[Ardour-Users] a completely frustrating experience so far

[Chris Caudle]

On Sat, May 16, 2015 5:44 pm, Martin Holsinger wrote:
> I am trying to use Ardour with a Tascam US 122, which may be the source of
> some of my frustration, but I am having more basic problems than that.

Which version of Ardour?  The newest version (4.0) can use ALSA directly
without JACK, which may ease some of your frustrations.  The combination
of JACK and Ardour is extremely flexible, but that flexibility comes with
some complexity, since it is the equivalent of having to setup a patchbay
when you start Ardour.

> I click the "play" button, and the cursor moves, but no sound.

That sounds like perhaps you are not really connected to the Tascam
interface.

> have tried every possible sound setting in Jack, but to no avail.

How are you starting JACK?  Directly from the command line, or with
QJackControl or a similar program?  Are you using the defaults, or
selecting the Tascam as the audio interface?  Are you  selecting by device
number (e.g. hw:0 or hw:1) or selecting by name?

> Maybe Ardour works best when it doesn't have to share the computer with
> pulse audio?

What distribution and version of linux, jack, pulse, and ardour do you have?
Many distributions have pulse configured to work correctly such that when
jack is started, pulse releases the audio interface, and starts the
pulse-jack interface.  For example, I use Fedora, and when I start JACK
with QJackCtl with the "use dbus" option selected, pulse automatically
releases the interface and starts a module to allow pulse to use JACK as
the audio interface.  I can leave it connected if I want to be able to
listen to things like browser audio output through JACK, or disconnect it
if I want to have only my ardour session routed through.

In years past, before pulse and jack integrated as easily together in
Fedora, I used the pasuspender program to start qjackctl, which caused
pulse audio to stop temporarily, and start again once I exited qjackctl. 
That way I could use pulse for normal desktop activity, but stop pulse
when I wanted to use audio production applications, then start pulse
running again once I stopped JACK and then exited qjackctl.

> Is buying another computer, and another interface (I hear
> Alesis works well with Linux) the simple, but expensive, way out of the
> loop I am stuck in?

Unlikely.  Since you don't understand why you are having problems
currently, it is likely that you will still have the same problems with a
new computer and new interface.

-- 
Chris Caudle