On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:56 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

In article , Jim Price
wrote:
On 14/02/13 22:56, Davey wrote:

Indeed. I have no idea what Jack is, but it is there,
in /usr/lib64. But what happens otherwise if I remove it?


Jack is handy for music production, as you can often use some of the
features of your sound card which might not be supported by ALSA
alone.

I continue to wonder about that. I haven't ever use 'Jack'. Never
needed it, despite recording things as well as playing and processing
them. But my impression is that it has been developed as a 'user
friendly' sic way to do things which its creators *think* people
"can't do" with ALSA.

However the "can't" may mean "don't know how" rather than "physically
impossible" - mainly, perhaps, because making sense of ALSA can be a
real struggle. And may involve hand-editing files, etc, which is
hardly user-friendly if people want to dump the old image of Linux =
"Typing arcane commands into terminals". Plus documentation that only
makes sense when you've hacked your way to a solution. ...erm IMHO.

Indeed, I keep feeling that people have invented and added extra
"sound systems" as an alternative to understanding and documenting
(and making programs to ease) doing this using ALSA.

The result now seems to be a pile of 'different' sound systems, which
can easily interfere with simple user choices that don't fit the
auto-magical assumptions of an install. Hence Jack, Pulse, etc,
become a PITA for many rather than a solution. And make some people
feel it is a hopeless task to do something as simply play music as
they prefer.

So far as practical, I'd advise people to avoid Jack, Pulse, etc, as
they just complicate issues for basic uses. As far as I'm concerned,
Pulse is a virus. But as usual, YMMV. ;-

2p ended. :-)

Jim


As I mentioned partially above, I looked for jack on my PC, and it was
listed by Synaptic as not installed, in any guise. Yet I did a
'whereis', and found:
jack: /usr/lib/jack /usr/lib64/jack
And the terminal tells me that it is not currently installed, just like
Synaptic. From this, I deduce that there are some files loaded, but
they are not in use.
Which leaves me still with the question:
What does my Audacity fail message mean?
--
Davey.

In article , Davey
wrote:


As I mentioned partially above, I looked for jack on my PC, and it was
listed by Synaptic as not installed, in any guise. Yet I did a
'whereis', and found: jack: /usr/lib/jack /usr/lib64/jack And the
terminal tells me that it is not currently installed, just like
Synaptic. From this, I deduce that there are some files loaded, but they
are not in use. Which leaves me still with the question: What does my
Audacity fail message mean?

My *guess* is that Audacity is looking for a device connected with a wrong
pcm format. However its not a problem I've encountered, so I can't predict
how to cure it.

Can you play files with aplay and record them with arecord? If so, your
sound system is basically setup OK and the problem is some assumptions that
Audacity is making. If Audacity refuses to even run you may have to look at
its config files or remove and re-install it if you can't find settings to
adjust.

If you can get it to run and give you a GUI, you can use that to change
what input and output setup it expects to match the reality.

But I'm afraid I don't use Audacity much. So can't give more than general
suggestions here.

snd_pcm_format_linear() is probably called to arrange the pcm format for
something by Audacity. The error is probably because the response isn't one
it can match. Why, dunno! :-/

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On 15 Feb, wrote:
In article , Davey
wrote:


If Audacity refuses to even run you may have to look at its config files
or remove and re-install it if you can't find settings to adjust.

Not sure if this will help, but just in case...

You should have something like an .audacity-data directory, inside of which
will be an audacity.cfg file. That is the default Audacity will check when
it is run. In my main machine's copy it includes

[AudioIO]
RecordingDevice=HDA Intel PCH: STAC92xx Analog (hw:0,0)
Host=ALSA
PlaybackDevice=HDA Intel PCH: STAC92xx Analog (hw:0,0)

Which tells Audacity what to try and connect to by default when run. It
then uses these as the default recording and playing devices.

Make a backup copy of the file for safety. Then do an 'aplay -L' and
'arecord -L' to get the details of your soundcard devices. Edit the
audacity.cfg file to point at the sound devices you want have have the host
as ALSA. That *might* cure the problem.

