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Old 05-18-2021, 07:42 PM   #121
citizenkeith
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hmm, I'll trust what you say, but those requirements are literally the first thing the readme says, verbatim:

"Welcome to the REAPER 6.28 for linux/x86_64 tarball

- Requirements:

+ libc6, libstdc++ for gcc 4.x or later
+ libgdk-3 (you can also target headless or libgdk-2 if you build your own
libSwell from WDL, see below)
+ ALSA"
I was able to install Reaper on Ubuntu Studio 20.04 without worrying about any of those requirements.
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Old 05-18-2021, 07:44 PM   #122
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^ OK, thanks. I'm trying a portable install as we speak, but I'm getting an error: "ALSA: error setting input device period count"... I'll have to look into that later - I'm hungry.
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Old 05-18-2021, 10:08 PM   #123
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hmm, I'll trust what you say, but those requirements are literally the first thing the readme says, verbatim
Huh, so they are. I think it's just poor wording; the implication I think is "these are the requirements for various aspects of the various things you might do as described below". gcc for example is a compiler, and certainly not required to run reaper.

Post your alsa questions here... it can be confusing. I use pulseaudio and JACK mostly, but there will be others here that can offer better help re: sound card config tweaking and alsa stuff.

We also never really sorted out whether the emu firmware stuff needed to be loaded on to the card, or some other driver stuff needed doing to properly access the card, so it's possible you're still working with the deck stacked against you, but good luck. :-)
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Old 05-19-2021, 02:53 AM   #124
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... libc6, libstdc++ for gcc 4.x or later
gcc is not required to run reaper, however, most any (C / C++) applications compiled with gcc will have a dependency on versions of libc and libstdc++ as does Reaper. In which case, you will need versions of those libraries which are suitable for gcc 4.x or later installed on your system. You will almost certainly have some (likely more recent) version of those libraries already since just about everything requires them.
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Old 05-19-2021, 01:14 PM   #125
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OK, all, thanks. I think I'm convinced I either have what I need or that the requirements are less required than made out to be in the 'readme'...

I probably won't have as much time to work with this stuff though from hereon out. I had a block of about a couple weeks, but now that's more or less shutting down. I'll probably only be able to do little things, a piece at a time, now.
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Old 05-19-2021, 02:18 PM   #126
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I can't think of a distro (unless it's something old and/or obscure) which doesn't meet Reaper for Linux's requirements, even a couple years ago when Reaper for Linux was new. That info is there for people who use those distros, or roll their own.

As for the "dependency hell" you're facing: that's probably due to some packages added by command-line, and not noticing any warnings while doing so. This is one reason I live by the mantra of "clicking is better". Avoid using Terminal unless necessary. Then when "necessary", 1) it's probably not necessary (ok well sometimes it is lol), and 2) I try to learn what the commands mean so that I'm never doing something "blindly". I've "wrecked" a distro a couple times by getting into dependency hell. One time I fixed it, and it was a rabbit hole. The other time, I just did a backup of my files and reinstalled fresh.

The firmware you need for your audio device: I saw it listed in the package for alsa-firmware which is installed in Manjaro by default (and probably most other distros). In Pacman (the GUI package manager in Arch/Manjaro) I listed its files and I noticed something about the emu1010:

/usr/lib/firmware/emu/audio_dock.fw
/usr/lib/firmware/emu/emu1010_notebook.fw
/usr/lib/firmware/emu/emu1010b.fw

Getting to know your GUI-based applications (in this case for you, Synaptic) would be worthwhile.

As for package names being different from what someone tells you: that bothers me too. I understand sometimes it's just a different version (updated, newer) but other times the name is so different I can't find it in the repo (especially if it's a reference to a Debian or Ubuntu package, since I'm using a distro that's Arch-based...or vice versa). I think partly it's because some packages are intended for some distros, with specific required files for that distro in them. As for the rest, I don't know, and it's been frustrating trying to determine what packages I really need for a given application I'm building (if it's not in the AUR, which thankfully a lot of applications are, and the package manager pulls in everything needed to build the application automatically, then builds the application for me).

Yeah did I mention Manjaro is cool? I've been using the AUR lately. Plus its normal repo in general has lots of software and is very up-to-date.
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Old 05-19-2021, 03:04 PM   #127
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Yeah did I mention Manjaro is cool? I've been using the AUR lately. Plus its normal repo in general has lots of software and is very up-to-date.

