Ardour output failed [SOLVED]

[ExecutorElassus]

I've used Ardour in the past to record voiceovers, and it's worked fine. Now, however, I've imported an mp3 file, and playback no longer works. I get the following error in the Ardour console:

Code: Select all

2025-03-18T15:03:11 ERROR: AlsaSeqMidiIO: Device initialization failed.
2025-03-18T15:03:11 WARNING: AlsaMidiIn: failed to open midi device '15:0'.
2025-03-18T15:03:11 WARNING: AlsaAudioBackend: cannot acquire realtime permissions.

Several things: I don't care about MIDI and never use it. How can I disable these warnings? However, why is AlsaAudioBackend failing to get realtime permissions? Every other audio system I use works (audacious, the browser, etc), so why is this failing?

But lastly, maybe a workaround: what I really want to do is take this mp3 file of a piano improvisation and transcribe it into notation. There are online tools to do this, but the free version only allows 20-second clips. I was going to try to use Ardour to cut up the audio file and do it piece by piece. Is there a better way to do this? Is there any automated tool that can take an mp3 of a piano recording and convert it into either MusicXML or even just a pdf of notation? (ultimately I'm going to re-encode it in lilypond anyway).

So if I have an mp3 file, what's the easiest way to get (probably the most practical solution) some semblance of a pdf of music notation that I can transcribe?

Thanks for the help,

EE

[szatox]

I know of WaoN, which I found on sourceforge a long time ago.
It's damn old and honestly it didn't work that great for my use case, but it is _something_, and maybe it will work better with your tracks, or maybe I just couldn't tune it properly. Well, try it and see for yourself.
Once you have a midi file, you can work with it as sheet music.


And this is just a crazy idea, but perhaps it would be possible to patch something up using gnuradio framework. It is not meant to be used that way, and it would be a very DIY option, but if we treat it as a digital data demodulation... Who knows, it might a fun thing to do in its own right. Not that I know how to use it; I'm just vaguely aware if its existence.

[ExecutorElassus]

What I suspect happened with the audio device was that I had audacious paused on playback, which means ardour couldn't get exclusive access. But once I closed audacious and restarted alsa, it still didn't work, and then I had no audio at all and had to reboot. I suspect ardour does something wonky if I try to start it up while some other app is using the audio device.

But anyway, there's also a wrinkle with the audio file: it's not remotely a regular piece. Like, no regular meter, tempo, etc. It's just freely atonal improv, which means the couple online tools I've tried to get a midi file return unusable garbage. I'm probably going to have to sit down with my partner (who's a pianist with pitch-recognition) and just have them try to play it back on a midi keyboard. I hate having to do it the hard way, but I don't know that any online or free solutions are going to fare very well.

Welp, at least when I rebooted I was able to take a few minutes to open up the case and clean the dust filters, so there's that.

Anyway, thanks again for tips.

[szatox]

Regarding Ardour playback issue, maybe the output got stuck for some reason and you need to re-select it?
Restarting ALSA doesn't actually restart anything, it just reapplies stored state of volume bars and mute switches. On top of that "realtime permissions" is not an issue that should break your sound completely. It might lag or stutter a bit if your system is very busy, but not producing any sound at all must have a different cause.

Anyway, I see that Ardour has jack and pulseaudio use flags, but you make it seem like you're using raw alsa. If you're into doing some audio work, wouldn't it be a good idea to move to jack or pipewire instead? It would let you easily move sound between applications and also decouple them from hardware with a provided software mixer... And if you're using it raw, I'd expect you to use dmix.
Do you have some funny setup there?

[ExecutorElassus]

I have pulseaudio globally disabled because I'm a petty bitch who never forgave Lennart Pottering for being such a tool. It's the same reason I have systemd globally disabled.

Anyway, yes: I'm running my audio on Ardour with Alsa as the audio driver. I suppose I could set up jack or pipewire to run instead, but I've … well, just never gotten around to it, because it seemed complicated and I'm kinda dumb

I honestly couldn't say if I have dmix running, but … maybe?

When I say "restart alsa" I mean running '/etc/init.d/alsasound stop start', but whatever was causing the problem, I had no audio until I rebooted. As I said above, I had my audio player paused and it seems to have caused something to hang when Ardour tried to initialize it.

Anyway, I think I have ardour working OK now, so now I'm back to the problem of how to take a low-quality audio recording of a piano improvisation and turn it into readable notation without having to do it manually, but I think I'm out of luck there.

Since all of this is unrelated to the original topic, I'll mark this solved and move on. Thanks for the help!

[ritzmax72]

I have pulseaudio globally disabled because I'm a petty bitch who never forgave Lennart Pottering for being such a tool. It's the same reason I have systemd globally disabled.

Anyway, yes: I'm running my audio on Ardour with Alsa as the audio driver. I suppose I could set up jack or pipewire to run instead, but I've … well, just never gotten around to it, because it seemed complicated and I'm kinda dumb

I honestly couldn't say if I have dmix running, but … maybe?

When I say "restart alsa" I mean running '/etc/init.d/alsasound stop start', but whatever was causing the problem, I had no audio until I rebooted. As I said above, I had my audio player paused and it seems to have caused something to hang when Ardour tried to initialize it.

Anyway, I think I have ardour working OK now, so now I'm back to the problem of how to take a low-quality audio recording of a piano improvisation and turn it into readable notation without having to do it manually, but I think I'm out of luck there.

Since all of this is unrelated to the original topic, I'll mark this solved and move on. Thanks for the help!

Help me fix my issue. I see alsa and pulseaudio. Alsa has several hdmi outputs but none of them work, two hardware audio and one generic. I guess generic is the one I am listening through.
Even then picking it up produces no output. I have a mic connected to rear input; obs can detect it but ardour does not. I have been struck trying to fix it.