Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

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Yuki_thePenguin
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Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by Yuki_thePenguin »

Greetings.

Just wondering whether any other human being on this planet managed to make their Native Instruments Komplete Audio 1 interface friends with Linux, on whatever distro.

Asking for tips on how to make my audio interface work in Linux on other forums resulted in people answering as though I were using a Komplete Audio 6 all the time, and that seems to be all that's supported by snd-usb-caiaq. Is the Komplete Audio 1 too new or not popular enough? (Komplete Audio 6 was released about seven years prior to KA 1 and 2, and was even redesigned after the release of the two latter, given the commercial success of the product.)

I'm asking because I had great performance in Windows 10, despite my elderly CPU—Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (2) @ 3.000GHz—although it's been impossible to achieve the same (audio-related) performance since I installed Linux on my same computer, an HP Compaq 8000 Elite CMT PC. The only physical difference in my PC between now and then is that I've added a GPU, which has taken some load off my CPU's shoulders by taking care of the monitor output and most of the graphics.

As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong) using Linux with a minimum amount of bloat and a light DE/WM should be more resource-friendly than using Windows. I've witnessed this by setting up a CPU usage dial widget on my Desktop, and I can't believe the difference.

Again, don't blame me for using an audio interface that obviously isn't supported out of the box with Linux, as I bought it back in the obscurity of my Windows days. As for the CPU, I know I'm going to get roasted for not just buying a computer that's fit for the job, but that's actually why I use Linux: Workarounds that don't cost much (until you realise that time is money, but that's all part of the fun).

Running Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) x86_64 on a 5.10.0-21-amd64 kernel, for whoever cares.

(No, I have not actually described my issue at all. I'm just wondering who's in the same boat as I am, before going over all the technical details, most of which I will treat individually across several threads, as I have many issues.)

God bless.

GuntherT
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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by GuntherT »

Is the device recognized by Linux, meaning you can get sound in and out of it? If the device is recognized, and the problem is performance only, i.e. numerous xruns, then it is a matter is configuring your system properly. That will typically involve setting up realtime permissions and adding your user to the audio group, adding threadirqs to grub, and installing the rtirq script and setting 'usb' as the first device. I can give more detail on this stuff if needed, but first would like to know if the device is recognized or not.

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Yuki_thePenguin
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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by Yuki_thePenguin »

GuntherT wrote: Mon Mar 13, 2023 6:43 pm

Is the device recognized by Linux, meaning you can get sound in and out of it? If the device is recognized, and the problem is performance only, i.e. numerous xruns, then it is a matter is configuring your system properly. That will typically involve setting up realtime permissions and adding your user to the audio group, adding threadirqs to grub, and installing the rtirq script and setting 'usb' as the first device. I can give more detail on this stuff if needed, but first would like to know if the device is recognized or not.

Thank you for you response, I appreciate it.

Yes, the device is recognised by Linux. I can output and input sound via the interface with no problem at all. In fact, my headphones are plugged in it all the time, and that's what I use to listen to sound coming out from my desktop.

As you've mentioned, there are a lot of xruns, and Ardour freezes on a single plugin with no automation, amongst other performance-related issues. I remember being able to run dozens of VSTs in FL Studio back when I had WIndows 10 installed on this very same computer so, as you say, it's most likely a question of configuring everything properly. Increasing JACK's buffer helps a bit but, at this time, my system is still unusable for full-scale music production.

Do you have a recommendation on the first thing I should try to make things better, or do you need more specific details? If the latter applies, I will start a new threads for my specific problems, to make everything easier to follow.

Thanks again for your time, and God bless you.

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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by sunrat »

To optimise your system, start here - https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system_configuration
Particularly run the rtcqs script and enact its recommendations.
There is a lot of info there, some is vital, and some not so much. Generally the realtime kernel is not needed these days but read that section anyway.
Good luck!

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independent
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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by independent »

Your post doesn't really say too much about what lengths or how much trying to fix this problem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/com ... l_it_work/

References a non existing page saying Kontrol 1 works flawlessly in someones linux box.

What I remember is the snd_usb_caiaq module is a completely kettle of fish to the snd usb modules. But I would probably hazard a guess you just need to sort out your alsa and maybe remove pulse to make it simpler. One thing for sure is these devices are very rare and not so well known in Linux. You might find some wierd funky behaviour just because times have moved on and not a lot of maintenence on the driver

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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by GuntherT »

The wiki that sunrat shared walks through the most important tweaks. In my experience, the biggest performance gains come from implementing the sections "Using the threadirqs kernel option", "limits.d/audio.conf", "audio group", and "rtirq" as I mentioned before. If you have JACK installed, limits.d/audio.conf should have been setup during its installation.

