Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Talk about your MIDI interfaces, microphones, keyboards...

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male
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by male »

danboid wrote:iodelay is working now - thanks for your advice male. The latency varies wildly if Direct Monitor isn't fully set to playback so I obviously didn't check that dial on my first attempt.

I had already done all the tweaks you suggested except my JACK priority is at the 85 default - I'll try upping that soon to see if I can get some more out of it.
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danboid wrote: I'm presuming the ALSA issue will get fixed eventually. A good first step might be for one of us chickens to report it as broke.
[/quote]

Actually, I'm not sure that it is broke. I borrowed a windows laptop and tried it there: There was also no software mixer in Windows. I think that this device simply lacks software mixer controls since it has a physical volume knob.
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by danboid »

I've tried upping JACKs RT priority but still can't run JACK at any lower than 64 without steady xruns, like I get at 32 here. What distro and kernel do you run male? Have you got a sizeable beast of a machine (unlike me)?

I tried my 2i4 out under Windows for the first time at a friends house recently but didn't think to check the mixer options - thanks for pointing that out!
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by male »

danboid wrote:I've tried upping JACKs RT priority but still can't run JACK at any lower than 64 without steady xruns, like I get at 32 here. What distro and kernel do you run male? Have you got a sizeable beast of a machine (unlike me)?
But did you set the IRQ priority of the USB controller also (I use the rtirq script for this)? It's the critical step--as is running an -rt kernel. Also note that I'm using the free-software radeon driver--with all the low-priority and low-performance settings I could find enabled. Using a proprietary driver is probably hopeless. The graphics card is always your worst enemy for low latency audio.

Yes, I do have a faster machine (just upgraded to FX-8350 (8-core @ 4.4Ghz)). But I was getting similar latencies my previous system, which was close to your specs (an Athlon II X4 @ 2.6Ghz).

CPU speed has less to do with latency and more to do with total DSP load capability.

I only upgraded for photo editing... with (my at least) audio software I never even came close to maxing out the Athlon--even doing full mixing/mastering at 1-3ms latency.
danboid wrote: I tried my 2i4 out under Windows for the first time at a friends house recently but didn't think to check the mixer options - thanks for pointing that out!
I actually prefer the physical controls... It's just a damn shame that the volume control doesn't affect channels 3 & 4...
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by danboid »

Yes, USB has the highest priority in my rtirq config but still, 64 is a low as I can go before xruns attack!

I am running the prop. NV driver though so I should try with nouveau, see if things improve
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by phonky »

I also just unpacked a brand new 2i4

But I haven't managed to get jack running with it :(

Using Linux Mint Nadia 14
4GB RAM
Jack config:
Input / Output Device:
hw:PCH,0 [ALC269VB Analog]
hw:PCH,3 [HDMI 0]
hw:USB,0 [USB Audio] <-- SELECTED

Input / Output Channels : 2
Sample Rate 480000 (tried 44.1 and 96 kHz too)
Periods/Buffer: 2

Logs:
Tue May 7 19:34:02 2013: Starting jack server...
Tue May 7 19:34:02 2013: JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 85
Tue May 7 19:34:03 2013: ERROR: cannot register object path "/org/freedesktop/ReserveDevice1/Audio2": A handler is already registered for /org/freedesktop/ReserveDevice1/Audio2
Tue May 7 19:34:03 2013: ERROR: Failed to acquire device name : Audio2 error : A handler is already registered for /org/freedesktop/ReserveDevice1/Audio2
Tue May 7 19:34:03 2013: ERROR: Audio device hw:USB,0 cannot be acquired...
Tue May 7 19:34:03 2013: ERROR: Cannot initialize driver
Tue May 7 19:34:03 2013: ERROR: JackServer::Open failed with -1
Tue May 7 19:34:03 2013: ERROR: Failed to open server


Any idea wha'ts wrong?
phonky
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by phonky »

I think it's fixed.

Instead of selecting the USB device in
Input/Output device,
I there selected "None",
and then I could select USB device in
Interface.

Seems to be working :)
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by Smeefer »

Does the Scarlett 2i4 function completely now at 24/96 for stereo recording and playback and everything in Linux? I'm using AVLinux and I want to either get a Scarlett 2i4 or 2i2, depending on their capabilities. I just need to record and playback audio at 24/96, be able to use qjackctl and all the music software, including software that needs to be used with a2jmidid like Qsampler as well. Would it be a better choice for me to get the 2i4 or the 2i2?
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by j_e_f_f_g »

Smeefer wrote:software that needs to be used with a2jmidid like Qsampler
Yep, I suspected you were asking the wrong question in the other thread. Qsampler is a softsynth. It may be internally "played" by routing midi data into it, but its output is audio. Think of it like a black box that converts midi into audio on-the-fly.

You can route midi data all over inside your computer. You need MIDI jacks on the audio interface only if you're going to connect external MIDI gear, such as a piano keyboard to manually play qsampler, or use a real hardware sampler to play your midi tracks (instead of qsampler).

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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by Smeefer »

Awesome, I felt that should be the case but I haven't yet used an interface that didn't have MIDI ports, so I just had to ask to make sure. Thanks!
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by hellsyncy »

All this talk about latency led me to another source of varying latency.

I could not see the connection between JACK settings (at least not a 1-1 connection)
and actual latency.

So I found (in Reaper) the "Performance Meter" and it reports Plug-in Delay Compensation
on each track.

This is a major source of confusion for me for a long time.

TL;DR; If you're familiar with this concept, you probably need not read further.

TL;DR; If you own a lot of plug-ins, make sure you absolutely know which ones
activate PDC, or need look-ahead.

The main problem is that not every plug-in introduces PDC

As I understand it, certain plug-ins operate in "look-ahead" mode, or, in other words,
they are buffering their sound stream in a way that requires "seeing into the future".

So, the only thing that the DAW can do is *delay everything*.

However, what is the rule here? There are plug-ins (or let's just call them effects)
such as Limiters, which usually have a look-ahead parameter. For example,
in Ableton Live, the minimum value for this is 1ms.

I was surprised to see a 1024 smp latency for a K-standard *meter* though.
(1024/48000 is roughly what, 20ms?)
So, now I always keep the "Performance" panel in Reaper docked, and periodically
check it.

But the "integer" milisecond formula is also a great revelation. (Although I've heard about
it before, I always got inconsistent results (always inconsistent, lol) depending on which
plug-ins were active.

Thanks for the info!
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Re: Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 - success!

Post by glowrak guy »

male wrote: Mon Apr 22, 2013 6:28 pm The graphics card is always your worst enemy for low latency audio.
There are lots of variables to consider. Over the years, I've often used nVidia's 3D driver
with Reaper, a pci maudio soundcard, and the latest wine I could install, in Ubuntu Studio, Fedora, pclinuxos, and probably Mint.
Latency has never been a problem. I pretty much stumbled into an excellent existing setup for linux audio.
I found the official nvidia driver helped when dealing with complex commercial quality gui's, which sometimes failed using nouveau
or intel/amd free versions. Installing by hand, was my first serious exposure to the linux terminal, a secondary gift in my case :wink:

Those were and are pretty lean audio-centric setups, no office, no gimp, no video editors,
no games, and rather basic productions, usually less then 8 total audio tools, and without
huge track counts.

I'll guess that the system gui is also an important aspect. I've not had a kde setup since V3x rolled out,
nor the usual stock distro options, and prefer to install Enlightenment or xfce. Not always perfect,
but neither are my playing skills. :roll: (Happily, there are AVLinux versions with xfce and enlightenment.)
Cheers
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