Working Linux Usb Audio Interfaces

Anybody having any luck with Renoise and linux usb audio interfaces? I’ve tried an NI Audio Kontrol and a Novation Xiosynth and both seem to be recognized by the system but when I select them in Renoise I don’t hear any sound.

Which Linux distro and which audio system?
ALSA, Jack or Pulse?

Does your devices work in other audio applications?

I am using an Edirol UA-5 and it works nicely with alsa and jack.
Well… as vV said: Is it just a renoise problem?

Using Ubuntu 8.10, either 32 or 64 bit and going directly to alsa.

The Xio seems to work ok as a regular audio device for wav/mp3 playback etc. Renoise seems to see it, but on playback nothing comes out.

Not sure. I need to experiment more. I was just wondering if people generally have this combination working. From what I understand most, if not all, usb audio devices use the same driver in Linux, right?

I have used xio with linux & renoise. Works fine. I don’t know about the NI Kontrol though.

Most audio interfaces work though. Check alsa homepage before buying though.

Are you using jack with renoise? If so, are the audio outs of renoise connected to your audio out of jack (usually called “system”)?

Well, it does for me, so it’s not a general usb-renoise-problem, that’s for sure.

Have a look at the alsa page for NI. Maybe this will solve your problem.

But if, as you claim, the sound is working for mp3 playback, I guess it’s not a driver problem at all. Maybe start renoise from the command line and have a look at the output there. Maybe there are some suspicious log messages?

After messing around with this for a while I’ve discovered that it works with jack if the number of alsa buffers is set to be > 2. I still get the occasional xrun but it’s workable.

Still no sound at all out of alsa if I use it directly though, which is weird.

i use an edirol ua101 with linux and renopise that works fine but needs jack to run properly - using alsa messes the graphics up (all jerky and glitchy) - although pretty sure that’s something to do with my system not handling the inbuilt soundcard propery - IRQ thing? no idea

but yeah works fine with ua-101 and jack - better latancy than xp and no xruns at all.

Jack uses Alsa.

If it works with jack it works with ALSA. Fact.

You just have to get the parameters correct.

you can change the number of periods for ALSA inside Renoise configurations.
this feature has been added exactly for this kind of trouble (which is common for laptop soundcards)

GASP – I thought I was the only one!

Gathering from your experiences and Suva’s info, UA-101 should itself be fine… but I haven’t had ANY luck yet with it in Linux. Tweaking the ALSA periods etc. seems to have little or no effect on the popping for me.

So it looks like the Audio Kontrol 1 does work. Running Jack and Renoise as root got them both working. Now I need to figure out what I have to do to make it work without sudo. Maybe it will be as simple as setting /etc/security/limits.conf.

I finally got this working by adding the following three lines to /etc/securilty/limits.conf:

@audio - memlock unlimited
@audio - rtprio 99
@audio - nice −10

The last two are the same as specified the FAQ but I had to add the “memlock unlimited” line to be able to use jack with the Audio Kontrol without running as root.

I picked up an Edirol UA-101 to get more inputs and it seems to be working. However, I get little pops and clicks when using it, and not only in Renoise, but in any audio application. I’ve tried a variety of Jack settings and none of them seem to make any difference. Has anybody else experienced this?

Bumping this thread as I am considering most of the cards mentioned when I get my new laptop and do want to put a Linux (probably Ubuntu Studio) partition on there.

Hi kazakore. In /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf you can add the line “options snd-usb-audio nrpacks=1” to get lower latencies in the usb audio subsystem. This works for me under Debian/Lenny with a custom built realtime kernel (version 2.6.29-rc4-rt2).