Install instructions for V1.0.2
January 4, 2013
FAQ
January 6, 2013
Login to Fluxbox first. Then we must transfer some music to the box. We can use removable storage like USB disks and sticks, CD/DVD or we can transfer our music via ssh from another machine. AP Linux comes with two audio servers. Pulse audio server and Jack. Jack is the real thing. Pulse is just there so you can listen other things like Youtube videos and such. If you don’t need it, just remove it. Or read in the FAQ how to disable pulse audio without uninstalling.
Now let’s go straight to business. Before doing anything we must find audio card in our PC. We’ll be using program qjackctl (Jack control). Right-click on desktop and choose qjackctl. Click Setup. Now click interface (right button – select PCM device name, if you can’t find it look at the picture below). There you will find your sound card. In our case it’s KingRex UD384 async-USB DAC. Check “Audio” and set it to “Playback Only” because we’ll be playing audio only. Check Realtime, choose Sample Rate, Frames/Period and Periods/Buffer. You will see how latency changes when you play with this options. When you are satisfied click OK and Start button. 
In Messages you will see something like this:
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
control device hw:1
control device hw:1
audio_reservation_init
Acquire audio card Audio1
creating alsa driver … hw:1|-|256|2|96000|0|2|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:1
configuring for 96000Hz, period = 256 frames (2.7 ms), buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
19:40:39.405 JACK connection change.
19:40:39.406 Server configuration saved to “/home/lero/.jackdrc”.
19:40:39.407 Statistics reset.
19:40:39.413 Client activated.
Now open deafbeef audio player. Right-click -> deadbeef –> Edit –> Preferances –> Output Plugin and select JACK output plugin. 
File –> Add files and that should be enough….
Also you can use Audacious music player. Just don’t use big players like Rhythmbox, Banshee or Exaile. They are not basic music players and they use various databases and services that are resource demanding. And we don’t want that in our Linux box.
If you have successfully configured your DAC to play music, send us what type and model of DAC you are using so we can have a database which devices works. We will then publish this list on a webpage. Â Also you can tell us your opinions with this DACs, do they sound better in Windows or Mac environment and such. E-mail is info@ap-linux.com.
66 Comments
forgive the noob questions. i’ve never installed linux before.
i see that you’re using an external DAC. i have an audioengine D1. it should work, no?
i have all my music on secondary HDDs installed in my current PC. i’m currently running win8 and plan on dual-booting. will i be able to access these files through AP-Linux?
Audioengine D1 should work without problems. And yes you will be able to access your music files through AP-Linux.
Hi,
Another noob question – I’m using an Audioquest Dragonfly, will the Deadbeef player and A-P Linux change the bit rates automatically to deal with high-res file playback?
It depends on what sound server you use. ALSA, Jack, Pulse…. And check settings in Deadbeef.
Sure. Just configure Deadbeef to use the alsa output plugin. No need to mess around with jack.
Also make sure you configure the mixer to control the volume of your Dragonfly.
Oh, and make sure you get rid of the resampler in Deadbeef.
Hi, linux noob here. I installed it and got all the way through fine. I can play music through the onboard sound on the motherboard (ie headphone jack, but I cannot seem to get a usb soundcard to connect. The sound card is a simple enough PCM2707 USB-spdif converter, standard drivers in windows. When I open system information, with the soundcard plugged in, I see nothing under USB devices….. any ideas?
Ta
Go here, http://www.ap-linux.com/documentation/playing-audio/
look at the picture, then try to find your card with qjackctl
Hi, I’m a win user.
Is it possible to run Hiface One with it?
If yes, could you explain how (for dummies 🙂 …
best regars
Whit AP linux, of course
Yes, http://www.ap-linux.com/news/m2tech-hiface-evo/
Thanks.
Somehow, someway ,y usb card is being picked up now. However, jack won’t start for me:
Could not connect to JACK server as client.
– Overall operation failed.
– Unable to connect to server.
Please check the messages window for more info.
with a load more messages in the message box.
