No Playback - Presonus Audiobox 1818vsl

Installation & Configuration Linux
#14

I hope you installed Ardour 4.4 and not Ardour 3.x

#15

Hi Paul, it was Ardour3 that I installed. What is wrong with it? I am new to Linux and have yet to track or mix with Ardour

#16

Ardour3 is old at this point. Ardour 4.4 was released last week. There’s not much point in us continuing to fix bugs and add features if people just continue installing old versions.

#17

Hi Paul, I downloaded Ardour 4.2.0 two weeks ago and was not able to make it work with my Presonus 1818vsl. It was in pure frustration that I installed v3 (which works). Is there a known problem between v4.2 and Presonus 1818vsl that has now been solved with 4.4?

#18

On GNU/Linux, Ardour does not care about the Hardware at all. Everything is provided by the Kernel/ALSA.
Ardour either uses ALSA or JACK (which also uses ALSA under the hood) to interact with the soundcard.

Ardour does also not interact with the hardware mixer (the mute issue mentioned above). If Ardour 3.X works, Ardour 4.X will also work.
How does Ardour 4.x fail for you? If you’re using JACK make sure to select “AudioSystem: JACK” in Ardour’s setup dialog.

PS. Presonus 1818VSL works just fine here with all versions of Ardour (since 2.X to latest 4.4-git) just like all other class-compliant USB devices that are supported by Linux/ALSA.

#19

Hello all, I am having similar issues,

I open qjackctl, start the server and click connect. under the Audio tab is listed system connection under both sides readable/output and writable/input. when I expand the “system” I see capture_1, capture_2 and playback_1 , playback_2 respectively.

I open an Ardour session and a new “connection” appears on both sides. when expanded i can see busses, tracks etc. (on both sides)

When I play a session, everything works fine.

Problem is, my presonus 1818VSL is connected. In qjackctl, I selected the Presonus unit as the Interface from the list of available options, Jack evidently “sees” the device since I can select it from a list (it disappears when it’s not plugged in)

In the Ardour audio connections manager my only connection options are system options for both playback and capture.

The only evidence of the presonus unit being “seen” is in qjackctl: connect: ALSA tab, then my only two options are 0:midi through port 0 and 0:AudioBox 1818 VSL MIDI1 on both the readable and writable side.

#20

Just a thought: are you sure you have started Ardour using Jack and not Alsa ? Start Ardour with the Jack engine.

#21

No. not at all, lol. regardless of whether Ardour is running or not, the above condition persists, simply from the qjackctl menu.

How do I make sure I"m using jack and not ALSA?

#22

Check Ardour menu: “Window / Audio Midi Setup”. The box named “Audio System” says which engine Ardour is using.

#23

ok, it is set to jack but there is a message in red that says "The Jack audio backend was configured and started externally. This limits your control over it. "

#24

As expected, since that is in fact the case.

You should open a Terminal window and run this command in it:cd /tmp && wget http://jackaudio.org/downloads/adevices.sh && bash ./adevices.sh

This will show you clearly what applications are using which of your audio interfaces.

#25

as requested, and thank you for your help.

This is the output from the above command:

100%[======================================>] 2,249 --.-K/s in 0.007s

2016-01-31 12:29:40 (329 KB/s) - ‘adevices.sh’ saved [2249/2249]

========================================
Part I: ALSA
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version k3.19.0-47-lowlatency.

Card 0 (PCH):

  • Playback Device 0 (ALC3221 Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,0,0):
      used by: jackd (PID 2964)
      access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
      format: S32_LE
      subformat: STD
      channels: 2
      rate: 48000 (48000/1)
      period_size: 1024
      buffer_size: 2048

  • Playback Device 3 (HDMI 0):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,3,0):
      closed

  • Recording Device 0 (ALC3221 Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,0,0):
      used by: jackd (PID 2964)
      access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
      format: S32_LE
      subformat: STD
      channels: 2
      rate: 48000 (48000/1)
      period_size: 1024
      buffer_size: 2048

Card 1 (VSL):

  • Playback Device 0 (USB Audio):

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

  • Recording Device 0 (USB Audio):

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

========================================
Part II: jack processes
2703 ? Ss 0:14 /usr/bin/jackdbus auto
2964 ? SLsl 8:44 /usr/bin/jackd -T -ndefault -t 200 -p 2048 -R -T -d alsa -n 2 -r 48000 -p 1024 -d hw:PCH,0

Part III: jack-dbus config
— status
stopped

#26

I accidentally left the bottom of the code off sorry

========================================
Part II: jack processes
2703 ? Ss 0:14 /usr/bin/jackdbus auto
2964 ? SLsl 8:44 /usr/bin/jackd -T -ndefault -t 200 -p 2048 -R -T -d alsa -n 2 -r 48000 -p 1024 -d hw:PCH,0

Part III: jack-dbus config
— status
stopped

#27

I’m running Ardour 3.5.403 (it was installed when I installed UbuntuStudio) would upgrading have any effect on this?

