Talk:Linux Issues

Q: Does anyone have any experience getting Audacity to work with Alsa-Compliant external USB Audio Devices? I have an M-Audio FastTrack Pro that is being recognized by Alsa and Audacity, but when I try to record from it, I get the dreaded "Error while opening sound device. Please check the input device settings and the project sample rate" message.


 * A: Did you look at USB mic on Linux (for example does it record with arecord)? Are you using the Fast Track out of the box or have you looked for drivers appropriate to your Linux distro? Asking on your distro's support forum may be the first step. There is also some general advice at:






 * though I don't see any Fast Track drivers mentioned on the alsa site.


 * Also try searching on.


 * I am assuming you have done the obvious like matching the number of channels, sample rate etc. in Audacity and M-Audio.


 * We can't offer technical support on the Wiki. If you need more help, the best place is the - post to the Linux sub-forum for either Stable or Beta Audacity as appropriate.


 * Gale

Steve: On my machine, opening Audacity for the first time when JACK is running is very slow and when changing the audio device Host from ALSA to JACK Audacity appears to freeze for a short while. I've only tested this on one machine (Ubuntu 10.10) but I assume that this will be common to all Linux distros that use PulseAudio. Can anyone confirm?

Restarting Audacity is not a workaround to this (minor) issue. Once Audacity has successfully changed to Jack, restarting Audacity will not have this delay as Audacity will have saved the correct device configuration for running with Jack, but the Host must be changed to Jack (which is slow) before Audacity can start without the delay. A workaround would be to manually edit audacity.cfg before opening Audacity, but that's more trouble than it's worth.


 * Gale: Based on two others (Ubuntu and Fedora), yes they see slowness or freeze when opening Audacity for the first time when JACK is running, and when changing the audio device Host from ALSA to JACK. However they do suggest restart is a workaround because the lack of response tends to continue after the initial launch or host change to JACK. Even if they don't change host, if they start Audacity for a second time when JACK is running then Audacity will launch (and thereafter respond) faster. Perhaps as there is conflicting evidence here, .cfg is a mentionable workaround?