What kind of graphics card are you using? If NVIDIA, are you using the open source driver or proprietary one? I had a NVIDIA card in an older model computer years ago, and audio performance was terrible until I installed NVIDIA's proprietary driver and went into its settings manager and selected the corresponding 'performance' setting. If you are using the open source noveau driver, switching to the proprietary driver would be my very first recommendation. If your graphics card is AMD, it is less likely to be the culprit, and working through the wiki recommendations would be the place to start.

Last edited by GuntherT on Fri Jun 02, 2023 6:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by BloodyCactus »

Well KA1 is class compliant, no driver required. It has nothing to do with snd-usb-caiaq (that is for some of NI's DJ controls and stuff).

-- BC --

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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by Yuki_thePenguin »

I am spoiled. Thank you for all the info, guys.

sunrat wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 4:06 am

To optimise your system, start here - https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/system_configuration

OK, I'll read through the docs, follow the instructions, break my system, fix it, and then give you news. Thank you for the resource, which seems very well written. It might take me a few days to go through all the steps in detail, as I'm limited on free time, lately.

independent wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 5:26 am

References a non existing page saying Kontrol 1 works flawlessly in someones linux box.

Yeah, people tend to mistake Audio Kontrol 1 for Komplete Audio 1, which are not at all the same product.

But I would probably hazard a guess you just need to sort out your alsa and maybe remove pulse to make it simpler.

Yeah, I noticed JACK and PulseAudio aren't very good friends. I will see what I can do about that, but I am planning on getting rid of PulseAudio once I manage to get my desktop to work without it. That's good advice.

GuntherT wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:09 am

The wiki that sunrat shared walks through the most important tweaks. In my experience, the biggest performance gains come from implementing the sections "Using the threadirqs kernel option", "limits.conf/audio.conf", "audio group", and "rtirq" as I mentioned before.

Perfect, I'll definitely keep that in mind while going through the instructions provided by sunrat.

By the way, did you mean limits.d/audio.conf? You wrote limits.conf/audio.conf, so just confirming what your intentions were.

If you have JACK installed, limits.d/audio.conf should have been setup during its installation.

OK, so audio.conf contains the three following lines:

Code: Select all

@audio   -  rtprio     95
@audio   -  memlock    unlimited
#@audio   -  nice      -19

On the other hand, the entirety of the contents of the file limits.conf are commented out, so I'd guess installing JACK didn't automatically set it up.

What kind of graphics card are you using? If NVIDIA, are you using the open source driver or proprietary one? I had a NVIDIA card in an older model computer years ago, and audio performance was terrible until I installed NVIDIA's proprietary driver and went into its settings manager and selected the corresponding 'performance' setting. If you are using the open source noveau driver, switching to the proprietary driver would be my very first recommendation. If your graphics card is AMD, it is less likely to be the culprit, and working through the wiki recommendations would be the place to start.

NVIDIA. I know, right? I got rid of the open-source drivers and got the proprietary ones some time ago, when I noticed the open-source ones needed a bit more love. I'm normally an exclusively FOSS guy, but I had to make an exception on that one. (Sorry, Richard Stallman.) Things are still a little funky sometimes, (black squares appearing out of nowhere until I randomly resize the window containing them) but apparently that just happens when I use KDE Plasma. However, i3wm works just fine, and lets me run graphics intensive stuff like Blender and family without a problem. Back when I had the open-source drivers, it's as though fireworks were popping in front of me all the time.

