Ahhh Interesting I was right about this part above, the audio.conf file takes 1st priority. For now if you could could add yourself to the audio group and reboot, once again trying Renoise to see if this is an issue 1st. Thanks
sudo usermod -a -G audio nick
Okay just gave it a shot and still having the same problem. I re-ran rtcqs and confirmed that I’m now in the audio group, screen here:
Just to re-check, I tried playing an audio file in Reaper using Alsa and it worked fine, so at least the tweaks we’ve made still work for other programs.
Output for ulimit -a here as well!
nick@nick-MacBookPro:~$ ulimit -a
core file size (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority (-e) 39
file size (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals (-i) 31114
max locked memory (kbytes, -l) unlimited
max memory size (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files (-n) 1024
pipe size (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority (-r) 99
stack size (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes (-u) 31114
virtual memory (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks (-x) unlimited
Ok good work, at least we have ruled out the priorities being the issue here. [ at least you have all your changes documented here, so reverting back will be no problem if required ] .
The 2nd thing that I was initially worried about was do you have the correct modules loaded for your soundcard ?, but I’m guessing by looking at your output of your lsmod you are covered ( it’s hard to know for sure as your drivers are different than mine ‘snd_hda_intel’ so I can’t truly compare. I guess you would have no sound if the driver wasn’t loaded.
There are a couple of basic steps you could dig into, just to clear them up before we dive deeper into this…
(1) in alsamixer when you press f6 what all options are shown?
(2) with pavucontrol open and Renoise playing a song, are you seeing anything in the playback tab ? ( I want to try and rule out Alsa playing through or rather being blocked somehow by pulseaudio )
(3) What options are shown in pavucontrol configurationtab > Profile ?
(4) With Renoise running open a terminal and do command killall pulseaudio use the up arrow key after pressing enter to repeat the command until any instances are killed, to easily reload the daemon simply run pulseaudio -D
Next when we eliminate these things, I want to look at your alsa settings, I have a few ideas on troubleshooting that.
Can you try Reaper with Jack if it works? And then close reaper and open Renoise and connect it to Jack. It’s really strange that there’s no sound from Renoise.
Is there maybe an issue with the output of the master channel?
@lilith Great idea. It has to be something simple blocking/kicking the audio from Renoise.
I really hope this is the issue, I’m sure it could be accidentally changed to an output that doesn’t exist 
@mikobuntu Answers below!
When I press f6 in alsamixer I get three options: “-” for default, “0” for HDA Intel HDMI, and “1” for HDA Intel PCH. I get the same options in Renoise and have tried all the available output channels. In other programs (Mixxx, Reaper) the PCH card works when selecting PCH Analog output.
While I’m playing one of the demo songs in Renoise, it’s not listed in the playback tab of pavucontrol (just “System Sounds”).
In the pavucontrol configuration tab (with Renoise playing) there are two entires for “Built-in Audio”, one with the Profile set to “Off” and one set to “Analog Stero Duplex”. My guess is the first is the HDMI sound card as all of the options have HDMI in them, the second has a lot of options: Analog Stereo Duplex, Analog Stereo Output, Digital Stereo Input/Output, Analog Surround 2.1 Input/Output, and Analog Suround 4.1 Input/Output.
With Renoise running, after I kill pulseaudio and try to restart it I get the below message, is that expected?
nick@nick-MacBookPro:~$ killall pulseaudio
pulseaudio: no process found
nick@nick-MacBookPro:~$ killall pulseaudio
pulseaudio: no process found
nick@nick-MacBookPro:~$ pulseaudio -D
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup failed.
@lilith right now Reaper doesn’t work with Jack but does with Alsa. This is my first time using Jack though so I likely don’t have it set up correctly. I’m working on getting Reaper to work with Jack and if that works will try to use the same setup with Renoise.
For output, I checked that first based on this thread. The master output has two options one for channels 1+2 and for channels 3+4. Neither seem to work yet. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:
Ok @nick , as always a great detailed reply.
For:-
(1) Choose HDA Intel PCH. ( could you also screenshot alsamixer to see what controls that you have, if there are any changes ? )
Might not be necessary, but I use the esc key to close alsamixer instead of just closing the terminal ( can’t remember if I read that somewhere or why I do this, but I think it always best to exit a terminal as cleanly as possible when closing an app ).
(2) Seems to be the expected behaviour.
(3) choose duplex mode here ( what was it already set to ? )
(4) hmm this is a tricky one, there could be one of many factors causing this.
Do you have pulseaudio set to not autospawn?
When you were using systemctl before for pulseaudio did you revert those settings?
can you paste the command/s you used please ? they will be in your bash history
history | grep systemctl
Another possibility is that your sound issues, or more so Renoise is blocking pulseaudio somehow, or basically locking up your soundcard.