But I can only guess as this isn't a problem I've encountered. And there
may be some other config that is fiddling with this for all I know!

Note you can also change 'hw:' to 'plughw:' as that might bypass an
expected format and allow the system to do a conversion for you at the ALSA
software layer. Might bypass the problem.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:11:17 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

In article , Davey
wrote:


As I mentioned partially above, I looked for jack on my PC, and it
was listed by Synaptic as not installed, in any guise. Yet I did a
'whereis', and found: jack: /usr/lib/jack /usr/lib64/jack And the
terminal tells me that it is not currently installed, just like
Synaptic. From this, I deduce that there are some files loaded, but
they are not in use. Which leaves me still with the question: What
does my Audacity fail message mean?

My *guess* is that Audacity is looking for a device connected with a
wrong pcm format. However its not a problem I've encountered, so I
can't predict how to cure it.

Can you play files with aplay and record them with arecord? If so,
your sound system is basically setup OK and the problem is some
assumptions that Audacity is making. If Audacity refuses to even run
you may have to look at its config files or remove and re-install it
if you can't find settings to adjust.

aplay works fine, I just checked. Not tried arecord (ever).
All that happens is that I get the message I showed.

--
Davey.

On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:47:17 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

On 15 Feb, wrote:
In article , Davey
wrote:


If Audacity refuses to even run you may have to look at its config
files or remove and re-install it if you can't find settings to
adjust.

Not sure if this will help, but just in case...

All help is welcome!

You should have something like an .audacity-data directory, inside of
which will be an audacity.cfg file. That is the default Audacity will
check when it is run. In my main machine's copy it includes

[AudioIO]
RecordingDevice=HDA Intel PCH: STAC92xx Analog (hw:0,0)
Host=ALSA
PlaybackDevice=HDA Intel PCH: STAC92xx Analog (hw:0,0)

Which tells Audacity what to try and connect to by default when run.
It then uses these as the default recording and playing devices.

Make a backup copy of the file for safety. Then do an 'aplay -L' and
'arecord -L' to get the details of your soundcard devices. Edit the
audacity.cfg file to point at the sound devices you want have have
the host as ALSA. That *might* cure the problem.


Following advice I found in the Audacity Forums, yesterday I found that
file, and deleted everything except the first line, then relaunched
Audacity. It is supposed to repopulate the file with info. when it
restarts, but it didn't restart. And of course, I didn't make a backup
(slaps own wrist!). I might look through my Backup records, though, just
in case.
But I don't think it's going to work anyway.

I have also tried Completely removing, and reinstalling, audacity,
already.

I'll give arecord a go.

--
Davey.

On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:56 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

In article , Jim Price
wrote:
On 14/02/13 22:56, Davey wrote:

Indeed. I have no idea what Jack is, but it is there, in /usr/lib64.
But what happens otherwise if I remove it?


Jack is handy for music production, as you can often use some of the
features of your sound card which might not be supported by ALSA alone.

I continue to wonder about that. I haven't ever use 'Jack'. Never needed
it, despite recording things as well as playing and processing them. But my
impression is that it has been developed as a 'user friendly' sic way to
do things which its creators *think* people "can't do" with ALSA.

Jack allows you to look at audio links in a totally different way. It uses ALSA
to make the physical connections, but (using something like Qjackctl) presents
all the information in a sane manner. The problem arises when using something
like Audacity, which although very good in it own right, is a bodge when
connecting up.

I simply could not do much of the composition work I do without jack. I can, and
do kick out pulseaudio as a waste of resources, and *never* use Audacity for
recording. Timemachine is just so much simpler, reliable and above all routable.


--
W J G

In article 20130215203017.02b60dda@debian, Folderol
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:56 +0000 (GMT) Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Jim Price
wrote:
On 14/02/13 22:56, Davey wrote:

Indeed. I have no idea what Jack is, but it is there, in
/usr/lib64. But what happens otherwise if I remove it?