However, I can go into audacious and select alsa as the output device, select usb etc and it plays fine.
I take it from your instructions that jack is the best way to get sound out?
(I have other issues with the hiface driver – fatal error, cannot connect o github,com, but maybe we’ll sort one issue at a time!!
Never mind – did a restart and its working now!!
Off now to try and sort out the hiface issue.
I bought the Audioquest Dragonfly DAC today.
Amazing little device. I am using it’s 3.5mm output to go staight into my AKG 702 cans and it really makes them sing!.
Just thought I would mention a bit of set up I had to do to take full advantage of the Dragonfly’s analogue volume control. If you follow the instructions above everything works fine but even setting deadbeef’s volume slider all the way up did not provide enough volume to rock the headphones. What Audioquest suggests is that you have your software players volume maxed out and then use the system volume to control the level. Of course they provide instructions in their manual for Windows and OSX but not Linux.
What I needeed to do is the following:
system menu > Applications > Sound > Xfce Mixer
In the mixer gui use the drop down to find the sound car (AudioQuest DragonFly (Alsa mixer) in my case) and Select Controls. Tick the box for PCM. Now you can use the sliders in the mixer to provide as much volume as you need.
If there is a more elegant way to accomplish this please let me know. Thanks,
grep
You can type alsamixer in terminal
I’m using Audio-GD SA-2 USB DAC & Xubuntu 13.04. I tried different players (Audacious, Deadbeef). But when I switched from one track (16bit/44) to another (24bit/192) there were strong distortion of sound! Can this AP-Linux help solve the problem? Thanks!
Yes it can.
AP-LINUX is AMAZING. I use it with HD audio and the sound quality is incredible, but I am facing a problem now.
I try to install my Multiface in AP-LINUX, failed to setup in JACK, but I can setup successfully in players such as audacious and DeeDBeef, and the player can play the music files without problem, the real problem is there is no sound coming out of Multiface, no matter analog or digital, there is no sound at all.
What happened? can anybody help me? thank you very much.
Hello – using the 192khz Vlink S/PDIF’d to a rega DAC. Followed your specs exactly as above (btw the filename for the “server prefix” appears necessary to allow jack to start). Able to select the USB device as hw:1 and deadbeef shows that the music is playing when selecting the jack output plugin. However, I get no sound. Are there any particular things we need to do with the “sound settings” or anything? Without using jack or deadbeef I can start a player like clementine and play 44.1 thru the DAC but then of course, no high sample rates allowed (A pulse audio thing I presume).
Alsamixer shows pulseaudio as the card even though I put in the “no start” option as recommended.
Thanks for any help.
Thanks for feedback. It’s probably pulesaudio causing the problem. On many systems jack and pulseaudio don’t like each other. Open terminal and go to .pulse directory (cd .pulse). Enter this command: “echo autospawn=no > client.conf” This will create client.conf file with autospawn=no argument which simply tells pulseaudio not to start on boot. Reboot the system and try again.
Thanks for the help.
This was already done. However the previous instructions on this site indicated a space on each side of the “=” sign. I will edit the file and remove the spaces in case they are relevant (rarely in a config file but…). I have also tried sudo killall pulseaudio and then stopped the jack server and restarted and then restarted deadbeef still to no effect.
There’s no “connection” I have to make in jack to make it aware of a music source like deadbeef is there?
You can see if pulseaudio is running with “ps auxw | grep pulse” command. If you see something like “user1 3109 0.0 0.1 97604 5644 ? S
Something broke in my last replay… I meant to say if you see /usr/bin/pulseaudio in output of “ps auxw” command then pulseaudio is still running. It’s important that you have sound. You will get to the jack eventually. It’s probably some little thing that you missed. Which version of AP-Linux are you using? In 2.0 there are major problems with S/PDIF.
