[TriLUG] How to prevent? "fsck died with exit status 4"

Mon Sep 29 17:17:56 EDT 2014

No specific recommendation.  When I did mobile recording with my laptop I
think I used one of those passport portable drives.  I just remember it was
500gb.  Yeah Ardour is very non destructive.  It's best feature really that
it is hard to do something that you can't back away from.  On a side note
one other tip I have heard from people is mounting a disk with the flag
noatime also is helpful for ardour.  Never tried tweaking drive mounting to
make it work, just went with separate physical media.

I would probably at this time still make the mention that Ardour might be
overkill.  In my mind there are only two reasons to use Ardour.  Tracking a
full band or other multi instrument live or studio scenario.  It seems to
do very well in that environment.  The other reason is if you are going to
be sharing work with studios using pro-tools as there is a plug-in (paid I
think) that can cross walk your ardour data to protools and back again.
Pro-tools being so industry standard.

I will mention another reason to use ardour, well ardour3, lv2.  Ardour
really has been the pioneer with using lv2.  However from what I have seen
there is not enough lv2 software out there to replace particularly what
exists in DSSI plugins.

Seriously you should give qtractor a try.  As great as ardour is for
tracking audio, qtractor is better for arranging audio clips.

One more alternative to ardour.  I hear a lot about people using Reaper in
linux using Wine and Wineasio. Reaper is a more traditional recording style
daw, like a protools.  However I think from what you have talked about
qtractor is the best bet.  You get easy audio clip arrangement and sync to
midi clock as well as fairly easy setup of midi editing and sending to dssi
plugins.

Some musts on the DSSI synths IMO:
Zynaddsubfx - amazingly deep, lots of patches, but complicated for building
your own patches
AMsynth - classic subtractive synth setup
Hexter - Yamaha DX series love, Fm synthesis
Qsynth - basic sound font synth but a great way to grab some GM style
realistic instruments
Alsa Modular - a very neat modular synthesis setup.  Not as intuitive
though as Audulus on IOS and OS X but it also can go a bit deeper.
Hydrogen - yes it is its own drum machine but is also great to use as a
sound source, when controlled over MIDI it responds to the standard MIDI
keyboard drum map.

And for a non-DSSI add in I have to mention Bristol.  It can emulate many
classic analog and vintage synths.  You will have to more manually wire it
in to use with qtractor though, hence why Claudia comes in handy.

You know I could go on and on with the various linux audio programs there
are out there.  I will mention that if you are more MIDI heavy than audio
clip heavy Rosegarden might be worth looking at.

Ken

On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 4:57 PM, Jeremy Davis <jeremyhwllc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ken,
> Do you mind if I ask, what exactly make and model usb drive would you
> recommend? My laptop has an ssd drive and adding an extra internal is not
> an option.
>
> If I am not mistaken, the reason Ardour is so demanding on the write
> resources is because it features nondestructive recording with infinite
> "undo" capability. All the changes are written to file, which allows you to
> go as far as you wish backward or forward through changes in your session
> and the original sound files are never altered. Most other OSS DAW software
> available does not offer this. That was one of my main attractions to it.
> Plus the sampling rate is limited only by the resources of your computer.
> The forums claim Ardour is on par or exceeds the capabilities of
> proprietary software used in high end recording studios.
> On Sep 29, 2014 4:30 PM, "Ken MacKenzie" <ken at mack-z.com> wrote:
>
> > It has to do with trying to access the same disk at different points at
> the
> > same time.  Recording in Ardour you will be hitting the disk at three
> > different points:
> >
> > 1.  reading the application and OS
> > 2.  SWAP (turning swappiness down to 10 is usually recommended)
> > 3.  The actual write of the recorded data.
> >
> > add an optional 4th point if you are tracking along with existing tracks
> > and reading that data point.
> >
> > Fact is Ardour has long had an issue with writing to the same disk that
> it
> > and the os and the swap is being run from.
> >
> > When I would record remote with Ardour and the firepod it could not be
> done
> > with just the internal drive, would always get an error.  As soon as
> added
> > a USB 2.0 drive as the external audio data store all disk access issues
> > went away.
> >
> > On my desktop I have /home mounted to a completely different disk drive
> and
> > that is where Ardour records to.
> >
> > I appreciate the thoughts of what should be faster but this is a long
> known
> > thing when recording with ardour particularly with laptops.  The solution
> > has always been to use an external data store with laptops and dual
> drives
> > when using a desktop.
> >
> > Ken
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 4:20 PM, Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, 29 Sep 2014, Ken MacKenzie wrote:
> > >
> > >  Fact is for running Ardour to record audio an external drive is a must
> > for
> > >> a laptop.  Ardour does not cooperate well when the OS and application
> > live
> > >> on the same physical drive as the recording target.  A different
> > partition
> > >> alone won't do it.  It literally needs a different physical medium.
> > >>
> > >
> > > if speed is neccesary, then an external usb v2.0 harddrive (ie designed
> > > for backup only) is not going to cut it. Nothing external is going to
> be
> > as
> > > fast as the internal disk (path is shorter). Maybe he could run the app
> > off
> > > a cdrom and write to the laptop drive at least till it starts running
> > well
> > >
> > > Joe
> > >
> > --
> > This message was sent to: Jeremy Davis <jeremydavis at jeremydavis.biz>
> > To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from
> that
> > address.
> > TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> > Unsubscribe or edit options on the web  :
> >
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/jeremydavis%40jeremydavis.biz
> > Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
> >
> --
> This message was sent to: Ken M. <ken at mack-z.com>
> To unsubscribe, send a blank message to trilug-leave at trilug.org from that
> address.
> TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> Unsubscribe or edit options on the web  :
> http://www.trilug.org/mailman/options/trilug/ken%40mack-z.com
> Welcome to TriLUG: http://trilug.org/welcome
>