Hi y’all,
I’ve been experiencing random (pink?) noise whenever I have an Ardour or Mixbus32c session open.
This happens regardless of Jack buffer settings, with DSP at 10% or under, and no xruns, even on a brand new project with no tracks - if I just wait for a minute or so.
When it happens, I’ll see it in the mixer for my master channel, again, even on a project with no tracks.
I only hear the sound when using Ardour and the noise is always the same and lasts for the same amount of time.
I’ve been using Pipewire lately but replaced it with my old Jack2/Cadence/Pulse setup and am still having the same issue.
Given that I’m seeing no xruns and nothing in the logs, I’m at a bit of a loss and would appreciate any suggestions y’all may have.
I’ve had some noise randomly start up, didn’t wait to see how long it would last… I would shut things down. Running with licensed Ardour.org 6.9 on Ubuntu Studio 20.04, particularly a session with Sfizz tracks, VPO sounds. Jack. Scarlet 2i2 as well, but I’m not listening to output through that… I listen through the laptop headphone out. Didn’t see anything in the logs, nor any x-runs. I believe it’s only happened during playback… not immediately, but would play for a bit, then PZZSSSHSSH…
Thanks for the thought, unfortunately I’ve testing everything I can think of and its still happening.
I’ve tried:
Jack2 & Cadence with my usb interface (speakers & headphones)
Alsa backend with my onboard intel audio (headphones) & usb interface
Pulseaudio backend with onboard intel audio (headphones)
I can open other applications (vital, geonkick, hydrogen) and never hear the noise. It only happens with Ardour/Mixbus unfortunately. And it makes it impossible for me to bounce a track because I can’t go for more than 60-90 seconds before the static hiss jumps onto my master track.
Can you go through the connections window and double check that there are no connections to the master bus in that case? For example, an input connected directly to the master bus unexpectedly.
What amount of time does the noise last? Does it repeat in a pattern, noise, silence, noise, silence? If so, are the gaps between the noise the same length each time? Same length as the noise, or different length?
I checked the connections window and I did see an unused connection to the auditioner so I disabled that to see if it helps at all.
What amount of time does the noise last? Does it repeat in a pattern, noise, silence, noise, silence? If so, are the gaps between the noise the same length each time? Same length as the noise, or different length?
It’s always the exact same length and pitch.
No pattern. Sometimes I can go minutes without hearing it, sometimes it starts popping up every few seconds.
I’ve managed to get it down so I can at least bounce a track after a few tries.
I’ve had this same hardware for years and never experienced this before. I switched to Pipewire about 6 months ago and everything was working as expected for a bit, though I just reinstalled from scratch and I noticed the issue sometime after.
By setting my pipewire & pipewire-jack configs:
to use a 44100 clock rate instead of 48000
with a set latency/quantum of 512
enabling the libpipewire-module-rt settings
and then following some of the steps on the Pro Audio Arch wiki page, I’ve managed to reduce it quite a bit.
At this point I’m chalking it up to Pipewire/config on my end.
That is just a task Ardour uses to play samples when browsing. I was thinking of something like an unexpected connection from an input with no source connected. That wasn’t very likely, just trying to rule out places noise could be coming in.
Since it happens both with built-in audio and a USB interface, hardware problems seem unlikely. Especially since as you say you “see” it in the master bus. Presumably you mean by that it shows up on the bus meters. Those meters measure the signal going through the master bus, so have no way to show something which is happening only on the hardware outputs. The audio hardware also has no influence on bouncing tracks or faster than realtime export, so if the noise was showing up in those cases that is just another clue that the hardware is not involved.
But you said the problem also occurs with the ALSA backend. When using the Ardour ALSA backend the Pipewire server is requested to stop using the audio hardware and Ardour has exclusive access.
I don’t remember if there was a version of Pipewire which did not honor that request properly, but I think in that case the Ardour request to open the audio device with exclusive access would fail, and you would get no audio, not good audio for a while and then noise.
When you say the problem happens on a “brand new” project, is the project truly blank, or did you start from a template which may have loaded a plugin in the master bus automatically? The fact that the problem occurs with different Ardour backends, and only with Ardour, not other applications, is pointing to something within Ardour. Ardour 6.9 does not seem to have other reports of this behavior, which can often indicate that the problem is caused by a loaded plugin rather than the base application. Obviously not applicable if you have not loaded any plugins.
First, I just want to say thanks for helping me out here, I really appreciate it.
Presumably you mean by that it shows up on the bus meters.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying (and failing) to say.
The audio hardware also has no influence on bouncing tracks or faster than realtime export, so if the noise was showing up in those cases that is just another clue that the hardware is not involved.
Thanks for the explanation. I didn’t think about that originally, but stepping back and walking through the signal flow, that makes total sense.
When you say the problem happens on a “brand new” project, is the project truly blank, or did you start from a template which may have loaded a plugin in the master bus automatically?
Totally blank project.
I just tried capturing another recording of the hissing sound in Ardour and captured the output of master on a new track for 8 minutes with no hissing! (alsa backend, 44100, 512)
I tried doing the same in Mixbux32c v7 with the same settings and got 6 instances of the hissing throughout.
I’ve been working mostly in Mixbus lately finishing up a track. I thought for sure I’d checked in Ardour yesterday before replying but apparently not. At this point I can’t reproduce it in Ardour, only Mixbus (though I’ll try some longer tests over the next few days)
Thank you!
I’d figured there was no way that was my issue since I’ve been paying for Mixbus for years.
Turns out when I reinstalled my new system the license file didn’t restore correctly and although it listed my name and said “licensed” when it started, when I opened the license window (mentioned in the link you posted) it said no license found.
I just recopied my license and now it shows as properly licensed.
I’ll check tomorrow to confirm, but that thread makes it seem pretty likely this was the cause.
Now I’m questiong if I ever heard it in Ardour, but I swear I checked multiple times before posting originally.
