Joe Giampaoli's Blog

This device is recognized by ALSA and works well out of the box on linux since it’s a USB1 class device. Only thing is that it will only capture in 16 bit at a sample rate of 44100. To be able to capture @ 24bit with it under linux you will have to patch and compile your own kernel. Once you do that you will be able to capture in 24 bit (Big Endian) up to a sample rate of 48000. Also I believe the digital input/output is enabled this way, have not tested myself, since I try to go “naturally” analog as possible.

I found a patch for this specific device at the ALSA wiki but it was quite old, it corresponded to kernel 2.6.22, I had downloaded it and readjusted it for a newer kernel (2.6.29). But now someone has uploaded a newer patch for kernel version 2.6.31. So I re-adjusted it again for kernel version 2.6.31.4 (which is the latest with realtime patch at the moment I wrote this guide), and I will probably continue updating the patch once in a while for newer kernels, so it’ll be a nice idea to come here and check once in a while.

NOTE:  This guide is mostly aimed for the ubuntu linux distribution. The method used here on how to compile your own Kernel is that it will leave your original Kernel intact, that means it will not mess anything with your current kernel. It will create two deb packages for you to install so you can then boot to that custom kernel, if something goes wrong with the new kernel, all you have to do is boot back to your original kernel and uninstall the custom self compiled one from synaptic. So this is straight forward easy and safe. You should leave your original kernel installed for everyday use and only use the custom self compiled one for audio production, If you only intend to use the computer  as audio hardware, then you can remove the generic kernel to free up some space, but I really don’t recommend it.

Also this guide can be used just to compile any kernel version, just change the version numbers and don’t apply the M-Audio Fast Track Pro patch since you will get errors from versions. If you don’t want a real time kernel either, then also ignore the rt patch and the kernel configuration steps.

One more thing, if you have Nvidia card, you will have to download the ones from the official site, if you installed the ones from ubuntu repos, you will have to remove them, and install the official ones, and then also build the Nvidia kernel module for the custom new kernel, so the nvidia driver is recognized under both kernels. This is what I had to do, so you will have to search also on how to install the Nvidia drivers on ubuntu from the official site and how to build the Nvidia module for additional kernels.

MORE IMPORTANT: I HAVE ONLY TESTED THIS ON UBUNTU HARDY HERON (8.04) LTS AND WILL NOT RE-TEST UNTIL THE NEXT LTS VERSION OF UBUNTU BECAUSE I ONLY LIKE TO USE LTS VERSIONS. SO DEPENDING ON YOUR UBUNTU VERSION I CAN NOT GUARANTEE MUCH….

UPDATE: DUE TO A HARD DRIVE CRASH, I HAD TO REINSTALL MY SYSTEM, SO I DECIDED TO GIVE KARMIC KOALA (9.10) A CHANCE. EVERYTHING IS WORKING WELL AFTER FOLLOWING MY OWN GUIDE, RT KERNEL COMPILED AND INSTALLED WITHOUT ERRORS, FAST TRACK PRO RUNNING @ 24 BIT…..

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NOW THE GUIDE:

LAST EDITION APRIL 07, 2010

Note: Most text that you see bold in a box

LIKE THIS

Means that is code that you must place in a terminal window. You can easily just select it to copy and paste it to avoid typos. If you feel like typing the code yourself, go ahead, but do recheck that you are typing everything just as is provided in this guide.

1.- First of all you have to download the linux kernel and the Real Time patch by Ingo Molnar that corresponds to the same kernel version. The versions we want for both are 2.6.31.4 since we will be applying the same version of the Fast Track Pro patch. You can browse the kernel site at http://www.kernel.org

It can be a bit hard to browse and find the files, since they have all the kernel versions in there all the way down to the first historic ones that used to run on calculators   so I will point you to the right files from here.

Linux Kernel version 2.6.31.4 click here to save it to your computer.

Ingo Molnar’s Real Time Preemption patch for Kernel 2.6.31.4 click here to save it to your computer.

2.- Next you will need the M-Audio USB Fast Track Pro patch to make it work like it should under this new kernel that we will build. Click here to download it. If your browser opens it up as a text file, not to worry, just save it with your browser and make sure it has the .patch extension to it and don’t change the name on it. Or better, just left click on the link and select “save as”.

