Recording on Linux with Lexicon Alpha

[Pastorandrew]

Hi All,
Our church recently received a donated computer (for Free!) and I'm trying to get it setup to record sermons. I've purchased the Lexicon Alpha Recording Studio for input into the computer. The computer came with no operating system so I installed Kubuntu a Linux distribution similar to the popular Ubuntu distribution and I'm using audacity to record with. The computer is a celeron 1GHz with 256Mb memory and a 40Gb HHD.


The alpha is a "plug n play" USB device which Kubuntu recognizes and works "fine" with, however it randomly disconnects the Alpha while recording. I thought maybe the USB port is getting overloaded as its an older computer so I used a powered USB hub with it. I tested it by leaving it overnight and seeing if it dropped off while doing an extended recording. It didn't which is frustrating because I can't work out why it sometimes does and other times records fine. There's nothing worse than a recording device which isn't completely reliable. This last sunday it disconnected and we only got half the sermon.

I wonder if I have to buy a copy off windows 98 to run on the machine as I image that this would correct the problem, but maybe there's a cheaper solution.


Has anyone had any success getting a lexicon alpha/omega/lambda working under linux?

Look forward to your replies
Cheers,
Andrew

[kbob]

None here, but congrats on your first post!!!

I think some had had issues with extended recordings on audacity, even under windows.

[TMcKellar]

Try running the Alpha with Jackd into something like Ardour and see what kind of results that gives you. Ardour is probably overkill for what you are doing but it should at least give you an idea of what is going on. They are in the repositories so just do "sudo apt-get install ardour jackd" and you should be set. You might want to check out Ubuntu Studio as well. All I did was add the repositories to my installation of Ubuntu and download the low latency kernels and it runs like a dream. Just make sure you do the last step adding the lines to you limits.conf and you'll be rockin'.

http://jackaudio.org/
http://ardour.org
http://ubuntustudio.org/

[JordanN]

Try jack and ecasound.

Timemachine is another simple recorder.

Ardour is even better, but is more complex.