When I first saw the break message, I was a little worried. I've run through just about every audio distro I've come across. I settled on KXStudio quite some time ago. I'm even quite comfortable installing it for non-technical folk - usually musicians - who don't need to, or can't afford to, get into the hardware rat-race Windows forces upon people. All they need is an update checker and a little textfile how-to on using synaptic to apply updates.
That's a major credit to FalkTX's work -
before you even start looking at the audio capabilities of the system.
I've been desperate enough for a new audio distro that I've a spare disk here with a base Gentoo studio install. Although, that's the last resort, I don't want to unlearn debian packaging and try to wrap my head around that of Gentoo.
So, I'm currently running KXStudio on KDE neon. Which I don't think is meant to be possible yet. I have gone through the process of installing several times so I've got it fairly well documented.
Here's how, I'll leave it to someone else to figure out
why it works....
- * Put KDE neon on USB, and boot target system from the stick.
* Install KDE neon. Download updates & install third-party along the way.
* Reboot.
* Install a few prerequisites, and add the snap version of GiMPCode: Select all
sudo apt-get install htop synaptic apt-xapian-index git etckeeper
sudo apt-get install snapd snapd-xdg-open
sudo snap install gimp
I've tried with just the snap components; that did not work. It seems to need that GiMP version to be able to work, and it needs it at this point.
* Add the KXStudio repositories (I downloaded copies)Code: Select all
sudo apt-get install ./kxstudio-repos_9.5.1-kxstudio3_all.deb
sudo apt-get install ./kxstudio-repos-gcc5_9.5.1-kxstudio3_all.deb
* Install lowlatency kernel, tools for cpufrequency, &cCode: Select all
sudo apt-get install linux-lowlatency linux-tools-lowlatency indicator-cpufreq cpufreqd cpufrequtils rtirq-init
* Make a few needed changes - user in audio group, rt audio tweaks, order sound cardsCode: Select all
sudo usermod -a -G audio fawkes
## System config file changes required
sudo nano /etc/sysctl.conf
# Append 'fs.inotify.max_user_watches = 524288' and save
sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
# Insert code to order sound card(s)
# I use 'options snd slots=snd-ice112,snd-ice1712,snd-aloop,snd-hda-intel'
* Now, time to bring the system up to date before a rebootCode: Select all
## This is the FIRST use of apt-get update
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot
* Once rebooted, it's time to install the KXStudio bits.I've used synaptic to do this, and list the packages marked for installation below:Code: Select all
kxstudio-meta-all kxstudio-docs kxstudio-desktop kxstudio-artwork-kdm
kxstudio-artwork-ksplash kxstudio-artwork-icons kxstudio-meta-audio-plugins-vst
kxstudio-meta-audio-plugins-ladspa kxstudio-meta-audio-plugins-dssi kxstudio-meta-plugins-lv2
libffi-static qtbase5-static glib-static pango-static
This is pretty much everything except kxstudio-desktop-kde4. It's a huge load of software to pull down, particularly when I'm doing this over a 3G mobile connection.
* Once that's all in place I went for a shutdown rather than reboot.
* Once logged in the kxstudio-welcome is displayed. I opted to take everything listed.
Now you're on to adding whatever else you want or need. I do a lot of graphics work, so the availability of GiMP 2.10.8 was what prompted me to try this. [Aside: I subsequently spent three days trying to put KXStudio on KDE neon without the GiMP bit]. For me, the newer kernel version runs my quad core i5 much better. Previously I'd get an xrun or three every hour.
I've even got the two Edirol DA2496 cards working together perfectly. For this I'm using
zita-ajbridge. The current version in neon offers a
-S option which stops it from doing any resampling.
Anyone who has tried to use multiple cards probably knows the whole rigmarole of stuff which works poorly - if at all. Using alsa_in/out isn't reliable. Nor is starting the audioadapter module with jack_load. Both of these do resampling. The latter will drop samples to keep going; after all, it is just an example module.
My pair of Edirol DA2496 cards are linked together with a word clock cable. Of course, the ICE1712 driver doesn't know about that. Instead, I have a S/PDIF TOSLINK connection from card0 to card1.
I'm using Claudia, so my default studio is using hw:DA2496 (card0) for JACK. Sample rate 96000, buffer size 1024, periods/buffer 2, dithering shaped, soft mode, duplex, hardware aliases,hardware monitoring,hardware metering. Some fiddling with alsamixer, alsactl store, and envy24control, is needed to get both cards working together consistently.
Within Claudia, I've run two custom applications for the second card's inputs and outputs:
Code: Select all
# First app - Input - named 09to16in
chrt -f 85 zita-a2j -S -d hw:DA2496_1 -r 96000 -p 64 -n 2 -c 12 -v >> $HOME/.zita-a2j.log 2>&1
# Second app - Output - named 09to16out
chrt -f 85 zita-j2a -S -d hw:DA2495_1 -r 96000 -p 256 -n 2 -c 10 -v >> $HOME/.zita-j2a.log 2>&1
With this idling, and unconnected, Cadence reports the DSP load at around 1%. I've run a test feeding all sixteen inputs into Ardour and recording for over six hours. No xruns, and no dropped samples in the zita logs (above). That showed a DSP load of around 3%.
I now need to sort out the precise latencies from card to capture ports, and from playback to card. Great to know they're marching in time, but I don't know if one is three steps ahead, or behind.
And keep my fingers crossed this install doesn't explode in an unterminated string of dependency errors.