03-23-2023, 03:32 AM | #1 |
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Pro Audio on Arch & Debian guides
https://github.com/chmaha/ArchProAudio
https://github.com/chmaha/DebianProAudio As posted in the Manjaro and Ubuntu guide threads, above are the links to the only maintained guides going forwards. If you have any suggestions it would be most helpful if you could provide them as issues for discussion or pull requests directly on Github. My forum interactions are generally in the ReaClassical and jsfx threads at this point in time but I will keep checking my subscriptions list for those who are not Github users. If there are significant changes to the guide for whatever reason, I will also post about it here.
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03-23-2023, 10:14 AM | #2 |
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Thanks! Very useful.
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04-03-2023, 03:19 PM | #3 |
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See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...bug=1000293#62
Robin Gareus doesn't have many nice things to say about pipewire at the present time. To be fair, I only use pipewire-alsa at this point and it seems to work flawlessly. For those with more complex setups which recreate their previous JACK configurations, maybe the above will make interesting reading.
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04-05-2023, 12:24 PM | #4 |
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One-line pipewire audio installer (as per my new Arch pro audio guide):
Code:
yay -S --needed pipewire-pulse pipewire-alsa pipewire-jack wireplumber This is my best shot for now but YMMV: Code:
yay -Rdd pipewire-alsa pipewire-pulse pipewire-jack yay -S pulseaudio pulseaudio-alsa pulseaudio-jack jack2
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05-26-2023, 09:49 AM | #5 |
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Hi Chmaha!
One simple question : regarding the Spectre/Meltdown mitigations, do you disable them in your own system? How risky (in an ordinary sccenario) is to do that? I did it on my last install, but I had to reinstall Manjaro due to some hardware issues, and I am doubting. My machine is "old" for nowadays standard (an I7 3770 from 2013), but I have plenty of resources for my daily work... Also, I don't really understand this message from rtcqs : [ OK ] USB port xhci_hcd with IRQ 25 does not share its IRQ. Soundcard snd_hda_intel:card0 with IRQ 29 does not share its IRQ. [ WARNING ] Found USB port ehci_hcd:usb1 with IRQ 23 that shares its IRQ with the following other devices: ehci_hcd:usb1, ehci_hcd:usb2 (Regarding a Fast Track Pro card I use in this machine). Last edited by Soli Deo Gloria; 05-26-2023 at 10:00 AM. |
05-26-2023, 11:36 AM | #6 | |
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Quote:
So, you have some IRQ sharing. Again, not an issue if everything is working fine. Maybe put the USB device on another USB port? Depends on your system really as to whether this is avoidable. IRQ sharing is generally OK but obviously if two devices are running simultaneously it could lead to audio issues.
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05-26-2023, 12:01 PM | #7 |
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If disabling migitatios is a good idea or not depends on 2 main thoughts:
Your CPU Older CPUs loose more performance due to migitations than newer ones. Safety This depends mostly on your computer experience. Linux per se is quite safe, but there are some things that cause security risks on Linux Computers: Browser: Do you surf on suspicious sites frequently? E-Mail Clients: You you open suspicious mails and/or attachments? Windows Software: Are you a wine user and install suspicious windows software? If you can answer the above questions with no, disabling migitations should be safe. And if you also have an older CPU, you should also gain some performance. In all other cases I would recommend NOT to do it. |
05-28-2023, 09:50 AM | #8 |
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Thanks so much, Chmaha and XoechZ. I suspected that these things were far from being deal breakers, so I'll probably disable the Meltdown thing and not worry too much about the IRQ sharing. The rest is just OK in rctqs, so everything is going along just great. My install/reinstall procedure is really tight, so I got a fresh working Manjaro in a reasonably short time.
Again anf again, infinite thanks for this guide. There's nothing even remotely close on the web... |
05-28-2023, 11:53 AM | #9 | |
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Quote:
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05-28-2023, 08:27 PM | #10 |
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That's a guarantee in itself, for sure! Besides, everything is crystal-clear : there's nothing ambiguous nor confusing on the guide, as in many Linux tutorials out there (and particularly those coming from the pens of many supposed "gurus").