Is it a big learning curve for somebody moving to Manjaro from Ubuntu Studio? I know my way around Ubuntu fairly well. I might give Manjaro a shot. Is it pretty easy to backup my Home folder, then install over my Ubuntu Studio install? It's a dual boot machine with Win10.
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Old 05-19-2021, 03:04 PM   #128
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I can't think of a distro (unless it's something old and/or obscure) which doesn't meet Reaper for Linux's requirements, even a couple years ago when Reaper for Linux was new. That info is there for people who use those distros, or roll their own.

As for the "dependency hell" you're facing...
All seems like 'sound' advice, thanks...

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...The firmware you need for your audio device: I saw it listed in the package for alsa-firmware which is installed in Manjaro by default (and probably most other distros). In Pacman (the GUI package manager in Arch/Manjaro) I listed its files and I noticed something about the emu1010...
As far as I can tell, I found the firmware and got it installed, as of post #82 on the 14th. My audio device is listed, Qasmixer shows more or less all the seemingly relevant I/O, settings, etc., and I get sound when I select the device. It seems to be working in general. I can't test much beyond 2 channel stereo output, though. And the Qasmixer 'widgets' and nomenclature are hard to decipher.

I tried to load an emu1010/1212/1616 specific mixer, but couldn't seem to satisfy the prereqs and get the source compiled.

In lieu of all that, I installed REAPER (portable) to see what it had to say. I get an error, "ALSA: error setting input device period count," audio isn't enabled. I can select emu as the audio device in the dropdown menu in REAPER device settings, but no audio...

I'm not really troubleshooting this problem at the moment, though; rather, I'm generally trying to reassess my options, re-read stuff, figure out where I should go from here given the amount of time I have, my ultimate goals, stuff like that. Of course, if anyone happens to know what that error means and how to fix it - it's not like I wouldn't be listening...
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Old 05-19-2021, 03:46 PM   #129
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...The firmware you need for your audio device: I saw it listed in the package for alsa-firmware which is installed in Manjaro by default...:

/usr/lib/firmware/emu/audio_dock.fw
/usr/lib/firmware/emu/emu1010_notebook.fw
/usr/lib/firmware/emu/emu1010b.fw

fyi, this is what I have installed in lib/firmware/emu:

audio_dock.fw emu1010b.fw hana.fw
emu0404.fw emu1010_notebook.fw micro_dock.fw
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Old 05-19-2021, 05:33 PM   #130
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fyi, this is what I have installed in lib/firmware/emu:

audio_dock.fw
emu1010b.fw
hana.fw
emu0404.fw
emu1010_notebook.fw
micro_dock.fw
That's the contents of the folder on my distro too, without having added any myself.

I wonder if adding firmware separately from a different (not-Ubuntu-repo-specific) source might have led to the dependency hell. Meanwhile those files might have been there by default, or adding the alsa-firmware package from the repo might've done the same job.

I don't know what "ALSA: error setting input device period count" means (since I haven't seen that before) unless you're trying to choose 0 periods or 1 period, I guess. I use 64 samples blocksize with 3 periods (4x that 64-sample "block"), at 44.1 KHz. That gives me 1.4/2.9 ms (4.3 ms round-trip) latency (reported to Reaper) and then with the ALSA-USB driver overhead it ends up being around 8 ms round-trip total latency (measured). Since your device is using a PCIe card, you could probably get the reported latency to be the actual latency (no ALSA-USB overhead), or much closer to it. Don't bother trying to use 16, 32 samples blocksize or anything less than 3 periods.

If for some reason you can't choose the number of periods or it's "stuck" on too low a number, maybe that's why you're seeing that message.

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Is it a big learning curve for somebody moving to Manjaro from Ubuntu Studio?
I haven't used Ubuntu Studio. I'm against using an audio-specific distro in general, since it's a bit too specialized and not as current as a more mainstream distro. Plus I don't use Jack and a bunch of other software in Ubuntu Studio, so I've had no reason to use that distro.

But generally speaking, Manjaro feels like other distros. The package manager is different (which also means command-line package manager stuff requires different commands), and package names can be different, so that might mess with your head. Otherwise it feels the same to me.

