When I export a audio track to a file, e.g. FLAC or WAV, Ardour crashes very often with a segfault or:
munmap_chunk(): invalid pointer
Aborted
It is the only audio track in the session besides a MIDI track with ZynAddSubFX, 8 minutes log, stereo. And it happens both when selecting the master track or the audio track in the export dialog. When I use the Quick export it happens as well.
It seems it does not happen when I “disconnect” Ardour from all devices with qpwgraph.
Can I find out what causes these crashes?
The reason Paul asked is because distro packages can be buggy in ways the official program isn’t.
So you should try the demo version from the Download page (Download Ardour | Ardour Community) and see if it too crashes.
If not it’s probably a Debian specific bug, which should be reported to Debian.
It if the official binary also crashes it could be a PipeWire bug (maybe Debian specific as well or in the official PW source), so you should check if changing to ALSA resolves the issue.
So, likely an issue with the version of Pipewire you have. If it isn’t the most recent release, you need to upgrade or wait or use ALSA. If it is, report it to the Pipewire project.
I downloaded the Linux demo binary, and it is way more stable. I made around 20 exports to FLAC and WAV, and it crashed only 2 times at the beginning. I could not reproduce the crash afterwards, even though I played around with qpwgraph and connecting / disconnecting Build-in Audio cpature to audio in and master out to my headphones sink during exports. When Ardours master out is connected playback to the headphones from other sources is muted during the export, but unmuted once export is finished. I would not sign that Pipewire might not be an issue due to the two crashes, but Ardour demo is way more stable than with the Debian package.
Pipewire is 1.0.1 in the Debian repo, and when I compare to PWs Gitlab, thats quite recent.
I will file an issue to the Debian Ardour maintainers.
Thank you very much for your help. Even though recommendations are still going to use ALSA, I will try my luck with PW. Connecting things with qpwgraph is just amazing and something I ever wanted to be able to with all audio stuff. I am not a professional and just started to play around with the tools and I am immensely impressed whats possible on Linux with Ardour, JACK, PW, easy effects and all the plugins. My deepest respect! Donation via Paypal on the way