#28

I guess Paul is in a timezone where people sleep at this hour so I will try to help now :slight_smile:

I suspect that you have not managed to select the right audio device in QJackCTL, since the script says about 1818VSL that it’s “closed”.

When you’ve open QJackCTL’s “Setup” window, the box labeled “Interface” tells what device you want Jack to use. It should say “hw:VSL”. You change the device not by clicking on the box, but the arrow on the right side of the box. There you can see a list of all audio devices your computer sees at the moment.

Also I suggest that you reboot your machine since it might be that there are more than one Jack instances running on your computer since the scipts output says two of your audio devices are used by Jack. There can be only one instance of Jack running at a time.

Here is a picture that shows you where you select the audio device to use with Jack. You can copy and paste this link to your browsers address bar:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2071830/Presonus_1818VLS/QJackCTL.jpg

Here is the output of Pauls script running on my system when Jack is using 1818VSL, note that every other device says “closed” but only 1818VSL says “user by: jack”.

========================================
Part I: ALSA
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version k4.1.16-gentoo.

Card 0 (PCH):

  • Playback Device 0 (VT1802 Analog):

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

  • Playback Device 1 (VT1802 Digital):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,1,0):
      closed

  • Playback Device 2 (VT1802 Alt Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,2,0):
      closed

  • Recording Device 0 (VT1802 Analog):

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

Card 1 (NVidia):

  • Playback Device 3 (HDMI 0):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:NVidia,3,0):
      closed

  • Playback Device 7 (HDMI 1):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:NVidia,7,0):
      closed

Card 2 (VSL):

  • Playback Device 0 (USB Audio):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:VSL,0,0):
      used by: jackd (PID 760)
      access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
      format: S32_LE
      subformat: STD
      channels: 18
      rate: 44100 (44100/1)
      period_size: 1024
      buffer_size: 3072

  • Recording Device 0 (USB Audio):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:VSL,0,0):
      used by: jackd (PID 760)
      access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
      format: S32_LE
      subformat: STD
      channels: 18
      rate: 44100 (44100/1)
      period_size: 1024
      buffer_size: 3072

========================================

#29

Ardour 3.5 is fine when you try to get things working, but before you do any serious audio work you should upgrade to the latest 4.6 release. Hundreds of bugs have been fixed since 3.5 and there are also many improvements to existing features and lots of new ones. You won’t get the 4.6 version from your Linux distros repository, but from this site by donating some sum to the developers. I guess you already did that because you can write on this forum :slight_smile:

#30

Just a correction, there is probably not two instances of Jack running on your system, I misinterpreted the scripts output. Both Jack references in the scripts output are for the same audio device, one for input (recording) and one for output (playback).

#31

Thank you so much for hanging with me.

This is a screenshot from my computer ==> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-nM4h9pmY_3U3BIMUdQRVdTMkk/view?usp=sharing

I ran the terminal command again and this is the output now:

100%[======================================>] 2,249 --.-K/s in 0.001s

2016-01-31 18:58:39 (2.38 MB/s) - ‘adevices.sh.1’ saved [2249/2249]

========================================
Part I: ALSA
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version k3.19.0-47-lowlatency.

Card 0 (PCH):

  • Playback Device 0 (ALC3221 Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,0,0):
      used by: jackd (PID 2964)
      access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
      format: S32_LE
      subformat: STD
      channels: 2
      rate: 48000 (48000/1)
      period_size: 1024
      buffer_size: 2048

  • Playback Device 3 (HDMI 0):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,3,0):
      closed

  • Recording Device 0 (ALC3221 Analog):

    • Subdevice 0 (hw:PCH,0,0):
      used by: jackd (PID 2964)
      access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
      format: S32_LE
      subformat: STD
      channels: 2
      rate: 48000 (48000/1)
      period_size: 1024
      buffer_size: 2048

Card 1 (VSL):

  • Playback Device 0 (USB Audio):

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

  • Recording Device 0 (USB Audio):

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

========================================
Part II: jack processes
2703 ? Ss 0:19 /usr/bin/jackdbus auto
2964 ? SLsl 12:41 /usr/bin/jackd -T -ndefault -t 200 -p 2048 -R -T -d alsa -n 2 -r 48000 -p 1024 -d hw:PCH,0
15856 ? SLl 0:04 /usr/bin/qjackctl

Part III: jack-dbus config
— status
stopped

If I’m following you, I need to stop:

Playback Device 0 (ALC3221 Analog): and Recording Device 0 (ALC3221 Analog):

If that is correct, can you tell me how?

#32

I do need to add this, When I first tried to adjust the “QJackCTL’s “Setup” window, the box labeled “Interface”” the box was grayed out. to fix this I simply scrolled up to “dummy” then back down, volia the interface box was editable. then I selected the presonus list from the dropdown

#33

I suspect that you are not restarting JACK at all. It continues to run on your other (builtin) audio interface.

I suspect that you have a version of JACK with a bug that stops it from exiting when it should (when run with the -T flag).

In addition, stop specifying the “server name”. The ability to set this has been removed from newer versions of QJackctl - it is an option that has caused a LOT of problems for new users.