Xruns constantly out of nowhere

kylekendall78 · December 7, 2022, 11:49pm

Hi all. I have been an avid user of Ardour for 15+ years now. I love it and I have recorded a lot of music using it. However, I am currently having a problem with non-stop xruns and I can’t nail it down. I have a Presonus 1824c interface that I have been using for a couple of years now without a hitch. This has happened briefly in the past and it has gone away after a couple of weeks (perhaps after some updates?). This time it has been a few weeks with no improvement. I have looked into the USB busses and I believe the interface is on its own, but either way I haven’t done anything different with any of the USB ports. This is an Asus laptop, but it is a dedicated recording device. Jack is set at 48khz, buffer size-256, periods-3. One thing I did notice is that Jack and Ubuntu Controls Jack settings did not agree, which seems weird, as I thought USC would override and alter Jack. I corrected Jack to agree with what I set in Ubuntu Studio Controls to no avail. I’m sure I am leaving out some crucial information, but please advise. I appreciate any help with this.

ccaudle · December 8, 2022, 1:25am

Perhaps verify that an update did not switch from jackd to pipewire-jack without your notice.

kylekendall78 · December 8, 2022, 1:45am

Hi Chris. Thank you for responding. I’m not sure where to look for that, i.e., pipewire vs Jackd. I have never encountered pipewire and do not realize it existed on my system.

ccaudle · December 8, 2022, 3:15am

May be completely unrelated, but you would be able to tell in whatever application you use for updating your system.

It may not exist on your system, you did not mention what version you have. You mentioned Ubuntu Controls, so I assume that means you are running Ubuntu. Ubuntu made Pipewire the default audio server in 22.10, so if you had a previous version of Ubuntu and updated to 22.10 it may have changed the audio configuration. Version 21.10 had Pipewire available, but it was not enabled by default.
I do not run Ubuntu personally, so I am not sure the policy on changing existing configurations when the distribution default changes.

Seems like it could match the time you described your configuration stopped working properly, so worth checking.

ardourwlk · December 8, 2022, 2:26pm

I would personally vote for ditching Studio Controls. When it was introduced, I found that I had a hard time keeping my settings steady, and ended up uninstalling. Too many hands in the pot. What worked for me prior to that, and since that, has been using QJackCtl, and setting up different presets if you actually do need to change settings for different setups.

kylekendall78 · December 8, 2022, 2:56pm

Hi Chris. Thank you for your investigative work. As I mentioned before, I knew I was leaving out a lot of spec detail, but I felt like a lot of it was irrelevant since this issue just cropped up without any hardware changes. I am still running Ubuntu 22.04, but there may have been an update that switched that Pipewire setting as you say. I will definitely look at that this evening.

kylekendall78 · December 8, 2022, 2:59pm

Thank you both for the info! I think you may be right in your assessment of USC. I have always been perfectly content with QJackctrl, and as I said I did notice that settings that were supposedly being altered through it did not actually change in Jack. I think I might just get rid of USC as well.

kylekendall78 · December 15, 2022, 12:11am

Hello again. So I tried looking into Pipewire as well as getting rid of Ubuntu Studio Controls. I had, at the same time, another issue that cropped up with an NVidia update that switched me back to the X11 driver, so I was hoping when I worked that out that that would have solved the whole problem, but alas… When I got rid of USC it didn’t seem to improve things and I realized that one thing I like about it is that it seems to be more intuitive with USB connectivity, and also with reconnecting with devices that are always plugged in, so I may revisit that, but for now I don’t believe it is problematic for me other than the fact that it does not always alter the info in JACK a it is supposed to do. As far as Pipewire, I cannot seem to find any way to access that program. I have seen, in recent updates, that it is being integrated but no cursory search in my system seems to show me where it would be nor how to remove it. A, possibly, more important piece of information that I have uncovered is that a number of the songs I have recorded have no issues if I set up another track and start to record. The major Xrun(and not just Xruns, but inordinate amounts of snap, crackle, and pop) downfall seems to come with not just recording but playing certain songs with many tracks and plugins involved. I tried disabling the plugins on the track I am attempting to record with no dice. Still a ton of crackle and the Xruns are continuous as per my counter on Ardour. Any thoughts? I am more than happy to supply any info or system specs.

kylekendall78 · December 15, 2022, 12:48am

Jack: JackClient::AddClient name = ardourprobe, ref = 6

Jack: JackLinuxFutex::Connect name = jack_sem.1000_default_ardourprobe

Jack: JackClient::kAddClient fName = qjackctl name = ardourprobe

Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 5 name = qjackctl notify = 4

Jack: JackClient::kGraphOrderCallback

Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 6 name = ardourprobe notify = 1

Jack: JackClient::RemoveClient name = ardourprobe, ref = 6

Jack: JackClient::kRemoveClient fName = qjackctl name = ardourprobe

Jack: JackClient::ClientNotify ref = 5 name = qjackctl notify = 4

Jack: JackClient::kGraphOrderCallback

Jack: jack_get_uuid_for_client_name ext_client 163784f0 client 163784f0

19:22:12.089 XRUN callback (1 skipped).

19:23:17.982 Statistics reset.

19:23:34.195 Client deactivated.

19:23:34.291 D-BUS: JACK server is stopping…

19:23:34.402 D-BUS: JACK server was stopped (org.jackaudio.service aka jackdbus).

kylekendall78 · December 15, 2022, 12:49am

This is a particularly problematic area of this readout.

kylekendall78 · December 15, 2022, 12:55am

This is the lsusb readout. I have not changed anything, however, and have not had a problem until recently:

Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 006: ID b49a:04f2 Realtek Bluetooth Radio
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:57de Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB2.0 VGA UVC WebCam
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:0129 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTS5129 Card Reader Controller
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 194f:010d PreSonus Audio Electronics, Inc. Studio 1824c
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 046d:c534 Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

The Presonus is my audio interface. Would it behoove me to switch that to another bus, and if so how would I do that without changing any physical ports?

ccaudle · December 15, 2022, 1:04am

Simplify the problem. VLC can use JACK as the audio backend, try playing an audio file with VLC and see if it has problems. Start a new session and do not install any plugins, just make one track and either record something or import an existing WAV file and see if it can play without problems.

system · January 12, 2023, 1:04am

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