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Is it pretty easy to backup my Home folder, then install over my Ubuntu Studio install? It's a dual boot machine with Win10.
I have no idea. I don't do that. I just back everything up and install a distro "fresh", since backing up stuff is easy for me. I suspect it's not difficult though.
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Old 05-19-2021, 06:09 PM   #131
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I wonder if adding firmware separately from a different (not-Ubuntu-repo-specific) source might have led to the dependency hell. Meanwhile those files might have been there by default, or adding the alsa-firmware package from the repo might've done the same job.
Yeah I wonder that too. Those files weren't there at the start, and there was no alsa-firmware option at the repo for my Ubuntu...


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I don't know what "ALSA: error setting input device period count" means (since I haven't seen that before) unless you're trying to choose 0 periods or 1 period, I guess...If for some reason you can't choose the number of periods or it's "stuck" on too low a number, maybe that's why you're seeing that message.
I hadn't been trying to change anything, the error message was there at first start of Reaper. But, seeing what you wrote, I went to audio device settings and started changing the period value - higher did nothing, lower, from 3 to 2 (the lowest option), made the error message go away, and the emu seems to be 'loading' into Reaper. I can't seem to get any sound though...

I'm tooling around the Qasmixer window at the moment. I have barely a clue what stands between my audio interface and Reaper. Is there a 'mixer' in Reaper that might show all potential inputs and outputs? Do I need to do something with ALSA, its configuration, or? Or maybe you have a previous post/thread that might cover these things? I'll look for one in a bit if I can't twiddle my way to some sound...


edit: OK, I got quote 'sound', but barely. There seems to be some confusion having to do with sample rates. I changed the project sample rate from 44.1k to 48, and now I'm getting some really crappy, gritty, static-y sound... I just have a stereo 24 bit wav file, 44.1k on a single track. Seems odd that the little audio device reading at the top of REAPER, in that bar, says the emu device is 16 bit, it should be 24...

-ouch: I got really crappy mouse control on the track volume knob - I've tried to change volume and a couple times it's gone to full and nearly blasted my ears off...

Last edited by eq1; 05-19-2021 at 06:44 PM.
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Old 05-19-2021, 06:53 PM   #132
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Yeah I wonder that too. Those files weren't there at the start, and there was no alsa-firmware option at the repo for my Ubuntu...
Wow, yeah I just looked the Ubuntu repo listing and I don't see it in there. Looking at the packages with "ALSA" in their names I also don't notice any with firmware files like that.

I started in Linux using Ubuntu variants, but I had chosen audio devices in advance that I knew worked in Linux without any extra configuration of the kernel. So I have never faced this before. But it seems Manjaro just by default has this firmware installed. This was the Manjaro "minimal" install too (a somewhat smaller ISO). If it's available for Manjaro, it's obviously available for Arch in the main repo whether it's installed by default or not. So again it seems Arch variants are one step ahead. I didn't expect that.

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I'm tooling around the Qasmixer window at the moment. I have barely a clue what stands between my audio interface and Reaper. Is there a 'mixer' in Reaper that might show all potential inputs and outputs? Do I need to do something with ALSA, its configuration, or? Or maybe you have a previous post/thread that might cover these things? I'll look for one in a bit if I can't twiddle my way to some sound...
ALSA mixer, QAS Mixer, that's all I've used.

Reaper will probably just present the outputs as a numbered pair in a drop-down list when you add a new hardware send in a track, and present the different inputs from a track's input selection dialog as usual (again probably just as numbered pairs). This is after choosing the correct number of ins/outs in the audio driver preferences.

Yeah I just tested it using my onboard audio device which has 2 ins and 6 outs (5.1). If I say the device has more ins/outs than 2, they'll be listed when I choose them in the TCP/MCP the ways I mentioned. If I say there are 16 ins and 16 outs, it still limits my choices to 2 ins and 6 outs when I go to choose them in the TCP/MCP. So Reaper "knows" the number that are available even if I add "too many" possible ins/outs in the ALSA device driver section.

I probably didn't mention, but this "new" computer (I've had it for a little while already) was also made with a mainboard that has good quality onboard audio (Realtek ALC1220) so that I can use that as a backup if my Focusrite 2i2 3rd gen dies or has some driver issue in an update. I had an ASUS audio card (Xonar DX) crap out on me before, so I figured I'd be careful about my mainboard selection so that I'd have a good backup device.

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edit: OK, I got quote 'sound', but barely. There seems to be some confusion having to do with sample rates. I changed the project sample rate from 44.1k to 48, and now I'm getting some really crappy, gritty, static-y sound...
Well set the blocksize to at least 64 (128 is also good) and periods to 3 minimum. That's your starting point, nothing less.

