scan... jackd: no process found 07:23:27.354 Post-shutdown script terminated with exit status=256. 07:23:29.044 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.

Thanks Julien, yes I've tried with headphones but jack still fails to start. I'll try now running it without jack and see if that brings any clues - but really i need to use jack. Forgot to mention that I can record and play at the same time - but only when the zoom is set as the input device and the laptop audio hardware set as the output. Cheers, Iain On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 13:00 +0200, Julien Claassen wrote:

On 06/06/2011 11:09 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Hello Ralf, Not sure if you're still using an Ubuntu based distro but: https://launchpad.net/~kxstudio-team/+archive/ppa/+packages?field.name_filt… I'm using Focusrite cards and I'm very happy with those. Not sure how they relate to RME cards, guess RME is one league higher :) The Focusrite cards I use are all FireWire cards and so far I've had practically zero issues. It's a matter of having or getting the right FireWire controller and setting up your system to accommodate the FireWire stuff. Regarding your mouse, are you so attached to that good old Microsoft PS/2 mouse that you never considered replacing it? And regarding PA, I'm using Ubuntu on my audio installs happily without it. It should be fairly simple to disable it on your Ubuntu install. Did you try Tango Studio? http://tangostudio.tuxfamily.org/ Best, Jeremy

On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I have an RME Hammerfall/Multiface-II setup (8 analog ins, 8 analog can always connect something from Apogee to the digital ins if you want some additional channels with converters that are even better yet (and if you can afford stuff from Apogee!). Well, Apple invented it, but it works anywhere. The other poster who said that it matters a lot what kind of firewire host you've got is right. I never experienced problem free firewire (for digital video capture) with the firewire on my motherboard, nor with a Western Digital firewire card. Finally, I got a 3-port card from SIIG, and it works beautifully with everything. That might be a place to start if you want to go with Linux audio via firewire, which uses the FFADO driver. Just my opinion, but to me, Keytronic makes the best keyboards. They resemble the old no-nonsense IBM server keyboards, but without the obnoxious audible click. (They still feel good though.) Don't know why Linux wouldn't support a PS/2 mouse. Then again, I've avoided them every since USB mice became available just for the simple reason that a USB mouse won't use an IRQ for itself, but a PS/2 mouse always will use IRQ12. Most BIOS's these days will let you free IRQ12 if you're not using the PS/2 mouse port, and that sounds good to me. -- + Brent A. Busby + + Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + Vote for Cthulhu. + University of Chicago + + James Franck Institute + Why settle for the lesser evil?

On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Yes, most motherboards almost always put the USB controller on the same IRQ as something else. Then again, I've never seen one that actually caused problems from that. PCI IRQ sharing can work, you just can't necessarily trust that XYZ card will do it right. I've never had an IRQ sharing problem from on-board USB before though. -- + Brent A. Busby + + Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + Vote for Cthulhu. + University of Chicago + + James Franck Institute + Why settle for the lesser evil?

On 06/06/2011 03:41 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: True but it's mostly the USB buses (if that's the right designation?) that share IRQ's with other devices and some are even on their own IRQ's or share IRQ's with other USB buses. So if you pick a port on a (UHCI, at least the mouse I have here is USB1.1) USB bus that sits on its own IRQ (or shares it with another USB bus) for your USB mouse it should basically equal the situation with a PS/2 mouse. Best, Jeremy

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 16:29 +0200, Jeremy Jongepier wrote: Thank you :) it can't harm if I'll read your workshop pdf, but not today. Over OT: I bought a supermarket mouse, the less expensive is the most ergonomically, but it anyway is to short to use the mouse wheel in a comfortable way. I'm also not sure if I can use it with GIMP. The USB mouse wheel works, but sometimes also the old mouse's wheel worked, so it might work randomly too. It's too funny, when I turned on the computer the mouse wheel dazzled me with blue light. Haha! I was surprised, didn't take care about this. For the Brauner power supplies we switched the dropping resistors for the blue LEDs and the blue LED of my Behringer mixer is also a flood light. I'm not kidding, the mouse wheel causes annoying reflections in the monitor. Oops, even positioning the mouse cursor for text is hard to do. No screwdriver does fit, hence I can't unsolder the LED today. Ok, now I know what I need to take care, when buying a good mouse. I can tread this one like a tissue. Tissues are the same price range. Moving the mouse without a ball is an advantage, at the moment the only advantage. :D Ralf

