I have just started using Ardour and thinks it’s great.
I want to input 2 track audio from the output of my Alesis 16 track mixer.
I have bought a m-audio 2496 card and installed it. I have configured jack to use the two audio inputs of the 2496 for it’s input and the internal sound card as it’s output.
If I use audacity I can record and playback using this configuration with jack.
When I try with Ardour I get no input. I do this using the same jack configuration. If I import audio data into Ardour it will play back fine. Just seems to be a problem with my configuration of Ardour.
Incidentally I tried the same thing using the USB connection of the Alesis mixer and got exactly the same result. If I used a USB to 1/4" cable, that records into Ardour fine.
I have read as much of the documentation as I can find and I think I’ve done all the simple configuration.
How did you configure ardour to use different cards for input and output? You usually have to jump through several hoops with unusual ALSA configuration file settings to create a pseudo-device, and with no clock synchronization between the devices you will likely get an under or over run at some point. You did not mention any custom ALSA configuration settings, so my first question would be whether you really checked Audacity with that same JACK configuration, or whether you mistakenly had Audacity talking directly to the ALSA devices.
Regarding the M2496 card, I have one and had problem several times with accidentally leaving the card set to synchronize to an external S/PDIF clock input and no longer having the S/PDIF device connected. That prevents the output from running, but it doesn’t give clear error messages why it is not runnng.
Also if you are using the M2496 as output the device seems to default to internal mixer set to full output volume attenuation every time I log in, so you probably need to check all the settings in the Envy24 control application and verify all the settings are as you expect (output volume set to no attenuation, correct input selected for the inputs, either S/PDIF or analog inputs, correct S/PDIF output format if you are using that, etc.)
I was using Ubuntu Studio (especially installed for this project) I did some investigation today and found Tango Studio. I tried the live edition and Ardour worked with my m-audio card using exactly the same configuration as before. I have now installed Tango over the previous installation and can start using Ardour to record and mix my band.
Thanks for all the information and a really great bit of software.
Hmm you should probably get on IRC (Help>Chat in Ardour) and ask there, this doesn’t sound like a simple problem if you have managed to get Audacity working with Jack and verified it working there, but not in Ardour. IRC is a much better venue for getting help on that.