As for the 16-bit versus 24-bit, I don't know but maybe there's some misidentification of the device in an ALSA configuration file.

Poor responsiveness of the UI can be due to a driver issue, I guess, especially if you altered the RT priority of the audio device in the audio driver preferences of Reaper. I lowered it to "10" actually, and it works great for me. All the talk about setting priority this and that way, I've found usually it doesn't help at all for me and sometimes makes things worse with high CPU demand (lots of plugins). Then again those tweaks might help under certain circumstances such as stability when using the realtime audio thread more demandingly (realtime instrument use), at the cost of the responsiveness of the rest of the system (including sluggish UI). Start with the default setting of "50" and if anything, go down from there like I did.

I had assumed you have a low latency or realtime kernel installed/running, and also set your CPU governor to "performance". These are fairly important steps to getting reliable low latency performance (including setting small buffer sizes) in DAWs.

Last edited by JamesPeters; 05-19-2021 at 07:05 PM.
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Old 05-19-2021, 07:05 PM   #133
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Well set the blocksize to at least 64 (128 is also good) and periods to 3 minimum. That's your starting point, nothing less.
I'll fiddle with blocksize and period, see if anything changes. But note that it was setting period to 2 that got rid of the ALSA error and enabled my audio device in the first place... Something be fishy for sure, though...

Yes on the low latency. I'll check the governor thing.
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Old 05-19-2021, 07:07 PM   #134
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I'll fiddle with blocksize and period, see if anything changes. But note that it was setting period to 2 that got rid of the ALSA error and enabled my audio device in the first place... Something be fishy for sure, though...
It's good that the error went away. Maybe it was a previous invalid setting Reaper needed to "flush" by just choosing a new value, so it was possibly a coincidence. Setting it higher again (3 or 4 should be fine) is a very good idea. 2 periods/blocks is a bit slim. I don't think that works for anyone that I've known in Reaper at least using ALSA directly. For Jack maybe (because that's on top of ALSA, and I think it adds another period/block by default no matter what).

Also check your audio device RT priority setting while in that preferences area. No higher than 50 (and probably lower, like I'm doing), just as a test at least if you're still having problems with GUI responsiveness.

Another thought: since maybe you had to "flush" the periods setting by entering a new number, maybe you have to do the same for your bit depth. Change it to 16 bit, then back to 24 bit. Or leave it at 16 bit for a test at least, see how playback works.

I recommend auto-suspend of Pulse Audio too, that setting in the same preferences area. Sorry but you're not going to have "everyday audio" coming from any other app while using ALSA in Reaper, from the same audio device. It's all or nothing. Might as well let Reaper cut Pulse Audio off when it needs to. If you ever want to make it so that you can have multiple applications all play audio through the same audio device, you can then configure Jack and use it instead of ALSA directly.

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Old 05-19-2021, 11:23 PM   #135
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^ I tried all these things (except the cpu governor) and bad sound didn't go away. The period setting only works at 2, all other settings I get that ALSA error... It - the bad sound - really sounds like some fundamental, underlying mismatch of one sort or another.

Right now I have block size set at 256 and period set at 2, latency is reported as ~5.3ms. Increasing blocksize doesn't make things better; decreasing does make it worse.
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Old 05-20-2021, 06:32 PM   #136
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Here's a couple more observations of emu audio (and onboard intel) while fiddling with Reaper in Ubuntu:

-I tried onboard audio and it generally works. I do get a drop out here and there. I tried various blocksize and period settings, I don't think it helped.

Strangely, I'm running a project with ~30 tracks, and the drop outs mainly happen where I have only a couple tracks playing, one mono and the other a 2 channel stereo sample, a snippet of another song. I watched the CPU meter over this section, and it jumps up to like 34% from 20% around where the dropouts happen (both of those values are high by historical standards, I'd see like ~3-5% on W7)...

That's onboard audio.

BTW, isn't there a CPU/resource monitor in REAPER/REAPER FL (for Linux)? I recall being able to right-click somewhere up in the right of the menu bar or somewhere around there and open a thingy, but I'm not finding anything in RFL...


EMU:

I actually got normal or near-normal sound for brief periods. In general, I can't have the project sample rate and the device sample rate at 44.1k and hear anything.

If I switch to 48k for both, I hear normal playback for some short duration, maybe 5 seconds to as much as 20 seconds, but then it reverts to static-y, 'misaligned' playback. Stopping and re-starting playback sound remains bad.

If I switch the project to 44.1k and device to 48k, I hear nothing.

