audio output/input problems

i recently upgraded to the last version of ardour 3.05, and i’m using it with ubuntu 14.04, for recording acoustic instruments through an external mixer.
my problem is:
if i turn on the pc and work with ardour, the sound gets correctly to ardour and get recorded, and i can hear it through ardour itself, but if i want to run another sound application like, say, rhythmbox, it won’t go, even after i quit ardour.
if , instead, i restart the pc and open rhythmbox the sound gets out normally, but i won’t get any record if i open ardour.
it seems that in every computer session, the pc recognize the first device that uses sound output, blocking the other, with no apparent way to switch from, say, rhythmbox to ardour, in the same computer session.
i had a similar problem with older versions of ardour and ubuntu, and i found a simple solution by try and error, that to me did not have any logic, but it does not work anymore.
thanks for any help in clearing the subject (though i use ardour and ubuntu for a long time, i’m doing everything empirically and am very ignorant of OS mechanics).

http://jackaudio.org/faq/pulseaudio_and_jack.html

Seablade

thanks Seablade, the subject is treated thoroughly and, I presume, clearly. I was able to understand why it happens what i described, but, given my poor terminal commands capabilities, most of the solutions proposed are impossible for me to use.
so i’ll have to figure out a different way to approach the problem.
1 - apparently pulseaudio and jack seem to be not compatible in the same moment on the same soundcard;
2 - apparently pulseaudio and jack start automatically once i start an application that uses one of them, let’s say rhythmbox, audacity, ardour;
3 - the one that get started before, inhibits the use of the other, depending on which application i start first after a pc restart;
4 - if all of this is true, then i should be able to switch reliably between pulseaudio and jack only through a pc restart (and that would already be a progress);
5 - when my configuration was ardour 3.04 and ubuntu 12.04, for some reason that i don’t know, the switching was possible without restarting the pc, just by starting (and then closing) a track recording in Audacity, and then opening Ardour (that would get jack going), while the reverse was possible just quitting Ardour; i discovered that by chance, and do not have any clue why it behaved that way;
does anybody know anything about why that works the way i described, and how could i obtain that once i quit Ardour pulseaudio is not inhibithed?
thanks Seablade and anybody who endured reading this!

This may help you :

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudioPreparation#Pulse_Audio

but without any command line (you said “capabilities”? but it’s just some letters to type in the same order you read on screen, or copy/paste in a terminal… come on, get the ski gloves off!!) I don’t think anyone could have a system with Jackd & PA working together… Or you have to choose a multimedia oriented distro, where all is already fixed for you, live AVLinux, TangoStudio, it’s several of they out there in Linux biotope, the closest from yours’ is UbuntuStudio

@stratojaune: thanks. looks like the wisest thing to do would be to upgrade from ubuntu to ubuntustudio. my hardware, though very minimalist, seemed to work for acoustic live recording with ubuntu. do you know if upgrading to ubuntustudio could be more demanding on the hardware?

At least it seems to me that it’s not more demanding :-).
One of the reasons might be that Ubuntu Studio 12.04 or 14.04 use fast Xfce desktop as a standard, instead of Unity.

Michael

well, i’ll try the upgrade, and then will report the result. thanks everybody

stefabarta: not to say that UbuntuStudio is not good, but it seems that most people here and there uses AV Linux to do what you want to (install & create without tweaking the system)… There’s a lot of audio oriented distros, maybe the best way is to try they with live USB stick before choosing & install… HTH :slight_smile:

“most people here and there uses AV Linux”

I don’t. I use UbuntuStudio, and the move to Xfce was a good one.
I have a I5 pc that works great with UStudio.
I also have a 10 year old Pentium 4 that runs lubuntu with the Studio packages and that works too.

I like XFCE too, but that by itself would not a reason for preferring Ubuntu Studio over AV Linux, as AV Linux also has XFCE as its standard desktop.

And though I’ve never tried it myself, KXStudio also comes recommended by many as a media production distribution worth trying.