HI,

a newbie, I am trying to install and use Pd 0.53.0 on a Fedora 35 machine.
I think I installed (from source) fine, but I do not get any sound.
I am not sure what I am supposed to check and do.

Some info on my install below.
Thanks for your help.

Below, I doubt line audio APIs: PortAudio ALSA OSS is how it should be, but I am not sure how to fix.

pd 0.53.0 is now configured 
Platform:             Linux
Debug build:          no
Universal build:      no
Localizations:        yes
Source directory:     .
Installation prefix:  /usr/local

Compiler:             gcc
CPPFLAGS:             -DNDEBUG  
CFLAGS:               -ffast-math -fno-finite-math-only -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -O3  -g -O2
LDFLAGS:               
INCLUDES:             
LIBS:                 -lpthread -ldl 

External extension:   pd_linux
External CFLAGS:      -fPIC
External LDFLAGS:     -Wl,--export-dynamic -fPIC

fftw:                 no
wish(tcl/tk):         wish
audio APIs:           PortAudio ALSA OSS 
midi APIs:            ALSA OSS 
libpd:                no 

 
$ ./pd -listdev
audio input devices:
0. USB Device 0x46d:0x825 (hardware)
1. USB Device 0x46d:0x825 (plug-in)
2. HDA Intel PCH (hardware)
3. HDA Intel PCH (plug-in)
4. HDA NVidia (hardware)
5. HDA NVidia (plug-in)
6. Trust PC Headset (hardware)
7. Trust PC Headset (plug-in)
audio output devices:
0. USB Device 0x46d:0x825 (hardware)
1. USB Device 0x46d:0x825 (plug-in)
2. HDA Intel PCH (hardware)
3. HDA Intel PCH (plug-in)
4. HDA NVidia (hardware)
5. HDA NVidia (plug-in)
6. Trust PC Headset (hardware)
7. Trust PC Headset (plug-in)
API number 1

MIDI input devices:
1. ALSA MIDI device #1
MIDI output devices:
1. ALSA MIDI device #1
priority 94 scheduling failed.```

If I try to set to something different from HDA Intel, I get
ALSA input error (snd_pcm_open): Device or resource busy
ALSA output error (snd_pcm_open): No such file or directory
`

@mario60 PulseAudio is hogging alsa. Supposedly you can use pd with pulse audio through the portaudio backend but it has never worked for me. You have a few other options as well, you can install jack recompile pd with jack support, this requires you to run pulse into jack, or jack into pulse, or suspend pulse when you start jack. Or you can suspend pulse and use alsa direct. Portaudio->PulseAudio can be troublesome with audio, Pulse has a fair amount of latency so if you want to process live sound it generally is not a viable option, but if you just want to patch together synths in pd than it should be fine.

Jack is the most reliable and the frontends for jack have provisions to handle the pulse stuff for you, but you will probably need to do some setup the first time around on a system like Fedora which does not seem all that popular in the audio community. Initial setup can be a pain but once it is going you just start jack and that is it. Suspending pulse manually and using alsa works well but there can be surprises when restarting pulse, and they can be a trick to sort out.

@oid Thanks for your reply and help.

I wish to have Pd 0.53.0 just to learn a few basics and to compare it to some other tools . So I do not want to meddle with my audio settings too much. PulseAudio (+ PulseAudio Control) is working fine and I would like to keep it. For the time being I would like to avoid to install Jack.

"Supposedly you can use pd with pulse audio through the portaudio backend but it has never worked for [you]". How do I try?
Thanks Cheers
mario

@mario60 said:

How do I try?

As far as I know you just select portaudio in the media menu and it should just work, but as I said, it never has worked for me and I never really bothered to explore why since I am ok with Jack and need it for other applications anyways.

Neither the PR to support pulseaudio in portaudio https://github.com/PortAudio/portaudio/pull/336 nor the pr to support it in pure-data have been merged
https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/963
https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/issues/846
(in light of which, I'm not really sure what the point of using portaudio on linux is)..

I haven't tried to get OSS to work (if it's even installed?) but I have gotten alsa to work by using the -alsa flag on the command line, provided no other applications are using the sound card. However if I change the sample rate while pd is running audio stops working.

@seb-harmonik.ar That explains why it does not work for me. Back when I tried it https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/issues/846 had been closed at the post explicitly stating that pulseaudio was supported through portaudio.

Hi
so what?
Nobody is using Pd on a Fedora machine?
Thanks anyway
cheers
mario

EDIT It works installed on Win10 within my Oracle VM Virtual Box.

@mario60 The reality of Linux audio at the moment is that, for real-time, low-latency audio creation tools (Pure Data, SuperCollider, VCV Rack, Ardour, Bitwig, Reaper, LMMS, Renoise, Qtractor, etc etc), it is not a plug-and-play experience. If you're looking for a plug-and-play experience, you won't find it in Linux. The choice for you, then, is either to accept Linux as it is, or switch to a different OS.

The recommended way forward for these apps is to set up JACK with PulseAudio integration -- which you do once, and then keep using it for the lifetime of that system.

The assertion that "nobody is using xxx" because there isn't a plug-and-play experience is not quite correct. People are doing this work in Linux -- they're just doing it through JACK.

(Incidentally, I recently installed the latest Ubuntu Studio -- 22.04 -- on a new system. It includes a new Studio Controls app which is almost plug-and-play. There are a couple of odd behaviors, with relatively easy workarounds, but it's pretty good. So that would be another alternative for you -- use a distribution like Ubuntu Studio that preinstalls the audio ecosystem.)

hjh