If I switch the project to 48k and device to 44.1, playback is normal sounding but slow for about 5 seconds, then becomes static-y and slow.


In summary, project needs to be at 48k to hear anything. If device is at 48k too, then playback is normal for some duration but then becomes bad. If device is set to 44.1k playback is normal but slow for some short duration but then becomes bad.


hmm, one more thing: increasing blocksize does seem to change things somewhat, but it only seems to postpone the inevitable onset of bad sound. It's like buffering or something falls out of line. Reminds me of streaming from a couple different sites in Winamp, where Winamp can't seem to 'sync' with the stream, so kind of plays in staccato...

Last edited by eq1; 05-20-2021 at 06:45 PM.
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Old 05-20-2021, 07:16 PM   #137
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BTW, isn't there a CPU/resource monitor in REAPER/REAPER FL (for Linux)? I recall being able to right-click somewhere up in the right of the menu bar or somewhere around there and open a thingy, but I'm not finding anything in RFL...
It's in the same place it always was. View -> Performance Meter. Right click on it for more options.

As for the rest of what you're describing: I have no idea what's going on. The only time I had an issue with audio glitching during playback was when I let my USB ports "auto suspend" (that's the default setting, which has to be changed when using a USB audio device). That plus a low latency kernel and CPU governor set to "performance", I've had virtually no problems on several distros on 2 different computers (all different hardware) so far.
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Old 05-21-2021, 12:27 AM   #138
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It's in the same place it always was. View -> Performance Meter. Right click on it for more options...
OK, thanks... I was thinking it was a right-click on the right side of the menu bar.


Here's an interesting development: I decided to try Manjaro on USB live, and it loaded the emu audio interface first try, even set it as default. Unfortunately Manjaro froze 3 times and I had to restart. But I was able to copy REAPER into it by the 3rd time, load a project, and determine that it actually played - real sound, though only at 48k, and it froze shortly into my trial...

Seems promising, though. Maybe a real install would help, and would be worth a go. Probably time to at least scrap the Ubuntu...
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Old 05-21-2021, 11:17 AM   #139
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Manjaro wins.
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Old 05-21-2021, 02:33 PM   #140
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^ Well, except for the freezing...

At a casual glance around it does seem...probably better for me. There's much less installed compared to Ubuntu Studio, it gives me the impression that what's there has been more thoughtfully curated. Studio seems like they tried to pack in every conceivable program for what they envision a 'creative' person might need - not one creative person, but every creative person under age 30...
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Old 05-21-2021, 06:06 PM   #141
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Well "the freezing"--that could be so many things. Trying to run a DAW with low-latency audio device, from a live ISO, with an audio device that may require further configuration...I'd expect it wouldn't quite work right.

I can see the appeal of Ubuntu Studio for someone who wants to use what are considered to be the more common Linux-based applications/plugins/audio systems, and as much software as possible. I'm just not interested in much of that, and a lot more interested in a workflow that reminds me of what I did on Windows or OSX: use a single DAW application with all plugins I want (and no external "standalone" synths etc.) Plus I may not want to use whatever version of Wine they have installed, whatever bridging they have installed, etc. I'd much rather customize that, and learning about it was necessary anyway. Even if Ubuntu Studio got the configuration "perfect" for how I'd use it, I'd still want to learn how to configure a distro for low-latency DAW use myself.

As it turns out I also prefer a distro that's Arch-based. I had to learn that after using a few different types of distro and settling on Manjaro.
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Old 05-21-2021, 06:17 PM   #142
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Lots of times freezing will turn out to be a graphics card related thing, i.e. drivers. You can try the open-source vs proprietary drivers and see if they make a difference. This used to be annoying and somewhat technical to do, but most distributions these days make it easy to switch. But that would be the first thing I would do.

Of course you also have a somewhat unusual pci sound card thing going on, so that might be related.

Or it might be something else entirely. One thing you can check, though it's a long shot: when you first boot after a freeze open a terminal and do "journalctl -b -1" which will show the logs from the previous boot. Hit "G" (capital G) to go to the end, and sometimes you might see some clue about what happened. Even if there are no errors you might note the last few things that were logged... might be a clue. Or a red herring.
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Old 05-21-2021, 06:22 PM   #143
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I can see the appeal of Ubuntu Studio for someone who...
^ All sounds very sensible...

