Ubuntu – Lubuntu USB sound card managing

alsalubuntusoundusb

I've been trying to use an old Asus EeePC901 to record and play music along with an USB M-Audio M-track-plus. I use Audacity 2.0.5. Already tried lots of Linux distros, and Lubuntu looks to be the one for Audacity & M-Audio to work perfectly.

BUT…

It would be nice to keep USB M-audio to play music from the Internet, and from my own audio files. That doesn't happen.

Audacity immediately recognized USB M-Audio with no issues, EVEN THOUGH Alsa mixer keeps on Intel internal audio card.

Alsa mixer do recognize USB M-Audio card but do not use it saying that there are no parameteres available.

The question is: why is USB M-Audio card available for Audacity with no issues, and Alsa will not use it for other applications, like music players or Web browsers…?

Thanks is advance for your support. All the best, RC

Best Answer

PulseAudio is used on top of ALSA to manage applications use of your onboard soundcard. However, it is not preloaded in a standard Lubuntu install. To get PulseAudio open your terminal and type

sudo apt-get install pavucontrol

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to list/access all the available audio input and output ports/channels of a USB soundcard from a particular PC

The four pairs are not listed as separate devices because they are not separate devices. The M-Track Eight is a single device with eight channels.

It would be possible to create a bunch of virtual software devices that emulate four stereo pairs. To do this, add something like this to /etc/asound.conf or your ~/.asoundrc:

pcm_slave.eightchannels {
    pcm "hw:Eight"
    channels 8
    rate 48000
    buffer_size 8192  # make these sizes smaller for lower latency
    period_size 2048
}

pcm.ch12 {
    type asym
    playback.pcm {
        type dshare
        ipc_key 2222      # some random number, but the same for the same slave
        slave eightchannels
        bindings [ 0 1 ]
    }
    capture.pcm {
        type dsnoop
        ipc_key 2222
        slave eightchannels
        bindings [ 0 1 ]
    }
    hint.description "M-Track channels 1,2"
}
pcm.ch34 {
    type asym
    playback.pcm {
        type dshare
        ipc_key 2222
        slave eightchannels
        bindings [ 2 3 ]
    }
    capture.pcm {
        type dsnoop
        ipc_key 2222
        slave eightchannels
        bindings [ 2 3 ]
    }
    hint.description "M-Track channels 3,4"
}
...

Ubuntu – Sound card shown as Dumthe Output in Ubuntu 18.04

Just wanted to add to this, I followed similar instructions to have sound work briefly after a reboot with a dell XPS 13 running Ubuntu cosmic (18.10). Switching between 'auto' and 'generic' didn't change much

sudo alsa force-reload

worked for me.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to list/access all the available audio input and output ports/channels of a USB soundcard from a particular PC

Ubuntu – Sound card shown as Dumthe Output in Ubuntu 18.04

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