Well I re-installed 2.1 as it just came out… TODAY!!! So I re-installed the distro, and jack now has made available the entries “interface” and “output device” for which I entered my USB to spdif converter hw1 and I also removed the two spaces on either side of the equal sign in the client.conf file. Now things work. Well, not deadbeef as it needs the sample rate to be set for each change in source sample rate (I removed the sample rate converter per the recommendation on these pages – I bet if I re-installed the SR converter things might work). Now using audacious and clementine and things are working fine. Well occassionally clementine seems to crap out, but a large update just appeared and I anticipate better. Thanks so much for your help.
I’m a sucker for smart playlists and shuffles so I like Clementine. I will do some work digitizing high SR files and playing them back on my oscilloscope to satisfy myself that things are working up to snuff.
Liking mint and cinnamon so far (am a long time Ubuntunian).
Thanks for your help all!
BTW audacious configured to play through Jack produces highly distorted really slow sound (192kHz file playing at 44.1 probably with other problems). Sorry I didn’t see a way to edit my previous post.
This happened to me once when I was playing with alsamixer settings. Don’t remember what I did to reset it to default.
I intalled AP v2.1 tree day ago and now I must say that I ‘m so inpresed with improvment over v1.0X.
In period of one year I try Ubutnu 12.04, 12.10, Ubuntu studio 12.10, 13.04 and AP v.1.09.
Also…Win 7, 8, with various players (from Foobar to JPLAY.. (JPLAY with hibernate crap, 99€))
Right know these v.2.1 of AP-Linux is best I ever heard from my computer, and from my sound system at all. And… by now (and buy far), this is the most stable version off all.
I understand that this is Mint linux in core, but.. with so many valuable tweaks, accurately choosen rt kernel version, and so..
Best regard for all your effort, and congratulations for you success with AP distribution v 2.1
Hi! I was using Jack with Audacious and DeadBeef in Ubuntu Studio with the only issue of the distortion when the resolution of the files changes. That’s why I installed APLinux. Over all I’m pleased and I’ve noticed an improvement in sudio quality using Alsa but I cannot see Audacious or Deadbeef in Qjackctrl, even when I set up the plugins and using the same soundcard than in my prior configuration. Any idea? I don’t know the name of my soundcard but it’s the one inside the monitors Alesis Usb 520.
Sorry I don’t understand the question. You don’t see Audacious or Deadbeef in Qjackctrl? Audacious and Deadbeef are different programs and they don’t appear in Qjackctl. Right click anywhere on desktop and you will see menu with Audacious, Deadbeef and other programs…
I mean I couldn’t see it in the connection graph or get any sound with Jack active. I just fixed it reinstalling everything carefully following the instructions and doing the same scheme of partition than the screenshots.
How that go? If you have sound in ALSA, then you have to have sound in jack because it uses ALSA as a driver.
I don’t know how happened. I want to be cleat that I could play audio using alsa, in deadbeef and audacious, but not using Jack. It was weird cos I’ve used Jack before in Ubuntu Studio and never happened to me. I guess something configured wrong in the installation. But I reinstalled it and worked. As far I could noticed the only thing that I did different was the partition table. Thank you.
I mean, I set up Jack and starts fine (it says messages) then I open DeadBeef ans set up Jack output, and Jack says that graph has changed (messages) but in the connection graph it doesn’t appear DeadBeef I just see system (expanded it says playback two chanels). And, when I try to play a file in DeadBeef it doesn’t (playback column shows 3 dots). DeadBeef with alsa output plays fine.
Hi, I am facing same problem. DeadBeef can’t play with Jack output plugin but plays fine with Alsa. Please help.
Thank you.
Hi
I use the La Voce DAC from Aqua Acoustic (www.aquahifi.com) which works well so far with AP Linux. Is there a media player with a better user interface than Deadbeef or Audacious, something closer to ITunes but without the high overhead?
