No audio when recording using Audacity in Fedora 9

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

I'm using audacity with jack under F9 to record audio coming in through
my computer's line input.  Everything seems to work OK, except that no
signal appears in the input VU meter or in the displayed waveform.  The
recording is silent.  A little web searching turned up this snippet:

        Audacity doesn't support PulseAudio, nor Esound for the moment.
        You'll have to kill or suspend pulseaudio before you use this
        application. Audacity uses the PortAudio cross-platform Audio
        API which doesnt support pulseaudio. Some work was started on
        making portaudio support PulseAudio but this does not appear to
        be under active development currently and does not work in it's
        current state. 

In F8 under KDE, I was able to stop the aRts sound server, and record
successfully.  F9 with Gnome appears to use both PulseAudio and EsounD.
It's easy to stop PulseAudio, using something like:
        pasuspender -- audacity <argument>
but there doesn't seem to be any way to stop EsounD.

Has anyone used audacity successfully with jack?  Or any other way?

[stan]

Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  
>  How do you disable pulse?  Just "$ pkill pulse" ?  Or something fancier?
pulseaudio --kill or
Application->sound and video->pulseaudio manager->disconnect

Everything you want to know about pulse is at http://www.pulseaudio.org

>  
>  Here's the key.  (And I feel very stupid.)  How do you select line as
>  the default for recording?  The Gnome mixer applet (right click on the
>  little speaker in the upper task bar; select "Open Volume Control") has
>  no checkboxes to select recording input (as opposed to the help page).
>  Alsamixer seems to want to communicate only with pulseaudio. 
There is probably a .asoundrc file in your home directory with 
something like

pcm.pulse {
     type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
     type pulse
}

in it.  This makes pulse the default for all sound.  Move it to 
.asoundrc.bak or something and with the end of the server, you should 
be OK.  At least, I'm able to run an application that calls the alsa 
library API directly and set various output parameters.

At that point, go into a console and type alsamixer.  I just tried it 
and had to hit F5 to get the capture selection.  Use the arrow keys to 
go over to the capture control, hit page down until you have line 
selected.  F4 went to the screen that turned capture on and off.

Note your card might be slightly different.

Audacity should now record properly.

>  
>  
>  On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:23:50 Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > I've been told (more than once) that JACK in Audacity is untested
> > and that it may be disabled by default in any future release.
>  
>  I've never had any *more* trouble with audacity with jack than with
>  audacity without jack.  I certainly hope that jack support is not
>  disabled, since jack has given me much higher recording quality at high
>  data rates (48000 samples / sec) than plain vanilla alsa -- I think I
>  was getting lots of drop outs (i.e.xruns). 
This is probably because jack gives itself higher priority than 
vanilla alsa.  In /etc/security/limits.conf  That stops things like 
background processes from interfering with it.

I created an audio group, added myself to it, gave it high priority, 
and now alsa doesn't get clobbered either.  :-)
>  
>  jon
>  
>  
>

lost gnome icons

[Gerhard Magnus]

I'm running FC9 with gnome and seem to have lost my desktop (wallpaper
and icons.) How can I get them back? The files in /home/magnusg/Desktop
still show up from the command line. Using the right mouse button on the
desktop (which should bring up a menu of options) gives nothing. Thanks
for the help!  --Jerry

avahi-daemon issues cont.

[Gerhard Magnus]

On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 15:54 -0700, Gerhard Magnus wrote:
>  When avahi-daemon is started during booting, I get this message:
>  
>  Starting avahi daemon... Timeout reached while waiting for return value.
>  Could not receive return value from daemon process.  FAILED
>  
>  Then the system comes up normally. According to system-config-services,
>  avahi-daemon is enabled and dead.
>  
>  Fedora documentation says:
>  
>  Avahi is an implementation of zeroconf and is useful for detecting
>  devices and services on local network without a DNS server. This is also
>  the same as mDNS. Most users may have this disabled. Please note that in
>  order to use the networked audio functionality of pulseaudio you will
>  need Avahi enabled.
>  
>  I would like to use the networked audio functionality of pulseaudio --
>  and in the process perhaps come to understand the black hole of
>  pulseaudio itself :)  So any ideas as to how to get avahi-daemon working
>  or at least how to troubleshoot this problem further?
>  
>  Thanks for the help! --Jerry
>   
OK, after thrashing about for awhile I tried something "obvious":

root@PuteB Wed Aug 20 16:10:25
[199] /home/magnusg $ /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon restart
Shutting down Avahi daemon:                                [  OK  ]
Starting Avahi daemon...                                   [  OK  ]

which seems to work. But what's going on? Is the system starting
services in the wrong order? Do the other boxes on the network have to
be operational first for avahi-daemon to come up during booting?

avahi-daemon issues

[Gerhard Magnus]

When avahi-daemon is started during booting, I get this message:

Starting avahi daemon... Timeout reached while waiting for return value.
Could not receive return value from daemon process.  FAILED

Then the system comes up normally. According to system-config-services,
avahi-daemon is enabled and dead.