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Well "the freezing"--that could be so many things. Trying to run a DAW with low-latency audio device, from a live ISO, with an audio device that may require further configuration...I'd expect it wouldn't quite work right.
It actually froze before I even tried working with reaper and audio, just clicking around, not doing much. Who knows what it was. I'm going to try a real install and see how that goes.


BTW, do you (or anyone) know if there are appearance differences between a portable install and a normal install of Reaper, or any other differences?

Probably file icons added with normal install, a few other little things like that. But how about the GUI? I noticed the text looked pretty clunky with my portable install, like it wasn't quite the right size or something, maybe even grainy. I seem to recall seeing that and other similar GUI appearance things with a mapping program I used to use, without actually 'installing' it.
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Old 05-21-2021, 07:04 PM   #144
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You can change lots of the appearance settings easily. Your DPI might be off. You'll have to poke around with things like "Appearance", "Window Manager", and "Display".

I don't do Reaper portable installations so I'm not the person to ask, sorry.

About what clepsydrae said about video drivers: there's a Manjaro Settings Manager, in which you will find Hardware Settings. Do your video driver configuration from there. That's also the place you'll find the available kernels. No need to get the RT kernel either; the default one (from version 5.11 on) is low latency already and works great.

Likewise, always check to see if there's a way to do something that's provided by a GUI-based application (especially one that's included in Manjaro), and if in doubt, search the 'net about it too. Avoid doing things in Terminal as much as possible. Some things will still be required, but a lot fewer than most people will have you believe. I hardly do anything in Terminal in Manjaro. Even installing software that's not in the main repo can be done by installing from the AUR, which you can do from the GUI-based package manager (Pacman which shows up as "Add/Remove Software" in your program list--it's the only package manager I use in Manjaro). The less you "mess around" and possibly do something wrong, the better off you'll be. To anyone reading this and scoffing: look, if you love Terminal so much, fine. Just try to refrain from throwing around Terminal advice at people (especially people new to Linux!) for everything when you know their distros have provisions to do these things in a more sensible and easier fashion, with visual feedback. I've seen too many people screw up their distros (and I'm one of them) by following advice to do things in Terminal. We don't have to work like it's DOS anymore; it's 2021.

I know the appeal of giving people advice with Terminal commands: it's "universal" and faster than explaining it any other way. Unfortunately some of that advice might not be meant for your distro in particular (type, version) and you might not realize it. Some of the advice is also just outdated. Another thing I've seen too many times already is: people claiming they know Linux well enough to provide advice with Terminal commands (including blogs etc.) when they have more limited experience than they realize. Also some of the commands can have "deeper" consequences if a command or option is misspelled, and you might not get any feedback as to what has been done. Then it's a troubleshooting procedure to figure out what happened and how to "just" change it back.

If you use the GUI-based tools provided by the distro to make changes to it, you'll probably get an idea if something should be done or not due to the feedback it provides. That's a much safer way to go especially for someone new to Linux. Not everything can be done with GUI-based applications, but almost everything I need in Manjaro can be done that way.

At the moment all I use Terminal for is: Yabridge sync after adding/removing plugins, and starting winecfg. Plus this one thing below...

I don't know if you'll have to do this, but there's another step that I had to do in Manjaro: enable fstrim.timer. Info about that here:

https://forum.cockos.com/showpost.ph...1&postcount=16

Last edited by JamesPeters; 05-21-2021 at 07:23 PM.
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Old 05-22-2021, 04:23 PM   #145
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^ Yeah, I kind of get all that about terminal vs. anything GUI. One thing I haven't been liking about terminal is there's a lot of things you can end up doing that are basically blind (for people with little to no experience with it)... I'm a terrible typer, too. I love the idea of getting to the source, being able to initiate commands that underlie all the GUIs, etc. but being able to do it wisely, efficiently and effectively will take some time to figure out, grow accustomed to...


Quick update: I got Manjaro installed, installed Reaper. Audio is better now but still sketchy. I haven't gotten any overall computer freezes yet, though the computer failed to come out of standby/suspend once, pretty sure that was after I installed.

Overall I definitely like Manjaro better than Ubuntu Studio - the tools and programs included, how they're organized - it's much closer to what I had 'configured' in W7 and basically all my previous Windows machines. Ubuntu Studio seemed like the Android smartphone I fiddled with not too long ago, where everything seems just sort of thrown together with little rhyme or reason, where 'apps' are installed automatically and stuff goes 'wherever'. With Manjaro (Xfce) there's not a ton of stuff, but what's there is neat and tidy and about all that I need from a basic build/setup... A much nicer starting point.