Thanks
Mike
ITunes? I have never used more complicated player :-). Maybe I’m to technical to use it :-). There is Banshee, Exaile and Rhythmbox, but I don’t know if they have support for jack server. So to get maximum from your sound card, you must tweak ALSA and this is painful. And more features the player have, more processes in the background running = more overhead…
Itunes is complicated but does have a nice UI for browsing and selection tracks. I agree ITunes is most resource demanding and not what we want for AP Linux. I am now going to explore remote control of the media player using VLC from a tablet, gess which tablet 🙂
Hi..I’m very interested to install this linux version with Deadbeef. I have a lot of CD imaged in both the ISO and NRG format. Would there be a way of directly playing these without mounting the images first?
Thx
I really don’t know. I don’t have any ISO or NRG files. But I know that mplayer can play ISO files, so maybe it’s possible that Deadbeef can play it also.
I could get jack to play audio after i uninstalled pulseaudio as i guess it was taking exclusive control of the jack server.
Now the only problem i am facing is sometimes when my machine re-starts , the hw interface numbers change for my usb dac, i have to go back edit and re-start jack.
Otherwise this is really cool. I am using ODAC usb dac and i must say sound is better than foobar on windows.
What player you recommend to play DSD files?
Gmpc with MPD. MPD in standard Linux distributions is pretty old and don’t have DSD support, so you have to download and compile the latest package.
Thanks. Any plans to add it in some future version of your distribution?
Yes, we are working on it. Maybe we will make documentation how to install it in this distribution so you don’t have to wait that long.
Hi,
I am really enjoying AP-Linux.
I need your thoughts on 1 problem though :
If i close deadbeef and open it again, it doesn’t come up.
It shows SLEEPING in system monitor.
Many instances would come up if i open over and over but all sleep.
I cannot launch deadbeef unless i reboot the computer.
Please suggest a solution.
Are you using Fluxbox? We never had any problems like that
I had thesame issue as Nitin.
Also can you please guide me how can ı remote control the aplinux with my ipad3
Didnt succed to install the VNC with cinnamon log in.
Thanks
I had the same issue (once closed deadbeef can not start till restart the system) but fixed when I configured jack to start on start up, installed the pulseaudio sink and disabled the internal sound card of my laptop for output. I don’t know exactly how this works only noticed that after applying those changes I haven’t the issue with deadbeef. I hope its help.
Bonjour,
I’ve started to use OSS with DeaDBeeF and Jack instead of alsa. For me the sound quality has improve a lot. I was just wandering if the OSS version was 4…
And another thing, when I’m starting Jack before DeaDBeeF I always get problem so I started to open DeaDBeeF only wiht output set to Jack and no more problems…
Am I going in the right direction when I’m using those settings
thanks,
M-P
Quebec, Canada
I don’t know. My DACs are not supported in OSS. If you like the sound better, than it’s fine :-).
Hi! My aplinux works fine but recently I noticed this: despite havin configured jack to 98000hz and that my dac (Pico Amp/DAC) supports 24/96kHz, in the main screen of Jack the sample rate appears like 48000Hz. Also in the “status” on the messages shows the sample rate like 48kHz and the buffer like 256 frames… But in the setup is configured like 98kHz and 512 frames. I made some experiments changing and saving the setup but the status always displays 48kHz /256 frames, it doesn’t matter if I set it higher or lower on the setup. I would like to know if there’s something in the configuration of Jack that is causing that it gets stuck in this settings.
Maybe you have two jack instances running. One running in the background that you are not aware of. If you have this option set in Deadbeef jack plugin options, than probably this is the problem. “Start JACK server automatically, if not already running” If this option is set, every time you start Deadbeef your last config will be used. Disable this option in Deadbeef jack plugins and restart your PC. You can see if you have jack already running in terminal by this command: ‘ps auxww | grep jack”
I disable the option in deadbeef an restarted. This is the output:
fermelom 3302 6.2 1.1 107736 90516 ? S<Lsl 07:39 0:25 /usr/bin/jackd -T -ndefault -P1 -t200 -dalsa -dhw:1 -r96000 -p256 -n2 -P -zs
fermelom 3364 0.0 0.0 1932 512 ? Ss 07:40 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/qjackctl
fermelom 3370 1.2 1.3 162000 107748 ? SLl 07:40 0:04 /usr/lib/qjackctl/qjackctl.real
fermelom 3578 0.0 0.0 3548 812 pts/0 S+ 07:46 0:00 grep –colour=auto jack
I don't know how read it, but I still have the wrong cofig displayed. I remember that I installed the jacksink for pulse audio and did something to initialize at the startup. I'll check if I can find it.