Jack is handy for music production, as you can often use some of the
features of your sound card which might not be supported by ALSA
alone.

I continue to wonder about that. I haven't ever use 'Jack'. Never
needed it, despite recording things as well as playing and processing
them. But my impression is that it has been developed as a 'user
friendly' sic way to do things which its creators *think* people
"can't do" with ALSA.

Jack allows you to look at audio links in a totally different way. It
uses ALSA to make the physical connections, but (using something like
Qjackctl) presents all the information in a sane manner.

In effect, that's a part of my point. Jack is effectively acting as a
'human interface' to ALSA. People use it because they can make sense of how
to use Jack, but are baffled by how to get ALSA directly to achieve the
same specific task.

If Jack (or indeed Pulse, etc) work for you or anyone else, that's fine
with me. Matter of personal preference and convenience. However my feeling
is that we have got into this situation of having 'many different sound
systems' due to a lack of awareness of how to simply use ALSA. That, in
turn, is because it can be a real PITA to work out how to get ALSA set up
in the way a specific task requires.

I've managed by banging rocks together for a few years to sort out the
basics of just getting music to play or record using ALSA. I've still not
sussed out the more complex requirements. So I can quite understand why
people use Jack, etc.

The problem in my experience, though, is that sometimes systems like Pulse
actually cause problems because they 'nanny' the user and actually stop
them getting what they want. Once that happens I feel the user can easily
end up in the kind of situation familiar to some Windows/Mac users: Of the
system refusing to do what is wanted, and behaviing in an opaque manner
which resists the user's attempts to correct its incorrect behaviour.

For the sake of my own sanity I gave up fighting Pulse years ago. I just
bypass it. But I just need to play or record/capture one stream at a time.
If I were trying to do multichannel recordings, mixdowns, etc, I'd probably
do something else.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

On Sat, 16 Feb 2013 09:47:52 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

In article 20130215203017.02b60dda@debian, Folderol
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:30:56 +0000 (GMT) Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Jim Price
wrote:
On 14/02/13 22:56, Davey wrote:

Indeed. I have no idea what Jack is, but it is there, in
/usr/lib64. But what happens otherwise if I remove it?


Jack is handy for music production, as you can often use some
of the features of your sound card which might not be supported
by ALSA alone.

I continue to wonder about that. I haven't ever use 'Jack'. Never
needed it, despite recording things as well as playing and
processing them. But my impression is that it has been developed
as a 'user friendly' sic way to do things which its creators
*think* people "can't do" with ALSA.

Jack allows you to look at audio links in a totally different way.
It uses ALSA to make the physical connections, but (using something
like Qjackctl) presents all the information in a sane manner.

In effect, that's a part of my point. Jack is effectively acting as a
'human interface' to ALSA. People use it because they can make sense
of how to use Jack, but are baffled by how to get ALSA directly to
achieve the same specific task.

If Jack (or indeed Pulse, etc) work for you or anyone else, that's
fine with me. Matter of personal preference and convenience. However
my feeling is that we have got into this situation of having 'many
different sound systems' due to a lack of awareness of how to simply
use ALSA. That, in turn, is because it can be a real PITA to work out
how to get ALSA set up in the way a specific task requires.

I've managed by banging rocks together for a few years to sort out the
basics of just getting music to play or record using ALSA. I've still
not sussed out the more complex requirements. So I can quite
understand why people use Jack, etc.

The problem in my experience, though, is that sometimes systems like
Pulse actually cause problems because they 'nanny' the user and
actually stop them getting what they want. Once that happens I feel
the user can easily end up in the kind of situation familiar to some
Windows/Mac users: Of the system refusing to do what is wanted, and
behaviing in an opaque manner which resists the user's attempts to
correct its incorrect behaviour.

For the sake of my own sanity I gave up fighting Pulse years ago. I
just bypass it. But I just need to play or record/capture one stream
at a time. If I were trying to do multichannel recordings, mixdowns,
etc, I'd probably do something else.

