ChucK on Linux cannot find the audio ports

[Acoustic Interloper]

One of my students is trying to use the current ChucK on Ubuntu Linux for the first time. I have used ChucK on Windows and OSX, but not on Linux.

Here is his email describing the problem:

[Kassen]

Ok. Let's go over this;

There are basically three types of Linux audio driver;

*OSS (slow and limited, only used by stuff like Adobe Flash and Skype, comparable to Windows media drivers)
*Alsa (Decent, more or less like ASIO)
*Jack (very low latency, routable from program to program, typically only supported by media/art programs)

As a rule of thumb I'd pick Alsa since OSS doesn't really have any advantages aside from compatibility with things from ages ago and Jack only really starts to shine when you want/need the routing stuff. This is, of course, a confusing situation. For reasons unknown, instead of simply dropping OSS support, the solution is deemed to be adding layers that can support multiple protocols and mix soundsources between them. This is where -typically- Pulse Audio comes in; I don't know why as I know 0 people that actually like it and it does weird things like only allowing a single OSS client which then gets to muck up the rest.

Anyway, the first step would be wondering what version of ChucK you compiled; when compiling you need to pick one of these three.

Please run this;

[Acoustic Interloper]

Thank you, Kassen. It's nice chatting with you again.

I'll get together with my student and let you know how it goes. Your response promises to be very helpful.

Take care.

Dale

[DrumAliens]

Can't check right now Acoustic Interloper but I believe I get a similar message if I try and run ChucK with out first running Jack.

As Kassen says try chuck --version and that should shed some light on the matter

[Kassen]

Yeah, that's likely it. With Jack you could have met all of the dependencies but then when the Jack server isn't running you still won't get a sound.

This stuff is a mess. Jack is absolutely amazing and can compete quite successfully with what other OS's have to offer for audio routing but the mainstream desktop releases focus on stuff like Flash and Skype, making things a bit harder for people who want to deal with media stuff.

OSS is the oldest of the three and kept everywhere for compatibility... which also means it's the safe bet for companies like Adobe, which in turn prevents it from getting moved out like it should.

To make matters worse; there are ways of addressing the soundcard (like the RTAudio library) that can deal with multiple protocols from a single program. ChucK uses that library but our version is out of date. This also affects Windows with the whole DX v.s. ASIO mess.

All of this is extremely annoying and often very confusing. Might be the one case where I envy the Apple policy of forcing a single option on everyone, but then again Apple has been known to change things without first telling developers that they will, which of course leads to it's own set of issues.

[dewdrop_world]

I've been fiddling with the latest puredyne, which is basically ubuntu 9.10 + a ton of audio stuff preconfigured. Jack just works out of the box there.

[Kassen]

Seconded. Pure:Dyne is the fashionable flavour of the season with good reason. Nice people there too.

[Acoustic Interloper]

I have not heard from my grad student lately, but thanks for the PureDyne recommendation. It sounds like a good recommendation if I get to using Linux for audio.

[Acoustic Interloper]

[Kassen]

[Acoustic Interloper]

[Kassen]

Quite odd. I can't explain that and I compiled ChucK on Ubuntu quite a few times without issues beyond my own initial inexperience.

I'll keep a eye out for more issues like this, maybe there is a structural problem hidden somewhere.