Renoise "Failed To Open Alsa Device" On Ubuntu 10.04 (Log Insi

i recently got a new computer and installed the latest linux. renoise works very well but often bugs at loading. heres the log file. i dont know what to do…please help me!

Version : Renoise V2.0.0 (Jan 14 2009)
Date : 2010-08-01
Time : 22:20:25
OS : Linux version 2.6.32-24-generic (buildd@vernadsky) (gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) ) #38-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jul 5 09:22:14 UTC 2010

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CPU: Found 1 enabled unit(s) with 8 core(s) / 16 logical processor(s) per unit. 2 cores are enabled in total.

Application: Showing the splash window…

StartupWindow: Initialiting the startup window…

Graphport: Initialising XThreads…
Graphport: Opening XDisplay ‘:0.0’ (configured via ‘DISPLAY’ env)…
Graphport: XDisplay was successfully opened
Graphport: Initializing Freeimage…

StartupWindow: Startup window successfully initialized…

Application: Initializing the API…

GraphPort: Loading cursor images (libXcursor is present)…

System: Running from directory ‘/home/denis/Renoise_2_0_0_Reg/’…

GraphPort: Initializing the Font Engine…

Graphport: Initializing Keyboard mappings…
Graphport: Initializing XAtoms…

Application: Initializing Icon Bitmaps…

ALSA: Enumerating Devices…
ALSA: PLAYBACK info: card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
ALSA: CAPTURE info: card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]
ALSA: PLAYBACK info: card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: ALC888 Digital [ALC888 Digital]
ALSA: CAPTURE info: card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 2: ALC888 Analog [ALC888 Analog]

MIDI-IO: Starting the input thread…
MIDI-IO: Adding unlinked virtual MIDI in ports…
MIDI-IO: Adding unlinked virtual MIDI out ports…
MIDI-IO: Enumerating external input devices…
MIDI-IO: Adding Input device ‘Midi Through Port-0’…
MIDI-IO: Enumerating external output devices…
MIDI-IO: Ignoring client 'OSS sequencer’s port ‘Receiver’ (blacklisted device)…
MIDI-IO: Adding Output device ‘Midi Through Port-0’…

DspDevices: Registering native DSP effects…

Application: Creating the main application…
Application: Start running…
Application: Loading the preferences…
Application: Init…

LADSPA: LADSPA_PATH environment variable not set. Using ‘/usr/lib/ladspa:/usr/local/lib/ladspa:~/.ladspa’…
LADSPA: Skipping LADSPA path ‘/usr/lib/ladspa/’ (Directory does not exist)…
LADSPA: Skipping LADSPA path ‘/usr/local/lib/ladspa/’ (Directory does not exist)…
LADSPA: Skipping LADSPA path ‘/home/denis/.ladspa/’ (Directory does not exist)…

Jack: Trying to open client ‘renoise’…

Jack: Opening the Jack server failed!

Error Message: Failed to open the jack client. Please make sure that the Jack server is running!

Error Message: Jack failed to open. Trying to open ALSA instead…

ALSA: Opening ALSA Playback Device ‘hw:0,0 (ALC888 Analog)’…
ALSA: Open ALSA Output Device FAILED!

Error Message: Failed to open the ALSA device ‘hw:0,0 (ALC888 Analog)’ (Device or resource busy).

MIDI-IO: Opening MIDI in device ‘Renoise MIDI In Port A’…
MIDI-IO: Opening MIDI in device ‘Renoise MIDI In Port B’…
MIDI-IO: Opening MIDI in device ‘Renoise MIDI In Sync’…
MIDI-IO: Opening MIDI out device ‘Renoise MIDI Out Sync’…

Application: Creating a new document…

Player: Constructing…
Player: Attaching to the document…
Player: Creating the slave threads…
Player: Start running…

GUI: Creating the Document GUI…
GUI: Successfully constructed

Application: A new document was created.

GraphPort: Initializing in WindowedMode…
GraphPort: Successfully initialized

Application: Init OK

StartupWindow: Closing the window…

Application: Enter MainLoop…

and i discovered that i works when every other soft is shut down. if renoise is running, i dont get sound anywhere else, for instance on a youtube video.

