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Pisound not available to select in Audacity

Pisound Support
#1

Hello folks, I have a problem here.

Setup: Raspberry Pi 4B + Pisound, patchbox OS as recommended.

Midi out works. BUT:
I do not get audio output from pisound and it can not be chosen as output in e.g. Audacity, where the bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI devices from the pi can be chosen in the dropdown menu, but the pisound does not show up.

aplay -l lists:
[…]
Karte 2: pisound [pisound], Gerät 0: PS-33BC3VD snd-soc-dummy-dai-0 []
Sub-Geräte: 0/1
Sub-Gerät #0: subdevice #0

The sub-Device 0/1, particularly, makes me feel really uncomfortable.

I would be grateful for a hint on this.

greetings, cw

#2

Hi, this issue stems from how audio on Linux works - there’s multiple audio backends to choose from - Patchbox OS uses Jack backend by default, which allows sharing the audio card between multiple audio programs. Audacity is by default configured to use Jack, so you shouldn’t have to manually change its settings. However, Audacity itself is a bit weird citizen in Jack world, as it creates its ‘Jack client’ only while recording / playback is on in the software itself, see https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Linux_Issues#JACK for more details on how it works. On Patchbox OS, it should be enough for Audacity to be configured to use Jack, and it should do the rest on its own, without having the audio card to use explicitly specified.

ALSA backend allows only single software program to make use of one audio device, so conflicts where it’s already in use by some other software (Jack backend in this case) are likely.

Of course you may use ALSA backend on Patchbox OS too, but in that case, Jack must be disabled by running these commands:

sudo systemctl disable jack
sudo systemctl stop jack

Then configuring software to use ALSA and picking the sound card to use should work.

#3

WOW - THANK YOU for this incredibly fast reply! That is a step forward!
I disabled jack and set the pisound (card 2) as a the default sound device:
/etc/asound.conf:
defaults.pcm.card 2
defaults.ctl.card 2

Now I get audio playback from audacity and the vlc player, which is good.

Thank you very much - have a happy new year and a robust immune system!

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