Fedora documentation says:

Avahi is an implementation of zeroconf and is useful for detecting
devices and services on local network without a DNS server. This is also
the same as mDNS. Most users may have this disabled. Please note that in
order to use the networked audio functionality of pulseaudio you will
need Avahi enabled.

I would like to use the networked audio functionality of pulseaudio --
and in the process perhaps come to understand the black hole of
pulseaudio itself :)  So any ideas as to how to get avahi-daemon working
or at least how to troubleshoot this problem further?

Thanks for the help! --Jerry

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:17:22 -0700, Gerhard Magnus wrote:

>  I've been able to get audacity to work without disabling
> pulseaudio by
>  installing audacity-nonfree (1.3.4-0.7.20080123cvs.lvn9) instead of
>  audacity. 
Eventually give audacity in fedora updates-testing a try.

[Gerhard Magnus]

On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 12:58 -0700, stan wrote:
>  Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  > I'm using audacity with jack under F9 to record audio coming in through
>  > my computer's line input.  Everything seems to work OK, except that no
>  > signal appears in the input VU meter or in the displayed waveform.  The
>  > recording is silent.  A little web searching turned up this snippet:
>  > 
>  >         Audacity doesn't support PulseAudio, nor Esound for the moment.
>  >         You'll have to kill or suspend pulseaudio before you use this
>  >         application. Audacity uses the PortAudio cross-platform Audio
>  >         API which doesnt support pulseaudio. Some work was started on
>  >         making portaudio support PulseAudio but this does not appear to
>  >         be under active development currently and does not work in it's
>  >         current state. 
>  > 
>  > In F8 under KDE, I was able to stop the aRts sound server, and record
>  > successfully.  F9 with Gnome appears to use both PulseAudio and EsounD.
>  > It's easy to stop PulseAudio, using something like:
>  >         pasuspender -- audacity <argument>
>  > but there doesn't seem to be any way to stop EsounD.
>  > 
>  > Has anyone used audacity successfully with jack?  Or any other way?
>  > 
>  > 
>  Yes, I use audacity on Fedora 9.  I do not use pulse at all, though it 
>  is installed and disabled (not temporarily suspended).  I am not using 
>  jack, though that probably isn't your issue.  I am using the audacity 
>  1.3.6 beta, and I compiled and installed it from the tarball.  I have 
>  used the line in successfully to record.  It was necessary to select 
>  it as the mic is usually the default.  alsamixer  then F4, and select 
>  the recording source.
>  
>  As far as I know the way to turn off the esound server is   esdctl off 
>     .  I think esound is just an alias for pulse at this point.  I seem 
>  to recall tracing this down and finding that.  So suspending pulse 
>  should suspend esound.
>   
I've been able to get audacity to work without disabling pulseaudio by
installing audacity-nonfree (1.3.4-0.7.20080123cvs.lvn9) instead of
audacity.

Jerry

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 16:31 -0700, stan wrote:
>  Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  > 
>  > How do you disable pulse?  Just "$ pkill pulse" ?  Or something fancier?
>  
>  pulseaudio --kill or
>  Application->sound and video->pulseaudio manager->disconnect
>  
>  Everything you want to know about pulse is at http://www.pulseaudio.org 
Thanks very much for all your assistance.  As you see, the problem had
nothing to do with any of this, and is now solved.

jon

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 15:27 -0700, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  Here's the key.  (And I feel very stupid.)  How do you select
> line as
>  the default for recording?  The Gnome mixer applet (right click on the
>  little speaker in the upper task bar; select "Open Volume Control")
>  has no checkboxes to select recording input (as opposed to the help
>  page). 
The solution is to click the "switch" belonging to the channel you want
to record.  

