Hello,
I am using Audacity 2.2.1 on Linux Mint 19.3. I installed the package from the distribution’s release.
I am having a random, intermittent clocking issue while using an analog-to-digital converter that is connected to my Linux machine via USB. I wasn’t having this issue before about a month ago and the problem is reminiscent of the last time the wxWidgets was updated and it no longer matched the version of Audacity that I was using at that time.
Is there a list of the dependencies for each version of Audacity, so I can check to make sure that I didn’t accidentally update something and render Audacity useless? Or better yet: is there a way to choose the clocking/timing source in Audacity? I would like to have the Linux machine as the slave to the analog-to-digital converter’s clock and it should be doing it automatically when the computer is connected to the converter.
Which Ubuntu version is Mint 19.3 based on?
If you do a package search for the relevant Ubuntu version, you can get a list of dependencies: Ubuntu – Package Search Results -- audacity
How does that “clocking issue” manifest?
The clocking issue manifests as bit stream errors. So, it’s cruising along just fine and then 20 samples suddenly jump 20 dB with some random waveform…then it goes back to normal sampling for 100 or 1000 error-free samples…then 20-25 messed up samples…and there’s no repeating pattern. It’s random. This means that the analog-to-digital hardware (which has the master clock) is not able to lock with the computer which is running Audacity and capturing the bit stream. And as I said: the last time this happened, it was because the Linux distribution updated wxWidgets so it no longer matched the older version of Audacity that was not compatible with the new wxWidgets.
What is the analog-to-digital converter that you are using?
Can you use it via PulseAudio?
Can you use it with Jack Audio System?
No offense - but I’m not here to discuss my A-to-D converter. It is NOT the problem. It works fine with everything else except my Linux Mint machine. The problem is on the DAW. The problem started after I clicked on “Update” for my Linux distro. Since Audacity is now on version 2.3.3, I just updated my distro to the latest version of Audacity. Problem solved. Now I don’t have to troubleshoot the problem between an older version of Audacity that no longer matches the current versions of the widgets and other dependencies. Solved.
No offense - but I’m not here to discuss my A-to-D converter. It is NOT the problem. It works fine with everything else except my Linux Mint machine. The problem is on the DAW. The problem started after I clicked on “Update” for my Linux distro. Since Audacity is now on version 2.3.3, I just updated my distro to the latest version of Audacity. Problem solved. Now I don’t have to troubleshoot the problem between an older version of Audacity that no longer matches the current versions of the widgets and other dependencies. Problem solved.
Not wanting to do a system rewind - because the problem wasn’t affecting any other software or hardware on the system - I tried uninstalling and then reinstalling Audacity from the Audacity, “Panda Jim” flatpak version. That made things better, but did not resolve all of the glitches in the A-to-D stream: reinstalling Audacity from the flatpak cleared the clocking issues but it didn’t completely fix all of the problems.
So, I fired up “aslamixer” in a terminal session, I went hunting through the settings, and found that some other program had changed some of the audio settings, such that the microphone was unmuted. I suspect that that happened when I installed OBS Studio in the face of the pending demise of Adobe Flash. After remuting all of the appropriate ins and outs, everything is back to normal.
In summary, I reinstalled Audacity from the Audacity, “Panda Jim” flatpak: that resolved the clocking issues. Then I had to check all of my audio settings and mute the appropriate devices that I don’t use. That removed digital noise / interference from other sources. It appears that the problems were caused by updates and / or newly installed software which changed settings upon their installation.
And thank you to everyone for the assistance! Although I didn’t use every suggestion from all of the helpful people on this forum and the Linux Mint user’s forum, the suggestions at least allowed me to troubleshoot the problem and eliminate all of the possible / probable causes.
Hi,
To be clear here. Panda Jim’s packaging of Audacity 2.4.2 is not a flatpak, it’s a Ubuntu-style .deb package hosted in a PPA.
The flatpak packaging of Audacity 2.4.2 is maintained by the flathub.org core packaging team and it has a number of issues, one being that it doesn’t support JACK.
ATB,
Neil