Audio Device or Resource Busy [SOLVED!!!!!!!!]

[phobos13013]

Edit, the original thread had an error that was corrected, please see below
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[phobos13013]

IGNORE: In this entry I confirmed a working JACK
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[phobos13013]

IGNORE: Here I realized there were several digital outputs that did not work with my current setup (analog)
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[phobos13013]

Anybody able to assist with this? It has been a bit of a shifting problem, but this is the first HDMI auido device I have had to configure and I'm not really sure where to start. I have managed to get audio output so it appears I have the right driver, lspci returns this for Audio:

[phobos13013]

Is anyone reading this? Would really appreciate even a nudge of help here. The problem persists that only one application can use the analog audio device at a time. Never ran into this problem before. If any further info is required, please do let me know. I am going out of town for work on Thursday and will be gone a week so if you respond within that time, please note a possible delay in response.
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[NeddySeagoon]

phobos13013,

A few hints. First, edit your post until you get responses. Replying to yourself drops your original post out of the unanswered posts search.
If you realise you made a mistake, its OK to delete your post and start a new topic. You cannot do that after you have a reply.

With ALSA, you get dmix for free. Pulseaudio is a wrapper around ALSA, so the same applies. dwix allows several sources to use sound togethor.
OSS, on the other hand only allows a single source to use the sound hardware at a time OSS is obsolete now but its still in the kernel.

What do you have in /dev/snd if it exists?
This should be all your ASLA devices.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[phobos13013]

Neddy,
Thank you for the very diplomatic explanation of the posting etiquette. I am a bit flustered these days as my previous posts have explained; I digress and will heed the proper protocols in the future! PROMISE! But this has been an adventure moving this install across completely different hardware. And will be posting again (there is the issue of my network which didnt work out of the box pre-fire, so will definitely make sure when I go back to the network post, I will heed he who well advises.

For the rest, here is my /dev/snd which seems to match what alsa seems to see:

[NeddySeagoon]

phobos13013,

I'm in Scotland, so you won't see much more of me tonight.

Card1 is your analogue sound card, it can do digital as well but not at the same time.
Card0 is the digital audio over the HDMI output on your video card.

Your /dev/snd looks perfectly normal.

Card0 is the system default sound card but you would like it to be card1, so everything just worked and without JACK.

There is some good reading on the ALSA website.
I've also seen solutions posted on the forums.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[phobos13013]

Only similar forum topic for me was this one: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-814969-start-0.html

I followed its advice but asound configuration did not change it. Actually that made it not work following those procedures. Looks like this one goes unsolved until I take another stab at it in the future unless anyone else has some suggestion within the next few hours. THANKS!
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[NeddySeagoon]

phobos13013,

Use google to search the forum. Enter your search term and in the search box add site:forumns.gentoo.org before you press return.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-998518.html
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[phobos13013]

Hi,
Revisiting this issue; still bad audio environment on the new box. I have tried many different things but nothing seems to be working. My /etc/asound.conf appears as:

[EmaRsk]

ALSA by itself is a one-app-at-a-time driver. If you want to use more apps (of course you want) you need to set up dmix (but I never used it myself) or use an additional layer like Jack or Pulseaudio.

Working with Jack is pretty easy, actually: install qjackctl and use it to configure and start Jack. Set the buffer big enough that you don't have xruns (that is, audio buffer uder/overflows) and you should be good to go.

If you don't do pro-audio work, you can skip the real-time and low-latency optimizations, but if you want you can look here, here and of course here.

You'll need to instruct ALSA to use Jack for non-jack-aware software (otherwise, no audio from flash, for example):
install alsa-plugins with the "jack" USE flag enabled and put this in your ~/.asoundrc:

[phobos13013]

EmaRsk,
Thanks for taking this on with me! So, I was on an old box that I had configured eons ago and just hobbled it along over at least 5 years through various changes and didnt seem to have a problem with alsa historically. I must have had pulse installed for a long time and just didnt realize it (pretty sure it was skype which had forced me into it some time in the past) because I always had an environment where all apps played simultaneously with no real effort.

Never messed with dmix, and I wouldnt mind trying it, but I dont even know if I know what that is let alone how to configure it.

Anyway, I would love to be using JACK if possible since the reason I have finally upgraded and migrated to this new box is to get things like hw synths and midi functioning but between all the advances in all areas of linux combined with the new hw is posing quite the challenge; i missed out on many of these improvements since I was a one box pony for so long.