3.- Next is to enable the root account. This is not a  high security vulnerability. In ubuntu the root account is disabled by default for the simple reason of preventing new linux users using it, where you can accidentally just remove any folder in your system and that’s it, without telling you that you don’t have such permissions for such action. So don’t be afraid and enable the root account, no one will hack you if you do. Also it’s best to do this as root and not with sudo, sometimes somethings just don’t plain work with the sudo command. So to enable your root account in ubuntu just open up a terminal and do:

sudo passwd root

This will ask you to enter the new UNIX password, give it one, you can use your own sudoer password or better something only you will know. Then you will be able to login as root by typing:

su

and providing your new root password.

4.- Next we will install the necessary packages to compile a kernel. So now that you are logged in as root in your shell do:

apt-get install kernel-package libncurses5-dev fakeroot wget bzip2

5.- Now we will move the downloaded files (kernel source and patches) to the /usr/src directory, so cd to where you downloaded them and do:

mv linux-2.6.31.4.tar.bz2 /usr/src

mv patch-2.6.31.4-rt14.bz2 /usr/src

mv usbaudio-ftp-2.6.31.4.patch /usr/src

6.- Now we cd to the /usr/src directory, since we will be working from there:

cd /usr/src

And we extract the kernel source:

tar xjfv linux-2.6.31.4.tar.bz2

then we create a symlink (symbolic link) to it:

ln -s linux-2.6.31.4 linux

and we cd to the symlink:

cd /usr/src/linux

7.- We now apply the real-time and m-audio patches:

This first command is just a test to see if the patch won’t spit out any errors:

bzip2 -dc /usr/src/patch-2.6.31.4-rt14.bz2 | patch -p1 --dry-run

If you didn’t get any errors (which you shouldn’t) then do:

bzip2 -dc /usr/src/patch-2.6.31.4-rt14.bz2 | patch -p1

Now the kernel source is patched with the real time preemption code by Ingo Molnar.

Next is the M-Audio USB Fast Track Pro patch:

patch -p1 /usr/src/linux/sound/usb/usbaudio.c < /usr/src/usbaudio-ftp-2.6.31.4.patch

and hit enter. Now we have applied our kernel patches.

8.- Now the fun…. we are now ready to go into the configuration of our kernel. What we will do here first is copy the current configuration of our running kernel, this way we don’t have to set too many things up in the kernel configuration from start, believe me, it can take a long time to configure it. Maybe in the future, if you feel a little adventurous, you can try it, but for now and simplicity’s sake, let’s just copy it so we can then just tweak it:

cp /boot/config-`uname -r` ./.config

Now we have a .config file in our kernel source tree identical to our original kernel.

Now, something quite important, if you don’t have your terminal window maximized (full size), it’s a good idea to do it now, since going into the configuration, it’s best to view in a maximized terminal.

Now do:

make menuconfig

You are now in the configuration of the new kernel, first we load our copied .config from our current kernel, so go to the bottom where it says Load an Alternate Configuration File and select .config, now just tweak the following settings and try not to mess around with anything else, even if it looks tempting, also when you enable some options described below, it will tell you that it will enable them as modules only, don’t worry, just say yes. Also you might see that you don’t have some options that I list in the following configuration, don’t worry, just ignore them, but still make sure you are looking in the correct section and you are not overlooking them.

PROCESSOR TYPE AND FEATURES:

Disable Tickless System

Enable High Resolution Timer

Processor Family: Try to select your processor type here, if unsure, leave as it is

Preemption Mode: Select Complete Preemption (Real-Time)

High Memory Support: If you run a 32 bit Kernel and  have more than 4GB  you can select 64GB. If unsure, leave intact.

Timer Frequency: 1000 Hz

POWER MANAGEMENT AND ACPI OPTIONS:

Enable ACPCI Support

Enable ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support

Enable Power Management Timer Support

DEVICE DRIVERS:

Soundcard Support

Enable Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

Enable Sequencer Support

Enable Sequencer dummy client

Enable HR-Timer Backend Support

Enable Use HR-Timer As Default Sequencer Timer

Enable USB sound devices

Enable USB Audio/MIDI driver

Look for Sound Devices and enable additional audio cards that you have, in my case I have a Creative Audigy PCI card and the integrated Motherboard VIA. The first time I compiled my kernel I had no sound from my default audio devices when I booted it up. But this is in a way irrelevant, since I only use my Real Time Kernel for audio production with Fast Track Pro, then boot back up to my original kernel for everyday use….

