So I’m new to Linux and I’m having a bunch of issues related to USB audio devices that are literally driving me up the wall. First my audio was super distorted then I found out that changing to a different USB port fixed that but I don’t know why then later my audio stopped working altogether for what seems like no reason. I’m currently using an Objective DAC from Mayflower Electronics and it works perfectly fine under Windows but on Linux it seems to be hit or miss even though it should work as a plug and play device.
Anyone know how to fix this?
Also I don’t really know how Linux works but it seems to be related to pulse audio or something not working. I had sound before but something happened and I’ve edited the daemon.conf like 50 times now trying to get it to work.
you can also check dmesg and other log sources to see if the device is disconnecting due to inconsistent power, and if your motherboard has USB power management features, set them to “always on” or disable them
I thought USB class audio devices were standard? I mean the DAc works (sometimes) and only in some USB ports. To my knowledge the USB ports don’t feature power management but I could be wrong.
there’s a standard spec for USB2, but that doesn’t mean manufacturers always follow it. MOTU for example is notorious for breaking spec on their interfaces.
Is there any third party software that could make it more compatible? So far it seems like my only solution is to change USB ports every time I have a problem and I’m running out of USB ports. From what I can tell it seems like the problem lies with Pulse Audio API or something not playing ball.
you may also need to make a .asoundrc config for the device, but before messing with anything else, check dmesg and restart PA with a verbose and loglevel to see how it’s interacting with the device.
did it stop working after an update?
note: ubuntu is notorious for doing a bunch of off-label pa config customization, so maybe boot from another distro’s liveusb to make sure it even works in a linux environment in the first place
@Kilobytez95,
Unfortunately know. If the hardware is buggy or non compliant, you can employ hacks but at the end of the day the hardware is at fault. We have these type of issues with Gnu/Linux and ACPI because most manufacturers use the spec as a suggestion at best, but go off the reservation mostly. This requires “quirks” to be put in the kernel drivers to deal with these oddities.
Also, just because something is plug and play in MS Windows or MAC OS X, does not mean it will work on another platform. The manufacturer made the drivers for one platform and the only way that you can get it to work on another is either by reverse engineering the existing driver, or writing one from scratch. If they user hardware that already has kernel drivers in the new platform, then you may be able to string things together.
I know that you are not using ArchLinux but honestly, between the Arch wiki and the Gentoo wiki, you could be set. Canonical is known for doing things their own way even when it breaks the agreed upon way to do things in the *nix/GNU world.
Try testing audio playback without Pulseaudio
Open Pulseaudio Volume Control at configuration tab - pavucontrol -t 5
find your DAC device and set it to ‘Off’
Play audio direct to hardware device in ALSA
If audio playback is no better, Pulseaudio is probably not source of problem
Keep Pulseaudio Volume Control open to prevent any power management kicking in to cause a problem