I also use Ubuntu 10.04. I’d recommend installing jack, qjackctl and pulseaudio-module-jack. You can use qjackctl to launch the jack server, then check “connect” and you will hopefully see all the pulseaudio stuff (including youtube, etc) connected to jack (you may need to go the ubuntu system menu > preferences > sound and change the output to “jack sink”). When you launch renoise it will also connect to jack and both will work happily side by side.

Sorry for the rushed response, I could add more detail in the morning if you cannot work it out.

obviously its not sufficient, with renoise running still no sound on youtube. the connections in the jack window show renoise and system’s capture 1 and 2. nothing more…

Sorry, I was hurrying. I forgot a crucial stage! In qjackctl go to “Setup” and add/change the following in the “Options” tab:

Execute script on startup: artsshell -q terminate
Execute script after startup: pactl load-module module-jack-sink;pactl load-module module-jack-source
Execute script on shutdown: <nothing, leave this blank and unticked>
Execute script after shutdown: killall jackd

The second one is the important one here, it launches the jack sink for pulseaudio.

Fingers crossed :)

This and also, you know that you can’t have audio coming from firefox, rhhythmbox, totem etc while running renoise or jack and vice versa. the simple answer is just to make sure all audio applications including firefox are closed before starting renoise. Something that needs to be sorted out with the alsa/pulseaudio devs I beleive.

not really: it’s Renoise that should support PulseAudio in order to avoid the problem at its roots, similarly to how it happens with JACK support: when Renoise makes ALSA busy, PulseAudio (or Jack) cannot access the resource anymore.

If you ask me, it is unlikely that Renoise will ever support PulseAudio anyway, as any Linux user who is serious about audio production should in theory use JACK, not PulseAudio.

ALSA acts similar to ASIO, it blocks the sound card. That’s it.

ok! strangely, this wasnt occuring on my previous laptop running kubuntu 8.04…

I don’t think kubuntu uses pulseaudio that much.

Also, some soundcards support hardware mixing and thus can be opened by multiple programs. These are rather rare nowadays though.

because PulseAudio was introduced later

This was the case with ubuntu until 10.04, when the pulseaudio-jack-module became available in the main ubuntu repositories (previously you had to compile it yourself or add other repositories and things got messy!). Once you’re using the pulseaudio jack sink then all the usual pulseaudio stuff (“firefox, rhhythmbox, totem etc”) is heard via jack. When you start renoise it connects to jack too and both will work simultaneously. I just checked and had renoise playing at the same time as a youtube video, worked flawlessly. I think this is a great solution for linux musicians now.

den&bass: have you got it working now?

planetm: I believe I already posed this question before but noone replied: do you know if passing all audio through jack would negatively impact on battery consumption? I could think of automatically shut JACK down on laptop battery power with a script, I know, but it feels awkward to do and would also surely cause problems if a black-out happens or if for any reason I would like to unplug my laptop from power network while using Renoise

The honest answer is that I’m really not sure. To try and get some idea I just watched various processes CPU usage (via “top”) whilst I tried using a few audio sources. I rebooted the pc and started renoise, via jack, without the pulseaudio jack sink, and with processes sorted by cpu usage I only occasionally spotted jackd appearing on the list (0 to 1% cpu usage). When I did the same with the pulseaudio jack sink connected, jackd was still at ~1% and pulseaudio now showed ~2% cpu usage. Pulseaudio usage increased to about 4% when it was being used for youtube (the flash plugin container was using considerably more). Before I rebooted, I noticed that when my pc had being idling for a day or more the two processes that had used the most cpu time were firefox-bin and pulseaudio (connected to the jack sink), pulseaudio was showing a consistent ~6% cpu usage at that point even when not used.

This suggests to me that it will have an effect on battery consumption, but the amount of CPU time pulseaudio/jack uses is much smaller than the processes creating the audio (flash player or renoise). Personally, I’d probably still use this system on a laptop since it would not be left idling like my desktop pc is, and whilst the laptop iss actually in use the processes you’re using will be using considerably more power than the audio system.

Of course, my data isn’t rock solid, so you may decide otherwise!