LinuxMusicians

[1. Linux on laptops is difficult. Laptops often have special hardware to be power friendly, fan-less, small form-factor, etc.

2. A Chromebook would be the cheapest option. But BEWARE. Linux is "officially" supported by Chromebook/Google via Crostini. However, you might not be able to access external hardware like the ever so needed USB audio device to record music. They won't allow you to do that for some f-ing reason. Enter Crouton, see below.

3. A Chromebook used to be able to run "hacked" Linux via Crouton. However, it's not supported anymore by David Schneider (he got a job now). If I'm not mistaken you can still use it but it appears to be on the way out.

• Have you tried installing Jack Audio or PipeWire?
• Do you know what those are?
• Does that help with the latency?
• What Linux distribution and what version are running on your Chromebook?

matybigfro wrote: ↑Mon Oct 24, 2022 1:48 pm

Thanks for the reply @Linuxmusician01

I can live with the high latency as my preference normally is to use direct monitoring anyway but the latency the device is reporting and the offset both fluctuate a lot which is causing problems when recording with direct monitoring.

I haven't tried the Alesis with Windows but I did have both high and unstable latency when using the Focusrite Scarlette 2i2

I've only a vague awareness of both Pipewire and Jack(mostly comments from people saying they find jack hard to get working) I tried installing Pipewire on Depthboot but it didn't seem to work, I didn't try installing either within Crostini but that might be my next step.

My Depbthboot build is running Gnome with Ubuntu (I think 22.04 but will need to double check)

I haven't had any luck getting crouton working on my Chromebook at all so far.

If there were any significant advantages to running linux through Depthboot rather than Crostini then I might consider installing it directly onto the Chromebook to overcome the USB issue although my preference would be to be able to continue using both ChromeOS and Linux on the machine but it's not a priority. Like it would be nice to have the option to use USB midi devices in the future which I've read can be an issue in Crostini but tbh I'm more interested in mixing and tracking live stuff than softsynths and the like.

If you want to get Jack audio working then I might give you some hints. However, PipeWire is meant as a replacement for it. Jack isn't that complicated to get running IMHO. I do it like this:

jackd -d alsa --device hw:0

Done.

I too really would like to know if Midi is supported by Crostini. Until now I didn't even know that USB audio devices were supported by Crostini. I mean: you did get yours working in Crostini didn't you?

I installed Linux (Crouton) on my antique Chromebook way back when. Never used ChromeOS. Only downside was the fact that Samba (to access Windows shares on a network) in Linux on a Chr.b. didn't work. If you're in environment with Windows users that's a real pain.

In Crostini it shows two sound cards
VoitIO sounCard at pci/0000:00:0a.0/virtio9
vitrio-snd - VirtIO SoundCard

this doesn't change when my Alesis is connected or not so I think its Cras/ChromeOS that is handling all the USB side of stuff and then passing it through to Crostini. It only seems to see two channels regardless of whether the Alesis is in 16bit or 24bit mode where as with Ubuntu/Gnome/Depthboot install I can get all four channels.

When I try to run that command I get an error saying The playback device "hw:0" is already in use. Please stop the application using it and run JACK again
Released audio card Audio0
audio_reservation_finish
Cannot initialize driver
JackServer::Open failed with -1
Failed to open server

I couldn't get pipewire to work on Crostini aswell

I was struggling to get Jack working initially on the Ubuntu/Gnome/Depthboot install but it did start working after I switched to pipewire although then ALSA stopped working. Latency seems much lower at the moment and more but not totally stable.

matybigfro wrote: ↑Mon Oct 24, 2022 3:28 am

[...] I was running Reaper within Crostini which was fine for mixing and audio editing but started to get more complicated when I tried to start using a USB audio I/O and trying to record overdubs to, particularly because latency is large and seems to fluctuate allot. I had been assuming this might be the way that Reaper was running with crostini and how Chrome routes the audio and so was interested in other ways of installing.[...]

Are you absolutely sure that you used your USB audio device (the Alesis IO4) in Crostini and that is was not Depthboot/Eupnea (or Crouton)? Because I found out that in March this year I asked in the official Chromebook/Crostini Linux support page about using USB devices and someone said:

Question: Is it (yet) possible to access hardware in Crostini/Linux?

Answer: Unfortunately, no, not yet, the support page still states: "Android devices are supported over USB, but other devices aren't yet supported.". And I haven't seen any evidence that that has changed, hopefully better / full support for USB and other ports will come eventually but it's not here yet.

A Chromebook for music production is worthless if one can not use Midi and USB audio devices.

If you have a recent Chromebook you might try the following for us, the Linux community. So we know what USB stuff is supported yet. Would you want to the following check that they recommend on the official Chromebook Linux FAQ page (link):

• ChromeOS now allows you to share certain devices through USB.

