qjackctl

[frabato56]

Hi All,

I'm happily running oss4 on debian stable (actually salineos) and I have cinelerra, dragon player, rhythmbox, xine, mplayer and vlc all playing nicely. What I don't have is qjackctl working properly or at all actually. I changed excl_policy to 2 and changed the driver setting to oss but that's all that I have tried. Here is the message from qjackctl:

20:29:03.101 Patchbay deactivated.
20:29:03.115 Statistics reset.
20:29:03.117 Could not open ALSA sequencer as a client. ALSA MIDI patchbay will be not available.
ALSA lib seq_hw.c:457:(snd_seq_hw_open) open /dev/snd/seq failed: No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
20:29:16.994 Startup script...
20:29:16.994 artsshell -q terminate
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server socket
jack server is not running or cannot be started
sh: artsshell: not found
20:29:17.396 Startup script terminated with exit status=32512.
20:29:17.396 JACK is starting...
20:29:17.396 /usr/bin/jackd -doss -r44100 -p1024 -n3 -w16
20:29:17.398 Could not start JACK. Sorry.
20:32:56.809 JACK was stopped successfully.
20:32:56.809 Post-shutdown script...
20:32:56.809 killall jackd
jackd: no process found
20:32:57.217 Post-shutdown script terminated with exit status=256.

Has anyone had any luck with this?

Thanks

[cesium]

The issue is jackd, not qjackctl (which is just a GUI wrapper IIRC). Older jackd had an OSS backend, but I think the current one has it enabled only on the Solaris platform. I had a patch to amend this, but it will probably require some finicking around to get it entirely to work.

[Edit: also, an older version of jackd may work - see archives.debian.org]

[igorzwx]

The issue is jackd, not qjackctl (which is just a GUI wrapper IIRC). Older jackd had an OSS backend, but I think the current one has it enabled only on the Solaris platform. I had a patch to amend this, but it will probably require some finicking around to get it entirely to work.

If your OSS4 driver supports "hardware mixing", you may not need JACK.
You may simply enable recording from "vol" in the OSS Mixer (with a mouse click). This allows to record everything, including the input from mic.
See the screenshot in the Attachment.

Is there a list of OSS4 drivers which support HW mixing?

[frabato56]

Thanks for the replies. I need to edit a wave file and so I was trying to run ardour which requires jack. Audacity was not behaving well at all nor was kwave. I don't know enough about coding to tinker with the patch (I don't know anything about coding) but I am a composer and I have cubase running on windows 7 so it's no problem for me to get the job done using those tools. I have an m-audio sound card running through a hafler amp and preamp and I will say that with my setup, oss4 sounds better alsa, it seems a shame that oss4 doesn't work with jackd because most people doing serious audio work in linux are probably using jack and those people would probably appreciate the higher quality of sound provided by oss4. I wish I had the expertise to be able to contribute something in this direction but I don't. Again, thanks for the replies, this is really not a big issue for me and I am still quite happy using oss4 for everything else on linux.

[igorzwx]

Thanks for the replies. I need to edit a wave file and so I was trying to run ardour which requires jack. Audacity was not behaving well at all nor was kwave. I don't know enough about coding to tinker with the patch (I don't know anything about coding) but I am a composer and I have cubase running on windows 7 so it's no problem for me to get the job done using those tools. I have an m-audio sound card running through a hafler amp and preamp and I will say that with my setup, oss4 sounds better alsa, it seems a shame that oss4 doesn't work with jackd because most people doing serious audio work in linux are probably using jack and those people would probably appreciate the higher quality of sound provided by oss4. I wish I had the expertise to be able to contribute something in this direction but I don't. Again, thanks for the replies, this is really not a big issue for me and I am still quite happy using oss4 for everything else on linux.