Still in Device Drivers section, enable Real Time Clock

KERNEL HACKING:

Enable Magic SysRq Key (Always good to have!)

Disable Kernel Debugging (This is a must, will build a very small kernel under 20 MB, otherwise it will be > 500MB)

SECURITY OPTIONS:

Enable Different Security Modes

IMPORTANT:

Some users have reported compile errors when building the kernel due to some Comedi PCMCIA drivers in the Staging Drivers section of the kernel configuration. If you get a kernel build error with this specific device, best is to reconfigure and disable that module. If you get an error with another Staging Driver do make proper note of which it is and look for it in the kernel configuration to disable it, and the rerun the compile process.

We’re done configuring our custom kernel!

9.- Now we build the kernel, type:

make-kpkg clean

Then:

fakeroot make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-custom kernel_image kernel_headers

The last one is ONE LINE! You can change the word custom to anything you like, just make sure it begins with – and has no spaces.

Go get a healthy snack, watch TV or take a nap…..this will take a good while.

When you come back, you should have 2 deb packages in /usr/src named something like:

linux-headers-2.6.31.4-rt14-custom_2.6.31.4-rt14-custom-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

linux-image-2.6.31.4-rt14-custom_2.6.31.4-rt14-custom-10.00.Custom_i386.deb

Install them and boot to your new kernel to see how all is going. Remember, you can uninstall them from synaptic, and please leave your original kernel. This new one will be used only for audio production.

If all the kernel building process came well, now we have to do some adjustments for IRQ balancing and Fast Track Pro:

Let’s first do the IRQ balancig step:

We have to install a package that helps the Real Time kernel to decide which IRQ will have higher priority. In the case of audio work, we want to give the soundcard the highest priority possible. But then, in the case of M-Audio FTP, since it’s a usb audio device, we want all usb audio interfaces to be at the highest possible. So here we go:

1.- First, you have to make sure ‘schedutils’ package is correctly installed on the system, on newer ubuntu distro’s this will be included in the ‘util-linux’ package, so make sure you have it installed first. Now download and install the rtirq-init package. Click here to get it.

Now that you installed it, you should find a file called rtirq in /etc/default

First let’s copy it before we edit it. Now we can use sudo.

sudo cp /etc/default/rtirq /etc/default/rtirq.original

Now we edit it:

sudo gedit /etc/default/rtirq

Look for the line that says: RTIRQ_NAME_LIST=”rtc snd usb i8042″

And change it to: RTIRQ_NAME_LIST=”rtc usb snd i8042″

(That’s where we tell it that USB device has higher priority, if you want to give a pci sound card higher priority, then leave as it is, but for Fast Track pro, we do need to change it like this.)

Make sure the following lines look like this:

# Highest priority.
RTIRQ_PRIO_HIGH=90

# Priority decrease step.
RTIRQ_PRIO_DECR=5

# Whether to reset all IRQ threads to SCHED_OTHER.
RTIRQ_RESET_ALL=0

# On kernel configurations that support it,
# which services should be NOT threaded
# (space separated list).
RTIRQ_NON_THREADED=”rtc snd”

# Process names which will be forced to the
# highest realtime priority range (99-91)
# (space separated list, from highest to lower priority).
# RTIRQ_HIGH_LIST=”timer”

Save and close the file.

From now on, when you boot to your realtime kernel, that script will load automatically. If you want to see a status of it running type in a terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/rtirq status

and this will print the status information of rtirq.

Also you can do either any of the 3 following:

sudo /etc/init.d/rtirq start|stop|restart

which is quite predictable what each one does. Remember this module only works under RT Kernel, if you do this on your generic one, you won’t get much output.

Ok, now we have our IRQ’s balanced, I just want to add here that when you run your realtime kernel, you’ll might find your video a little sluggish sometimes, but not too bad. Especially when playing or capturing audio. This is because the sound device has higher priority than your video device, which means it’s perfectly normal and good, if you have an Nvidia Card like me, you can type nvidia right after usb in the RTIRQ_NAME_LIST line of the /etc/default/rtirq file, this will push your card with a little more priority, but do type the word nvidia right after usb, otherwise, you’ll get xruns everytime your video card goes into heavy duty. I sometimes use Desktop effects on my pc, I love them, and they respond quite well without jack server showing me any xruns, and my computer is really not that high end, but if you do encounter problems, you might want to disable desktop effects (compiz), or even better, create an account just for audio without visual effects.