Now I feel both stupid and irritated.  IMHO the volume control applet is
buggy and badly designed to the point of extreme confusion: after a
channel is enabled (i.e. made visible by using Edit->Preferences) the
applet has to be closed and then reopened before its associated switch
appears.  And how is the user to know that the switch controls the
recording channel?

Yours in dismay - jon

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 12:58 -0700, stan wrote: 
>  Yes, I use audacity on Fedora 9.  I do not use pulse at all, though
> it 
>  is installed and disabled (not temporarily suspended).   
How do you disable pulse?  Just "$ pkill pulse" ?  Or something fancier?

>                                                         I am not using
>
>  jack, though that probably isn't your issue.  I am using the audacity 
>  1.3.6 beta, and I compiled and installed it from the tarball.  I have 
>  used the line in successfully to record.  It was necessary to select 
>  it as the mic is usually the default.  alsamixer  then F4, and select 
>  the recording source. 
Here's the key.  (And I feel very stupid.)  How do you select line as
the default for recording?  The Gnome mixer applet (right click on the
little speaker in the upper task bar; select "Open Volume Control") has
no checkboxes to select recording input (as opposed to the help page).
Alsamixer seems to want to communicate only with pulseaudio.


On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:23:50 Michael Schwendt wrote:
>  I've been told (more than once) that JACK in Audacity is
> untested
>  and that it may be disabled by default in any future release. 
I've never had any *more* trouble with audacity with jack than with
audacity without jack.  I certainly hope that jack support is not
disabled, since jack has given me much higher recording quality at high
data rates (48000 samples / sec) than plain vanilla alsa -- I think I
was getting lots of drop outs (i.e.xruns).

jon
>

[stan]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > 1.3.6 beta,
>  
>  That doesn't exist yet. Most recent you can get is 1.3.6-alpha6 from cvs.
>   
You're right.  That's what I get for going from memory.  ;-)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:58:41 -0700, stan wrote:

>  Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  > I'm using audacity with jack under F9 to record audio coming in through
>  > my computer's line input.  Everything seems to work OK, except that no
>  > signal appears in the input VU meter or in the displayed waveform.  The
>  > recording is silent. 
>  > Has anyone used audacity successfully with jack?  Or any other
> way? 
I've been told (more than once) that JACK in Audacity is untested
and that it may be disabled by default in any future release.

>  Yes, I use audacity on Fedora 9.  I do not use pulse at all, though
> it 
>  is installed and disabled (not temporarily suspended).  I am not using 
>  jack, though that probably isn't your issue.  I am using the audacity 
>  1.3.6 beta, 
That doesn't exist yet. Most recent you can get is 1.3.6-alpha6 from cvs.

You can get 1.3.5-beta rpms for Fedora 8 and 9 in the updates-testing
repo ( yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update audacity ) or when
installing audacity-nonfree from Livna.

[stan]

Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  I'm using audacity with jack under F9 to record audio coming in
> through
>  my computer's line input.  Everything seems to work OK, except that no
>  signal appears in the input VU meter or in the displayed waveform.  The
>  recording is silent.  A little web searching turned up this snippet:
>  
>          Audacity doesn't support PulseAudio, nor Esound for the moment.
>          You'll have to kill or suspend pulseaudio before you use this
>          application. Audacity uses the PortAudio cross-platform Audio
>          API which doesnt support pulseaudio. Some work was started on
>          making portaudio support PulseAudio but this does not appear to
>          be under active development currently and does not work in it's
>          current state. 
>  
>  In F8 under KDE, I was able to stop the aRts sound server, and record
>  successfully.  F9 with Gnome appears to use both PulseAudio and EsounD.
>  It's easy to stop PulseAudio, using something like:
>          pasuspender -- audacity <argument>
>  but there doesn't seem to be any way to stop EsounD.
>  
>  Has anyone used audacity successfully with jack?  Or any other way?
>  
>   
Yes, I use audacity on Fedora 9.  I do not use pulse at all, though it 
is installed and disabled (not temporarily suspended).  I am not using 
jack, though that probably isn't your issue.  I am using the audacity 
1.3.6 beta, and I compiled and installed it from the tarball.  I have 
used the line in successfully to record.  It was necessary to select 
it as the mic is usually the default.  alsamixer  then F4, and select 
the recording source.

As far as I know the way to turn off the esound server is   esdctl off 
   .  I think esound is just an alias for pulse at this point.  I seem 
to recall tracing this down and finding that.  So suspending pulse 
should suspend esound.