I have been using Ardour for only one day. I sometimes hear digital distortion when playing a track. I am using a 6-yr old PPC macbook pro (1GH processor, 1GB RAM); I experience this distortion without any plugins loaded. The distortion is like extremely short digital beeps, that occurs at seemingly random times, but fairly frequently (at least every few times I playback a track).
Any idea of what might be causing this? Is there other info I could provide that’d be helpful?
Is JACK running in realtime mode? How did you start JACK (JackPilot, or did you just leave it to Ardour to start it)? What audio interface are you using - the builtin one on the macbook or something else?
I’m not sure. I don’t see any controls in Ardour or JackPilot that refer to realtime mode.
//how did you start JACK (JackPilot, or did you just leave it to Ardour to start it)?
I had been just leaving it to Ardour to start JACK; although I have since tried starting JackPilot first and then starting Ardour. The occasional beep-distortion behavior seems the same in both cases.
//What audio interface are you using - the builtin one on the macbook or something else?
I have a similar machine (1.5GHZ powerbook with 1.5GB RAM) (not my primary… which is a linux desktop)… although I haven’t used Ardour on it for a while (and is sitting at about 2.8.3… from memory) I used jackpilot in realtime mode… with loose latency settings (about 10ms ) I was able run 16 tracks with a few simple plugins… when I added some of the focusrite plugins I needed to push the latency right up…(this was also on the built in sound while I was away on holidays)…
So in short with jackpilot you should be able to run ardour quite happily on your machine if you don’t try to push it too hard… I suggest reading information about jack settings … increasing periods and buffers will make it seem sluggish but allow you to do more…