[ardour-users] Refugee from Windoze/Cubase -drowning in Linux/Ardour

Mon Apr 18 11:13:58 PDT 2005

Hello to all. This is my first post here and I apologize immediately for
the length of it. I'm about a month into my first Linux box, and haven't
seen a command line since Dos 3.3 and QuickBasic, so you might well
imagine my psychological condition at present.

I've resisted the temptation to post here (I have been lurking) until I
had a better grip on things. At first I had a dreadful battle with
permissions and whatnot, but now I at least seem to have a system which
I can use (as user) and get some useful stuff done. However, I'm still
sufficiently 'at sea' that I'm not at all sure which questions to ask
first, or how to frame them. If I may, I'll list a pile of information
here with the simple questions: 

     1. What the heck am I doing wrong?

     2. Might there be someone nearby (Calgary, Alberta) who could hold
        my hand for a few days?

I'm running Fedora Core 3 2.6 with the CCRMA kernel and Audio Apps all
installed with apt-get. Ardour is running and is useful but is not
without problems. In fact when I see the error messages that get
generated, I can't understand why it's running at all.

My Motherboard: Asus P4B266-C 2400MHz 1 Gb ram

IRQ's are Bios configurable -sound cards on 9 & 10

The sound cards are 2 Roland RPC-1 cards connected via R-Bus to a Roland
VS-2480 recorder which is set as clock master and running a 24bit 44100
project.

I think the RPC-1's are a modified M-Audio 1010. Evny24control finds
them alright, but there are issues, as you'll see below. I was sure I
saw the M-Audio Delta R-bus card in the Alsa list before I started all
this, but it doesn't seem to be there now???

I should also explain that I'm running my boot drives in Caddies just to
separate things as much as possible. I normally run a Windows boot drive
with the ethernet card enabled, and another Windows boot drive with it
disabled and only a few audio apps installed (Cubase SX2, Reason,
Garritan Personal Orchestra etc.) To that I have added a third Boot
drive just for Linux. My second Physical drive (which is always
installed) is used for audio data and is partitioned fat32 into 3
logical drives.

The basis of my present confusion seems to be that Jack's not talking to
Ardour, or at least one of them is not listening at least some of the
time. Ardour seems to do what it wants regardless of what I ask Jack to
do.

Example: Starting Jack from the Gnome Terminal AS USER:

[ks at S01060050da7307e1 ~]$ jackd -d alsa -d hw:0 44100

jackd 0.99.0

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

JACK compiled with System V SHM support

loading driver ..

creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|
32bit

control device hw:0

configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames, buffer = 2 periods

-pressed Ctrl-c here

jack main caught signal 2

[ks at S01060050da7307e1 ~]$

So why 48000Hz and not 44100Hz???

and then:

[ks at S01060050da7307e1 ~]$ ardour

Ardour/GTK 0.9beta28

(built using 0.579.2 with libardour 0.878.4)

Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Paul Davis

Some portions Copyright (C) Steve Harris, Ari Johnson, Brett Viren, Joel
Baker

Ardour comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it

under certain conditions; see the source for copying conditions.

Loading UI configuration file /etc/ardour/ardour_ui.rc

cannot write to jackstart sync pipe 4 (Bad file descriptor)

jackd: wait for startup process exit failed

jackd 0.99.36

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

JACK compiled with System V SHM support.

loading driver ..

apparent rate = 44100

creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0,0|128|2|44100|0|0|hwmon|hwmeter|-|
32bit

control device hw:0

configuring for 44100Hz, period = 128 frames, buffer = 2 periods

nperiods = 2 for capture

nperiods = 2 for playback

Noise-shaped dithering at 16 bits

ALSA/ICE1712: (0) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (1) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (2) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (3) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (4) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (5) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (6) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ALSA/ICE1712: (7) cannot set input monitoring (No such file or
directory)

ardour: [INFO]: JACK server started

Loading system configuration file /etc/ardour/ardour_system.rc

Loading user configuration file /home/ks/.ardour/ardour.rc

ardour: [ERROR]: MIDI: no such port device

ardour: [WARNING]: Your system generates "Mod2" when the NumLock key is
pressed. This can cause problems when editing so Ardour will use Mod3 to
mean Meta rather than Mod2

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkpixmap.c: line 63 (gdk_pixmap_new): assertion `
(width != 0) && (height != 0)' failed.

