Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

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More info at http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/

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mad.ax
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

Hello!
This is my first post on this board. Although I've been using Linux since 1998, I'm still a newbie when it comes to making music with my favourite (and only) OS. The reason is quite simple: until now, I've never been able to find a distro that would work well music with my setup and requirements. That all changed last night when I tried KXS 12.04 DVD. Almost everything worked out of the box! Watching videos in youtube without having to install proprietary codecs is already impressive in itself, but starting Guitarix in one click and being able to play along said video is something new!
Big thumb-up to FalkTX for providing such an efficient distro!

So I thought, I would document in this thread the post install little tips and tweaks that may be needed to get a full functional setup. Some are probably obvious to experienced users, but for instance, having to add oneself to the audio group is not necessary something that a newbie would expect.
I'll probably edit this post in the future as I find out new stuff. If you have other tips, please share!

FYI, my rig features a Phenom II X4 proc, 16Gb of RAM, NVidia GTS450, HDA sound chipset + HDMI sound chipset + HP webcam + EMU tracker pre USB.

To do after a clean install with the KXS 12.04 DVD

-Open a console and type:
sudo addgroup $USER audio
where $USER is to be replaced with your user name. After typing your required root password, you'll need to reboot for the change to take effect.

-Go to System>package manager Muon and upgrade all the proposed packages.

-For some reason, the sound was not working well under VLC when playing DVDs and some .wav files. CDs and mp3 were fine but when playing DVDs, there was a lot of cuts, then no more sound. I tried reinstalling VLC without success. So I uninstalled it, including its pluggins, and reinstalled VLC alone. Muon proposed the required dependencies and I agreed. Now VLC is working fine, with just the vlc-plugin-pulse proposed by Muon, instead of the vlc-plugin-jack previously installed by default. IIRC, pulse and the phonon-backend-vlc were also installed by default, so maybe there was a conflict between them all.

-If you experience the dreaded 'blue filter' while watching video on youtube, that's probably not KXS related, rather a common Flashplayer issue. The easiest way I know of solving it is to install the Flash-Aid pluggin in firefox and let the wizzard do its magic.


That's it for now... Thanks again to FalkTX for all that great work!
Axel
Last edited by mad.ax on Tue May 29, 2012 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mad.ax
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Posts: 10
Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

Speaking of Cadence, it does something special with my EMU tracker pre USB2.0.
With all other distros, I only managed to get it working at a 44100 sample rate. Any setting higher didn't work, or was just impossible.
With Cadence, I can work up to 48K, so that's a definitive improvement!
It also let me select 96 or even 192K but there's no sound coming out. I guess the EMU works in USB1.1 compatibility mode, and has no specific USB2.0 driver, so 48K must be the limit...
I don't know how much work would that involve, but if the non-working options were 'greyed', that would be neater.

While we are on the subject of sound cards, there's something I cannot get to work the way I'd like to; Skype.
Skype expect an alsa output but accept to work with pulse audio. So it works with the bridge to jack. Fine. But that means I must keep a mic plugged in my EMU cause JacK is configured to work with the EMU.
What I would like is to use the mic of my webcam. Ideally that would mean getting the output of the webcam to feed the Pulse audio Jack source. But it seems that we cannot handle more than one sound-card, ain't we?

Axel
mad.ax
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Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

falkTX wrote:
mad.ax wrote:It also let me select 96 or even 192K but there's no sound coming out. I guess the EMU works in USB1.1 compatibility mode, and has no specific USB2.0 driver, so 48K must be the limit...
I don't know how much work would that involve, but if the non-working options were 'greyed', that would be neater.
I have no idea how to do this, do these interfaces (ie, ALSA) export the list of supported features?
Even if they would, I guess vendors would export the maximum values these interfaces were designed for, i.e. 192K in the EMU's case. So that wouldn't help.

What would be needed is test procedure (automated or not) that analyse the gear and fill a database.
mad.ax
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Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

falkTX wrote:
mad.ax wrote:While we are on the subject of sound cards, there's something I cannot get to work the way I'd like to; Skype.
Skype expect an alsa output but accept to work with pulse audio. So it works with the bridge to jack. Fine. But that means I must keep a mic plugged in my EMU cause JacK is configured to work with the EMU.
What I would like is to use the mic of my webcam. Ideally that would mean getting the output of the webcam to feed the Pulse audio Jack source. But it seems that we cannot handle more than one sound-card, ain't we?
You can configure JACK to use a different input sound-card vs output sound-card.
I guess I need to use cadence to do this right? I tried it, but no luck. (see screenshot below) Skype only works with a mic into the EMU. And the earcandy extension for Skype (that brings audio options through pulse audio) doesn't work at all.
falkTX wrote:It's possible to have multiple soundcards running with JACK2 profiles or alsa_in/out, it's something I'm investigating right now.
This would be great indeed! Rather than trying to find the perfect sound-card that does it all (and will most likely be Linux compatible NOT!), we could mix different ones and expand the possibilities...
FalkTX, you spoil us too much!