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 07:00 -0400, Paul Davis wrote: I'll test this, thank you. Regards, Ralf -- PS: OT: Yes for a hand full of people who use Ubuntu and describe to forums and mailing lists it works OOTB. They also don't need a kernel-rt for their work in their professional studios, just a PREEMPT does the job. From 01.10.2010 to 31.03.2011 I worked for child care, no audio engineers, no computer experts, well, averaged people seldom do have that good luck, most people came from Windows and stay at Windows, although they liked what I showed by Edubuntu. i've been using a different distribution that has a long history, I don't had issues with old Debian and I don't have issues with Suse 11.2, without Suse's Sax, my monitor won't be ok for Debian ;). i would also strongly advise against changing a thread that started as Yes, you're right. I need to calm down ;). perhaps I should switch back to Suse or use Fedora or some RPM based distro.

On 06/06/2011 03:14 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Could you stick with one thread instead of opening a new one for every subquestion you have? Thanks in advance. \r

On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 09:41 -0400, Paul Davis wrote: :) Thank you very much. :( I would prefer to go completely off-line and make music instead. On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 15:35 +0200, rosea.grammostola wrote: Pardon, you're right. Off-line for at least a while now, Ralf

Paul Davis wrote: Debian works here. Has for many many years. I can't blame Debian for perfectly supporting the Audiophile 2496 on the desktop machine ... or the fact that Behringer (manufacturer of the USB audio I use on my laptop) decided to name its hardware device "default". Figuring out how to make my setup recognize the USB audio as the default ALSA audio device took some figuring out because of that ... Ubuntu is not Debian. Ubuntu is Debian quirked by a bunch of people who are (in my opinion) slowly but surely working their way to their own proprietary Linux derivative. Ubuntu doesn't just work on my boring, stodgy old bog-standard hardware. Ubuntu usually barfs when trying to use the Intel i855GM video hardware built into my Toshiba laptop. It doesn't even get to the point of dealing with the audio hardware. When I boot an Ubuntu on the laptop, I always have to force X to use the VESA driver ... The last couple of Ubuntu releases have not included RT kernels because Ubuntu thinks no one needs one. After all, Ubuntu is for desktop Linux users: those people only use one audio device that does only stereo output, and they only use it to play MP3s. (Well, Debian still doesn't provide an RT kernel as standard. They also see no need for one.) I think some folk on the list have mentioned that Linux audio use is a small percentage of Linux users, and pro-audio users are an even tinier percentage of that, so pro-audio users routinely are ignored as being too tiny a minority group to pay attention to ... I understand that the newest incarnation of OSS solves all the problems that ALSA has ever had and does it all flawlessly ... yah, being sarcastic! ;-) -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On Tue, 2011-06-07 at 11:32 +0200, Jeremy Jongepier wrote: On Ubuntu Studio users and devel mailing list everybody can get a script to build current kernel-rt for Maverick and Natty, 'maintained' by me :p. But for good reasons I switched to Debian. If a 'Studio' distro ships with PA, at least the sound card config files should be reedit to work. AFAIK until now only one user build a kernel by my scrip, to get rid of xruns, most people make professional recordings, in professional audio studios, with extreme low latency, using PREEMPT kernels. The Ubuntu Studio maintainers are using kernel-rt, but recommend everybody to use a PREEMPT only kernel, because a kernel-rt shouldn't be needed. Sarcastic? No! My mileage just varies. And to be fair! They will help everybody who'll help Ubuntu Studio! E.g. send you hardware to make tests. So yes, they do good jobs, but Ubuntu Studio isn't a OOTB audio/MIDI workstation yet. !!!AND they wish to keep as close as possible to a regular Ubuntu.!!! Keeping it as close as possible to Ubuntu is an issue for me. 2 Cents, Ralf

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:14 AM, Brett McCoy &lt;idragosani(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: i think that what is meant by OOTB is that if you take a machine and install a given distro on it, everything that ought to be and needs to be configured for use as an audio/MIDI workstation is already done by the time you login. there's no doubt that you can use *any* linux distro for this purpose - the question is how much work is it post-install.

