I’ve been using Ardour for a while now and have 8.12.0 installed. I use Linux and I do compile from source, which I believe I have all my dependencies squared away. Just want to start with that.
I’m having an issue though with busses and tracks not accepting input from other tracks/busses. In the project I’m working on now, my Master buss is broken and nothing I connect to it will transfer sound on the Master buss. When I started the project and several months into it, it worked just fine, but then all of a sudden it just died. I couldn’t find anything wrong with it, so I just made another master buss and used it to collect my inputs, problem solved, though a half-assed solution.
Then it started happening with other busses and the only solution I found was to delete the buss and start a new one and reassign everything. Then it worked. There was no difference from the new buss and the old buss, just one stopped working and the new one worked.
Now I am in a case where I just added a midi track. I can see notes coming in and the sound be generated on the track VUs. It’s a simple track just using the general midi sound module. Nothing extra, but I can’t get the sound from it to go anywhere. No track or buss I connect it to will pass the sound through and nothing shows up on the connected VU meters.
But, I can connect the output of that track directly to the speakers and it works.
So I am thinking I have something out of whack in my compilation or configuration, perhaps I’m running out of allocated memory? Any ideas what might cause this? I am assigned to the audio group and I have the following settings in my /etc/security/limits.conf
soft nofile 2048000
hard nofile 2048000
soft memlock 2048000
hard memlock 2048000
I believe the * should cover the audio group… though admit I’m not 100% sure of that.
Not that I can offer much help, but I had some similar cases. It was always a problem with some plugins that interfered badly. I never could really track down what it was, but I removed one plugin after the other and at some point it worked again.
Thank you all for the feedback. To answer one question, I do not have any plugins on the Master bus, but I think you’re all right that it is a plugin issue, even though I don’t use very many and the two channels in question didn’t have any on them. I also don’t usually put plugins on the busses, just on the tracks… at least at this point in the project. I’ve tried to only use plugins that come from the Ardour installation, but there are probably one or two out there from other places. I’ll do a deeper dive on that and if I can isolate which one it might be, I’ll post here. Thanks again.
I haven’t gone back to Alsa, but I don’t think Pipewire is the issue, though I suppose I shouldn’t remove that from suspect. I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.
Unfortunately, safe mode also disables the generic midi synth module, so half my channels are dead just from that, including the offending ones I started with, so that didn’t help much. Would be nice if we could just disable plugins per track. Not sure if that’s doable, but I don’t see an option for that.
Well, after deleting every plugin from the project, including the general midi synth ones, my Master buss is still broken, along with a couple other busses. Some busses are working, some aren’t. The project doesn’t seem that big to me. I have about 10 busses and 25 tracks, of which only about half are being used right now (I start from a template).
I’ve checked the compiler flags to see if there is a way to increase internal memory, but I don’t see any. I have seen, randomly and very rarely, an error about running out of memory, but I don’t remember which project it was in, and I have about four or five that I’m bouncing around now, each about the same size. Just focusing on this one right now as I know it’s broken. I also think this error was a configuration issue and the way I had tracks assigned, possibly in a feedback loop. But at this point, I may have to recreate the project from scratch and hope it doesn’t happen again.
The one track that was broken and wouldn’t connect to anything I deleted and started a new one, which does seem to be working, for now.
Why do you think memory has anything to do with this problem? Are there any error messages printed in the log, or on the console if you start Ardour from a terminal?
How big is the entire project folder now? Maybe you could zip up the entire project folder and upload somewhere so someone else could take a look and see if anything stands out as obviously wrong (or try it in an ardour.org build to see if the problem occurs in the supported binary version).
I was thinking memory since each connection would take some amount of memory for buffers, and if it ran out of memory, it would lose those connections. But you’re right, I should have thought of the command line. I’m too used to starting it up with menu.
But using the terminal exposed something as it forced me to reselect the engine. Using ALSA or PulseAudio, the Master buss started working again, for at least the first time, but then when I shut down and restarted again, they were all broke again in all configurations. There are no errors in the terminal though, under any of the engines.
EDIT: Bah, somehow I ended up with two instances of Ardour running on that last test. Starting clean, ALSA and Pulse are working fine, it’s just Jack/Pipewire that is broken.
