No audio from other applications when Renoise is running

Hi,
this is my first post, I’m totally new not only to Renoise but to composing music with software. I’m really glad to have found this project. I’m following the video tutorial step by step.

The issue I’m having now is that when Renoise is running I can’t hear audio from other applications. For example, I’m playing the video tutorial and then I run Renoise to try using it: it happens that the video still goes but audio disappear as soon as Renoise starts, while at the same time I can open and hear songs from Renoise. When I close it, the audio from youtube can be heard again.

I found a FAQ describing the opposite of my actual problem (Why Renoise isn’t able to play when other applications are playing or after other application have used the audio resource?). I checked anyway if any audio manager is running but it’s seems not,

ps aux | grep esd  

gives nothing.

I’ll be glad to provide more info if needed. Any help greatly appreciated.

Info on my system

$ uname -a # ubuntu 12.04  
Linux tk 3.2.0-54-generic-pae #82-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 10 20:29:22 UTC 2013 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux  
  
$ aplay -l  
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****  
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: STAC92xx Analog [STAC92xx Analog]  
 Subdevices: 0/1  
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0  
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]  
 Subdevices: 1/1  
 Subdevice #0: subdevice #0  
  
$ jackd -d alsa --help  
jackdmp 1.9.8  
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.  
Copyright 2004-2011 Grame.  
jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY  
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it  
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details  
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted  
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted  
Cannot create thread 1 Operation not permitted  
 -C, --capture Provide capture ports. Optionally set device (default: none)  
 -P, --playback Provide playback ports. Optionally set device (default: none)  
 -d, --device ALSA device name (default: hw:0)  
 -r, --rate Sample rate (default: 48000)  
 -p, --period Frames per period (default: 1024)  
 -n, --nperiods Number of periods of playback latency (default: 2)  
 -H, --hwmon Hardware monitoring, if available (default: false)  
 -M, --hwmeter Hardware metering, if available (default: false)  
 -D, --duplex Provide both capture and playback ports (default: true)  
 -s, --softmode Soft-mode, no xrun handling (default: false)  
 -m, --monitor Provide monitor ports for the output (default: false)  
 -z, --dither Dithering mode:  
 n - none  
 r - rectangular  
 s - shaped  
 t - triangular (default: n)  
 -i, --inchannels Number of capture channels (defaults to hardware max) (default: 0)  
 -o, --outchannels Number of playback channels (defaults to hardware max) (default: 0)  
 -S, --shorts Try 16-bit samples before 32-bit (default: false)  
 -I, --input-latency Extra input latency (frames) (default: 0)  
 -O, --output-latency Extra output latency (frames) (default: 0)  
 -X, --midi-driver ALSA MIDI driver:  
 none - no MIDI driver  
 seq - ALSA Sequencer driver  
 raw - ALSA RawMIDI driver  
 (default: none)  
  

Regards,
Paolo

Renoise use ALSA exclusively so, if you don’t use JACK, you won’t be able to use audio on other applications during Renoise usage.

running Renoise via JACK is relatively easy; a complete procedure form scratch is described here, but you are probably way over the middle of it already

Like It-Alien says, JACK is the way to go on Linux. It also opens up many routing possibilities, for instance you can route the audio from a youtube video straight into renoise and start recording and then messing about with that sample. One of those things you get jealous of when you’re on Windows for a minute.
Easiest way to install it properly in my experience is to use a music-dedicated distro, some of them also have Ubuntu libraries that you can add though. Then just launch and configure QJackCtl before you launch Renoise. Then setup Renoise to let JACK handle audio. You can have multiple (virtual) outputs and everything.
Someone should tell that guy from the debian topic though that the renoise demo works forever, not a month.