Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

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CrocoDuck
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by CrocoDuck »

Hi there!

I have just skimmed through the thread, and it definitely rings some bells. I had the very same issue on my old gen Scarlett 2i4. Is your device an old gen?
EVD wrote:Thanks. Yeah well, your conclusions are logical, however I can't accept it to be broken.
There is something fishy about that +48V button, on the old gen. It killed 2 devices for me. I wrote about it here:
https://thecrocoduckspond.wordpress.com ... st-review/
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

CrocoDuck wrote:Hi there!

I have just skimmed through the thread, and it definitely rings some bells. I had the very same issue on my old gen Scarlett 2i4. Is your device an old gen?
EVD wrote:Thanks. Yeah well, your conclusions are logical, however I can't accept it to be broken.
There is something fishy about that +48V button, on the old gen. It killed 2 devices for me. I wrote about it here:
https://thecrocoduckspond.wordpress.com ... st-review/
I thought he said that the thing still works just fine in Windows 10. But thanks for the info! :)
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by CrocoDuck »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: I thought he said that the thing still works just fine in Windows 10. But thanks for the info! :)
Is it?
EVD wrote:Thank you, I agree. Well it's been done yesterday with a Win 10 system. Initially, to my delight, the interface was dead silent as well, in spite of having been selected as a main card in that Win10 system. Then we played some youtube vid and started to wiggle all switches, especially the "+48v" toggle which switches mic amplification on/off. At some moment the interface "jumpstarted" and from that moment on, it was functional in Win10.
It feels like it is not 100% reliable on win either. Makes me wonder whether the +48V button weirdness might affect Linux somehow differently than other OSes, even though I would never be able to even guess how or why.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by merlyn »

If speaker-test came out through the internal soundcard then your changes in .asoundrc didn't work. I have disabled my internal soundcard in the BIOS.

EDIT : I think you need to create /etc/asound.conf and put your changes in there.

https://www.alsa-project.org/wiki/Setti ... ult_device
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by nikgnomicradio »

EVD wrote: About speaker-test. Calling it without arguments causes my builtin, onboard (it's a Thinkpad laptop) soundcard to kick in. upon which everything works. To actually force ALSA to use USB interface, I have used:

Code: Select all

speaker-test -D plughw:USB
you probably don't need to use 'plughw:' (but it should still work ok)
Most users need it to work around Pulseaudio, but you can call card direct with 'hw:'

but probably need to specify ALSA subdevice - in your case would be either 'hw:USB,0' or 'hw:1,0'

must also specify 2 channels (-c 2) or speaker-test will default to single mono channel that may not play, or only play left channel

I also set it to test both channels twice twice and then stop (-l 2), default test never stops

so try

Code: Select all

speaker-test -D hw:USB,0 -c 2 -l 2
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by EVD »

merlyn wrote:If speaker-test came out through the internal soundcard then your changes in .asoundrc didn't work. I have disabled my internal soundcard in the BIOS.
Yes, I wanted to do that, unfortunately my Thinkpad doesn't have this toggle in the BIOS.
So instead...
EDIT : I think you need to create /etc/asound.conf and put your changes in there.
https://www.alsa-project.org/wiki/Setti ... ult_device
... yes I did that before (you can see some posts above it's been so far done on the user level (via ~/.asoundrc)). Regardless, doesn't change anything.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by EVD »

nikgnomicradio wrote:
EVD wrote: [...]
so try

Code: Select all

speaker-test -D hw:USB,0 -c 2 -l 2
Thank you, I've tried that. I get this output:

Code: Select all

$ speaker-test -D hw:1,0 -c 2 -l 2

speaker-test 1.1.8

Playback device is hw:1,0
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 2 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Sample format not available for playback: Invalid argument
Setting of hwparams failed: Invalid argument
No sound, but it's quite interesting, could it be referring to the fact 24bit audio is required by Scarlett?