I’ll hold off on asking someone to dig into it. Since I did see it working on ALSA and Pulse for a time, it makes me suspect my system or something outside of Ardour. I may setup a debug version and try to debug it, at least for some insight.
Thanks all for the replies. I think this a problem outside of Ardour, so if I find a solution, I’ll post here. Might be a while.
The command ulimit -l will display the maximum amount of memory which Ardour will be allowed to lock into place in physical RAM.
The usual recommendation for a machine which is running realtime audio software is to add the configuration memlock unlimited for whichever group is used for audio/realtime use (which could be audio, realtime, jackuser, or pipewire depending on how your or your distribution setup the groups).
That will eliminate any issues with memory limits causing a problem within the limits of your physical RAM available.
Which version? Several versions of pipewire are known to cause problems. The default answer from the Ardour developers is that they will not investigate any errors which occur with pipewire-jack until the problem has been replicated using jackd. Version 1.4.6 has been out for around 1 month and does not seem to have JACK related problems reported here.
I posted in the first post my memlock settings, but I didn’t know about the unlimited flag. I will change that, though I think I gave plenty of headroom in the settings… not sure.
Ubuntu made Pipewire the default sound system in 24.04, as I recall. Or perhaps I installed by scratch, in either case, Synaptic is reporting the version as 5.27.11, though I think the libraries are the ones you’re actually referring to, and those are 1.0.5-1, which is much older than the version you listed. I keep the distro up to date with all the published updates from Ubuntu, though this may be a reason to switch to a different audio based distro like AVLinux. They are very slow at updating their audio libraries.
I would be a little hesitant to build the Pipewire 1.4.6 as not sure what else it will break from other packages being so far behind. Pipewire has been pretty good up until now. Any suggestions?
So, decided to download and install the latest Pipewire. What could go wrong?
It went wrong, though not exactly sure when it all fell apart. Now when I run Ardour, I can only run on the internal clock, and the only choice is local or MTC… that button used to say Jack, and yes, I do have Jack/Pipewire selected. I think this started happening earlier after I switched over to ALSA. When I went back to Jack/PW, it started showing the MTC, but wasn’t worried about it since I was just testing local. I need Jack to work with Hydrogen, which I have to set it as the master controller since Ardour and it don’t want to play nice otherwise.
Yeah, I’m about ready to install AVLinux or Kubuntu Studio, though not sure if Kubuntu Studio would be any better than what I have now. Will do some thinking and figure something out.
Thanks for the help. No worries that things seem to be completely f’d up now. I’ve used Linux for decades. I’m used to it. I’ll figure something out.
You haven’t installed pipewire-jack correctly. You will end up with a file in /etc/ld.so.config.d that identifies the pipewire directory where its versions of the JACK libraries live, so that applications using JACK find them instead of the ones that come with JACK1 or JACK2. Then using the JACK API will work, because the application will be talking to Pipewire (via the JACK API).
Following the /etc/ld.so.conf.d path all the way to the new Pipewire installation I created today. It installed correctly, at least as far as the pathing is concerned. The bigger question would be did I have all the correct dependencies and configuration settings correct. There were a lot red "NO"s as I did the make config step, and I just don’t know enough about the internals of PW to know if that was good or bad. I’m guessing there were several no’s that should have been yes’s.
Very very probably one of those red no’s that scrolled by.
I need PW to play with Hydrogen. I use it for all my drum programming, so going back to straight programming the drums in Ardour just ain’t going to happen at this time.
So, I appreciate all the insight you guys are providing. This whole system, though, has been getting more and more squirly over the years since I did an upgrade to 24.04 over 22.04 instead of installing a fresh version. This just seems like a straw that broke the camels back moment and time to blow this thing away and start fresh. Was one reason I was willing to risk the PW install. Been thinking it’s time for it anyway.
Hmm, you’re probably right. However, things have devolved here to catastrophic. No audio devices anymore since messing with the new PW libraries. Sound is completely jacked, even after deinstalling the new PW libraries and reinstalling the old. Doesn’t look like much choice now. Fresh install is coming.