I have an idea … would you create this following file by running this command
echo -e "defaults.pcm.card 1\r\ndefaults.pcm.device 1" >> ~/.asoundrc
…And restart alsa, or maybe even reboot just to be sure… and obviously try Renoise again. And maybe test other alsa audio apps like reaper lmms etc, antyhing that lets you choose direct alsa
If non of the above works …
A good way to test if this is a system config problem or just the Renoise doesn’t play nice with your particular soundcard would be to run a live distro from usb and install Renoise in the live environment .
If I remember correctly you can do this in the live usb without having to set it up with persistence.
I’d recommend Ubuntu-20.04 for a starter.
It might even be possible to cd to your existing renoise binary directory and run it, without having to install it?
Sure, more answers here!
Here is a screenshot of what I see when I select HDA Intel PCH. This is with my headphones unplugged. Also noted that I always exit before closing the terminal (habit from working in remote servers).
Confirmed it was already set to “Analog Stereo Duplex”. I’m still learning the screenshot tool so wasn’t able to get a screen with all of the options listed.
I haven’t edited anything to turn off autospawn for pulse that I know of. At least in /etc/pulse/client.conf the line “autospawn = yes” is present. These are the commands I used to kill pulse a couple sessions ago. I’ve since rebooted a couple of times so am not sure if they’re still affecting things:
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.socket
systemctl --user stop pulseaudio.service
I ran the command you suggested and now ~/.asoundrc has the two lines setting the default soundcard to 1. Let me go ahead and restart the computer and see what happens.
@mikobuntu Okay so this was interesting!
After re-booting, all of the sound on my system stopped working entirely. Not just Reaper/Renoise, but also playing normal audio files with Celluloid. It’s the same as my issue with Renoise where sound appears to play (no errors) but no sound comes out of the speakers.
I emptied out ~/.asoundrc and restarted and everything came back, though Renoise has the same problem. Is Renoise for some reason doing something similar with the pcm defaults?
And noted on running from a live USB drive. I will give it a shot but it will take a little while as I don’t get much free time.
Side question that hopefully isn’t too involved: do you know a good jack tutorial anywhere? As I have time I’m also trying to get Jack to work with Reaper but getting nowhere. I don’t think it’s the same issue, just me not knowing Jack very well.
ok cool :-
(1) Looks perfect
(2) That should be fine, I was expecting it to be duplex.
[ yeah it’s a bit tricky to get a screenshot with a drop down menu as losing mouse focus will close it ]
ways around this are, use a screenshot tool with a countdown timer, or use peek and record an animated .gif .
(3) looks good ! and I was concerned that you had maybe masked a systemctl setting, but again all looks good.
For the asoundrc file, I will maybe have to specify a few extra options as this should work ( I will get to this in my next post for you ) This at least shows me that we can override your system alsa settings from here, which is much easier that editing system files.
Hopefully the live usb method sheds some light on the issue.
I will definitely be able to dig out some info on getting jack up and running for you, I’ll post in a reply soon.
pcm.!default {
type hw
card 1
}ctl.!default {
type hw
card 0
}
@nick Can you please paste this into the ~/.asoundrc file and do the usual procedures, thanks
I was trying to make you a 1 liner to run from the commandline, but it was starting to get complex using echo with newlines and tabs 
If this fails, maybe even try setting the card numbers to 0 or 2 , It will probably fail, but worth a try I guess.
We could maybe look at setting up dmix next, but in the meantime here’s a great source for alsa related stuff Asoundrc - AlsaProject
Okay, just updated the Asoundrc with the settings you listed and rebooted. My sound still works correctly for audio files and Reaper, though Renoise still doesn’t have sound. I’ll take a look at the asoundrc documentation you sent and play around with it. Same with trying jack and the live USB drive, though may not be able to update for a little bit. Will keep you posted.
One last weird thing I noticed: When I play audio with Celluloid or Reaper, the volume controls on my laptop still work (the volume increases/decreases, the pop-up volume indicator shows up, the system tray volume icon changes) but not on Renoise. When Renoise is launched the volume keys stop working entirely. Does that mean anything?
Try setting the samplerate in renoise to 48.000.
Okay @mikobuntu we are somewhat all set!
I did boot up from a live USB running Ubunto 20.04 LTS and was able to run renoise from the existing directory, but still have the exact same problem as I did on my actual install of Mint. Also @shorty I tried setting the samplerate to 48000 and had the same issue on Mint and on Ubuntu.
While digging for a flash drive though I found an old audio interface (the FiiO USB DAC K1). I plugged it in and ran renoise and finally HAVE SOUND, the drivers auto-installed and alsa picked it up perfectly.
I have no idea why renoise won’t work with my normal headphone port or speakers. The only thing I can think of is that my laptop is pretty old (2013 Macbook Pro) so possibly any performance optimizations Renoise tries to make don’t work with this card.
Either way, I appreciate all of the help. If you want to keep digging to try and figure out what’s going on I can keep running commands just to see what happens, but I’m fine just running with the usb audio interface for now.
