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Hi everyone, I've installed Live 8.2.2 on my 64bit Debian (testing) machine. I am able to get sound, with very low latency, but constant and strong distortion of the sound.

My first installation was done "manually" (i.e. without PoL) and I posted my issue in another forum. Besides the xruns everything seems to be working much better than expected. Sine I haven't been able to get rid of the xruns, I installed PoL to see if this would solve my issues, so I could then attempt to solve it myself.

I uninstalled Live, then reinstalled via PoL.

First impression is: great work! Seems to be maturing great, and I love the simplicity of being able to --for example-- install wineasio from within PoL.

However, after installation of Live via PoL, whenever I try to run the application I get what seems to be the Live window but all black. I am certain that the application got installed and authorized properly because I can open it through my terminal and it works fine. However when I run it from PoL I get the black screen.

Any pointers would be welcome.

Debian testing 3.13-1-amd64 / xfce
wine-1.6.2 (Windows version set to XP, audio driver to winealsa.drv, I/O set to defaults)
jackdmp 1.9.10


**Edit: Well I guess the Wine version is 1.5.20 since I'm havng the issue from within PoL.

Edited by somedude

You may have audio problems because Wine and PlayOnLinux only use ALSA for audio. I'm pretty sure Debian uses Pulseaudio which is a wrapper for ALSA and there have been some recent issues.

I've read many places that Wine and PlayOnLinux aren't very happy with pulseaudio and can respond with "pops" "crackling" and performance issues.

One thing you can do is post your debug from PlayOnLinux.
Select Live and click "Debug" instead of "Run"
Then when it crashes or has problems, the errors are output into this window.
Copy and paste here so we can see if you ARE having ALSA problems.

One error is an ALSA underrun
This one can actually be fixed, but I've read many articles online about recording audio and Wine peformance and you might be in for a ride!

Edited by booman

These are the pulseaudio packages I have installed:

[~]$ dpkg-query -l | grep pulse

gstreamer1.0-pulseaudio:amd64 1.2.3-1 amd64
libpulse-mainloop-glib0:amd64 4.0-6+b1 amd64 libpulse0:amd64 4.0-6+b1 amd64 libpulse0:i386 4.0-6+b1 i386

And 'ps -e | grep Pulse' or pulse shows no Pulseaudio processes running.

I use Mint (which is Debian at its core) and can open the system monitor.
Pulseaudio is always a running process for audio.

One thing you can do is install pavucontrol
Then launch Live in PlayOnLinux in one desktop
Then switch to another desktop and launch pavucontrol

As long as audio is playing you will be able to see ALSA and Wine controls/Volume LEDs then Pulseaudio is running and calling-the-shots.

There are ways around it and forcing Wine (PlayOnLinux) to use ALSA only... so let me know

Hi booman, I've somewhat of a (perhaps misguided) aversion to pulseaudio so I decided I'll go with ALSA for my professional audio needs. I've been able to get a pretty smooth experience with Ableton, wine-rt and wineasio installing everything manually,using ALSA with jack at 512 and disabling RT. Low amount of xruns, usable setup for playback with low latency, but not there yet for recording with effects in the audio channels.

If you want to get rid of the black screen, go to

Playonlinux -> Configure -> select the virtual drive -> Wine -> configure wine -> graphics tab -> uncheck both boxes that control windows and whatnot. I cannot remember the exact names. That will do that.

What you need for low-latency audio is this:

jack and qjackctl
low-latency kernel
user needs to be in the 'audio' group
a 32-bit install of Ableton (64-bit will not work)
WineASIO (installed via PlayOnLinux)
a low-latency audio interface.

For instance, I run:
M-audio MobilePreUSB
all of the above mentioned items, Ableton included

You do not want to run ALSA, you do not need wine-rt AT ALL. You can install WineASIO from:

PlayOnLinux -> Configure -> Select virtual drive for ableton -> Install Components -> WineASIO

If you are missing any of the 4 things it needs (32 virtual drive, jack install, qjackctl installed, and the user in the audio group), it will stop the install of WineASIO, and tell you why, and what needs to be done. PulseAudio works fine. You need to install pulseaudio-alsa for an alsa bridge, as Jack will not talk to Pulse, just ALSA. It doesnt matter, because with Jack, its just going to have pulse pass it directly to the audio interface. The only reason you need WineASIO, is that Windows programs cannot see Jack, and so to expose Jack to say, Ableton, it needs to present itself as an ASIO-compatible driver, hooked up to an ASIO-compatible interface. JACK is what represents itself as that, but it is being exposed through WineASIO. If that makes sense. lol

Edited by RoninDusette

so I decided I'll go with ALSA for my professional audio needs.

ALSA will not give you what you need without Jack.

I have recently left Ableton for the time being to work on beta-testing the Linux version of Bitwig Studio. Its a VERY advanced DAW, has many of the same features as Ableton (literally. Check it out.), and it has native Mac, Linux, and Windows versions. You can cut out the Wine/WineASIO middleman, and run native. Im testing it, but have yet to find any showstopping bugs to file. hahaha. Its a blast. Multi-monitor support, a native scripting language for interfacing with controllers, built-in Max/MSP-like programming IDE for visual programming of audio devices, full VST, RTAS, etc. support, native Jack support, blah blah blah blah.

It is the solution that I have been looking for, well, for a long time. I have been using Ableton for about 15 years (ever since its first version), but not being able to run on Linux killed me. Its actually what got me involved with POL (I wrote the Ableton and Reason scripts, as well as the WineASIO script). I just wanted my damn music software working on a level I was comfy with.

When I heard about bitwig a year or so ago, I waited very impatiently. Finally it came out, they gave me licenses to beta test it, and it ROCKS. I feel it may be what you are looking for, in terms of Ableton-esque workflow in Linux. :D

Bitwig Studio looks pretty awesome. I'm assuming it does analog multi-channel recording, right? I used to record my own music about 12 years ago with Cakewalk (Sonor) and mix/edit everything myself. Its been a while, but one day I would like to do more recording.
My biggest problem is acoustic drums. I want to mic every drum and need all the mics/input to record the entire set real-time.
Do you think Bitwig Studio and Linux can handle something like that?

Thanks DJYoshaBYD for the detailed answer, keep up the useful work.

The low-latency (NOT RT) kernel is really not needed, as it will be feeding to a low-latency audio device for processing. If you are trying to run it through the sound card on your computer, and not through a device made for recording, you will have issues, such as underruns, popping, distortion, etc etc etc..

So you're running your audio through an external sound card, which carries most of the weight of your DSP? I'm running my audio through a Focusrite 2i4, so I think all the load is on my laptop anyway, which might explain the persistent xruns. Makes sense? I might have to save and get a good external sound card that actually relieves my CPU of a bunch of operations.