We are almost there…..

Now we have to create a file for M-Audio Fast Track Pro (suggested by unofficial ALSA wiki), this is what they say:

This will put the FastTrack Pro at device number 5 with 24bit mode, max. 48kHz sampling mode, 2 inputs and 4 outputs. According to the patch, the possible values for the device_setup parameter are the sum of the following numbers:

* 0×01 : use the device_setup parameter, always needed
* 0×02 : enable digital output (channels 3,4)
* 0×04 : use 48kHz-96kHz sampling rate, 8-48 kHz if not used
* 0×08 : 24bit sampling rate
* 0×10 : enable digital input (channels 3,4)

Recording can be done e.g. by using arecord:

arecord -c2 -t raw -fS24_3BE -d5,0 …

So we do:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/fast-track-pro
And we insert the following line:

options    snd_usb_audio    vid=0×763 pid=0×2012 device_setup=0×9 index=5 enable=1

Save and close the file.

Thanks to user “gaiol” (Read posts below) he found when copying and pasting the code above (what I crossed out) the “x” between numbers are malformatted by wordpress, changing them to multiplication symbols, they should be x as in “X-Men”. So instead I have placed the file on the server for you to download.

Click here to download it.

Now cd where you saved it and do:

sudo chown root fast-track-pro.conf

sudo chgrp root fast-track-pro.conf

sudo mv fast-track-pro.conf /etc/modprobe.d

Now we configure the alsa-base file, I found out that in newer ubuntu releases the configuration files have been renamed with a .conf extension, so depending on your ubuntu version (you’ll have to browse yourself), the file we want to edit could be:

/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base or /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

if there is no such file, then it could be

/etc/modprobe.d/sound or   /etc/modprobe.d/sound.conf

It has to be one of those, so open it up with sudo gedit and it should show a bunch of lines with index values. There’s one we have to look for:

options snd-usb-audio index=-2

change it (comment it out) as:

#options snd-usb-audio index=-2

Save it, and close it

Last is setting your permission to use realtime audio on your box:

First we’ll check if you are in the audio group. So do:

groups username

Where username is your username

Then you should see a list of group names where you belong to, if you do see audio in that list all is well, if not, you will have to add yourself to the audio group.

I have found out that on some ubuntu releases, if not all, the group audio already exists, and if you fire up the “users and groups” from System>Administration menu it will probably not appear there, so best is not to do it that way, a lot of new linux users who do it that way end up creating another group because they don’t see it there, so what we’ll do is open the /etc/group file to edit it directly:

sudo gedit /etc/group

Look for a line that says

audio:x:29:

and just add a comma as separator (no spaces) and type your username.

Save and close.

And last, we’ll edit /etc/security/limits.conf

sudo gedit /etc/security/limits.conf

At the very bottom of that file you are going to place the following lines:

@audio - rtprio 99

@audio - memlock unlimited

And that’s all you have to place. A lot of people tend to put an extra line that says “@audio – nice -10″. This is totally unnecessary, as Paul Davis (The main developer of JACK and Ardour) has stated:

“the “nice” entry is not required. this is a mistake that has been propagated online by people who don’t know what they are talking about. its very unfortunate that it has spread so far and wide.”

You can see the original post here

Save and close that file.

Now reboot……

We are now Ready! We now just have to set up qjackctl for Fast Track Pro, here’s a screen shot of mine. You can adjust somethings and test. But this works perfectly well for me, latency is much lower than what qjackctl predicts.

And the results:

If by any chance your FTP make a high pink noise (like interference noise) while monitoring, this does happen once in a while, rarely just power it down for a few secs. and then power it on, a few people have reported this to happen once in a while, including me, nothing to worry about, this I believe happens when the 24 bit mode doesn’t engage properly, so just repowering your FTP will do the work, but do wait a few seconds before powering it up again.

BTW, once your custom kernel is installed you can delete the uncompressed linux-2.6.31.4 , linux-2.6.31.4.tar.bz2 , patch-2.6.31.4-rt14.bz2 , usbaudio-ftp-2.6.31.4.patch and linux symlink in /src, just keep a backup of the two kernel debs for future safety.

I really hope this guide helped you out on configuring you Fast Track Pro. I wish you the best in your audio production.

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