All those "serious people" seem to be perfectly happy with ALSA, because they do not hear the difference. Those, who can appreciate sound quality, may not use ALSA. Taking into account the results of libsamplerate test, it is very unlikely that ALSA "musicians" and "composers" are not deaf to a certain extent viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4423#p17789 Although, of course, deafness can hardly be an impediment to creativity. The story of Beethoven proves this point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven

There is a special handbook for deaf composers: Carla Schroder, The Book of Audacity (2011).
It may help you to understand how to edit waves with Audacity. Since Audacity was designed for deaf musicians, there might be problems with "high resolution" waves. It does not make much sense to file bugs, if you have not learned the art of "effective argumentation". In any case, it might be useful to study the manual: http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/08 ... m-all.html

There are experts, who are able to hear the difference, but they do not seem to compose music
http://morten.lindberg.no/19537/
http://www.2l.no/hires/index.html
There are also self-proclaimed "composers" and "musicians", who produce "digital crap" in huge amounts. Ignorance can hardly be an obstacle to creativity. On the contrary, the only ignorance can remove any hindrances to creativity and unleash the magic forces of creative imagination. The Cargo Cult stories prove this point (see: Lamont Lindstrom, Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond, 1993).

Since OSS4 users are not going to produce "digital crap", they may not need JACK, libsamplerate, and PulseAudio.
If you do not know how to do something with Audacity, you may ask for help on Audacity forum.
There is also a special forum for Windows users, where they can ask questions about computers, Linux, Audacity, media players, browsers, and other applications:

Absolute Beginner Talk
The perfect starting place to find out more about computers, Linux and Ubuntu.
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.ph ... a9cd&f=326

[frabato56]

Thanks igorzwx,

Well I followed all the links and there are some informative and some amusing bits out there. Audacity is a fairly straightforward program and it runs fine with alsa but not with oos4 (at least not on my machine running debian stable), playback is garbled and I have fussed with the bitrate settings and I've tried flac, wave and ogg files all with the same garbled results. As I said though, not a big deal as I have other ways to get the job done. Anyway thanks again for the entertaining post.

[igorzwx]

Thanks igorzwx,

Well I followed all the links and there are some informative and some amusing bits out there. Audacity is a fairly straightforward program and it runs fine with alsa but not with oos4 (at least not on my machine running debian stable), playback is garbled and I have fussed with the bitrate settings and I've tried flac, wave and ogg files all with the same garbled results. As I said though, not a big deal as I have other ways to get the job done. Anyway thanks again for the entertaining post.

playback is garbled - this might be because libsamplerate (fast resampler) is enabled.
If the best resampler of libsamplerate is enabled for playback, you may have sound interruptions (on old computers). In any case, "libsamplerate best" tends to overload processor. This is how you can detect that it is active. Run "top" on terminal, it will show the processor load:

Code: Select all

$ top

In short, you have to disable resampling in Audacity settings: Audacity → Edit → Preferences → Quality
To disable resampling, you have to set the default format the same as that of the file which you are going to play (see the screenshot).
In this case, resampling will be done by OSS4 (if it is enabled).
The OSS4 resamplers are not perfect. You may try the so-called "production quality" viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3543&start=30#p15711
If your soundcard supports the format you are going to play, you can disable resampling in OSS Mixer.

[frabato56]

Well once again thanks for the reply. I had already tried the settings that you recommended but the results are the same. When I say that the sound is garbled, I don't mean that it's a bit messed up, I mean that it is unrecognizable and completely trashed. I don't think that my computer is having a hard time processing this. It's a 2.4g quadcore with 6g ram. But now you have me curious about this so when I get a bit of spare time, hopefully in the next day or two, I'll backup with clonezilla and try using a different distro. I believe that I've asked this before but perhaps things have changed. What distros make life easy for a guy trying to use oss4? Archlinux comes to mind so I"ll give that a try. Any others?

