LinuxMusicians

If I were you I'd be giving up trying to get your onboard sound working by now. Tiger Lake and SOF drivers/firmware are both relatively new and I haven't heard any reports of them working with JACK.
If everything else works with just ALSA and/or PulseAudio except LMMS, perhaps try to solve that one problem rather than the random splattering of things you seem to be trying currently. Forget JACK for that, you probably don't need it anyway.
Or just go buy an inexpensive external sound interface.

Yes, Jeff, I do agree. I never saw the movie - not into horror at all. Rosemary's Baby had me into sleepless nights and nightmares for weeks at 19 years old.

But I am thinking that there is something with a really wicked sense of humor lurking in this PC.

This morning it played beautifully without QJackCtl - both mp3 and video. This afternoon, after some hours suspended while I worked outside, mp3's play in VLC and mpv, but no video commentary - music yes, no voice??? WT*?

Whenever I think that we are sorted on a problem than it springs another, or undoes any good that has been done.

Try a power down - restart???

No joy!

Disable QJackCtl in 'Sesssion and Startup > Application Autostart and then reboot.

No QJackCtl autostart but no improvement.

pulseaudio --start

No improvement.

Logout and back in again - no improvement.

Very depressing especially having just spent $1200 on a new, more powerful PC specifically for Audio production and now this hassle.

GMaq wrote

AV Linux should indeed work with the sound hardware on the computer no matter what it is but I will say I would guess a majority of Users are using it with some sort of external USB 'prosumer' Audio device that is much more suited to focused Audio work. I will ensure that the SOF firmware is included in future ISO releases..

sunrat wrote

Or just go buy an inexpensive external sound interface.

I am beginning to think that this may be my only quick fix for this vexatious issue that is pouring precious time that I don't have, down some bottomless bit bucket in the cloud.

GMaq and sunrat, do you have any suggestions / recommendations for such a device. Preferably on the lower price end, as the wife will have my guts for garters if I spend too much more on, what she sees as, 'a very expensive hobby'.

I had a look at the following web site, but I don't even know what I am looking for or at on this page, but it is probably where I will buy it, as the Key25 came from there also.

https://www.storedj.com.au/studio-gear? ... rice%3Aasc

I see names like 'Behringer' and 'M-Audio' that seem to dominate the lower end of the price range. The only one I knew of many years ago was the external 'Sound Blaster', but I am not sure they are still in existence.

How likely are they to actually solve my problem with minimal hassle and are they likely to produce superior sound quality than any internal sound card?

Having never had more than one audio device attached to a PC before, how do you separate them into the internal only playing mp3 and video through Pulseaudio, while the external uses Jack/QJackCtl to play with music production applications?

Behringer and Focusrite interfaces have a fair bit of discussion on the forum. Basically you want something that works in class compliant mode as they don't require drivers.
The Behringer UMC202HD would be a good choice but it's reported to need a special option for the driver to work properly - https://nandakumar.org/blog/2022/02/umc202hd-linux.html . The cheap M-Audio interfaces are reported fairly flimsy construction.

I've spent a few thousand at StoreDJ and if you shop in person you can often knock a few bucks of the price.
https://www.storedj.com.au/studio-gear/ ... eProduct=1

Using separate interfaces for different applications would be difficult. I would disable the onboard sound in UEFI Setup and only use the external for everything.

@foodforester1

I'm sorry I am neck deep in another project temporarily and my real job is seasonal and very busy right now..

I don't really have an answer for you... the sound card seems to be the likely culprit, I can say it is definitely not Qjackctl and I can't reproduce your issues because all my sound devices work out of the box and don't require special firmware. In general new(est) computers are not ideal Linux machines especially Linux Distributions that use mature Stable bases because there is always a lag in drivers and firmware etc. for Linux vs. Windows.

Do you still have an old PC that you could boot the AVL USB key on and try? That would give you an idea on how it works on normally supported hardware.. Also I don't think going to suspend with the JACK and bridges running works very well, AV Linux does not boot with systemd and the 'pajackconnect' script used to glue JACK and PulseAudio together isn't really geared to do that without systemd. To be honest I've never used suspend in my life... if I'm doing Audio work with Audio and Plugin bridges running I just shut down when I'm not using the PC... suspend on Linux comes and goes at the best of times and I've never trusted it on a dedicated Audio PC, too many things to wake up..

I use AV Linux with larger full mixers with multitrack USB support (Presonus AR-8, AR-16) and a Zoom LiveTrak L-20 and these work well but are far more than you are probably after and I personally am out of touch with what small USB interfaces are now well supported. On my home development system I have an iRig Duo that seems to work well.. In general the small Presonus devices seem to be well supported as well.

I hope others can comment with better advice on that..

Having never had more than one audio device attached to a PC before, how do you separate them into the internal only playing mp3 and video through Pulseaudio, while the external uses Jack/QJackCtl to play with music production applications?

