Ardour 2.3 on Ubuntu Hardy - 100% cpu
The upgrade to Ubuntu Hardy and thus to Ardour 2.3 seems to have broken my system. Simply put: I open an Ardour session and the CPU use jumps to 100% and stays there. It takes something like ten seconds for the program to register when I try to select a different sound file. It will play a session fine, but doing any real editing (let alone trying to run a sequencer at the same time!) causes overload, crashes etc. It doesn’t seem to be anything to do with the plugins - disable or enable, it’s still 100% CPU. The really weird thing is that the programme doesn’t want to close down! It ignores a “Quit” command from the menu - I can “Close” the session and then quit from the next window but - here’s the surprise - check System Monitor and the Ardour session is STILL running, consuming 50% of CPU.
Hardware specs: Celeron 2GHz processor, 768M RAM, running kernel 2.6.24-16-rt.
Any suggestions? I can’t see this anywhere as an already-noted bug.
Just note that on Hardy they seem to have automatically enabled dynamic CPU scaling.
You can do a: sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils
and then run: sudo cpufreq-set -g performance
to get the most performance from your CPU (ie: No underclocking it)
You can also uninstall powernowd (I think :P) which will disable the cpu scaling.
It tied me up for a while.
Also while you’re at it, it is a good idea to install the rt kernel in the Ubuntu repos by doing a:
sudo apt-get install linux-rt
You can also install the ubuntustudio metapackages to install lots of audio plugins and applications, should you require: ubuntustudio-video, ubuntustudio-audio, ubuntustudio-graphics, ubuntustudio-audio-plugins
Cheers
Ok, tried as advised (disabling freq scaling) and it seems to make not a lot of difference. I am using the Ubuntu Studio default RT kernel (as I said above, 2.6.24-16-rt), and jack version 0.3.2. I’ll try the generic kernel but I’m not sure it will be any better.
Hmm, I don’t think Using the generic kernel will improve your situation. Seems to be something with your set-up, as I’m not experiencing any of the issues you have. As I’m typing this I’m playing back a Rosegarden midi sequence to QSynth, synced to a Hydrogen drum sequence and an Ardour session containing the vocals with some fx plugins, all without a glitch and CPU at about 15%.
I do have a better spec machine though (AMD X2 4400+ with 1G RAM), but still you should be able to use Ardour normally. Possibly some stuff broke during the upgrade? Is an install from scratch an option? Upgrading from Gutsy to Hardy broke my display, so the method isn’t flawless for sure.
I really don’t want to reinstall my entire system, as my UbuntuStudio is highly customised and I really don’t want to go through doing that again.
Further experiment: opening a new session, the CPU usage only goes from 25-40%. It’s the older sessions, which I recorded in the last version of Ardour in Ubuntu Gutsy, that demand a 80-100% CPU load.
Doloras,
could you post the entire *.project file of an older session that consumes 80-100%cpu somewhere (maybe your own webspace or so, but there should be free spaces around to keep the code for a week or so)?
Maybe we can find out what’s wrong there.
Benjamin
p.s. In linux, there’s no need to reinstall the system, even if major things went wrong - it can always be changed without redoing everything. If people do or recommend so, they don’t know enough about this.
p.s. In linux, there’s no need to reinstall the system, even if major things went wrong - it can always be changed without redoing everything. If people do or recommend so, they don’t know enough about this.
While this is very true, sometimes reinstalling (ans thus reconfiguring) from scratch is easier and quicker than finding the solution for a broken system.
doloras:
Sorry, this was a very bad typo ;) I meant the .ardour file, you are right.
If you don’t find a place to post it, you could send it to me via e-mail “realhangman (you know what to fill in here) web.de”, I’ll post it on my website and post it here.
I know http://rafb.net/paste, but this expires after 24 hours, not so good for a forum conversation and archives.
TomB: true ;)
Benjamin
hi,
unfortunately the code seems to be incomplete. There is at least a closing
tag missing, but much more. Could you check this? The xml is invalid if it’s not complete and Ardour cannot read it.
Have you considered asking for real time help on irc?
Benjamin
First impression:
Works normal. I have 1 GB Ram and a 2 GHz AMD Athlon and have about 5 % cpu usage. Of course I don’t have the wav files, but the rest project loads. I only tells me about a missing plugin (“1767”), but I don’t think it matters.
Ok, some more things to do:
1. try to play with somewhere like Options -> Denormals (but I see you have already enabled an option… maybe another?
2. Upgrade to 2.4.1
(adding
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/spacepluk/ubuntu hardy main
to /etc/apt/sources.lst should do it)
see
http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu-studio-users@lists.ubuntu.com/msg0189…
3. check realtime mode - how do you start jackd? Via the Ardour dialog, or via qjackctl?
how is your /etc/limits.conf looking?
4. for all this step-by-step, better enter
#ardour at freenode :)
http://ardour.org/support
Benjamin
Joined: 2008-05-08