not recognizing any device

OS: Linux mint 18 Cinammon 64-bit. Linux kernel: 4.4.0-43-lowlatency
Audacity 2.1.2

Hello,
I suddenly started having this problem with audacity. It used to work perfectly until some days ago. I don’t recall changing anything to make this happen…

When I try to listen to an audio file I get this message:

Error while opening sound device. Please check the playback device settings and the project sample rate.

When I try to record, this other:

Error while opening sound device. Please check the recording device settings and the project sample rate

Project rate has always been 44100 Hz.
Since I have that problem, I have uninstalled and installed again from “Software Manager” and then with “sudo apt install audacity” in terminal. Still not working.
Rescan audio devices makes nothing.
In edit/preferences/devices/interface I can’t choose any “host” and a little under that line I can read: Using PortAudio V19.6.0-devel, revision 396fe…(quite long numbers and letters list).
In playback device and recording device there is nothing I can choose from, too.

I don’t think that is the problem, because I tried it without it too, but I use an external audio interface: Steinberg UR 22 mkII. I have also tried changing between that and internal audio soundcard in sound settings. I have also tried to see if it recognizes jack, turning on jack and then opening audacity. but also not working.
Does anybody have an idea of how can this be solved? Am I missing ALSA drivers?
Everything else works perfectly, Ardour, playback and record through external soundcard; sounds from firefox, and all other audio and music programs…
Thanks.

Try this:

  1. From the “Help” menu, select “Audio Device Info”. When the info appears, save it as a text file.
  2. Log out and back in again (or reboot)
  3. Repeat step 1.

Then post the two text files with your reply (see here for how to attach a file to a forum post: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1)

True! I forgot to say that. I checked that before and this is what appears there:

Default recording device number: -1
Default playback device number: -1
No devices found

and that is even after a reboot?

What do you get from:

aplay -l

(that’s “hyphen, lower case L” at the end)

Yes, I just rebooted my computer and it was showing the same thing.

This appears in terminal:

myname@myname ~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC887-VD Analog [ALC887-VD Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC887-VD Digital [ALC887-VD Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: UR22mkII [Steinberg UR22mkII], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

What happens with the command:

pavucontrol

the pulse audio volume control opens. I remember installing that to record sounds from firefox with audacity. It worked well the last time I used it. Not so long ago.
In “output devices” in pulseaudio I can see:
-GF108 high definition Audio Controller Digital Stereo (HDMI 4)
-Steinberg UR22mkII Analogue Stereo,
-Built-in Audio Digital Stereo (IEC958).

In “input devices” I can see:
-Steinberg UR22mkII Analogue Stereo.
-Built-in Audio Analogue Stereo.

This is very strange. It seems that your sound system is as it should be, and you say that Audacity was working correctly, but now does not see the sound system at all.
You could try resetting Audacity back to its “factory defaults”. To do that, find the folder:

~/.audacity-data

(where “~/” means your home folder)
Ensure that Audacity is not running, then delete everything in there except for “EQCurves.xml” (if present).

Even that it’s not working… nothing has changed, only that I see the “how to get help” window when I open audacity again.
This is very bad, I am starting to thinking that I will have to get used to a life without Audacity… or maybe wait for it to work again suddenly… :-/

How did you install Audacity?
(If you installed it from the main repository or a PPA, then it may have been updated from a version that worked to a version that doesn’t. If you installed it from a deb, or built it from source, then that will not be the case.)

Do you also have a generic Linux kernel installed? If so, have you tried selecting that at boot?

Yes, I have installed it from the Software manager once, and then uninstalled it and installed it again with “sudo apt install audacity” in terminal. None of them are giving the good result.
I don’t know how to install that from a deb or built it from source. I have heard about it, but never managed to do it with other programs. Maybe I should try to learn that way, to see if it works…
I have Linux mint 18 Cinammon 64-bit. The Linux kernel: 4.4.0-43-lowlatency, so it’s not the generic one. I haven’t updated that recently, so I don’t think the problem lies there. oh! You meant, apart of that? Now I understand your message. I used to have one I guess, I don’t know what happened with it, might be inactive. I haven’t check if it might work selecting that one at boot. Also have to check. Don’t remember how I can select the other kernel, have to re learn that again, but first in a couple of hours, right now I don’t have time.
I will keep informing :slight_smile:
Thanks!

If you get the Grub boot screen on boot-up, you can just use the up/down cursor keys to select which of the installed kernels you want to install. By default, when an updated kernel is installed, the old kernel is left on the system just in case you need it.

I booted with the generic kernel and it’s not working, still not recognizing anything.
I tried to build it from source, but for that I had to install wxWidgets:

checking for wx-config... no
checking for wx-config-3.0... no
configure: error: Could not find wx-config: is wxWidgets installed? is wx-config in your path?