This is quite simple. pavucontrol has a device configuration tab. For the external device you simply select OFF in the configuration options and pulseaudio does not touch the device. I have a small line mixing board so the out puts from all the audio devices go into separate channels on it and then it's outputs to the monitor amplifiers. Any application wanting pulseaudio plays on the internal device. I start JACK as needed on the USB device and the applications needing JACK play on that device.

Behringer has made changes to their USB audio devices. They are currently broken in Linux. Focusrite is probably your best option right now.

foodforester1 wrote: ↑Wed May 18, 2022 10:47 am ...
This morning it played beautifully without QJackCtl - both mp3 and video. This afternoon, after some hours suspended while I worked outside, mp3's play in VLC and mpv, but no video commentary - music yes, no voice??? WT*?
...

Is there any way you can provide an audio clip of speech being unintelligible? If we can hear it we may be able to diagnose it.

Sunrat wrote

I've spent a few thousand at StoreDJ and if you shop in person you can often knock a few bucks of the price.

Thanks for that, but unfortunately since that journey would be a minimum driving time of 5 hours roundtrip I would have to buy a modular synth to justify the costs in time and running costs on the road. Road - what roads. The continuous strip of potholes left by the floods, some large enough to almost warrant their own post codes??? Somewhat reminiscent of the 'Sea of Holes' from "The Beatles - Yellow Submarine".

GMaq wrote

I'm sorry I am neck deep in another project temporarily and my real job is seasonal and very busy right now..

No worries mate. Work and income always comes first. Thanks for all your efforts so far.

GMaq wrote

Do you still have an old PC that you could boot the AVL USB key on and try?

The only old hardware I could try it on would be my old, very under-powered Acer Aspire 3, which this new PC was meant to replace to cater for the demands of music production. I had been running AVL MX 19 for a while on that but the CPU just wasn't up to it and the DSP would be constantly overloaded with the XRUN count going through the roof. Many of the default patches in LMMS, Surge 1.9 and even some sound-fonts would not play at all.

bluzee wrote

For the external device you simply select OFF in the configuration options and pulseaudio does not touch the device.

Thank you for that info. I will try that when I get the external device.

bluzee wrote

Behringer has made changes to their USB audio devices. They are currently broken in Linux. Focusrite is probably your best option right now.

Thank you for the info about Behringer being broken in Linux. The "Behringer U-Phoria UMC204HD" would have been my first choice based on price only. The "Focusrite Scarlett Solo Gen 3 2-in/2-out USB Audio Interface" is only $10 more, so I may go for that instead, if that would be sufficient to solve my problem.

An immediate problem arises - I can read the web based blurb on this device, but nowhere do I see anything to tell me that it is a 'sound card' replacement. This looks like an external instrument input into PC based software applications. Is this really a 'sound card' replacement, or must I look at something else.

I have been now 17 years away from the IT industry (network support), and nearly 30 years removed from PC hardware matters, other than as a user, and so much has changed, that I don't know what I am reading half the time. As a result, I can now easily make some costly mistakes, without some good advice, that my pension can ill afford, so any advice is very gratefully accepted.

merlyn wrote

Is there any way you can provide an audio clip of speech being unintelligible? If we can hear it we may be able to diagnose it.

Immediately after I read your kind reply, I went to the video that starts with commentary and within minutes give an example of audio.

I played it three times, tweaking a few things to check that it was consistently playing rubbish. I then started listening to mp3's on Audacious, which worked perfectly.

After I had explored options, written the above, found a way to record and set it up ready to go, I decided to check if the video output was still rubbish - and it plays perfectly??? WT*? Like when you take your car to garage about a strange noise in the engine, and the whole time there, the engine just purrs???

I will get back to this after a reboot.

As a general comment on all this, I discovered that pulseaudio wasn't running when I tried to use pavucontrol - "couldn't connect to server" and the error:-
(pavucontrol:11427): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 10:31:21.390: gtk_notebook_get_tab_label: assertion 'list != NULL' failed

I had done previously:-

ps aux | grep pulse
username 3272 0.0 0.6 398116 50972 ? Sl 07:14 0:01 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/wrapper-2.0 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/xfce4/panel/plugins/libpulseaudio-plugin.so 3 25165837 pulseaudio PulseAudio Plugin Adjust the audio volume of the PulseAudio sound system
username 11183 0.0 0.0 75740 664 pts/0 S+ 07:52 0:00 grep pulse

When I saw various entries for pulseaudio, it was running - wrong!!! only the volume control in the panel, but no pulseaudio.

pulseaudio --start

And I could then start pavucontrol.

I will now put "pulseaudio --start" into the "Session and Startup > Application Autostart" and reboot to check if this changes anything for me.

I will report further after this reboot.

UPDATE:-

pavucontrol works perfectly now that pulseaudio has been started by the "Session and Startup" tool.