Code: Select all

someone@something:~$ lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208B [GeForce GT 730] (rev a1)
        Subsystem: ZOTAC International (MCO) Ltd. GK208B [GeForce GT 730]
        Kernel driver in use: nvidia
        Kernel modules: nvidia
someone@something:~$ dpkg -l | grep -i nvidia
ii  glx-alternative-nvidia                                      1.2.1~deb11u1                      amd64        allows the selection of NVIDIA as GLX provider
ii  libcuda1:amd64                                              470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA CUDA Driver Library
ii  libcuda1:i386                                               470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA CUDA Driver Library
ii  libegl-nvidia0:amd64                                        470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary EGL library
ii  libegl-nvidia0:i386                                         470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary EGL library
ii  libgl1-nvidia-glvnd-glx:amd64                               470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX library (GLVND variant)
ii  libgl1-nvidia-glvnd-glx:i386                                470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX library (GLVND variant)
ii  libgles-nvidia1:amd64                                       470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL|ES 1.x library
ii  libgles-nvidia1:i386                                        470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary OpenGL|ES 1.x library
ii  libgles-nvidia2:amd64                                       470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL|ES 2.x library
ii  libgles-nvidia2:i386                                        470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary OpenGL|ES 2.x library
ii  libglx-nvidia0:amd64                                        470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary GLX library
ii  libglx-nvidia0:i386                                         470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary GLX library
ii  libnvcuvid1:amd64                                           470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA CUDA Video Decoder runtime library
ii  libnvcuvid1:i386                                            470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA CUDA Video Decoder runtime library
ii  libnvidia-cbl:amd64                                         470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary Vulkan ray tracing (cbl) library
ii  libnvidia-cfg1:amd64                                        470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX configuration library
ii  libnvidia-egl-wayland1:amd64                                1:1.1.5-1                          amd64        Wayland EGL External Platform library -- shared library
ii  libnvidia-eglcore:amd64                                     470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary EGL core libraries
ii  libnvidia-eglcore:i386                                      470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary EGL core libraries
ii  libnvidia-encode1:amd64                                     470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-encode1:i386                                      470.161.03-1                       i386         NVENC Video Encoding runtime library
ii  libnvidia-glcore:amd64                                      470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX core libraries
ii  libnvidia-glcore:i386                                       470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary OpenGL/GLX core libraries
ii  libnvidia-glvkspirv:amd64                                   470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary Vulkan Spir-V compiler library
ii  libnvidia-glvkspirv:i386                                    470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA binary Vulkan Spir-V compiler library
ii  libnvidia-ml1:amd64                                         470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA Management Library (NVML) runtime library
ii  libnvidia-ptxjitcompiler1:amd64                             470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA PTX JIT Compiler library
ii  libnvidia-ptxjitcompiler1:i386                              470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA PTX JIT Compiler library
ii  libnvidia-rtcore:amd64                                      470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary Vulkan ray tracing (rtcore) library
ii  nvidia-alternative                                          470.161.03-1                       amd64        allows the selection of NVIDIA as GLX provider
ii  nvidia-detect                                               470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA GPU detection utility
ii  nvidia-driver                                               470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA metapackage
ii  nvidia-driver-bin                                           470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA driver support binaries
ii  nvidia-driver-libs:amd64                                    470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA metapackage (OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES libraries)
ii  nvidia-driver-libs:i386                                     470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA metapackage (OpenGL/GLX/EGL/GLES libraries)
ii  nvidia-egl-common                                           470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary EGL driver - common files
ii  nvidia-egl-icd:amd64                                        470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA EGL installable client driver (ICD)
ii  nvidia-egl-icd:i386                                         470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA EGL installable client driver (ICD)
ii  nvidia-installer-cleanup                                    20151021+13                        amd64        cleanup after driver installation with the nvidia-installer
ii  nvidia-kernel-common                                        20151021+13                        amd64        NVIDIA binary kernel module support files
ii  nvidia-kernel-dkms                                          470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary kernel module DKMS source
ii  nvidia-kernel-support                                       470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary kernel module support files
ii  nvidia-legacy-check                                         470.161.03-1                       amd64        check for NVIDIA GPUs requiring a legacy driver
ii  nvidia-modprobe                                             470.103.01-1~deb11u1               amd64        utility to load NVIDIA kernel modules and create device nodes
ii  nvidia-persistenced                                         470.103.01-2~deb11u1               amd64        daemon to maintain persistent software state in the NVIDIA driver
ii  nvidia-settings                                             470.141.03-1~deb11u1               amd64        tool for configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ii  nvidia-smi                                                  470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA System Management Interface
ii  nvidia-support                                              20151021+13                        amd64        NVIDIA binary graphics driver support files
ii  nvidia-vdpau-driver:amd64                                   470.161.03-1                       amd64        Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix - NVIDIA driver
ii  nvidia-vulkan-common                                        470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA Vulkan driver - common files
ii  nvidia-vulkan-icd:amd64                                     470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA Vulkan installable client driver (ICD)
ii  nvidia-vulkan-icd:i386                                      470.161.03-1                       i386         NVIDIA Vulkan installable client driver (ICD)
ii  xserver-xorg-video-nvidia                                   470.161.03-1                       amd64        NVIDIA binary Xorg driver
someone@something:~$ 

I'm not sure why some of my drivers are doubled in both i386 and amd64. If you see that as a problem, (I wouldn't know) just let me know and I'll manage a way to fix that. If it doesn't really matter, I'll just leave it as is. Some faded glimpse of a distant memory tells me that it had something to do with some software I installed somewhat long ago, and I can still see an install script telling me that it had to use those i386 drivers, although I have no idea what it was.

BloodyCactus wrote: Tue Mar 14, 2023 6:55 pm

Well KA1 is class compliant, no driver required. It has nothing to do with snd-usb-caiaq (that is for some of NI's DJ controls and stuff).

That is correct, the Komplete Audio 1 is class-compliant. I didn't know that meant it worked everywhere without a driver, though. I'm guessing that what got me to think I needed it is people telling me to use it all the time, the moment they heard "Native Instruments". Thanks for shedding some light on that.

Again, many thanks to all four of you. I appreciate your time. God bless you, and have a nice one all.

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Re: Anybody else using a Komplete Audio 1?

Post by GuntherT »

Yes, I mistyped that. It should have been limits.d/audio.conf (I edited the prior post for future readers), and it looks like the installation of JACK did set that up for you.

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