[SOLVED] ALSA ports won't connect / No SysEx over Jack MIDI

[oli]

Hi all

I've been trying to resolve this issue on the LAU mailing list, and have received some help, but I still haven't managed to find a solution. I thought I'd try here as well, as I really need to get this sorted.

I'm trying to backup a drum machine via a MIDI SysEx data dump. I used to be able to do this with my PCI Audiophile 192 interface, but with my new firewire card it no longer seems to be possible. I make all the necessary connections as before, but no data gets through when I transmit the dump. I know the connections are correct, as when playing on the device I can record the MIDI output.

The only difference I could see was that the new interface gives me Jack MIDI ports rather than ALSA. For music making, I can use it as normal with a2j, but SysEx messages seem to be lost using this approach.

Clemens on the mailing list suggested I switch to kernel v3.16, which has made ALSA midi ports appear in Jack Control. I've also noticed I get fewer XRUNS, which is great! Only problem is, these new ports refuse to connect to anything else, always saying port is "busy". Anyone got any ideas?

Any help with this would be fantastic! Losing my drum patterns on this thing would really not be nice...

Thanks in advance

Best, Oliver


Some infornation about my setup -
(many of these commands were requested by Clemens on the list)

Drum machine - Korg ER-1
Interface - Edirol FA-101

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$ uname -r
3.16.0-28-lowlatency

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$ jackd --version
jackdmp 1.9.10

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$ amidi -l
Dir Device Name
IO hw:0,0,0 EDIROL FA-101 MIDI 1
IO hw:2,0,0 Oxygen 49 MIDI 1

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$ arecordmidi -l
Port Client name Port name
14:0 Midi Through Midi Through Port-0
16:0 EDIROL FA-101 EDIROL FA-101 MIDI 1
24:0 Oxygen 49 Oxygen 49 MIDI 1

This one gives some sort of error -

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$ amidi --dump
ALSA lib rawmidi_hw.c:233:(snd_rawmidi_hw_open) open /dev/snd/midiC0D0 failed: Device or resource busy
cannot open port "default": Device or resource busy

This one hangs at this point -

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$ aseqdump
Waiting for data at port 130:0. Press Ctrl+C to end.
Source Event Ch Data
0:1 Port subscribed 129:0 -> 130:0

And this error comes up when attempting to aconnect -

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$ aconnect 24 16
Connection failed (Device or resource busy)

"lsof /dev/snd/midiC0D0" gives no output. Just executes then nothing.

This one gives the "busy" error again.

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$ aseqdump -p EDIROL
Cannot connect from port 16:0 - Device or resource busy

[oli]

This is now fixed, the trick was changing the jack driver to "alsa" rather than "firewire".

It's not as stable as ffado, but I've now saved a new profile in jack control for SysEx. I do have to restart jack to switch between it and my normal profile, but that's a minor thing.

I was getting XRUNS with my normal, high port setup, so I tuned it a bit -

Frames/Period - 256
Samples - 44100
Port Max - 128
Interface - hw:FA101,0
Periods/Buffer - 2
DBUS interface disabled