• To enable USB access, go to Settings and select “Developers" from the left-side nav.

• Then navigate into “Linux” and then into “USB preferences”.

• Here you can enable USB access on a case-by-case basis.

@matybigfro: thanks for your answer. I think that answers the question I asked after that (I didn't notice that you replied). Crostini probably cannot "see" any devices attached to the USB port.

So I can't be 100% sure about USB midi devices as I don't have one to test but the Alesis is defo not available to give Linux apps permission to access. USB MIDI is more of a nice to have than must have for me personally as I'm mostly looking record and mix audio with Reaper.

As before I think the audio is routed through Chrome into Also and Pulse in Crostini in a slightly convoluted way as I have recorded with the Alesis and a Focusrite Scarlett in Reaper installed in Crostini.

I've my Depthboot build to Pop!_os as the internal Chromebook audio wasn't working with the Ubunto build on it.

Interestingly testing Latency through Alsa in Reaper today on both Crostini and Pop_os and the latency has been totally stable in Crostini but could get lower in Pop_os alas with much more variation.

Kinda scratching my head at this point tried to run your commands below to try Jack in pop_os but it came back saying initially that Jackd wasn't found and gave two commands to install either 1 or 2, now it's saying

jackd: symbol lookup error: jackdL undefined symbol: clock_source

Interestingly after installing jack1 the ALSA latency in Popos stabalised completely

matybigfro wrote: ↑Tue Oct 25, 2022 2:27 pm

[...]Kinda scratching my head at this point tried to run your commands below to try Jack in pop_os but it came back saying initially that Jackd wasn't found and gave two commands to install either 1 or 2, now it's saying

Code: Select all

jackd: symbol lookup error: jackdL undefined symbol: clock_source

Jack isn't installed by default. And in In the latest Linux distributions PipeWire is the replacement for JackAudio (and for PulseAudio). That is, you don't have to use Jack anymore if you have PW. I've got no experience with PW yet. You might ask someone w/ PW experience how to let it behave like Jack if you have to. But simply using Alsa with Reaper is okay too. PW, Jack and Pulse are (amongst others) meant to let more than one application use audio. With Alsa only one application (i.e. Reaper) can use audio.

Alsa is the Linux audio "driver". Jack, PW and Pulse are a "layer" on top of that. In "the old days" Jack would enable more advanced usage of audio on Linux, for us musicians etc.

matybigfro wrote: ↑Tue Oct 25, 2022 2:47 pm

Interestingly after installing jack1 the ALSA latency in Popos stabalised completely

Might be a coincidence, might be not.

Ahh yea some other digging and I found out Pop_os has fully upgraded/replaced Pulse audio with Pipewire where as I think Ubuntu and others have Pipewire installed but not switched on fully and still use Pulse Audio.

I did install jack after the first time I used 'jackd -d alsa --device hw:0' and then thats when I got 'jackd: symbol lookup error: jackdL undefined symbol: clock_source'

matybigfro wrote: ↑Tue Oct 25, 2022 6:44 pm

Ahh yea some other digging and I found out Pop_os has fully upgraded/replaced Pulse audio with Pipewire where as I think Ubuntu and others have Pipewire installed but not switched on fully and still use Pulse Audio.

I did install jack after the first time I used 'jackd -d alsa --device hw:0' and then thats when I got 'jackd: symbol lookup error: jackdL undefined symbol: clock_source'

The external audio card might be hw:1 instead of hw:0. One way to find out is:

cat /proc/asound/cards

Watch the output of that command. It's the first number in the line. Numbering starts with 0. So if you have two sound cards then the number of your second card is 1.

But I'd use Pipewire if I were you.

Anyway, could you check the following in ChromeOS (if you have developper mode activated) to know if you can use your audio card in Crostini?

• Enable USB access, go to Settings and select “Developers" from the left-side nav.

• Then navigate into “Linux” and then into “USB preferences”.

• Here you can enable/determine USB access on a case-by-case basis.

Crostini can use a external soundcard but it doesn't have direct access to it, it isn't an available device in the Linux USB preferences, instead in the main linux menu there's an option to allow linux to access your microphone (it always has access to the sound output) which is really annoying as it's easy to forget to switch on if you restart linux on Chrome. Equally the sound ouput and input selected with the ChromeOS audio define this would probably be fine if ChromeOS audio setting were a bit more advance and allowed you to set latency and buffer size and the like.

matybigfro wrote: ↑Thu Oct 27, 2022 12:34 pm

Crostini can use a external soundcard but it doesn't have direct access to it, [...]

Thank you for that info. How can you use a external soundcard in Crostini when you do not you have (direct) access to it?