I tried to install it, but for that I needed something else called GTK+

checking for GTK+ version... 
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking for GTK+ - version >= 2.6.0... Package gtk+-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk+-2.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gtk+-2.0' found
Package gthread-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gthread-2.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gthread-2.0' found
no
*** Could not run GTK+ test program, checking why...
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occurred. This usually means GTK+ is incorrectly installed.
checking for pkg-config... (cached) /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking for GTK+ - version >= 3.0.0... Package gtk+-3.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk+-3.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gtk+-3.0' found
Package gthread-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gthread-2.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gthread-2.0' found
no
*** Could not run GTK+ test program, checking why...
*** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
*** exact error that occured. This usually means GTK+ is incorrectly installed.
checking for gtk-config... no
checking for GTK - version >= 1.2.7... no
*** The gtk-config script installed by GTK could not be found
*** If GTK was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
*** your path, or set the GTK_CONFIG environment variable to the
*** full path to gtk-config.
checking for gtk-config... (cached) no
checking for GTK - version >= 1.2.3... no
*** The gtk-config script installed by GTK could not be found
*** If GTK was installed in PREFIX, make sure PREFIX/bin is in
*** your path, or set the GTK_CONFIG environment variable to the
*** full path to gtk-config.
configure: error: 
The development files for GTK+ were not found. For GTK+ 2, please
ensure that pkg-config is in the path and that gtk+-2.0.pc is
installed. For GTK+ 1.2 please check that gtk-config is in the path,
and that the version is 1.2.3 or above. Also check that the
libraries returned by 'pkg-config gtk+-2.0 --libs' or 'gtk-config
--libs' are in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH or equivalent.

and kind of tried doing that, but I haven’t managed it, but I have already seen that to do that i need to have something else before… all these dependencies… exhausting! and I don’t even know if it is going to solve the problem… :-/
maybe I get more motivation later, but right now I can’t :-/

Do you know which Ubuntu version your operating system is based on?
This command may show you:

lsb_release -a

There is a PPA with regular builds of Audacity for Linux: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntuhandbook1/+archive/ubuntu/audacity
(installing from a PPA is much easier to install, and uninstall, than building from source).
You could try the appropriate build for Audacity 2.2.2.
(no guarantees that this will work, because I’ve never encountered this problem before, and I can’t think of any explanation for it).

:open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth:
It works!!!
So! today I learned how to install from a PPA, I did what you told me and installed the 2.2.2 version, and now it works! It has been a long way, but now it seems that everything is back to normal… I can breathe :slight_smile:
thank you very much guys!

I am just writing this in case someone has the same problem, or to remind me how I resolved the problem if it happens again, because strangely, It has happened again to me, and like in the first time, I don’t know why. After the first time, i resolved the problem by installing version 2.2.2 from PPA , but now that it happened again, I deleted the .audacity-data file, and uninstalled it and tried to install it again from terminal but it was not possible and this message was shown:

Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
audacity : Depends: audacity-data (= 2.2.2-1build1~ubuntu16.04) but 2.3.0-0build2~ubuntu16.04 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

then I checked the Software manager and after searching for audacity, two results appeared: audacity (not installed) and audacity-data (installed), i figured that maybe there is the problem, so I uninstalled the audacity-data program and then installed it from terminal and it worked. I guess the audacity-data program was for 2.3 version (the one that I used to have after an update, I guess), and might be incompatible with the 2.2.2.

This is an old topic, but with the update I am having the same problem. I forgot about this and when the update manager told me that there were updates I clicked “update” without thinking too much. Now I am back to the latest version 2.3.1 and it’s not working again. I tried the solution from last time and I am unable to install version 2.2.2 again. I just cant find it in the ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity because from there it updates to 2.3.1 again. Somehow I managed to the old 2.1.2 version (where all my problems started), deleting that PPA, but is still not working. Can anybody tell me how to install version 2.2.2 again???
Thank you

Assuming that your version of Mint is based on the current LTS version of Ubuntu (Bionic):

  1. Uninstall Audacity.
  2. Remove the PPA from your sources list.
  3. Install Audacity (from the main repository)

Hi Steve, thanks for your answer. But I already did that. I first uninstalled audacity, and also “audacity-data” from Software manager, then deleted the PPAs in update manager, and then installed it again, but now 2.1.2 being installed. And that is not solving the problem of not finding any Audio device. I click on /trasport/rescan audio devices and nothing. Help/audio device info tells me this:
Default recording device number: -1
Default playback device number: -1
No devices found

the first time having the problem, i solved it by installing version 2.2.2, but now I cant downgrade to that version again… or I dont know how :-/

What’s the exact version of Linux? Enter this in a Terminal window for the full info:

lsb_release -a

What audio devices should be available? Enter this in a Terminal window for the full info (the final character is lower-case L):

Playback devices

aplay -l

Recording devices

arecord -l

What is the output from Audacity’s “Help menu > Audio Device Info” (save, then attach the entire file to your reply).