Also, little things tend to work better - I was having a terrible time just selecting the corner of a window and dragging it out in Ubuntu Studio, the window cursors were all fidgety (and taking more than 15 minutes to figure out how to fix it was too much for me to handle). So far trying to find how to tweak this or that in Manjaro has been much better, easier, faster, more 'logical'.

Etc etc.


But alas, the important thing is the audio, and I'm pretty much resigned to the idea that I'm not gonna get my audio interface fully functional - or minimally functional yet stable - without a lot of leg work, not something i want to do. I'd be better off just buying a new one should I need to use Linux. I'll probably still look into a few things, poke around some more, but I'm like 99% sure there's problems here that go beyond just tweaking this or that conventional setting. I mean, I've only got 48k sample rate, for instance, and even that doesn't quite work...
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Old 05-22-2021, 05:11 PM   #146
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Being able to easily resize windows is more a quirk with XFCE and some themes with thinner borders around windows (the sort of theme I prefer). Choosing a theme with thicker borders helps with that. I learned to use the "key used to move and resize windows" more often though. In Window Manager Tweaks. I assigned it to the Windows key (super) instead of the default (alt). Freeing up the alt key for modifiers was important for me, and now that Windows key is locked in my mind as the "resize key" (it's not like I used the Windows key for anything else before, so that's fine for me).

If you used Ubuntu with Gnome instead of XFCE, you might just be preferring XFCE for the most part now. (Assuming you chose Manjaro XFCE edition.)

What are you considering for your next interface? I might sell my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (3rd gen) since I've gone back to using my onboard audio device (Realtek ALC1220, apparently implemented well on this mainboard). The quality is the same, I prefer connecting things to an external mixer, and I like having some more controls (high pass, etc.) Well the headphone amp of the onboard device isn't as good as the 2i2, but I'll be using the mixer (connected to the line out) for that anyway.
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Old 05-22-2021, 05:38 PM   #147
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Quote:
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...What are you considering for your next interface? I might sell my Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (3rd gen) since I've gone back to using my onboard audio device.
I probably won't buy anything, but rather continue using W7 and the emu. But, I was thinking I could get the same thing you got - the scarlett - if I had to. You seemed to like it, and you probably know about things better than I do. I looked it up at Amazon and saw it had good reviews, best seller, and all that. For what i do, at my stage, I don't need much, and my understanding is that audio interfaces are all pretty good these days.

My only reservation is that I'm not sure how well my USB ports function, they're USB 2.0, and just lately I've been seemingly having issues - my whole USB controller thing is a total cluster - I've got listings of USB devices everywhere, with different controllers or controller hubs, some at 'full-speed' i.e. 12MB/sec, and some at high speed (480MB), I don't know which physical USB ports correspond to high speed, and when I try to figure it out I'm confronted with all sorts of cryptic gobbeldy-gook...

I looked for PCIe ones at some point, but there's not many of them, and as I recall, they were pretty expensive. I think that's why I ended up sticking with the emu - the emu seemed like much more bang for the buck. Pretty sure the way my computer's configured, for what it is, that a PCIe card-based interface would be better, faster...

Blah blah blah.


BTW, just after I wrote what I did above, singing the praises of Manjaro, I tried a restart and now I'm getting an error and can't get it started: "failed to start Load Kernel Modules." I'm trying to figure out how to start/fix it as we speak. Just prior to this I had tried to switch from open source graphic card driver to proprietary, choosing that option in the Manjaro Hardware Settings manager thing. It said it was done, fine, whatever, but maybe it wasn't...

As I recall this is similar to what happened earlier, when it failed to come out of standby. But then I just tried to boot into the live USB, and when I did that, it instead booted into the Manjaro installed on the machine. I don't know, my Linux days are filled with no rhyme or reason...
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Old 05-22-2021, 05:51 PM   #148
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You also had some issues while using Windows too, if I recall correctly?

Maybe your machine has some issue that isn't OS-related. It might be time to buy a new computer. Fixing that one is of course possible, but if the system is old enough and you need to replace a component (mainboard, RAM, etc.) sometimes it makes sense to just replace the majority of it due to compatibility issues and/or the cost of buying used parts while attempting to fix it.

Consider that, anyway. You might be able to reuse some parts, but generally you can count on replacing the mainboard, CPU, RAM, power supply (and case). I'd also recommend using SSD nowadays, if you haven't been using them for years already. I don't recall what your system is, but chances are you can buy new parts for a system that will be much more powerful and probably quieter, without having to spend much.