The only difference right now is that I have a couple of little scripts to start and reset rtirq directly, without the need of udev-rtirq. The same with cpupower-gui, which I change manually with another little script. I developed these practices since I had some problems with the automatic solutions in other installs - sometimes, things wouldn't change as expected -. With these quick procedures (a couple of clicks and a password) it always works. |
05-30-2023, 08:09 AM | #11 |
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Since I also have an old i7, I have been thinking to disable the meltdown thing... And live dangerously 😃 maybe it makes a difference.
A little problem I have is that I cannot get the cpupower-gui settings to stay on next restart. I don't know why. But REAPER has an option to set CPU to performance when it is running, in the audio preferences page. |
05-30-2023, 09:30 AM | #12 |
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That's exactly my situation with Manjaro, Heda... Hence, I turn on and off the performance boost with cpupower-gui and rtirq manually. And it certainly makes a world of difference (!)
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05-30-2023, 10:54 AM | #13 |
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If you are referring to the Performance/OnDemand/PowerSaving stuff for your CPU, I have found that "TLP UI" will let you set your CPU preference and retain it after a reboot. If OTOH you are talking about something else, disregard the above.
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07-26-2023, 02:20 PM | #14 |
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FYI: I made a significant change to this guide and the new DebianProAudio guide and completely removed pipewire instructions. For "Pro Audio" use cases the best is still to use ALSA + Pulseaudio + JACK. Yep, I've gone back and forth a lot but it took a few recent pipewire experiences on Debian 12 to realize it isn't ready for primetime yet. I you are probably aware, I'm not alone in this view. It works for general desktop audio use cases, sure, but pro audio is a whole different ball game.
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07-26-2023, 07:45 PM | #15 |
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I have to say that I suspected it. In my only, brief experience with it, it didn't seem as flexible as the Alsa-Pulse-Jack combination at all (with Cadence and Catia in my case) and I couldn't even get it to do two or three simple things I needed (it could have been my fault, but anyway...). It was only a brief, superficial impression, but you're somehow confirming now that it's not the tool for the job.
In my case, for big MIDI projects, Jack is also not really suitable (it tends to suffer from hiccups much quicker than Alsa), but in many aspects, when you couple it with Catia and its modular patching capabilities, it's a great thing to have. The equivalent tool in Pipewire didn't seem as polished, neither. |
07-27-2023, 01:29 AM | #16 |
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Yes, this is accurate. I slept on it and I'm doubly sure Those parts of the guides didn't sit right with me all along and now I know why. The point of pipewire seems to be to replace pulseaudio and JACK but until it 100% recreates the experience (and also makes it easier to configure) it simply isn't ready. My judgement was clouded because I had only been using ALSA and pipewire-alsa. A few days ago when I tried to use pipewire-jack, things fell apart. I got it to a stage it was working but it wasn't reporting latency accurately and the discrepancies between pw-top and hw_params reporting made me decide to roll back.
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07-27-2023, 11:46 AM | #17 |
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Replacing pipewire in Debian 12 Gnome
Code:
sudo apt remove pipewire-alsa pipewire-pulse pipewire-jack sudo apt install pulseaudio pulseaudio-module-jack jackd2 pavucontrol sudo apt install pipewire-media-session wireplumber- sudo reboot If someone would be interested in giving it a go on a real install (either on a non-critical spare machine or your main one if you are a terminal wizard) I'd be eternally grateful. I'd like to add it to the new Debian Pro Audio guide soon. If you run inxi -Aa you should see:
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07-28-2023, 08:27 AM | #18 |
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Confirmed as success using a real Debian 12 install on my laptop (running cinnamon).
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08-23-2023, 12:35 AM | #19 |
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I've updated the DebianProAudio guide to reflect my move away from Liquorix kernel to the generic with preempt=full kernel parameter. I've also re-grouped all the kernel tweaks into a single step.
The ArchProAudio guide has been re-grouped similarly but the Arch kernel is already set to full preempt by default.
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11-17-2023, 05:04 AM | #20 |
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Pipewire updates
In my own pro audio setup (using Debian Bookworm) I have now permanently moved to pipewire compiling from https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire. I've just updated to 0.3.85 and quite happy including enabling build options for aptx/HD and LDAC bluetooth codecs.
