Fixing Retrovol to work with external sound cards

[Smithy]

I was going to reply to the thread Fix your soundcard problems by uninstalling Retrovol thread, but it's been locked.

Anyways, if anyone is trying to use an external sound card as default (disabling the internal audio) and there is no retrovol mixer, or it has disappeared, I discovered that you have to make a text file with the following code in it:

Code: Select all

 Config file for retrovol
# This file should reside in the user's home directory and be named .retrovolrc


# Which soundcard to use
#card=hw:0

# Set this to 1 to make the sliders vertical, or 0 for horizontal (only applies to the main window)
#vertical=0

# Window position
#window_x=-1
window_x=583
#window_y=-1
window_y=284

# Window dimensions
#window_width=270
#window_height=256

# Slider dimensions
#slider_width=102
#slider_height=20
#slider_margin=2
#seg_thickness=2
#seg_spacing=1

# Slider colorscheme
#background_color=#000000
#border_color=#000000
#unlit_color=#993300
#lit_color=#FFCC00

# Enable the tray_icon
#enable_tray_icon=1

# Enable the tray_menu
#enable_tray_menu=1

# Background color of tray_icon (default is default GTK background color).  Note:  the commandline -bg option overrides this
#tray_icon_background_color=#CCCCCC

# Set this to 1 to make the slider on the tray_icon vertical, or 0 for horizontal
#tray_slider_vertical=1

# Tray slider dimensions
#tray_slider_width=20
#tray_slider_height=102
#tray_slider_offset=-1

# Which slider to link with the tray_icon, identified by numid
#tray_control=37
tray_control=2



# The numids of the sliders to display, in order.  It is okay to have comments
# after the numbers as long as the numbers are the first non-whitespace
# characters.  To get a list of the slider numids, run this command:
#    amixer controls
# NOTE:  This section must go at the end of the file!

#EXAMPLE:

#sliders:
#	37	#Master Playback Volume
#	15	#Front Playback Volume
#	3	#Surround Playback Volume

sliders:

Then it needs to be saved as .retrovolrc and dropped into root.
Give X a restart and hopefully retrovol should be on the taskbar.

This, in combination with etc/ modprobe/ alsa conf and adding things like
options snd-usb-audio index=0 will make an external card the default card.

It's like trying to start an engine with wet spark plugs sometimes!

[darkcity]

retrovol has/had a bug if the soundcard referenced by hw:<card_number> isn't recognized it crashes (disappears).

Manually editing the card line in the rc file and restarting can help. (but can be a pain if multiple soundcards initialize in different orders - hence giving a different number)

~/.retrovolrc

Code: Select all

# Which soundcard to use
#card=hw:0 

I've been using a Presonus AudioBox-USB, ALSA can not set the volume for this device - so retrovol just crashes. The volume is controlled manually on the box, or by the software level rather than the sound system level.

I'd recommend people backup ~/.retrovolrc before editing it.

---

Which USB device are you using?

[Smithy]

Ah yes, that's a simpler method.

I've got a test bed for Qtractor here. It is a fully functioning distro based on Pemasu's recent Debian Pup.

So far it is performing very well, lv2, ladspa dssi plugins etc.
Only been able to try it on two machines so far, but no problems.

It is glx, so if you can get to the desktop straight away, then all well and good.


It's main focus is Qtractor, but 'tinternet and usual stuff is available. Openbox only.
If you want to try it it is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/4cm ... go-glx.iso

[darkcity]

I nice one. I'll give it a spin. I'm a fan of Qtractor and Openbox ; -)

[Smithy]

Me too, now I can finally get to try it out.

Love the way you can save all your audio and midi as a sqooshed up Qtz file, and it all comes back exactly as it was.

The Why Synth is a good little synth as well and those lv2 plugins seem mighty fine.
Would be nice to see a cpu usage led in Qtractor.