Disable the pulseaudio. That might causing the problem. You have in FAQ how to do this.
Hi ….
FIrst of all “Happy New Year” to all of you guys….
I tried yesterday the first time A-P Linux with the WAVEIO USB to SPDIF Converter and the Najda Board. I did some room correction with Acourate NAS. Its an amazing sound… better than JPLAY with win 8 or just JRIVER under WIN 8. Great Job !! The Next step is to configure BruteFIR for online convolution. But Im a rooky in Linux. So it will take years 🙂
My question… There are a lot of software updates in AP-Linux. About 700 Mega. Is it usefull to do these updates. Are there any influences to the sound ?
Best
Chris
No there is no influence to the sound if you upgrade. It’s just standard Mint upgrade with new packages.
just installed software, work fine , got FOSTEX HP-A7 DAC absolutely above mr gate merchandise.
details:
15:39:51.797 Patchbay deactivated.
15:39:51.800 Statistics reset.
15:39:51.807 ALSA connection change.
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
15:39:51.818 ALSA connection graph change.
15:40:20.270 JACK is starting…
15:40:20.271 /usr/bin/jackd -t2000 -dalsa -dhw:2 -r96000 -p256 -n2 -P -o2
Cannot connect to server socket err = No such file or directory
Cannot connect to server request channel
jack server is not running or cannot be started
15:40:20.302 JACK was started with PID=4145.
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
no message buffer overruns
jackdmp 1.9.9
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2012 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
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
control device hw:2
control device hw:2
audio_reservation_init
Acquire audio card Audio2
creating alsa driver … hw:2|-|256|2|96000|0|2|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
control device hw:2
configuring for 96000Hz, period = 256 frames (2.7 ms), buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 24bit little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
15:40:22.412 JACK connection change.
15:40:22.413 Server configuration saved to “/home/roly/.jackdrc”.
15:40:22.414 Statistics reset.
15:40:22.419 Client activated.
15:40:22.422 JACK connection graph change.
15:40:50.363 JACK connection graph change.
15:40:50.449 JACK connection change.
Hi,
There is resampling to 48 kHz included in AP linux through ALSA. Can it be changed to use the source sampling frequency instead? In case this is not possible, how can I change the sampling frequency to 44.1 kHz instead?
Thanx
Look for man asoundrc.
Hi, this is my first linux installed pc.
I used to play all my audio with foobar under windows.
My large storage is sitting on my other PC on the network and we shared all the songs and movies for the entire family
How do I connect with networks drive and play it with this ap-linux.
Thanks
It depends on how you share your music on that pc. Most common type is using SAMBA or NFS.
Hi I shared th files under Windows 7.
How I do mapping network drive ?
Should I install another additional program?
Anyway I successfully test the sound running Jack with my ZeroDAC with USB connection. But I keep failing when trying the coax spdif with all combination interface. Is Jack only work with USB interface?
Thanks
Look for this pages
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1208
http://www.ap-linux.com/forums/topic/network-problem/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba/SambaClientGuide
Jack can use spdif interface too.
It works with my KEF x300A
Thanks alot for this! Instructions were clear and simple. Made a world of difference in sound quality for me. Before this the music had a really dry feel to it, after setting this up it feels a lot more rich with depth to it. Using Clementine player with a Fiio e10, DT-990 pro headphones.
My Setup is :
Thinkpad T430
DAC Calyx PaT
Grado SR125e
I’d like to inform you that this dac is working fine using JACK, paired with Audacious, as deadbeef didn’t have the jack output option anymore.
Now, it’s more refined, and added more body in the mid section.