Trying to get a Behringer UMC404HD working with JACK.

[CosmoG]

Hi all,

I'm having trouble getting my audio interface to work with JACK. The interface is a Behringer U-Phoria UMC404HD. I'm working on Ubuntu Studio 16.04.

I plug in the interface and fire up JACK. I go to "setup" and I can select the UMC404 as the input device. But the interface does not appear in the JACK connections window. And whatever application I try to use, whether it's my DAW or another application like Rakarrack, I can't get audio from the interface. The only audio I get when I make connections to the "system capture" is audio from the on-board microphone.

I'm mostly using REAPER native linux for my DAW. If I set the audio device preferences in REAPER to ALSA, then it sees the UMC404, and I can use it fine. But I just can't get it to work with JACK. Similarly, other applications like Rakarrack and Audacity don't seem to see the interface when using JACK.

When I open up alsamixer, I can select the UMC404 as a soundcard, and see that none of the inputs are muted.

I'm just getting started trying to learn my way around linux audio, and obviously my knowledge is pretty limited. And this has got me stumped. Any insights are much appreciated.

-C

[Pablo]

"System" in the jack audio connections doesn't refer to the onboard interface. Jack uses the generic name "system" for the audio interface it is currently using. Just make sure that you configure jack to use the UMC404HD interface for input and output.

See also:
http://libremusicproduction.com/article ... arted-jack

For these first tests, before you try a different configuration, just in case kill jackdbus and jackd after closing qjackctl and start again. In a terminal:

Code: Select all

killall -9 jackd jackbus

[CrocoDuck]

I plug in the interface and fire up JACK. I go to "setup" and I can select the UMC404 as the input device. But the interface does not appear in the JACK connections window. And whatever application I try to use, whether it's my DAW or another application like Rakarrack, I can't get audio from the interface. The only audio I get when I make connections to the "system capture" is audio from the on-board microphone.

The first port of call is to make sure you are setting up JACK correctly. This little video shows how I set it up from my Scarlett 2i4. Then, what you see as system inputs and outputs in JACK are actually the selected soundcard inputs.

[CosmoG]

Thanks to you both for the replies and the links.The article and video were helpful to make sure everything is looking as it ought to. Unfortunately, I still can't tell what I'm doing wrong. I made sure the interface is selected, settings all look the same as show, started up JACK, but nothing. Also I killed jackd and jackdbus, per Pablo's suggestion, but now I can't seem to start JACK back up. Every time I hit start in qjackctll I get error messages:

"D-BUS: JACK server could not be started. Sorry"

and

"Could not connect to JACK server as client.
- Overall operation failed.
- Unable to connect to server.
Please check the messages window for more info"

Hmm...

[Pablo]

Could you paste here the output of the following informative command from a terminal window?
arecord -l && aplay -l

And also the contents of the message window of qjackctl.

Lets hope we can narrow down the source of the problem.

[CosmoG]

You bet. However, I did notice that the problem with JACK not starting seems to occur after reboot. If I disconnect the interface, stop JACK, plug the interface back in, then JACK starts up again.

Another weird thing is that now when JACK does start and when I go to the connections window, I see the system capture is only showing one mono input. And now that input is not picking up anything, not even the laptop's onboard mic. (Before, I was getting audio input from the onboard mic whenever I tried to use the interface.)

Ok, when JACK is not starting, here are the contents of the message window:

20:15:29.549 Statistics reset.
20:15:35.622 ALSA connection change.
20:15:41.706 D-BUS: Service is available (org.jackaudio.service aka jackdbus).
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock
20:15:41.820 ALSA connection graph change.
20:15:45.580 D-BUS: JACK server could not be started. Sorry
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: Starting jack server...
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: self-connect-mode is "Don't restrict self connect requests"
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: Acquired audio card Audio1
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: creating alsa driver ... hw:U192k|hw:U192k|1024|2|44100|1|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: configuring for 44100Hz, period = 1024 frames (23.2 ms), buffer = 2 periods
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit integer little-endian
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: ERROR: ALSA: cannot set channel count to 1 for capture
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: ERROR: ALSA: cannot configure capture channel
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: ERROR: Cannot initialize driver
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: ERROR: JackServer::Open failed with -1
Mon Oct 23 20:15:45 2017: ERROR: Failed to open server
Mon Oct 23 20:15:46 2017: Saving settings to "/home/cosmo/.config/jack/conf.xml" ...
20:15:54.464 Could not connect to JACK server as client. - Overall operation failed. - Unable to connect to server. Please check the messages window for more info.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock
JackShmReadWritePtr::~JackShmReadWritePtr - Init not done for 4294967295, skipping unlock

And the results of arecord -l && aplay -l

**** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: U192k [UMC404HD 192k], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VC Analog [ALC269VC Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: U192k [UMC404HD 192k], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[Linuxmusician01]

I plug in the interface and fire up JACK.

I didn't read the entire topic. But this is where it may go wrong (like FalkTX says). I always start Jack from the command line so I can easily state which sound card/audio device Jack should use. In your case that is number 1 (number 0 being your first audio card) . Like so:

Code: Select all

sudo killall jackd
sudo pkill -9 jackdbus
jackd -d alsa --device hw:1

Notice the "hw:1" here. Good luck!

[asbak]

Another thing, periods = "3" may be a better choice.
Make sure pulseaudio has been de-activated and is stopped.
Kill all jack processes, jackd, jackdbus etc

Then start jack like so from a terminal logged in as your user:

jackd -dalsa -r44100 -p256 -n3 -Xraw -D -Chw:U192k -Phw:U192k

(The card can easily run at lower latencies but for now this should be good enough.)

[CosmoG]

Progress! Last night when I got home I was able to getting it working using the commands Linuxmusician01 suggested. This morning, no luck, so I don't know if I was messing up the sequence, or what the difference was. But when I tried the method asbak suggested and it worked again.

I'll see if I can get it to work again tonight, and in the meantime try to better understand WHY it's working (or not, depending).

Thanks so much for all the help. Y'all are awesome.

-C

[asbak]

I got rid of jackdbus by removing jack2 packages and compiling them from source, WITHOUT jackdbus support.
Use a front-end such as qjackctl to launch jack & problems with jack2 SOLVED.

If you don't want to go to these lengths you'll probably have to kill jack & jackdbus processes before restarting audio.

[Linuxmusician01]

Progress! Last night when I got home I was able to getting it working using the commands Linuxmusician01 suggested. This morning, no luck, so I don't know if I was messing up the sequence, or what the difference was. But when I tried the method asbak suggested and it worked again.

I'll see if I can get it to work again tonight, and in the meantime try to better understand WHY it's working (or not, depending).

Thanks so much for all the help. Y'all are awesome.

-C

Hmmmm. The only difference between Asbak's method and mine is that I called your audio device by its number (i.e. 1) and Asbak called it by its name (i.e. U192k). Only thing I can think of that might have changed since a reboot is the order in which ALSA numbers the audio devices. That is: sometimes your Behringer 404HD is number 0 and sometimes it's number 1. Did you boot your PC with the Behringer attached the second time? If so: it might have become ALSA's first audio device of choice, that is: number 0.

Anyway, use Asbak's method: its better.