On Tue, 2011-06-07 at 07:14 -0400, Brett McCoy wrote: Even the PREEMPT only kernels are from a repository you need to edit after installing Ubuntu Studio, so you are able to do professional recordings with the kernel-generic? Wow! What hardware are you using?

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 7:27 AM, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote: Yeah, I've not had any problems with the stock Ubuntu Studio kernels for using Jack. Mind you, a real-time kernel is not required for using Jack in real-time mode. I use RME Multiface II (HDSP). It also works out of the box for me (aside from the known issue that Ubuntu Studio 11.02 was missing hdspmixer) -- Brett W. McCoy -- http://www.electricminstrel.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "In the rhythm of music a secret is hidden; If I were to divulge it, it would overturn the world."     -- Jelaleddin Rumi

On Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:10:33 -1000 david &lt;gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com&gt; wrote: Parts of RT kernel are in the main tree now, so maybe .39 would work for you. Have you tried it?

On Wed, 2011-06-08 at 21:10 -1000, david wrote: David, I guess everybody who makes serious audio work needs a kernel-rt too, hard to imagine that some people really don't need a kernel-rt. I'll test kernel 2.6.39.1 $ uname -a Linux debian 2.6.39.1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jun 7 01:40:05 CEST 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux Just PREEMPT? No RT? I don't know. I once had a kernel PREEMPT and there were issues when I tried to use it for audio. But perhaps the vanilla 2.6.39.1 is ok. Cheers! Ralf

On Tue, 2011-06-07 at 12:52 +0200, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: Correct, assumed 2.6.39 is able to replace rt-patched kernels. I guess some of you already use this kernel without any issues, regarding to real-time. Regards, Ralf -- OT: Thanks to everybody for the hints regarding to 2.6.39. Later today I'll try to get the kernel's ALSA stable :).

On Wed, 2011-06-08 at 22:02 -1000, david wrote: I experienced the same issues regarding to the resolution and the 60 Hz stroboscope (and a non working mouse wheel for my PS/2 mouse, slow down Internet for PPPoE etc.) with current debianoid Linux. They drop old hardware, even if they claim not to do. Regarding to the monitor, I downgraded X and then I got back the wanted 1152x864@90Hz. The monitor can do better than 90 Hz, debianoid Linux for my setup can't anymore, but I guess there's no difference between 90 Hz and > 90 Hz. I'm using xserver-xorg-video-nv 1:2.1.17-3 + depending X packages, it's from Debian stable, while anything else should be from Debian testing. For Debian testing there's no nv driver anymore and the nouveau doesn't work on my machine, when using a kernel-rt. Perhaps a downgrade will solve the issue on your machine too. 60 Hz vertically is unhealthy. -- Ralf

On Thu, 2011-06-09 at 00:39 -1000, david wrote: And your brain ;). I'm not sure if it's a myth or true, it's said that stroboscope effects can cause epileptic shocks even for averaged people. (Hopefully this won't cause a discussion as the one about 'time'. ;) A vertically frequency of 60 Hz won't cause an epileptic shock, but at least effect your well-being. Anyway, stroboscope effects are used as weapons. At 60 Hz I would use a dark theme, unfortunately dark themes have disadvantages, regarding to reflections and for the desktop they usually have side effects, such as invisible fonts, scroll bars etc.. Ardour's dark seem IMO is good. I wonder how good modern displays are and if they should be able to replace monitors for every usage, how expensive those displays are. The artists I know (among others, some famous comic drawers), having brand new 'common' displays, use their old monitors again, because the displays are unusable for graphics, excepted of the video tablets they additionally use. Those video tablets are very expensive and the usage is different to the usage of a display or monitor. Perhaps very expensive displays are able to replace a monitor. For DAW IMO even a cheap display at all events is the better choice, I guess ... less electric smog? Space-saving! I'm unsure if I should switch from monitor to display, as I'm not drawing for print media, perfect colours aren't that important for me. But when playing a single coil guitar, a display might be better.

