Music production on Linux

  • Thread starter Thread starter roos
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VomitHatSteve said:
I'd probably stick to Windows audio, but I desire to combine my love of hacking with my love of music. I figure it's probably easier to learn audio on Linux than to learn to hack (and interface that with audio) on Windows.

Anyway, hppnq:
My error messages when I run "aplay -vv [some wav file]" as a non-root user
ALSA lib confmisc.c:768:(parse_card) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392:(snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1251:(snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3513:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib conf.c:3985:(snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib pcm.c:2144:(snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
aplay: main:564: audio open error: No such file or directory

when I ran lsof as root, I got no output. When I ran it as non-root, I got a lot of permission denied errors (even after I changed the permissions... strange)

lsmod gave me
snd_intel8x0 30557 1
snd_ac97_codec 92257 1 snd_intel8x0
ac97_bus 5825 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_dummy 6853 0
snd_seq_oss 29633 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9921 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 44913 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 9933 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 37441 0
snd_mixer_oss 16577 2 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 61637 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 21065 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 44517 9 snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 9633 2 snd
snd_page_alloc 11337 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

Most of my kernel settings should be pretty close to Fedora 8 defaults.

cat /proc... etc. gave me
0 [I82801CAICH3 ]: ICH - Intel 82801CA-ICH3
Intel 82801CA-ICH3 with CS4299 at irq 11
Again thanks for your help.
Click to expand...

Are you in the audio group?

# gpasswd -a <your user name> audio

Also, as root, run the command alsamixer, assuming you installed the alsa-utils package. This will allow you to unmute the D/A faders.
 
I've actually assigned all the audio permissions to the "users" group, which I am a member of. But I will add that group in case I missed something.

I'll get back to you on the effects of running alsamixer.
 
I must be lucky or something, because to get my audio interface working I simply installed all the stuff I wanted using...

sudo apt-get install jackd qjackctl ardour libfreebob0 ... etc etc ...

Only bit of config I had to do was opening QjackCtl and changing the driver to freebob, and changing permissions on the firewire port.

Whenever I want to run ardour I hit start on the jack control panel and load ardour. All works.
 
mattr said:
I must be lucky or something, because to get my audio interface working I simply installed all the stuff I wanted using...

sudo apt-get install jackd qjackctl ardour libfreebob0 ... etc etc ...

Only bit of config I had to do was opening QjackCtl and changing the driver to freebob, and changing permissions on the firewire port.

Whenever I want to run ardour I hit start on the jack control panel and load ardour. All works.
Click to expand...
I sense some sarcasm...

So I ran alsamixer. As root, it seemed to work fine. The mixer opened.

As a non-root user it told me "alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory"
 
VomitHatSteve said:
I sense some sarcasm...

So I ran alsamixer. As root, it seemed to work fine. The mixer opened.

As a non-root user it told me "alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such file or directory"
Click to expand...

Setting up audio for linux is usually really easy. The only trouble you are having is with permissions. try this command:

ls -la /dev/sound

If everything is right, you should see something like this:

crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 12 Jun 28 08:57 adsp
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 4 Jun 28 08:57 audio
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 Jun 28 08:57 dsp
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 0 Jun 28 08:57 mixer


The dsp and mixer devices are only there because I have OSS emulation enabled. It's not required, but it adds to compatibility.

Anyways, make sure that each device belongs to the audio group.

Then, run this command:

ls -l /dev/snd/

There should be a long list of devices. The permissions should be the same, all members of the audio group.

Then, assuming your user is part of the audio group, the ALSA device should be accessible by that user.
 
Nothing wrong with using Linux or open-sourced programs.

Any computer OS can record and mix, even Amiga, Atari and PowerPC.

...but the real TOOLS of recording are the plugins, and those
are going to be VSTs, DirectX's and AUs. And they wont run there.
 
Hey Steve, good to see things are working. Sorry, I was out for a few weeks. Thanks avieth. ;-)
 
Ardour can be compiled with VST support, they just don't have it as standard for licensing reasons. I haven't tried it yet but I'll have a look.
 
After running alsamixer as root and setting up as you want press ESC.

You should still be root user and run alsactl store this will save your alsamixer settings.
 
I know this is an old thread (and I'm posting an old link) but since a couple people claimed that "no pro audio studio is using Linux", I figured I'd stick this here for consideration.

This is actually a more in depth look at the aforemention recording studio (multitrack.us). Makes interesting reading, though Linux's pro audio capabilities have increased exponentially since the time that article was written.
 
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