I don’t think so. I also have only pipewire-jack and it’s working here without using pipecontrol…(CachyOS - arch)
Why don’t you check with another Live USB/CD arch distro? It’s done within 15min.
So you could verify if it’s a setup/config issue of your system…or a hardware issue.
I’ve tested the interface on my old laptop that EndavourOS (also an Arch derivative) and Ardour there is also locked at 48 kHz when launching but the guitar signal is not garbled when I put in my guitar cable. I’ll try out a Live CD next.
Maybe check also with a non-arch distro? (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint)
Could be only Arch related.
Even using the ALSA backend? Ardour can request any supported rate when using the ALSA backend, but if a JACK server is already running then Ardour will default to using the JACK/Pipewire backend, and will not let you change the rate of the running JACK server.
Going to try Ubuntu Studio Live CD.
You already confirmed you can control the sample rate with pipecontrol.
Yes with pipecontrol I can
force a samplerate onto Ardour before I launch it. My confusion/misunderstanding is why can’t I set the samplerate with Ardour directly in JACK/Pipewire or ALSA etc.?
So you’re saying that you want to be able to set the sample rate from Ardour’s Window → Audio/MIDI setup?
I’m not sure if that can be done with Pipewire-Jack. It should be possible with the ALSA driver and probably with Jack2 as well; presuming you don’t start the Jack daemon before starting Ardour.
OTOH it’s just about as time consuming to set up the sample rate from within Ardour as it is to do it beforehand.
You supposedly should know what sample rate you want to use before starting Ardour so if you set it up 5 seconds before starting or 5 seconds after shouldn’t make that much of a difference.
I just tested my Focusrite in Ubuntu Studio (Live USB session). If I open Ardour with JACK/Pipewire my guitar doesn’t garbled like it does in Arch Linux. I also tried running Ardour with ALSA on the Ubuntu Studio session and that worked fine as well. I noticed though that if I choose my g733 gaming headset as output I can only get 48kHZ sampling rate. If I choose the Focusrite as both input and output then 192 kHz becomes available.
That probably only my supports one sample rate. Common for inexpensive chipsets which are not targeted to recording use.
For JACK servers you just need to set the server sample rate first.
For ALSA you should be able to set the sample rate, but you will have to stop the JACK/Pipewire backend first before you even get the option to connect to the ALSA backend.
I got ALSA working on my Arch Linux PC and here I don’t have the initial garbled output on my guitar signal like on JACK/Pipewire. Is recording with JACK better than ALSA or vice versa?
I’ve been looking at headphones for monitoring. Would these be appropriate for the job?
Using ALSA directly hijacks the soundcard so you won’t to be able to watch YouTube videos or listen to Spotify while Ardour is running.
You also won’t be able to use softsynths or effects that can’t be loaded as plugins in Ardour.
If you don’t need any of the above it’s usually recommended to use ALSA instead of Jack.
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Ah, thanks for the clarification.
As mentioned the primary use case for JACK servers is routing audio between different applications. Originally that meant music production applications, but Pipewire is bridging between standard desktop audio API and JACK API, so you can also rounte audio from browsers or other desktop applications as well as JACK-aware music production applications.
As you found that means you have to make sure you set the audio settings you want first before starting Ardour, since once Ardour detects a running JACK server it will just use the existing settings.
ALSA backend requests exclusive use of the audio hardware, so you can know for sure what settings are in use by Ardour.
Those are very well regarded headphones, I think they should work well.
about "I’ve been looking at headphones for monitoring. "
The D770 are really great but mind they’re of the closed type, thus mostly for cases when you’re recording with a mike close enough of the headphones to grab some noise if they were open type.
Also, as closed they’re a bit less comfortable than open-type when you use them for hours.
I used to use DT990 for mixing/mastering and DT770 for recording. YMMV.
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Closed back headphones are also useful if you work in environments which have a small to moderate level of ambient noise. I used to use open back headphones a lot, and you hear everything in the room with you, they don’t really block any noise.
If you are mixing with headphones, it’s sometimes good to listen in other ways. This isn’t a panacea, but it’s a useful plugin:
https://www.airwindows.com/monitoring3/
Cheers,
Keith
Thanks for the recommendation.