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkgc.c: line 51 (gdk_gc_new_with_values):
assertion `window != NULL' failed.

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkgc.c: line 483 (gdk_gc_set_font): assertion
`gc != NULL' failed.

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkgc.c: line 456 (gdk_gc_set_foreground):
assertion `gc != NULL' failed.

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkdraw.c: line 89 (gdk_draw_rectangle): assertion
`drawable != NULL' failed.

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkgc.c: line 456 (gdk_gc_set_foreground):
assertion `gc != NULL' failed.

I then get several hundred of these:

Gdk-CRITICAL **: file gdkdraw.c: line 268 (gdk_draw_text): assertion
`drawable != NULL' failed.

And then the Ardour GUI appears. showing SR:44.1kHz/2.9 msec. I can load
a recent project, and after adjusting the latency to 1024 buffers, I can
playback a recent project quite nicely.

I searched around on the net and the Gdk errors seems to be something to
do with GTK.

I've apt-get update(ed) etc, and nothing gets done. I think it was
glib.c that someone was talking about and that seems to be on the
system.

I start Qjackctrl -here are the messages

10:26:38.940 Patchbay deactivated.

10:26:39.327 Statistics reset.

10:26:39.335 Client activated.

10:26:39.483 XRUN callback (1).

10:26:39.553 Audio connection change.

10:26:39.708 MIDI connection change.

10:26:39.729 MIDI connection graph change.

10:26:41.524 XRUN callback (1 skipped).

10:27:24.417 Statistics reset.

And the Status:

Server State: Active

CPU Load: 8.2%

Sample Rate: 44100Hz

Buffer Size: 1024 frames

Realtime mode: No

Transport state: Stopped

XRUN count since last reset 0(0)

I get a couple of XRUNS as things are loading and lots of them at the
2.9 msec latency,but none at 23.2 msec.

Now: Fresh boot (just to keep things clean)

I do see “Loading Realtime Module any=1 OK “ as it's booting, so I run,
in the Gnome terminal:

[ks at S01060050da7307e1 ~]$ jackd -R -d alsa -d hw:0 44100

jackd 0.99.0

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

JACK compiled with System V SHM support

loading driver ..

creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|
32bit

control device hw:0

configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames, buffer = 2 periods

and in a new terminal:

[ks at S01060050da7307e1 ~]$ ardour

Ardour/GTK 0.9beta28

(built using 0.579.2 with libardour 0.878.4)

Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Paul Davis

Some portions Copyright (C) Steve Harris, Ari Johnson, Brett Viren, Joel
Baker

Ardour comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY

not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it

under certain conditions; see the source for copying conditions.

Loading UI configuration file /etc/ardour/ardour_ui.rc

cannot write to jackstart sync pipe 4 (Bad file descriptor)

jackd: wait for startup process exit failed

jackd 0.99.36

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

JACK compiled with System V SHM support.

loading driver ..

apparent rate = 44100

creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0,0|128|2|44100|0|0|hwmon|hwmeter|-|
32bit

the playback device "hw:0" is already in use. Please stop the
application using it and run JACK again

cannot load driver module alsa

no message buffer overruns

ardour: [ERROR]: Unable to connect to JACK server

ardour: [ERROR]: Could not connect to JACK server as "ardour"

and then get the familiar 'ardour:unplugged' (expect some eric clapton
here, but it never comes :) ), jack is not running etc...

For what it's worth:

When Jack and Ardour are running, Jack (using Qjackctrl) can find
alsa_pcm captures 1-12 and playbacks 1-12 (hw:0), midi through,
ICEnsemble ICE1712 MIDI (2 entries), my Midisport 2X4, ardour midi, and
the Behringer BCF2000 control surface (if I cycle the Behringer power).

And having just now started Ardour from the Gnome menu without logging
out or rebooting after the errors just above Jack can't find ardour
audio ports, although I'm sure it would with a fresh boot. Stopping and
starting Jack at this point doesn't help.

Also, in previous installation with a borrowed Soundblaster Audigy 1, I
did seem to be able to control Jack using the Qjackctrl setup, so I'm
pretty sure the Roland RPC-1's have a major bearing on the problems, but
they do work after a fashion.

I'm sure more info is required, but this post is already too long. If
someone can find the courage to deal with someone like me, I'd be
delighted to supply whatever info will help rather than bomb the list
with a load of stuff I think you 'might' need.

thanks in advance,

Keith Smith