audacity-1.3.4 (and audacity-1.3.4-r1) includes a buggy portaudio-v19 snapshot for audio recording/playback. As a result, starting audacity or opening the preferences dialog takes a minute due to timeouts, all attempts at playback or recording to alsa devices fail, and the application prints a constant stream of error messages: configuring for 44100Hz, period = 1024 frames (23.2 ms), buffer = 2 periods ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 16bit little-endian ALSA: use 2 periods for capture ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit little-endian ALSA: use 2 periods for playback Expression 'ret' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1034 Expression 'AlsaOpen( hostApi, parameters, streamDir, &pcm )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1066 Expression 'ret' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1034 Expression 'AlsaOpen( hostApi, parameters, streamDir, &pcm )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1066 Expression 'ret' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1034 Expression 'AlsaOpen( hostApi, parameters, streamDir, &pcm )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1066 Expression 'ret' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1034 Expression 'AlsaOpen( hostApi, parameters, streamDir, &pcm )' failed in 'src/hostapi/alsa/pa_linux_alsa.c', line: 1066 etc. See the Debian bug (in the URL field) for more gory details. The solution is to update audacity's internal portaudio snapshot to 2007-12-07 or later, which is known to fix the alsa and jack bugs. This has already be done by audacity upstream: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Audacity_PortAudio_v19
Created attachment 143093 [details] Ebuild with newer portaudio snapshot To fix the bug, here's an ebuild that uses the 20071207 portaudio-v19 snapshot.
Created attachment 143095 [details, diff] portaudio-cvs-rev1.7.patch (for above ebuild) Patch from audacity CVS, modifications to portaudio-v19 required for audacity to compile. Used by the above ebuild.
Erm... This should use system portaudio libs, not any bundled nonsense. Until portaudio-19 gets unmasked, the functionality should be just hard disabled.
(In reply to comment #3) > Erm... This should use system portaudio libs, not any bundled nonsense. Until > portaudio-19 gets unmasked, the functionality should be just hard disabled. 1. Audacity-1.3 has ZERO functionality without portaudio (because it uses portaudio for all sound I/O). 2. Audacity-1.3 cannot use external portaudio-18, because -18 and -19 have different APIs and feature sets. 3. (this is the fun part) Audacity-1.3 CANNOT use an external portaudio-19 either! This is because it actually uses a custom-patched CVS snapshot of portaudio-19, and those patches have apparently not been taken by portaudio upstream. So in this case, I recommend doing what Audacity upstream recommends, and using their bundled patched internal portaudio snapshot.
(In reply to comment #4) > Audacity-1.3 CANNOT use an external portaudio-19 > either! This is because it actually uses a custom-patched CVS snapshot of > portaudio-19, and those patches have apparently not been taken by portaudio > upstream. Yeah, this is just wonderful strategy. Shipping (broken as a bonus) custom-patched bundled libs is definitely the way to go... should be employed more widely for complete PITA maintainer experience. In a similar way, this also bundles its own allegro and links it in statically so that in case of vulnerability users can enjoy that permanently.
(In reply to comment #2) > Created an attachment (id=143095) [edit] > portaudio-cvs-rev1.7.patch (for above ebuild) > > Patch from audacity CVS, modifications to portaudio-v19 required for audacity > to compile. Used by the above ebuild. > hmm the patch doesn't apply here against 1.3.4 :(
(In reply to comment #6) > hmm the patch doesn't apply here against 1.3.4 :( Of course not. Look at what the attached ebuild does. The patch is not applied to audacity-1.3.4; instead it is applied to the portaudio v19_20071207 snapshot (which the ebuild uses to replace audacity-1.3.4's broken portaudio snapshot)
(In reply to comment #7) > (In reply to comment #6) > > hmm the patch doesn't apply here against 1.3.4 :( > > Of course not. Look at what the attached ebuild does. The patch is not applied > to audacity-1.3.4; instead it is applied to the portaudio v19_20071207 snapshot > (which the ebuild uses to replace audacity-1.3.4's broken portaudio snapshot) > ha ! I didnt see that, thanks ! Indeed, it seems to improve alsa playback (which happened to not work at all recently here while it used to work if using a specific frequency rate iirc). Any reason to use pa_stable from dec. 2007 while audacity cvs uses one from jan. 2008 ?
(In reply to comment #8) > Any reason to use pa_stable from dec. 2007 while audacity cvs uses one from > jan. 2008 ? No reason, it's just that while googling for how to fix the bug, I've read many reports that Dec. 2007 portaudio snapshots are known to work well, and I know that audacity used to have the 20071207 snapshot in their CVS version (although I guess they have upgraded to a newer snapshot by now).
updated in r2, thanks a lot !
If audacity 1.3.4-r1 is known to not work because of this issue, should it be (hard)masked? It still shows as stable.