Comments on: How to Configure JACK in Ubuntu Studio

By: Ed Hutchinson

Ed Hutchinson — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:44:05 +0000

I have been struggling for a couple of weeks to get an M-Audio Delta 44 to work with Ubuntu. I printed this article to study. It worked perfectly. It took longer to print the article than it took to get the card working. The problem of XRUN made it unusable at first but it was recognized and operating. The tuning of JACK in the article worked exactly as expected. I have it working to my satisfaction (probably not an an optimum of minimum latency but OK for the applications I have in mind.

I was able to record from a four track tape recorder with Audacity with no additional setup.

Thank you very much. This is a many beans article. *****

By: english

english — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 01:38:29 +0000

hi have you try changing the sample rate in jack? This may help!

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:06:22 +0000

hi,
I managed to get jack to run in Realtime, but I get much more xruns. I thought that if I was getting one xrund every 10 mins, without realtime, i would do better with it enabled.

In about o minute after I start Ardour and have jack in realtime mode i get something like 2(360) xruns wihtout even doing a thing… any ideas?

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:54:16 +0000

Yep… I can confirm that if I set hw:0 I get choppy playback in Ardour, but with hw:0,0, the playback is perfect!!!

Yeeehaaaaaww!

the other options are frame/periods: 512, and periods/buffer: 3 or 2
Again, realtime option is not selected.

Using frame/periods lower than 512 may create problems for me.
My hardware is: Acer Aspire 5610-4654, onboard Intel soundcard, and I’m running Ubuntu 7.10, not Ubuntu Studio…

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 08:42:18 +0000

I had problems with Ardour choppy playback, but somehow after fiddling with Jack, i got it to work. I wasn’t able to use the realtime option but I think that after i chose hw:0:0, it worked although now it’s hw:0

Plays fine now, not sure exactly what fixed it, but I’d be glad to help

By: Thorns

Thorns — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:58:32 +0000

I found that no other option influenced the numbers of xruns I got more than the Periods/Buffer. Setting this to 3 greatly helped reduce the number of xruns. Then tweaking the realtime priority and buffer sizes helped more. Right now I have very few xruns if any. I also noticed that selecting hw:0 was more unstable than hw:0:0.

By: KreaturesofKaos

KreaturesofKaos — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:59:13 +0000

ok, got the delta 44, now i need to get it to output in stereo. I had a Y cable i hooked up to the out 1 and 2, but still all i get is everything though left channel, any help?

By: schoappied

schoappied — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:16:25 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for the good guide!
Is there also a tutorial for jack-rack? I want to add some effects to my guitar, but I can not make jack-rack work.

I’ve intel 82801DB-ICH4 onboard soundcard.

jack starts and also hydrogen > ardour > jack (from your other tutorial).
But jack-rack seems to do nothing:
Some screenshots:
http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/3113/jackrackoc1.png
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/9431/jackconnectnm2.png
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/5948/patchageke7.png

I hope you can help me? And maybe it is a good idea to write a tutorial about jack-rack?

By: djnastynate

djnastynate — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:01:28 +0000

I’m trying to configure JACK. I have a Dell XPS M140. I can’t seem to get the client to connect. Any help would be awesome.

By: geoffs

geoffs — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:04:25 +0000

Interesting the mention of Intel HDA. I have an Inspiron 6400 laptop with the dreaded sound chip.

When first set up with defaults, jack ran with numerous xruns, and no sound. Looked at this forum and several others, scratching the head.

My solution was this - turn off input capture - all of a sudden no xruns and very low latency (around 3.8 ms) was doable. Settings were - no input capture, 3 buffers, 64 periods 44100 hz, realtime etc.

Doesn’t assist those who wish to capture - buts its great for me - I do all my capture on a vast AMD opteron dual CPU with Hammerfall DSP etc - I only need laptop for gig playback.

By: gruvola

gruvola — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:51:27 +0000

FYI - for my M-Audio Delta 1010LT, I had to add ‘H/W Monitor’ in JACK Setup to hear Output.

By: gruvola

gruvola — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 03:49:18 +0000

Regarding Nighto’s Post (for the newbie’s like me):

Go to ‘Applications’, ‘Accessories’, ‘Terminal’
at the prompt (ends in a $), type in ‘alsamixer -c1′ and hit
by the way, ‘h’ in alsamixer gets you a menu

alsamixer for the other card will start, or at least it did for me. If I simply type in ‘alsamixer’, I get my computer’s default card.

Peace,
Gruvola

By: TMS

TMS — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 20:20:06 +0000

Have Jack up and running, using a Tascam US-122. However, when playing tracks through Jack (using an xmms-jack output plugin), playback is about a tone lower than it should be, due to slow playback. Do I need more memory, or is there a different issue? I’m not even sure how to search for help on this problem.
Thanks
Tom

By: Aamir

Aamir — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 03:04:04 +0000

Thank you!

By: ubustu

ubustu — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 07:17:02 +0000

Thanks Nighto, a great tip.

By: Nighto

Nighto — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 05:53:33 +0000

Aamir,

alsamixer -c1

By: Aamir

Aamir — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 22:33:38 +0000

I tried this config, however, I actually have 2 sound cards. one is a built in card, and the other is a Delta 44. When I run Alsamixer, it displays the onboard card (no matter which interface I select in JACK). Please help!

By: ubustu

ubustu — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 04:44:58 +0000

volksolwagen: You just need to be sure you don’t have any programs open which might be utilizing sound, like a Firefox page with Flash, or even something innocuous like GAIM. Just fire up JACK when you first log into your desktop.

That depends on the context of the post. With a mixer you can mix several sound sources down into one or two channels. Some USB cards only have one or two inputs, so a mixer could be useful. If your USB card has several inputs, a mixer may not be practical.

johnapeterson: Not sure what your problem can be. For the most part you should be interested in getting ALSA to work and not OSS. I can tell you that the entirety of this tutorial is all we had to do “out of the box” to get our Delta44 working with Ubuntu Studio.

By: volksolwagen

volksolwagen — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 08:51:52 +0000

I understand that there should be no programs running while jack is in motion. How can I terminate these apps? If I want to start jack, quit, and start again, how can I keep from having to terminate them (when i figure out how)? thanks for your help in advance.
also, i want to start recording. does an external usb sound card function as a miniature mixer also? i read in a post off of ubuntuforums.org that a mixer would be a good investment in the long run, “unless you have a usb soundcard.” what does this mean? double thanks for anyone that can help me.

By: sopitikoj

sopitikoj — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 01:07:28 +0000

I am really excited. This will be my first time visiting, good work. Good stuff. :-)..!

Bye