On Thu, 2011-06-09 at 12:36 +0100, James Morris wrote: In Germany there are no warnings regarding to photosensitive epilepsy and in other countries it might be less known too. I never heard that any 'averaged healthy' person in Germany had PSE caused by flashing television, even not that there was a hysteria after they send reports about PSE. Btw. the only artist's colours with a health label I own, are from England, warnings about chemical thingy that in Germany are used as food colouring. So in England there might be a hysteria, but not in Germany, those things are less known here. I really have issues with degassing of some cable jackets. There shouldn't be degassing for a microphone cable, even if it shouldn't be unhealthy, it's unpleasant and artist tend to be divas and IMO it's ok to expect that a cable doesn't smell, a monitor doesn't flare. I won't use a monitor at 60 Hz. -- Ralf

On Thursday 09 June 2011 14:01:14 Ralf Mardorf wrote: Yes, you will. All displays past the CRT-age run at 60Hz...

On Thu, 2011-06-09 at 09:19 -1000, david wrote: Arnold off-line wrote, that because of this, even some displays should be ok with 24 Hz, plausible.

On 06/09/2011 01:23 PM, Ralf Mardorf wrote: have you considered getting a tft display and retiring your tube monitor? the energy savings will very likely balance the cost within a year, plus you get lots of extra desk real estate. and no stroboscope, ever. and if you don't rely on excellent wide-gamut color reproduction, even the cheapest tfts should be sufficient. when i was using crts, i found i also needed at least 85hz to be comfortable, particularly in the office, where you'd be turning your head often and then see the strobing trail in the corner of the eye - very confusing. for the same reason, i still don't like DLP projectors - i don't see rainbows when looking straight on, but as soon as the head moves, i feel like i just popped a handful of mushrooms.

Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: Oh, I am going to replace the CRT, Fathers Day is coming in the USA ... with a bigger LED display. :-) My CRT can run up to 110Hz refresh rate but not at the resolution I use. I'm also sensitive to screen flicker, can readily see it 60Hz clicker on CRTs and flourescent tubes. Not as sensitive as you, though - 75Hz works on the present CRT. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On Fri, 2011-06-10 at 15:50 -0500, Brent Busby wrote: Thank you for the explanation :) I had a stressful week with setting up Linux and I'm not ready yet, but the only thing I didn't get working is the mouse. I replaced it with an USB mouse, anything else does work. Now I only need to set up nonessentials. Most things seems to work better, than they have ever worked before. Regarding to the Internet it could be issues caused by my provider, I don't know. The computer now seems to be in a good shape and my systolic blood pressure was at 154 in the morning and is at 142 now ;), if I reach 139 Linux and I are ok again. Oh, this is for the imaginary OT blog. I did expect trouble with audio, but not with anything else. Still euphoric, but not pissed of. My impression is that audio reached a very high quality state, but that the environment, desktop, X etc. might do a small step in the wrong direction, but at the moment I'm unable to see it dispassionate. Hm, ok, time to stop writing OT, but I liked to reply. Should do a backup now. Best, Ralf

On Mon, 6 Jun 2011, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote: I agree in principle, but part of the reason the Linux community has been so accepting of this is because of the history of *awful* device drivers vendors have written on the occasions when they have decided to provide their own. Intel seems to have the hang of it now with some of their stuff, but for the most part, Linux users have gotten to where nothing scares them more than driver code that was written by a hardware vendor. I never got this obsession with everything having to use one toolkit that everybody has. I always thought one of the strengths of X11 was that you can use whatever toolkits and window managers you want. If you've got a working app that's built on FLTK, for gosh sake, be happy! -- + Brent A. Busby + + Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + Vote for Cthulhu. + University of Chicago + + James Franck Institute + Why settle for the lesser evil?

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: Mark Knecht [mailto:markknecht@gmail.com] Gesendet: Mo 6/6/2011 16:12 An: Ralf Mardorf Cc: linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org Betreff: Re: [LAU] PITA: RME HDSPe AIO On Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 6:16 PM, Mark Knecht &lt;markknecht(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Apparently I stepped in it with my response. I really shouldn't have offered _any_ information about an RME card that I don't own and use every day. I'm sorry to have caused any confusion with my post. Goodbye, Mark -------------------------------------------- *randomly online via Suse Linux, using the Microsoft-thingy of my provider ... can't download their bill anymore, with any of my Linux installs* You didn't cause confusion! I'm grateful for every reply. Thank you everybody, thank you Mark. *off-line now* Ralf