As for that standby issue: I forget what the deal was, but I noticed some people having that kind of issue with some distros and some hardware. It may even be related to the sort of install you did (hibernate or suspend) and whether you added a swap file or not. I never let my computer go into hibernate or suspend; it's either on, or it's off. It's a desktop and consumes low power when I'm not doing anything demanding, so it's not worth letting "sleep". If anything I turn the monitor off, which saves the most power when the system isn't in use and I'm away from the desk.
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Old 05-23-2021, 12:15 AM   #149
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Quote:
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You also had some issues while using Windows too, if I recall correctly? Maybe your machine has some issue that isn't OS-related. It might be time to buy a new computer.
Indeed, that's what started all this. Basically, I was getting blue screens during startup, something like every other time I'd restart. The vexing thing is that it'd always startup fine - super fine - just after the blue screen, and other than that everything would work fine.

What's interesting is that doing the dual-boot, I've discovered that W7 starts up just fine - when I startup after I've left Linux (Grub is the bootloader). If I shutdown in W7 and restart, it will usually lag and blue screen.

I don't think the problem is strictly machine-related. I did run most of the OEM's hardware tests (like memory, drives, etc.) and nothing showed up. There could be some glitchy hardware config, though, that W7 isn't able to handle properly, for whatever reason. I don't know, I don't know much about this stuff. It seems like W7 isn't shutting down properly, something that it needs or that needs to happen on reboot isn't getting saved on shutdown, is corrupted - something... Why else would it startup fine after leaving Linux, or only startup fine after it crashes?.

Anyway, I'm kind of Luddite. I doubt I'd get a new computer, I hardly want the one I have... I used to be into making music, mostly electronic, back in the day, with outboard gear, just before computers were really becoming viable in the field. I got out of it when that stuff, like Pro Tools, was just starting to heat up. I got back into it maybe a year or two ago, more 'serious', revisiting old stuff (I dabbled a little maybe a decade ago - since I joined this forum back in 2012)...

I'm not really sure just how much I want to make computers and music a part of my life at this point. Using what I got is OK, but I'd have to be more committed to bring another computer into my space. I think it's probably more of a principled environmental stance of some sort than anything else, I don't think it's really the money. Or maybe it's a 'simple living' stance, not really 'environmental'. I got too much stuff as it is... I know, this all probably sounds a little wack.


Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesPeters View Post
Fixing that one is of course possible, but if the system is old enough... Consider that, anyway. You might be able to reuse some parts, but generally you can count on replacing the mainboard, CPU, RAM, power supply (and case). I'd also recommend using SSD nowadays...
Yeah, I've been thinking about it. I've decided that IF I can get by with what I have then I will. Pretty sure I'll be fine, I'll get things sorted out... I have replaced a bunch of stuff, memory, power supply, graphics card, network card (I just bought another a couple days ago), 3 SSDs... I could reuse the power supply and SSDs, everything else is obsolete. Even the network card I just bought had to be a little older model, to work with W7 - most of them are only compatible with W10 now...


So, I came back here just to mention that I got the Manjaro back up and running. It took some handful of hours to do the research and figure it out. Figured there's like a slim chance that if I report what the issue was, some wayward soul might be lucky and run into it before having the same problem.

In brief: Apparently it looks like people can often have issues with Nvidia graphics cards and Manjaro, or if not Manjaro-only with whatever Linux distro. Prior to my problem, I had used Manjaro's Hardware Manager to try to install the proprietary driver listed there. For whatever reason, Manjaro said it worked, but upon restart I got that "Failed to start Load Kernel Modules" message. Reading stuff, it seemed pretty obvious that that was the problem, the driver switch.

The solution was that I needed to access a terminal, command line, tty - whatever (there's like 80 names for the same thing it seems) and uninstall the proprietary nvidia driver. You can do the command line thing either by choosing it from the alternative boot options in the boot menu, or once you see the error press ctrl + alt + F3, or you can boot into the Live USB and do stuff from there (I don't see the point of that one, but maybe it'd be needed if you don't get the boot screen at all).

Then there's a couple commands to list the hardware/drivers, figure out what you have, then remove the driver, possibly reinstall if needed (I didn't need to). Here's a link to a webpage that goes over all that stuff, it's pretty crystal clear there: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/C...Graphics_Cards
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