Ill warn you all first off, not only am I a noob to using Ardour, I am also a noob to Linux (using SONAR on my windows box). I was able to install Ardour fine with the pre-compiled Kubuntu packages. However, I have come across some issues with recording and playback. I was able to record by plugging my guitar directly into my laptop, but my play back was very choppy. A friend suggested installing alsa-oss, but that did not fix my problem. In fact now I get no audio at all going into my pc. Im running 64 bit Kubuntu 7.10 on an HP Pavilion dv9000t (2.2 Ghz, 2GB of RAM, 2 x 120 GB 7200 RPM HDD). I know thats probably not enough info, but does anyone have any suggestions of things I can try to get Ardour working? Looks like a VERY cool app and I cant wait to start using it.
Your first course of action would probably be to find if anything plays back smoothly at all. If not this is an ALSA problem. Laptops generally have cheap kinky AC97 based sound devices and usually you have to mess around with mix and configuration settings to get them to work correctly.
Second, plugging a guitar pickup directly into a computer sound device is not a very good idea. There are all kinds of impedance problems with that, and it probably sounds awful. If you want to record direct, at least get a cheap DI and preamp to go between the guitar and your computer.
Thanks for the suggestions Reuben. I can play MP3s, CDs, and DVDs just fine. Its only choppy in Ardour. You mentioned that there were some settings I need to configure? Do you have any suggestions or references you can direct me to? Here is the info for my audio card:
Are you running it with realtime priority? How does everything look in Jack? Have you used ‘top’ to check how much of your system resources are being used while running? Are you using a plugin to get your guitar sound? A lot of the plugins are a bit tricky to deal with sometimes.