I should imagine that my Arch and Debian-based guides will add pipewire back as an option at some point soonish after v1 is officially released. At this stage a lot of distros are shipping pipewire as default of course. On non-rolling releases currently building from git is the way to get the latest benefits (which isn't really an option for the average user). Ease of pipewire audio configuration via GUI is definitely still a problem (only partially addressed by some simple 3rd-party taskbar apps) however ALSA configurations (as is recommended for most users) should be relatively easy and things like samplerate and blocksize set directly in the DAW. On that note, I personally don't set the ALSA device as "default" and stick to using the device name itself. Unless you've set your pipewire blocksize in a config file, if you attempt to use your usual lower blocksize, you will most likely hear extremely stutter on playback. Happy to corrected on this but my advice — perhaps obvious at this point — would be: 1) For typical professional DAW usage: ALSA - set to your actual device with appropriate samplerate, blocksize and bitdepth. Should cover 99% of situations... 2) For those who need to connect to JACK instruments/effects/listen to YouTube videos for inspiration mid-project: JACK (will use pipewire-jack). Just be sure to set a decently low blocksize via command line or a 3rd-party GUI for workable monitoring. And, of course, general desktop audio from other applications including switching between devices should be seamless. Plus, if you use option 1 above but really want to listen to YouTube now and again, simply use your USB interface for the DAW and use your built-in soundcard for general desktop audio.
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11-17-2023, 09:46 AM | #21 |
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I am looking forward to your Debian 12 pipewire update!
Did you try Debian backports for the latest pipewire? https://packages.debian.org/source/b...ports/pipewire is on 0.3.84 I would like to update, but am also waiting on the 1.0 release so I can feel better about the whole thing How about this new pro audio mode in pipewire, can we set it in the command line? If you just type 'default' (there is no dropdown on mine) into input and output in ALSA then I think it is doing some pipewire magic...
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11-18-2023, 03:59 AM | #22 | ||
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Quote:
Quote:
Yes, it probably uses pipewire-alsa and activates the soundcard selected in whatever sound settings taskbar widget you use. However, as stated previously, unless you set the blocksize to match the one set in your pipewire.conf, you will get a mass of stuttering. At least that was my experience trying to use my usual blocksize of 64 (which works flawlessly using the Behringer USB device name). I've not bothered to change the default pipewire blocksize of 1024 given I only use ALSA for audio work.
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12-14-2023, 01:33 PM | #23 |
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A few updates:
1) I've been successfully using pipewire 1.0 (and now 1.1) built from git. Not sure whether whether I configured something erroneously but I did need to manually set up pipewire-alsa via the instructions in the relevant portion of the install.md, namely to copy a conf file and symlink to another as follows: Code:
/etc/alsa/conf.d/50-pipewire.conf -> /usr/share/alsa/alsa.conf.d/50-pipewire.conf /etc/alsa/conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf 2) I might not be able to maintain these guides for too much longer for various reasons including that I can't maintain two separate Arch and Debian systems to test latest pro audio developments and neither am I really willing to install new ISOs to double-check what comes as the default (at least that's what my inner self is rebelling against). Plus, with the recent personal attacks in this subforum I just feel that life's too short to keep freely giving when I'm labelled by a certain user as "uncouth" or suffering from "Dunning-Kruger effect" when actually I know exactly what I'm talking about and am a well-regarded expert in the field of audio engineering and Linux. Finally, I've said something very similar previously but it feels different this time: I don't think I can contribute further to this subforum. I'm actually quite content developing ReaClassical and documenting my progress over in a main forum thread. The only reason I feel a need to jump back in here is to correct some erroneous statement or help someone when I should actually just sit on my hands at this point for sanity's sake. I really don't think my personality and forums are a good match so I'm doing something about it. Oh well. There we have it. I'm not interested in having any follow-up dialog about this. Onwards to greener pastures...
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12-15-2023, 03:11 AM | #24 |
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Thank you...
... for all you have contributed to on this forum; the guides are a godsend.
FWIW, I would say your personality and forums are a good match - paraphrasing Robert Fripp, "The problem lies elsewhere". |
12-16-2023, 08:06 AM | #25 | |
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Well, Chmaha, my posts on the forum are scarce nowadays, but as I said elsewhere, your guide and help have been of the utmost importance to achieve a smooth Linux experience in the field of audio and MIDI work. Hence, I couldn't ask for more. I hope your personal sanity has the priority and you find the fitting balance in your activities. I'll download the guides and keep having them as the ultimate reference, no matter how old are they. One can always ask anywhere if some point is outdated as time goes by. Massive, absolute thanks for all you have contributed. Best wishes! SDG Last edited by Soli Deo Gloria; 12-16-2023 at 09:42 AM. |
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