I tired to insert an image Image name 'Session and Startup, Application Autostart, original Pulseaudio entries.* (12 different image formats) but none would show any picture after I had done a "Submit". Either I am doing something wrong or I still haven't found an acceptable image format.

The image was of the two PulseAudio entries in Session and Startup, Application Autostart. "PulseAudio Sound System (Start the PulseAudio Sound System) on Login" was clearly present, but PulseAudio was not running according to the pavucontrol error I was getting.

The sound extract was taken from the first two minutes of "SURGE XT THE MOVIE Amazing FREE Synthesizer - Full In-Depth Tutorial" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvBgb4HGx0.

As could be heard ,(if I could attach it) what the speaker is saying is totally incomprehensible, yet the music plays. Even after the music is finished, the speakers audio has not changed.
'
Audacious plays mp3's perfectly, but LMMS no sound.

So here it gets weird again.

Unplug the headphones and plug them back in again, and everything plays perfectly. I even tested it with VLC video, Audacious mp3 and LMMS all playing simultaneously - something I would never usually do, but it works.

Due to the potential for metal fatigue in the mini phone jack socket within the laptop, I would prefer to not unplug and replug the headphones too often.

Is there a way of achieving this without physically removing the phone jack?

The clue to this one came when I tried to record the audio clip included. I had played the video 2 or 3 times through the headphones to check that it was still faulty, but when I plugged the recorder in, the resultant audio clip was perfect. So after connecting the headphones and the recorder to a two-way splitter (1 plug & 2 sockets), and a reboot and I was able to get the audio recorded. Once I removed the splitter and plugged the headphones back in on their own, everything was perfect.

I think that we are getting closer to a solution, without the extra CPU / PC resources imposed by Jack etc., and without the extra costs of an external sound card, hopefully.

It looks like neither of the attachments have come through properly. Clicking on the audio attachment takes me to either a Greek or one or other Slavic web site???

I will attach the files should this still be required, if someone would be good enough to explain the process.

This may or may not work.

Open a terminal.

Type in alsamixer.

select your soundcard.

save and exit.

Check audio in apps.

I have tried various methods to try to circumvent the requirement of unplugging and re-plugging the mini phone jack from the PC stereo headphone port:-

Inserting a stero extension cord between the headphones and the PC and then unplugging the headphones - no joy.

pulseaudio --kill with a pavucontrol to check that pulse is dead followed by pulseaudio --start - no joy.

Based on further research done on the functioning of stereo phone jack / sockets at https://www.cuidevices.com/blog/underst ... schematics, I am going to assume that there is NO way around the physical activity of unplugging and plugging to get past this problem.

So to mitigate against any potential long-term internal metal fatigue issue, I would guess that I am back to the external sound card option at this stage.

GMaq, I realize you are very busy right now, but when the work pressure is off, this may be of interest.

I tried booting from a straight iso install without persistence on a USB, and found that the 'Session and Startup' > Application Autostart had the following settings regarding PulseAudio:-

"Pulseaudiostart (starts volumeicon after pulseaudio)" had a check mark next to it, so it would start "on Login" and was present in the panel, albeit "greyed out".

"PulseAudio Sound System (Start the PulseAudio Sound System)" did NOT have a check mark next to it so it did not start "on Login".

That is why it PulseAudio was not running in any of my standard installs.

Unfortunately I have many of the age related eyesight issues in addition to being red-green color blind. Combined with the 1920 X 1080 resolution of my new screen, and the installed color scheme, I had difficulty seeing that the check mark was not checked. The "visibility" issue has been discussed at length on the MX Forum and is now mostly solved.

Based on the volume icon presence in the panel, I assumed that that Pulseaudio was running, especially with startup command being labled as "starts volumeicon after pulseaudio". This is the first time in some 17 years I have used any Linux system, where PulseAudio was not running by default.

Yes, I agree I should have checked this earlier in the saga, but based on the above findings and eyesight issues, I did not. I am quite used to Jack interfering with Pulse, so assumed that Jack had overridden the ability for the volumeicon to remain not greyed out, as it had been all along.

I am not sure if the check mark next to "PulseAudio Sound System (Start the PulseAudio Sound System)" was purposely left unchecked for some reason???

Did you check the box labeled...

Solve all my problems and try to make my mother-in-law less irritating

Jeff,

In my original install that item was not at all editable. I could not even see the command involved in that entry. That install has been replaced with a very much more functional installation.

The entry is now checked and as a 'belt and braces' approach, I have also inserted a new one to run "pulseaudio --start".

Apart from the "unplugging and re-plugging" of the headphones, everything is now working smoothly.

As soon as I can get through the continuing flood waters to a bank and post office, I will be ordering a "Focusrite Scarlett Solo Gen 3 2-in/2-out USB Audio Interface", to try to circumvent any incompatibilities between Linux and the Tiger Lake sound card.