[igorzwx]

Well once again thanks for the reply. I had already tried the settings that you recommended but the results are the same. When I say that the sound is garbled, I don't mean that it's a bit messed up, I mean that it is unrecognizable and completely trashed. I don't think that my computer is having a hard time processing this. It's a 2.4g quadcore with 6g ram. But now you have me curious about this so when I get a bit of spare time, hopefully in the next day or two, I'll backup with clonezilla and try using a different distro. I believe that I've asked this before but perhaps things have changed. What distros make life easy for a guy trying to use oss4? Archlinux comes to mind so I"ll give that a try. Any others?

I am using Arch Linux.
You may try Audacity with OSS4 on Arch LiveCD viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3933#p17316

When I am alone in a forest at night-time and jump from one tree to another, I often think that life is so strange.
George Mikes, How to be an Alien: A handbook for beginners and advanced pupils, 1946.

[frabato56]

Well here's the next bit of information about this experiment. Running audacity on debian stable produced unrecognizable sounds so, off to arch linux. I hadn't installed arch for a while and now you can install xorg and a desktop at installation. So I took advantage of that and then booted into a nice xfce4 desktop with oss4 installed. I then installed audacity. Across the top of the gui you get file, edit, view, transport etc., after setting the preferences to 44.1 and 16 bit I close out the preferences box to find that there is now only fi across the top and clicking where the others should be does nothing. Ah so what, lets play a file, so I close the program and when I reopen it there are all the menu items across the top again, good. I open a .wav and the waveform renders nicely, then click on play = nothing, press the spacebar = nothing, the cursor, or whatever you want to call that vertical line that moves during playback, does not move. Well, at least the behaviour is different, variety is the spice of life. The sound is fine with vlc and gogglesmm. Well, maybe I'll try another distro.

[igorzwx]

Well here's the next bit of information about this experiment. Running audacity on debian stable produced unrecognizable sounds so, off to arch linux. I hadn't installed arch for a while and now you can install xorg and a desktop at installation. So I took advantage of that and then booted into a nice xfce4 desktop with oss4 installed. I then installed audacity. Across the top of the gui you get file, edit, view, transport etc., after setting the preferences to 44.1 and 16 bit I close out the preferences box to find that there is now only fi across the top and clicking where the others should be does nothing. Ah so what, lets play a file, so I close the program and when I reopen it there are all the menu items across the top again, good. I open a .wav and the waveform renders nicely, then click on play = nothing, press the spacebar = nothing, the cursor, or whatever you want to call that vertical line that moves during playback, does not move. Well, at least the behaviour is different, variety is the spice of life. The sound is fine with vlc and gogglesmm. Well, maybe I'll try another distro.

It is difficult to understand what you are doing.
If ALSA configs are not removed, you may have problems with Audacity and OSS4.
If ALSA emulation is enabled, Audacity may fail to work http://www.4front-tech.com/wiki/index.p ... _Emulation

On that Arch LiveCD, Audacity is already installed viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3933#p17316
You should only install OSS4, following the manual.
Just boot the LiveCD and make a test.

[frabato56]

Hello again,

I did a network install onto the hard drive, I didn't use the live cd. This is a fresh install and I only installed oss4 I did not install alsa-utils nor is alsa in the modules array in rc.conf. I've added "blacklist soundcore" to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa_blacklist.conf. and the sound is fine on all the applications except for audacity. Go figure, oss4 works just fine, audacity does not.

[igorzwx]

Hello again,

I did a network install onto the hard drive, I didn't use the live cd. This is a fresh install and I only installed oss4 I did not install alsa-utils nor is alsa in the modules array in rc.conf. I've added "blacklist soundcore" to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa_blacklist.conf. and the sound is fine on all the applications except for audacity. Go figure, oss4 works just fine, audacity does not.

It seems that your problems are unique.
Since your experiments cannot be reproduced, nobody may help.

Audacity has been always working on my computers with OSS4 ("out of the box").
You may ask Cesium, if someone else reported such problems.

[frabato56]

Yes, it is quite possible that the problems are unique to my computer. I've had operating systems that installed just fine on my amd/asus machine but would not install on my intel/gigabyte machine, this may or may not be relevant. In the interest of experimentation, I'll try again with a different distro.