Ardour and Presonus 1818

Hi guys, first post here!

I apologize if this is not the place for my question - but I figured I would get the best reply here…

I bought Ardour a few weeks ago, in 5.3.xx and am now in 5.4.0

I’m going to learn this thing from tip to toe, and am loving it so far… read a note on the Manual about it being/not “intuitive” but so far I’m amazed at how clear and clean everything looks.

So I bought a Presonus 1818VSL audio interface; it arrived today. I just tried it and the results were:

It sync’d with Linux (that blue light)
And I was able to - without doing anything related to setups - record and listen to 2 tracks, via USB. I recorded a voice on MIC1 and a guitar on Line2. Both went right to their tracks and I could listen to them as I played back.

So, as far as Ardour goes I have no issues … :slight_smile:

My two issues/questions are - being a Noob:

  1. I can’t listen to anything on the Presonus headphones out;

  2. Is it possible to route the Linux sounds, like my Spotify playlists, to the Presonus interface?

Here’s what I have:

Presonus 1818 connected to my M-Audio powered speakers;

I’m using the MAIN outputs of Presonus to connect to the speakers as indicated.

The interface is connected with my Linux computer (Mint, KDE/Plasma) via USB

I have my mike and guitar on inputs 1 and 2.

So, no sound on the headphones

and no general sound from Linux coming in.

Ardour works perfect :slight_smile:

Again, sorry if this is not the place, but I read a few things at the Presonus forum and it was like Linux didn’t exist, so…

Thanks in advance for any help!
Joao

Headphones on the 1818VSL is a separate output (7/8) not shared with the main output. So connect Ardour’s master out to both: system:playback 1/2 AND system:playback 7/8

@x42
Thank you, it worked like a charm!!
So the headphones subject is solved.

Again, I know this is not Ardour, but if anyone can at least confirm that Linux sounds like browers, spotify, etc, can be routed to the Presonus that would be awsome.

They can obviously be routed there, since you’ve done that with JACK and/or Ardour. But … how to do that with specific software depends on lots of other things, and is almost impossible to give a general answer to. The JACK FAQ provides some answers to this, but the answers are already confused by the fact that gstreamer 1.0 apps behave totally differently from those using gstreamer 0.10 …

Hi joaopaz,

It can be done and I do it with a Presonus 1818VSL in my studio, all audio is routed to it. It isn’t exactly trivial to set up but the Audio distribution I maintain ‘AV Linux’ is pre-set up to have all ALSA stuff (meaning browsers, media players etc.) run with a loopback to whatever selected JACK device you have running without PulseAudio being involved at all, I don’t know what distro you are using but if it is Debian or Ubuntu based then the KXStudio repositories feature an application called ‘cadence’ that also sets up a loopback as well.

Further reading:


http://kxstudio.linuxaudio.org/Repositories

Hello Joao,

I don’t know Mint, but if it uses PulseAudio it shouldn’t be too difficult:

  • Check to see if you're using PulseAudio:
    • Open a command / terminal window and enter "pactl info" to get information whether PulseAudio is being used
    • Start "PulseAudio Volume Control" from KDE
  • Create an output ("sink") in PulseAudio to route PulseAudio sound output to Jack
    • Open a command / terminal window
    • Enter "pactl load-module module-jack-sink"
    • Check in "PulseAudio Volume Control" whether you see "Jack sink (PulseAudio JACK Sink)" in tab "Output Devices"
  • Last but not least check in "PulseAudio Volume Control" in tab "Playback" that Spotify (etc.) is using the "Jack sink"

If this works there is of course a way to automatically start the “Jack sink” on system boot.

I hope this helps…

Regards, Arnd