Axel

(edited for missing screenshot)
Attachments
cadence settings.png
cadence settings.png (63 KiB) Viewed 694 times
Last edited by mad.ax on Wed May 30, 2012 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mad.ax
Established Member
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

The Skype Issue is not a deal breaker for me, so I'll definitely be there when the next cadence update!
In the mean time, I can live with a mike plugged in my USB sound card, but good to hear you're working on it.
KXSudio is already the best music environment around, but also the one that evolves the fastest!

Axel
mad.ax
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

Well, it seems that trying to get skype working I may have messed the whole system up...

Before averything worked well. My EMU sound card was always recognized as HW2, Jack always worked fine, and I got a coupla xruns in about a day... Fine.

While trying to get skype to work with the webcam, I launched Kmix (which didn't work) and Pavucontrol (the pulse audio volume control which kinda works. I thought it was safe to try those controls since they showed up in applications>multimedia>hardware conf.

Since then, I'm experiencing a lot of issues:
-Kmix always shows up in the notification bar. I got rid of it by unchecking the notification in its parameters, but every time I boot or reboot, the Kmix window appears.
-The sound server acts strange. Most of the time I get no sound. Cadence>config>driver shows the input and output channels a zero. And the interface is now random, sometimes EMU, sometimes HP webcam, sometimes Intel chipset, and so on... Need to force restart jack several times to get it working. And when it works, I get 80 Xruns in 5 minutes!
-Even if I get it working, the auto connect in catia doesn't always works. For instance I launch audacious and it plays fine, then I launch guitarix but I need to make the connexion manually in Catia to get any guitar sound...

Any idea about what gone wrong, and how to fix it?

Axel
Thad E Ginathom
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Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by Thad E Ginathom »

<Crossposted with FalkTX>
Cadence>config>driver shows the input and output channels a zero.
Intuitively, all these no-s and 0-s look like something disabled, but this is how it is in my Firewire config and inout and output certainly work...
Capture Ports: no
Playbeack Ports: no
Input Channels: 0
Output Channels: 0
mad.ax
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

falkTX wrote:use the reset button in the jack-settings dialog, close it, then re-open it and configure as usual.
not sure about the rest, but hopefully the upcoming update will fix the card-index order.
No luck. Device/interface keeps coming back to hw.1 [Loopback], thus preventing any sound going through my EMU
mad.ax
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Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

Kinda worked...

tried Audacious, Guitarix, youtube...fine.
But still get this useless Kmix window poping up after a reboot.
Sound still works, but when checking the config in Cadence, I get the attached result, despite having checked
"hw:2 [E-MU Tracker Pre | USB]" everywhere, and also checked "full duplex"...

What I don't understand, is why it worked perfectly without those issues, before I used Kmix..? Even the hardware detection was always spot on....

Axel
Attachments
Jack settings1.png
Jack settings1.png (194.09 KiB) Viewed 805 times
mad.ax
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Posts: 10
Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

Edit: seems that I need to uncheck duplex mode in order to change the first line to "hw:2 [E-MU Tracker Pre | USB]"
Then when I check "duplex mode", I just need to go somewhere else, and when I come back the 1st line became "hw:2,0 [USB Audio (duplex)]"

So maybe that's normal behaviour...
I thought that I'd need duplex mode in order to get my EMU working as an input and output device...
But could it be that duplex mode in cadence means the ability to select EMU for the output, and something else for the input? In which case, it makes sense that it unchecks itself if I keep the same device for both input and output...

So resetting the Jack engine in cadence did the trick! Thanks a lot! I'm amazed that you implemented a one-click solution to what looked to me like a huge problem...

Axel
mad.ax
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Posts: 10
Joined: Tue May 29, 2012 12:05 pm

Re: Getting started with KXS 12.04 liveDVD

Post by mad.ax »

Thanks! So far, after something like 30 reboot your last trick is still working. Jack keeps working and finding my EMU sound-card...

On another note, that useless Kmix pop up window bothered me, but I finally found how to get rid of it:

sudo rm /usr/share/autostart/kmix_autostart.desktop

(happy) Axel
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