No audio

[KirkD]

I've been running audacity 1.35 beta for a while now (a month or so) but suddenly I was greeted by an error dialog stating that there was an "error opening audio device" That error has gone away, but I get no audio. The application behaves as if there is audio playing (the level meters are active), but I'm getting nothing. Oddly, this seems to coincide with my headphone jack having gone dead. With other applications (YouTube in FireFox and Amarok) I get normal audio playback, but headphones are silent.

Any tips are appreciated.

-kirk

Update: I just uninstalled and reinstalled Audacity, and I'm back to the error dialog:

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

Previously this worked without any adjustments. Now?

[waxcylinder]

First thing I would try would be to delete your Audacity prefences file - audacity.cfg. I know where this lives in a Windoze file structure but have no idea whee it is located in a Unix environment.

This will reset ALL yourAudacity preferences - so you will need to reset those.

You may wish to rename the old audacity.cfg file rather than delete ite - so that you can restore it if needed.

WC

[steve]

First thing I would try would be to delete your Audacity prefences file - audacity.cfg. I know where this lives in a Windoze file structure but have no idea whee it is located in a Unix environment.

In Ubuntu Intrepid the default location is:
home/<user name>/.audacity-data/audacity.cfg
(you need to enable viewing hidden files to see the .audacity-data folder).

The error message in Audacity is when the default (or selected) sample rate is not supported by your selected record or playback devices .

If you click on "Help > Audio Device Info.." you should get a list of all the audio devices that Audacity can find - here is an extract from mine:

==============================
Default capture device number: 0
Default playback device number: 0
==============================
Device ID: 0
Device name: OSS: /dev/dsp
Input channels: 16
Output channels: 16
Low Input Latency: 0.011610
Low Output Latency: 0.011610
High Input Latency: 0.046440
High Output Latency: 0.046440
Supported Rates:
8000
9600
11025
12000
15000
16000
22050
24000
32000
44100
48000
88200
96000
192000
==============================
Device ID: 1
Device name: ALSA: SBLive! Value [CT4832]: ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback (hw:0,0)
Input channels: 2
Output channels: 2
Low Input Latency: 0.011610
Low Output Latency: 0.011610
High Input Latency: 0.046440
High Output Latency: 0.046440
Supported Rates:
8000
9600
11025
12000
15000
16000
22050
24000
32000
44100
48000
88200
96000
==============================
Device ID: 2
Device name: ALSA: SBLive! Value [CT4832]: Mic Capture (hw:0,1)
Input channels: 2
Output channels: 0
Low Input Latency: 0.064000
Low Output Latency: -1.000000
High Input Latency: 0.256000
High Output Latency: -1.000000
Supported Rates:
==============================
Device ID: 3
Device name: ALSA: SBLive! Value [CT4832]: Multichannel Capture/PT Playback (hw:0,2)
Input channels: 16
Output channels: 2
Low Input Latency: 0.010667
Low Output Latency: 0.010667
High Input Latency: 0.042667
High Output Latency: 0.042667
Supported Rates:
48000
==============================
Device ID: 4
Device name: ALSA: SBLive! Value [CT4832]: Multichannel Playback (hw:0,3)
Input channels: 0
Output channels: 16
Low Input Latency: -1.000000
Low Output Latency: 0.010667
High Input Latency: -1.000000
High Output Latency: 0.042667
Supported Rates:
48000
==============================
Device ID: 5
Device name: ALSA: front
Input channels: 0
Output channels: 2
Low Input Latency: -1.000000
Low Output Latency: 0.011610
High Input Latency: -1.000000
High Output Latency: 0.046440
Supported Rates:
8000
9600
11025
12000
15000
16000
22050
24000
32000
44100
48000
88200
96000
==============================
>
>
>
==============================
Selected capture device: 3 - ALSA: SBLive! Value [CT4832]: Multichannel Capture/PT Playback (hw:0,2)
Selected playback device: 5 - ALSA: front
Supported Rates: 48000
==============================

You will note that my selected devices are Device: 3 (recording) and Device: 5 (playback).
This allows me to record at 48kHz only, but I can playback just about any sample rate.

In Audacity Preferences (from the Edit menu) in the "Audio I/O" tab, I select the devices that I want to use, and in the "Quality" tab I select the default recording sample rate (48kHz)

If you have an option of "Alsa (default)" then normally you should use that.

(Somehow, I can actually record at sample rates other than 48000 Hz, I've no idea why or how, but I'm not complaining.)

The problem with no sound from other devices indicates that there is another problem with your computer sound system. Check the obvious first - do your headphones work? Do you have the volume turned up in the sound card mixer? Double click on the loudspeaker icon in the panel to bring up the full interface. Thanks to sound card manufacturers not bothering with Linux, there are rather a lot of options to go through and it may take a bit of fiddling to get the mixer set up correctly.

[richardash1981]

You can record at other than 48000Hz on a 48000Hz device because audacity resamples the incoming data on the fly, as it does for playback at unsupported rates. This does of course reduce the quality and increase the CPU load.

[steve]

(Somehow, I can actually record at sample rates other than 48000 Hz, I've no idea why or how, but I'm not complaining.)

You can record at other than 48000Hz on a 48000Hz device because audacity resamples the incoming data on the fly, as it does for playback at unsupported rates. This does of course reduce the quality and increase the CPU load.

On versions of Audacity prior to 1.3.5, when running on Ubuntu, I have received the infamous message "Error while opening sound device. Please check the input device settings and the project sample rate." when using that setting. However with Audacity 1.3.5 I can indeed record at "unsupported" rates.

[richardash1981]

That sounds about right for when we added that feature (or rather, when it worked properly).

[Tootler]

I just had the same problem with the same error message.

After reading this thread, I checked Audacity preferences and found that the sound was set to ALSA Default and the Quality was set to a sample rate of 44100 Hz 32 Bit Floating Point. I don't use Audacity for recording - I make my recordings on an Edirol R09 Recorder and transfer them to the computer for editing. Nevertheless, just for good measure I reset Recording from OSS to ALSA Default and OK'd it.

Playback then worked again.

I am using Ubuntu 8.10 on a Compaq Presario and I have Audacity 1.3.5 installed.

Geoff