jackd does not work, aplay -l shows two instances of the same card (Ubuntu 13.04, HDMI audio only)

Question

I'm on Ubuntu 13.04, using a ZaReason Zini, which as far as I can tell has no audio output other than its hdmi port. I'm trying to get the Clojure library Overtone working, and ran into the problem described here. The underlying problem seems to be that jackd doesn't work:

anand@anand-desktop:~$ jackd -R -d alsa
jackdmp 1.9.10
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2013 Grame.
jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
audio_reservation_init
Acquire audio card Audio0
creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
ALSA: Cannot open PCM device alsa_pcm for playback. Falling back to capture-only mode
Cannot initialize driver
JackServer::Open failed with -1
Failed to open server

Following the blog post and advice others have given for similar problems, I did aplay -l and saw

anand@anand-desktop:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

There seem to be two instances of the same card. Doing jackd -R -d alsa -d hw:0 produces the original error, and any other device number results in

ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:1401:(_snd_pcm_hw_open) Invalid value for card

Unfortunately, that means that the standard fix described in the blog post doesn't work for me. How can I get jackd working?

Solution 1

Well jackd -R -d alsa -d hw:0,3 seems to work:

jackdmp 1.9.10
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2013 Grame.
jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
audio_reservation_init
Acquire audio card Audio0
creating alsa driver ... hw:0,3|hw:0,3|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
ALSA: Cannot open PCM device alsa_pcm for capture. Falling back to playback-only mode
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames (21.3 ms), buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 16bit little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback

I guess I now need to figure out how to get Overtone to use that extra option.

Solution 2

For me, changing the output device in QjackCtl's settings from (defualt) to HW:PCH,0 solved the problem.

Here is the output of aplay -l:

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: HDMI [HDA Intel HDMI], device 8: HDMI 2 [HDMI 2]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: VT1802 Analog [VT1802 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 2: VT1802 Alt Analog [VT1802 Alt Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0 

Comments

[Anand]

I should note that this ppa is installed on my computer. Before I installed it, the sound didn't work at all.

[Anand]

From lspci: 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)

[Anand]

In case anyone gets here while trying to get Overtone to work, the solution is to simply run the command above in a separate terminal window or in the background, then start Overtone. Overtone automatically connects to the running jackd instance.

[chefarov]

Keep in mind that you also have to set the input and output device in qjackctl setup->settings->advanced

[TravelTrader]

Yes! Your hint was the one that worked! Thanks a lot.

[Josie Thompson]

@Anand this also works for Supercollider, thank you!