Slainte,

Jim


That sounds like a sensible viewpoint, from my perspective of very
limited experience of this business. If Folderol finds Jack useful, good
for him, but since I am struggling getting the basics working, I don't
think I'll go there.
I did some basic testing yesterday, I'll post the results later on, for
your comments.
--
Davey.

On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:11:17 +0000 (GMT)
Jim Lesurf wrote:

arecord
Ok, here is what I found out. Bear in mind I have never used arecord,
only aplay. Both of my TV encoders work fine with their respective WIN
7 programs, so that is how I use them, I never succeeded in getting
either of them to work with Linux. With a lot more time, maybe I would
be able to. Maybe.
So, still in Ubuntu 10.04, I ran aplay -l and aplay -L, and
arecord -l, and arecord -L, before inserting the EZCap into a USB port.

aplay -L with the EZCap added the line:

iec958:CARD=U0xeb1a0x2861,DEV=0
USB Device 0xeb1a:0x2861, USB Audio
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

arecord -l added:

card 2: U0xeb1a0x2861 [USB Device 0xeb1a:0x2861], device 0: USB Audio
[USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

This sounds to me as though the device is being seen and recognised.
Volume Control Sound Preferences also shows it as:
2861 / 1 Input / Analog Stereo Input, which is good.

alsamixer shows one L R CAPTURE volume bar whether or not the
device is plugged in, so it is probably referring to an internal
device, such as the internal Intel soundcard. If so, where is the USB
device?
I now need to work out what arecord instruction to give to record
something, but I need to do some reading for that.
Just tried a basic arecord, and whatever I do, it returns:
arecord: main:608: audio open error: No such file or directory

Got other stuff to do, back to this later.

--
Davey.

In article , Davey
wrote:
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 14:11:17 +0000 (GMT) Jim Lesurf
wrote:

arecord
Ok, here is what I found out. Bear in mind I have never used arecord,
only aplay. Both of my TV encoders work fine with their respective WIN 7
programs, so that is how I use them, I never succeeded in getting either
of them to work with Linux. With a lot more time, maybe I would be able
to. Maybe. So, still in Ubuntu 10.04, I ran aplay -l and aplay -L, and
arecord -l, and arecord -L, before inserting the EZCap into a USB port.

A problem with this is that I have no real idea what "EZCap" is. You'd have
to say more about that.


aplay -L with the EZCap added the line:

iec958:CARD=U0xeb1a0x2861,DEV=0 USB Device 0xeb1a:0x2861, USB Audio
IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

How does aplay -l list it? I'd have guessed from its name that it is a
'capture' device so wouldn't appear at all for aplay -l.


arecord -l added:

card 2: U0xeb1a0x2861 [USB Device 0xeb1a:0x2861], device 0: USB Audio
[USB Audio] Subdevices: 1/1 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

That says it is hw:2,0,0 for capture.


This sounds to me as though the device is being seen and recognised.
Volume Control Sound Preferences also shows it as: 2861 / 1 Input /
Analog Stereo Input, which is good.

What "Volume Control Sound Preferences" do you mean here? How are you
getting that info?


alsamixer shows one L R CAPTURE volume bar whether or not the device is
plugged in, so it is probably referring to an internal device, such as
the internal Intel soundcard. If so, where is the USB device? I now need
to work out what arecord instruction to give to record something, but I
need to do some reading for that. Just tried a basic arecord, and
whatever I do, it returns: arecord: main:608: audio open error: No such
file or directory

You'd need to say what you mean by a 'basic' arecord.

Try something like arecord -D plughw:2,0,0 -f dat -t wav -d 5 fred.wav

If it can find the device it should give you a five second long wave file
called fred.wav, stereo 48k rate. If not, say what errors it returns.

If it works, try

arecord -D hw:2,0,0 -f dat -t wav -d 5 fred.wav

and if that doesn't work, what errors does it return?

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html