update
changing to 'plughw' helped the command to actually pick up

Code: Select all

speaker-test -D plughw:1,0 -c 5 -l 2

speaker-test 1.1.8

Playback device is plughw:1,0
Stream parameters are 48000Hz, S16_LE, 5 channels
Using 16 octaves of pink noise
Rate set to 48000Hz (requested 48000Hz)
Buffer size range from 12 to 65536
Period size range from 6 to 32768
Using max buffer size 65536
Periods = 4
was set period_size = 16384
was set buffer_size = 65536
 0 - Front Left
 2 - Front Center
 1 - Front Right
 3 - LFE
 4 - Unused
Time per period = 12.294565
 0 - Front Left
 2 - Front Center
 1 - Front Right
 3 - LFE
 4 - Unused
Time per period = 13.653626
still, no sound of course.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by EVD »

CrocoDuck wrote: Is your device an old gen?
It's 2nd gen.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by EVD »

Something else I found quite interesting:

Code: Select all

cd /var/lib/alsa
root@orion:/var/lib/alsa# tail -n 48 asound.state 
state.USB {
	control.1 {
		iface PCM
		name 'Playback Channel Map'
		value.0 0
		value.1 0
		value.2 0
		value.3 0
		comment {
			access read
			type INTEGER
			count 4
			range '0 - 36'
		}
	}
	control.2 {
		iface PCM
		name 'Capture Channel Map'
		value.0 0
		value.1 0
		comment {
			access read
			type INTEGER
			count 2
			range '0 - 36'
		}
	}
	control.3 {
		iface CARD
		name 'USB Internal Validity'
		value true
		comment {
			access read
			type BOOLEAN
			count 1
		}
	}
	control.4 {
		iface CARD
		name 'Keep Interface'
		value false
		comment {
			access 'read write'
			type BOOLEAN
			count 1
		}
	}
}
I mean of course the zeroes in the Playback Channel Map, that makes sense. I wonder if I could change these.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by bluebell »

I have 1st gen 2i2 and 2nd gen 2i4 and Solo. All are running stable out of the box and don't have any problems with 48V and condenser mics.

But as many (all) class compliant USB interfaces they run best with 48000. At 44100 I have some occational clicks and cant use' buffer sizes of 64 and below without xruns.

My main audio system is jackd. Pulseoudio outputs to jackd via jack-sink. No problems.

Sometimes I run 2 jackd's, one as the main audio system for Qtractor, the other with small latency for Guitarix.
Those 2 jackd's are not internally connected. The guitar's interface's audio output goes to a mixer (Behringer Ultralink Pro) so I have some kind of "direct monitoring" to my speakers. From the mixer the guitar interface's audio goes to the main interface for recording.

Linux – MOTU UltraLite AVB – Qtractor – http://suedwestlicht.saar.de/

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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by EVD »

Good for you.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 dead silent in Debian (no PA)

Post by CrocoDuck »

EVD wrote:Something else I found quite interesting:

Code: Select all

cd /var/lib/alsa
root@orion:/var/lib/alsa# tail -n 48 asound.state 
state.USB {
	control.1 {
		iface PCM
		name 'Playback Channel Map'
		value.0 0
		value.1 0
		value.2 0
		value.3 0
		comment {
			access read
			type INTEGER
			count 4
			range '0 - 36'
		}
	}
	control.2 {
		iface PCM
		name 'Capture Channel Map'
		value.0 0
		value.1 0
		comment {
			access read
			type INTEGER
			count 2
			range '0 - 36'
		}
	}
	control.3 {
		iface CARD
		name 'USB Internal Validity'
		value true
		comment {
			access read
			type BOOLEAN
			count 1
		}
	}
	control.4 {
		iface CARD
		name 'Keep Interface'
		value false
		comment {
			access 'read write'
			type BOOLEAN
			count 1
		}
	}
}
I mean of course the zeroes in the Playback Channel Map, that makes sense. I wonder if I could change these.
Hi, I did not notice this post earlier.

I did not know about asound.state. I checked mine, and it seems that the values are zeroed out for all devices that do not support playback. Have you tried to just edit the file?

Also, there are mentions of deleting it here: http://linux-audio.4202.n7.nabble.com/W ... 19401.html

Maybe you could back it up first, and then see whether deleting it does something. Maybe ALSA will reconfigure? Or maybe your whole audio configuration will explode in an irreversible way? I do not really know if editing/deleting it is a good idea, but if you can afford to test it maybe it is worth a shot.
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