All this is to say, that I have no idea how to configure this box for JACK. I tried your off the shelf conf file and nothing changed, although I had seen one very similar to it in another post regarind getting flash working and it too didnt work. When I do start qjackctl, I do get this cluster after jack starts:

[EmaRsk]

Hmm, "hw:Generic" doesn't sound right. Go into the setup and select the correct interface from the list.
As a start, you'll probably want to select a bigger buffer than "128", to avoid xruns. Also, if it complains about realtime permissions, you can uncheck "realtime" for now.
Oh, and you'll need to kill or suspend Pulseaudio before starting Jack. There's a guide here on how to use them together, but you can deal with that later.

Please note that my ~/.asoundrc assumes that jackd is always running (it is on my PC).
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[phobos13013]

Yikes!
This is confusing. Please note that pulse is NOT installed on this system currently. I currently have skype installed with apulse only.

I was just fiddling with all the possible options for input/output in the jack setup. These are the only options:

Input Device: hw:HDMI (HD ATI HDMI hw:0), hw:Generic (HD-Audio hw:1), hw:Generic,0 (AC887-VD Analog hw:1,0), hw:Generic,1 (AC887-VD Alt Analog hw:1,2)
Output Device: hw:HDMI (HD ATI HDMI hw:0), hw:HDMI,3 (HDMI 0 hw:0,3), hw:Generic (HD-Audio hw:1), hw:Generic,0 (AC887-VD Analog hw:1,0), hw:Generic,1 (AC887-VD Alt Analog hw:1,2)

I really do not understand which to choose. If I choose the same one for input and output, the server starts with no errors but then I get no sound, all apps say that the device or resource busy. If I choose any analog option (hw1:x) but different ones for input/ouput, the server starts with the error shown above but I get sound (presumably through ALSA only).

I just do not understand this configuration. I really want to get jack working but I just do not understand now it even works, i guess. I will have to give up and see if pulse works, which I havent tried yet with the sound card but I hope it works. If it doesnt, I will be back. I am just completely confused by the way sound works on motherboards these days. I used to not have to worry about it before, ALSA just worked for me....[/quote]
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[EmaRsk]

Don't give up, if you want to work with MIDI and synths, Jack is pretty much mandatory

OK, so you you don't have Pulseaudio, one problem less to deal with.

It's funny that your soundcard is listed as "Generic", but that seems correct after all. I see that you have two analog sub-devices, I never dealt with such cases to be honest.

You say that if you select the same device for in/out, jack starts. Let's try one step at a time:

• clean your ~/.asoundrc from my code, let's start with just the /etc/asound.conf you posted before
  
• please, tell me if this works and post the output:

  Code:

  jackd -dalsa -dhw:1

  
  
• do you have mpv or mplayer installed?

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[phobos13013]

Arrrgh, So I realize that I added your code to /etc/asound.conf not the ~/.asoundrc but I went ahead and tried that real quick and still no change altho if I select the same input/output in jack the readable/writable system clients disappear (still the ALSA lib error message listed above) but sound (still one app at a time and no flash).

Anyhoo, so I cleared out ~/.asoundrc which I guess then defaults to /etc/asound.conf and run the command I get this:

[EmaRsk]

[phobos13013]

Back again! Thanks SO much for helping me with this. I am more of a dialectical problem-solver than I am a solitary one.

OK, so heres what happened:

-Yup, all asound* files are clear
-Well here we have the first problem; no play does not work! I basically get the exact same problem listed here... but it seems the solution has already been implemented (also I am not concerned with HDMI audio ATM!) https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=185675
-So I didnt even get this far with the above issue; however, note I DID NOT activate the jackd kill.... I didnt realize that is what it was suggesting! (Also note though that when I run jack through qjackctl, I do not get that result. The server continues with no fails except for in all the instances already mentioned)
-Here down havent even gotten that far.

So is there a hw alsa issue? I am certain there is a well documented completely obvious solution to this but I am still peering deep into this fog to figure it out, THANKS AGAIN for your patience!
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[EmaRsk]

Well, if aplay fails, then there's something blocking the device, or /etc/asound.conf isn't configured correctly.
How does it fail? What's its output?
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[phobos13013]

Like I say, aplay fails with the same commands as the link I provided...

First, aplay complains:

[EmaRsk]

[phobos13013]

EmaRsk,
So I try it on all the other files I can find and for the ones that pick out the right sampling rate, I get:

[EmaRsk]

Are you using wav files? Did you try sox's "play" command? What player do you have installed? mplayer? mpv? xine? vlc?
You got to have something that works, otherwise we're not going to get even started.
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[phobos13013]

Well... I am playing mp3s, not wav. And the thing is, even though aplay isnt outputting properly, I can then use my mp3 manager to play something (I am using clementine for audio, vlc for video) without any problem, just one at a time.
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