Ardour6 with pipewire not connecting to USB-devices

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

Hey All,
experimenting with Ardour6 to get 2 USB-soundcards into individual tracks. I use Alsa with pipewire + wireplumber. The cards are found in aplay -l. When running Ardour with pipewire 64 tracks are displayed in recorder. Strange, all tracks have the same signal from one device(MIC), the other device is not recognized.
I have no idea how to allocate the devices to individual tracks.
My system: Laptop, Kernel: 6.8.0-38-lowlatency, cinnamon 5.8.4, Linux-Mint 21.2 Victoria
Ubuntu 22.04 jammy
Any hints and how-to’s are much appreciated since no appropriate info’s were found in the net.
regards Mat

#2

First things first, you should really update your version of Ardour. Not even sure if Pipewire existed when A6 was out, but can’t remember honestly.

Second thing, can you share a screenshot of your Audio/MIDI Setup window? I suspect you have the wrong settings there at a guess. Of course I am also assuming without knowing that Pipewire is aggregating the two devices to show as a single device, but that could be a bad assumption (See item #4 below)

Third thing, I assume you already did the obvious and checked the input to the track?

Fourth thing, it is a bad idea to record off two different sound cards at the same time unless they are locked to the same clock. See this thread (Multiple mics on Ubuntu - #12 by graylion) for more info as to how to accomplish it if you really want, but it is generally a bad idea.

  Seablade
#3

So you selected the JACK backend in the Ardour audio setup, and are using pipewire-jack for routing audio?

To save Paul the time typing this up again, I will copy in his instructions for running a script which verifies which software is using which audio interface:

With Ardour running, open a terminal window and run this command:
cd /tmp && wget https://ardour.org/files/adevices.sh && bash ./adevices.sh
Paste the output here. It will not alter your system.

#4

Chances are that your version of pipewire is too old. Unless you use recent pipewire 1.2.1 do not bother. Various older versions have known bugs which make them unsuitable for pro-audio.

While updating is always a good idea, it should make no difference at all for the case at hand.

Ardour cannot distinguish pipewire from JACK.

1 Like
#5

True, this was more of a general ‘good idea’.

Seablade

#6

Many thanks for your reply. Here is the output of cat /proc/asound/cards. no surprise!

Card 0 (Device_1):

  • Playback Device 0 (USB Audio):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Device_1,0,0):
      closed

  • Recording Device 0 (USB Audio):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Device_1,0,0):
      closed

Card 1 (Device):

  • Playback Device 0 (USB Audio):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Device,0,0):
      closed

  • Recording Device 0 (USB Audio):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Device,0,0):
      closed

Card 2 (Generic):

  • Playback Device 3 (HDMI 0):
    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Generic,3,0):
      closed

Card 3 (Generic_1):

  • Playback Device 0 (ALC269VC Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Generic_1,0,0):
      closed

  • Recording Device 0 (ALC269VC Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:Generic_1,0,0):
      closed

Card 29 (ThinkPadEC):

========================================
Part II: jack/pipewire
1079 ? Ssl 6:50 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse
13772 ? Ssl 0:17 /usr/bin/pipewire
pipewire
Compiled with libpipewire 0.3.48
Linked with libpipewire 0.3.48

And here the set-up screen of my Ardour6
Bildschirmfoto vom 2024-07-24 07-59-54

I’ll try to update the ardour6 to 8.6. and see if this solves the problem.
Many Thanks
Mat

#7

It won’t, as I clarified later that was more just general good idea advice rather than for this specific problem.

However as @x42 pointed out this could be your pipe wire version being to old.

Seablade

#8

Use Audio System “JACK” with pipewire, and pipewire’s JACK emulation.

if you have not setup pipewire to provide JACK by default, you can run Ardour from a terminal:

pw-jack Ardour6

or if you got Ardour from your distro instead of the official binary

pw-jack ardour6

But with ancient pipewire 0.3.48 you’ll likely run into countless bugs.

#9

Hi,
thanks to all who gave me valuable notes. I now got the version 8.6 running. First it’s a success, but unfortunately the 2 devices/tracks are completely overdriven. Perhaps any DC-signal on both, I don’t now.
This is exactly the same behavior that I observed with Ardour6 so far.

Bildschirmfoto vom 2024-07-24 17-12-31
Bildschirmfoto vom 2024-07-24 17-12-311366×768 59.9 KB

second approach as Robin proposed was to call pw-jack Ardour8. Finally it did the job.

Bildschirmfoto vom 2024-07-24 17-08-39
Bildschirmfoto vom 2024-07-24 17-08-391366×768 67 KB

The devices now obviously have the right signals. Why the 2 other tracks appear distorted is a miracle still.
In the net it was said that pipewire would replace jack as well as pulseaudio. I had assumed that pipewire is such a new development that the properties of jack and pulseaudio were merged into and together with wireplumber result in an improved DAW.

For now, I am fine and can live with the results.
Best wishes
Mat

#10

Well 3/4 there seem to be routed from your built in inputs, not from USB devices.

 Seablade