I’ve been working with Ardour since I’ve started to use Linux. My problem is probably more connected with jack-server:
Although I have a 2.66GHz 64-bited Celeron Processor, 1.5 Gig of RAM and an Audigy 2 card, I cannot record more than 3 stereo audio tracks with ardour. With the 4. track the record begins to crackle and strange noises are heard, like my system were overloaded. Do somebody have correct settings for jack, or how do you use ardour for recording? I mean at least 5-6 stereo tracks. Could I use my Yamaha PSR-225 and MIDI? How?
minthaka2, the way to build kernels differs a bit depending on the linux distribution you are using. I use debian and ubuntu based systems, so I am not familiar with mandriva, but the following is rather standard and should get you through if you dig it a bit yourself :
get the kernel sources from www.kernel.org (2.6.22 is the latest stable release, I am personally using 2.6.23-rc2).
get the realtime patch from Ingo Molnar (google it, it’s somewhere in the kernel.org area)
In the following, whatever is between double-quotes is a filename or part of it.
So, in a shell :
go to /usr/src
cd /usr/src
untar the kernel source package
tar jxvf linux-“your version”.bz2 (the package you had downloaded)
if necessary uncompress the realtime patch
bunzip2 “realtime patch for this particular kernel version”
cd to the top of the kernel source tree
cd linux-“your version”
patch it
patch -p1 < …/“uncompressed patch”
if you have a kernel config file in /boot, copy it to .config
cp /boot/config"whatever you have, preferably a 2.6.22 config" .config
configure your kernel, and answer stuff that was new compared to your
old config. If realtime related questions pop up, say yes, this is what you want.
make oldconfig
compile the whole thing, you can increase the speed if you have more than one CPU
or if you use distcc with other machines on your network (I have three myself, and it helps a lot:)
make all
install (depending whether you use lilo or grub or whatever)
make install
remember to generate an initrd if you are using one
cd /boot
mkinitramfs -o initrd.img-“kernel version you just compiled” “kernel version you just compiled”
ex : mkinitramfs -o initrd.img-2.6.22-rt 2.6.22-rt
edit your boot menu. If using grub, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, add an entry at the end with the new kernel and DON’T REMOVE THE EXISTING ONES!! you might need them if you have a boot issue with the new kernel.
When everything is in place, reboot and cross fingers 
Obviously, Mandriva must have come with some tools to automate all that stuff. In Debian based systems, things are made easy with the kernel-package tools. You will have to dig it yourself. I am sure you can get tons of help from Mandriva WIKIs floating on the net …
Good luck.
How do you start JACK / what options do you use?
Things like this are often easier to solve via IRC (#ardour on irc.freenode.net)
I’m using qjackctl.
I don’t use any options. I would welcome any suggestions. I must confess, I’m getting angry with JACK. The stupid Windows managed to make a simple sound system, wich could give me easy multitrack recording abilities. I don’t want to believe, that Linux is no good at all for sound studio work, even that my experience is saying up till now.
JACK makes considerably more demands of audio h/w and drivers than the windows media layer. In particular, it expects devices to be fully capable of synchronized playback&capture at the same sample rate, something that many consumer oriented devices cannot do correctly.
Please answer thorwil’s question in detail and/or get on IRC, where people can offer you hands on, rapid turnaround assistance. Best times are from about 10am CET to about 10pm EST.
Maybe you should look at what kind of kernel you’ve got. The latest kernels of the 2.6 (2.6.18 and up) series should be real-time capable out of the box, personally I still use a 2.6.15 with a realtime patch - without this, nothing works! But if you don’t like to patch and compile a new kernel, don’t do it, and just upgrade your kernel!
Dear markus morf
I would like to do the Kernel patching since I’m on Mandriva 2007 with kernel 2.6.17. How did you thatbwith your kernel (step-by step please!)
I’m struggling to make it from sources.
Thank’s guys!
I found the kernel-multimedia-desktop-2.6.17.14-3mdv-1-1mdv2007.0.i586.rpm package wich solved my problems. I’ve tested the new kernel, and after 10 stereo channel recorded I got bored!!! Whoah, it rocks !
Let me just suggest for other users not to use kernel-multimedia-desktop-2.6.17.14-5mdv-1-1mdv2007.0.i586.rpm package, wich has serious hardware problems (my PS/2 mouse won’t work with that!)
Let me start the music-making !
Thanks again