And @lilith thanks for your help as well. I tried a couple of guides for setting up jack but kept getting lost and never got it set up. Once I get the hang of it I’ll come back and see if that solves the original problem.
@nick Excellent news, but if you are like me, I am a bit OCD about making things work as intended lol, so therefore I am more than happy to keep digging away at this one ( It will also help any future travellers to this post to get their sound working correctly especially if they don’t have access to an external soundcard ).
I’m thinking that we can check the log files when trying to run Renoise to see if they show any relevant info and maybe also try to manually load the correct driver for your internal soundcard as I’m now starting to believe that your system [ running Mint ] is loading a generic driver which Renoise [ or any other blocking Audio system, including Jack ] can’t/won’t run with .
We will start with checking dmesg to have a look at the boot sequence to see if anything obvious pops up [ just be careful not to include any sensitive info from the next few commands that I give you [ if any ] :-
(1) dmesg
This next 2 commands have to be run after each other as the terminal closes after the sudo part which is required 1st, then the normal user command can’t be kept open as we need to use the ‘enter’ key to keep listing the info … so … [ Renoise should not be opened until these commands are both run ]
lets flush journalctl or else we will probably have all log files since you installed Mint.
(2) sudo journalctl --flush --rotate && sudo journalctl --vacuum-time=1s
Now in the same terminal is ok to run the user part of the command [ keep this terminal open ]
(3) journalctl --user --all
Now as usual run Renoise and play a song . Next we need to put focus back onto the terminal with the previous command and hit the enter key continuosly . Hopefully there is some good info here.
Next I will do a bit of research to see if I can find more info about loading the driver for your soundcard, I know from my own past experience having issues with my own soundcard I was able to add a line to the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf file to fix this.
Ok on my 1st bit of research, I think this is doable for your soundcard, the problem might be just getting the specific driver that will work to load.
so we will try to append the right one .
looking here HD-Audio Codec-Specific Models — The Linux Kernel documentation there are a lot of options but your closest matching one , I believe is the ‘mbp11’ option.
so we want to edit the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf and put the model options after the line snd-hda-intel model= … ( obviously a reboot is required after trying each new driver load and you don’t want to have your USB soundcard plugged in for now.
It may also be possible that we need to specify an index= option also, but for now do command.
sudo echo -e "options snd-hda-intel model=mbp11" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf && sudo reboot
And another command if you will @nick and upload the output here. This downloads and runs a small alsa script that checks a few config files on your system . Choose n for no in the upload option for now and the output of the file will be on your local disk in the /tmp folder.
wget https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh && chmod +x alsa-info.sh && ./alsa-info.sh
A great sourceof Alsa info here
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/sound/index.html
Placeholder/reminder about hdajackretask ( will edit with more info later )
@mikobuntu works for me!
So for your first post, I’m not sure I’m doing it correctly. When I run dmesg it dumps a bunch of log information that looks like it goes back to the first installation. When I run all of the journalctl commands, leave the terminal open, and run renoise, nothing happens even after pressing return a few times. Are you looking for the dmesg log after the “Vacuuming done” line? If so, that’s below:
[ 2484.026397] systemd-journald[324]: Vacuuming done, freed 0B of archived journals from /var/log/journal/dafd9a61376b4676aa8b190bc1ed4b43.
[ 2632.224856] snd_hda_intel 0000:00:1b.0: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #1. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj.
[ 2634.137915] mce: CPU2: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 1)
[ 2634.137917] mce: CPU0: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 1)
[ 2634.137964] mce: CPU1: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 1)
[ 2634.137966] mce: CPU3: Package temperature above threshold, cpu clock throttled (total events = 1)
[ 2634.141916] mce: CPU2: Package temperature/speed normal
[ 2634.141917] mce: CPU0: Package temperature/speed normal
[ 2634.141963] mce: CPU3: Package temperature/speed normal
[ 2634.141965] mce: CPU1: Package temperature/speed normal
[ 2669.212718] perf: interrupt took too long (2548 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 78250
[ 2767.110666] intel_powerclamp: Start idle injection to reduce power
[ 2775.306439] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.307408] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.309824] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.310411] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.311319] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.314455] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.318454] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.322456] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.466443] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
[ 2775.466767] NOHZ: local_softirq_pending 282
For your second post, I ran the command and rebooted. Still no sound. I checked and /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf does have the new text at the bottom:
nick@nick-MacBookPro:~$ tail -n 10 /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
options snd-usb-ua101 index=-2
options snd-usb-us122l index=-2
options snd-usb-usx2y index=-2
# Ubuntu #62691, enable MPU for snd-cmipci
options snd-cmipci mpu_port=0x330 fm_port=0x388
# Keep snd-pcsp from being loaded as first soundcard
options snd-pcsp index=-2
# Keep snd-usb-audio from beeing loaded as first soundcard
options snd-usb-audio index=-2
snd-hda-intel model=mbp11
For your third post, I ran the script from alsa-project and the output puts me over the character limit for this post, I’ll put it in my next reply.