Getting loud static when I connect in jack connection

Bare with me, I have neveer been in a forum or even asked a question because I usually find what I want on this sites lie this. I write music and I have used Adobe Audition since it’s inception. I loaded 11.10 on my laptop, installed jack and Ardour and since I do not know a lot about tweaking and these forums are over my head, I was happy everything worked through my Lexicon alpha. Since everything worked, I bought Ubuntu 11.10 pre installed. The computer works perfectly, but I get a loud static anytime I try to record. I did some lightweight tweaking(not much) and I got it to work twice. After it worked, I would close everything and try again to no avail. When I read these forums they go way over my head with suggestions. I need a ‘dummy’ book. When I am in jack connections, as soon as I connect from the system / ardour I can see this noise in the master bus in Ardour. Again, I have never been in a forum, excuse me if I am doing this wrong.

One is a laptop, the other a desktop from Zareason. Nice computer, but killing me in the music department. This is akin to learning to build the engine before you can drive the car. I am in IT and the worst problen to have is when something works, then does not work. I finnlly got it to give me the same problem, I get loud static as soon as I connect useing jack. I see the meters showing static. I also loaded adobe audition in wine and get the same thing. This started to happen after I put a new install of both Ardour and Jack.

I loaded 11.10 on my laptop, installed jack and Ardour and since I do not know a lot about tweaking and these forums are over my head, I was happy everything worked through my Lexicon alpha. Since everything worked, I bought Ubuntu 11.10 pre installed.

Are these two different laptops or the same?

My personal suggestion would be to download and try a distribution like AVLinux, DreamLinux, etc. instead of Ubuntu. These are distributions intended for audio and multimedia production, and the latest versions of Ubuntu have been somewhat less than stellar in that department without significant tweaking.

         Seablade

Thank you fro your responce. I am really thinking of going back to windows. Would there be significant tweaking in ubuntu studio?

I will try it…I am already reading up on it. If that does not work, sadly to say I must go back to windows, at least when it comes to music production. Have a good one. I don’t understand why they release a new version of UBuntu and not try to make the music aspect better. Thanks again

Well music creation is still a very tiny market segment, and lets face it, not their primary target. As a result they often have to make choices, do we do something that works for the vast majority of our customers(PulseAudio) vs do we do something needed by professional audio folks (Jack and Low Latency Audio)? It is understandable why they make that decision, and there are tons like it that they make given that.

But that is the power of Linux, just because one company targets one demographic, another can target a completely different, which is where things like AVLinux etc. come in.

     Seablade

If you want to do music with Ubuntu I’d install the kxstudio or Ubuntu studio packages or switch to Dream Studio linux which is an Ubuntu-based audio distro. In my experience you get up to speed much faster doing music in linux using a audio-optimized version like AVLinux, Dream Studio linux or Tango linux than beating a regular distro into shape. These audio-optimized distros work just fine as regular desktops. You can install any software you need from software repositories.

Yes Ubuntu is in general pretty broken for audio. Again download AVLinux and try it out, there is a LiveDVD of it so all you have to do is boot off your DVD to try it.

Seablade

“I can’t understand why anyone would pick a distribution like current Ubuntu without realizing that its really poorly setup for music creation/pro-audio workflows”. Paul

Let me help you understand: I chose Ubuntu 11.10 because it worked. Plain and simple. I used 10.10 on my laptop, with my Lexicon alpha and it worked flawlessly. I then decided that if everything worked fine on 11.10 on my laptop, I would purchase a desktop with Ubuntu 11.10 preloaded. I use my computer for general computing, not just for music creation. If I were to buy a desktop just for music creation, I would have stayed with Windows and Adobe Audition, software I have used for the past 15 years. So I have to say now that “Unfortunatly everything worked fine on my laptop, or I would not be in the pickle I am in now, which is reasonably fixable, I have a fresh copy of Windows 7 if it comes to that. I am working on a project and I need this thing fixed. I have been using Ubuntu for three years and being a bit of a rebel and not liking Microsoft I changed to Linux for the fun of it. Everything worked fine. I have been in IT for thirty years, I am use to procedures. It seems that it would not be too hard for someone to say " Do this , do that, install this and Voila it all works.” I am not a geek in the sence that I love tinkering with computers. I would rather use them. You seem a little miffed at my comments, that shows me you are passionate about Linux, as I am. I have turned friends and family onto Ubuntu and they have broke thier Windows and crossed over as happy campers. I have a co-worker with knowledge of jack and he has talked me into hanging in there and trying to make it work. I will try for a little while, but my back is against the wall to get a project done. AVlinux is a little different than Ubuntu, from what I understand, and I don’t want to learn different commands on top of everything else. The forums I have gone to are way too over my head. I am now thinking it could be my Lexicon Alpha, it is the common denominator of both my laptop and desktop. Thanks agin for your comments.

@montry: Having developed audio software on both Windows and linux machines, Win 95 all the way through to 7 and now mainly linux (many different distros), in my experience, when everything is considered, getting audio to work reliably on current linux distros is no worse than getting it to work on Windows. In fact, in a lot of cases linux ships with far more working drivers (out of the box) than a plain Windows installation. Sure, the hardware you buy will likely have a Windows driver with it, but there can still be issues, and at least with linux there are many more things you can tweak, in an attempt to resolve the problem.
I have had similar problems to those you describe, using Windows, where audio performance has been flawless, only to be completely unusable on another similar machine with the same I / O

Generally, when you use a free operating system, you pay with your time, rather than paying cash for a turn-key system that (in theory) ‘just works’. That said, you also get the benefit of being able to configure a linux system in a far more flexible way than you might with a more proprietary solution (look closely at the way Apple and MS are heading, and ask whether that is a good thing for software diversity especially in a niche genre such as audio, which is largely the domain of independent developers or small businesses…)

@montry: lets put this a totally different way: “I can’t understand why anyone would pick a distribution like current Ubuntu without realizing that its really poorly setup for music creation/pro-audio workflows”. Like so many people new to Linux, you have the (completely reasonable) idea that every Linux distribution is equally well setup for all possible things you might want to do with a computer. Although completely reasonable, this idea is also … wrong. Any Linux distribution can be made to work, but the amount of futzing varies quite a bit. You made an unfortunate choice - nothing more or less.

Thanks a lot for your comment…Sunday morning I got up to do battle with my computer, jack and Ardour. After about two minutes changed the interface setting and Voila! Everything is fine. Thanks, everyone for your comments and help. It got me focused. Jack Ardour and Ubuntu 11.10 is perfect together, no special tweaks were needed and it sounds excellent!