Yamaha AG06 mixing console & Solus?

SOLUSfiddler

Hi there!
Has anyone here used the Yamaha AG06 mixing console (audio interface) running Solus?
I was given this wonderful little audio interface for online violin lessons (thanks, Corona).
My laptop is a rather powerful Lenovo Thinkpad W530, my microphone a Røde NT1-A (large diaphragm microphone), the DAW I used for some first recordings to test the mic with is Audacity.

Normally the Yamaha AG06 needs drivers that are available for Windows or MAC only.
But I figured that if I could produce high quality recodings with Audacity (worked!) I could also use the AG06 to connect online and play music.
Problem was: My students couldn't hear me.

So, I met online with my brother who has the same Yamaha mixing console, an almost identical mic and a laptop running Windows.
He had been successful in using the AG06 to connect online with his colleagues at work, using his mic and his Windows laptop. His colleagues could hear him and he could hear them.
So, I asked him for some advice, thinking he could be successful with my computer/hardware setup, too.
He went through all possible settings with me - hardware and software. He knows the AG06 rather well and works as a software developer for a large company, so he also knows linux and terminal commands and stuff.

But whatever we tried he couldn't hear me.
I could produce recordings meaning Solus/Audacity recognises the mic and the AG06, but my brother just wouldn't be able to hear me when we were connected live online.

He thinks that there are drivers missing I might need for the AG06 to get fully recognised, for listeners to hear me, for my students to hear what I play or say to them.
I really don't want to use the crappy in-built mic of my laptop, I want to use a high-quality mic and an audio interface that produces a great audio signal.

Any ideas what I might need to install if all software that comes with the AG06 is for Windows or MAC only?
Any idea why connecting online in both directions using the AG06 doesn't work?

brent

I usually say good luck to people as a gesture of good will but this is GOOD LUCK!
My first layman instinct when I read this was 'maybe a bridge program in solus/repo will do it."
Maybe it's there.
Internet is BONE DRY of info. I saw a post where ALSA connected a yamaha keyboard/midi to linux Arch (http://linux-audio.4202.n7.nabble.com/Yamaha-usb-midi-drivers-and-Linux-td98202.html).
AG series mixer aside, Yamaha's official policy is no linux drivers: mac/windows only.
I found no evidence of foss even tackling yamaha drviers and this has been a frustrating search. I imagine how you feel.

It's gotta be a linux thing. I have a friend who now, via covid, teaches guitar lessons thru zoom in windows with a mixer happily, like your brother.
Don't give up on the foss, man. Hope someone gets some ideas for you because if it all comes down to a pulse or Audacity setting then I will feel silly for all this spitballin but happy for you!

craigtoyoracer

It looks like they are not linux friendly. You can install Wine and see how it runs. Maybe get lucky. 🙂

SOLUSfiddler

craigtoyoracer
Thought of that, too.
Might try it later (next week I will have another tryout session with me brother...).
Thank you!

synth-ruiner

what software are you using for audio/videoconferencing, and how is it installed? it may be that the software itself isn't able to access Pulseaudio or what have you. clearly it works in some sense if it's working in Audacity

SOLUSfiddler

synth-ruiner
It's been quite a few days ago that we tried it so I'm not sure.
As far as I can remember we tried ZOOM (I had installed the snap package), we also tried SKYPE. But whatever we actually did try, it didn't work.
Thanks for your comment though and for looking for a solution!

sgvd

SOLUSfiddler
Also check whether it has to do with Mono or Stereo mic. I have a Focusrite Solo and the XLR mic is sometimes seen as a stereo input channel, so the mono input will be heard from R (or L, don't remember) only. If the software you use then chooses L channel for its mono input, you get no sound input.

It cannot hurt to at least check with other tools as @synth-ruiner suggests. For example, pulseaudio gives lots of devices in some tools (all channels separately?), while others will only show a few (only show devices, no channels?).
(Discord versus Ripcord comes to mind as an example for my setup. Ripcord has way more options to play with.)

SOLUSfiddler

sgvd
Hey, thanks for your hint - I will look into it!
(I've also installed Ubuntu Studio to test the setup, that suite has an abundance of audio tools installed by default as you might know.
But so far I could only check making a recording via Audacity which worked nicely as it had worked running Solus.)

synth-ruiner

SOLUSfiddler I don't know this for sure but I think snap sandboxing might prevent access to certain things like microphones. might be worth trying other installation methods or looking into the problem from there

SOLUSfiddler

I have made progress:
I've done some more testing with my brother, he's an engineer and knows his tech, he also uses several computers running Windows and one old lappy running - guess what? SOLUS Budgie!
So, we first met online via my setup (Røde microphone, Yamaha AG06 audio interface) using a test installation of Ubuntu Studio on a laptop that I use only for testing things. That distro is bound to have every audio driver you can think of, so we thought that if a linux system has what the setup needed then it might be Ubuntu Studio.
And it worked! Hooray!
Yet, we weren't quite sure why it worked this time 'round, so we decided to do more testing, and I started my main Solus Budgie machine (a Thinkpad T480/i7-8650U/MX150/16GB RAM at present).
My brother had been running his main Windows laptop and still was.
Tested my setup with ZOOM (app and in the browser), SKYPE (app), using different settings for microphone and loudspeakers.

The overall result are:
SKYPE manages the audio and video quality better than ZOOM (that became obvious especially when my brother joined my ZOOM meeting directly in a browser).
The audio settings within the respective software were best and easiest to handle if we set everything to "Same as system", then managed the audio modules from Solus audio settings.
That way we didn't have to fiddle & fight with different software settings against each other.

Within the Solus audio settings I had to choose the analogue (!) audio interface (AG06) both as output/loudspeakers and input source/microphone, the microphone having to be set to 100%. If we set it to anything lower, say 50%, the opposite side would hear me only very feebly.
(That is different from using the inbuilt microphone: There I would have to go not higher than 40-50%, otherwise it would start crackling and distorting.)

My brother then tested using his Solus machine, too - and we had the same results: Everything works, and it works best when set to "Same as system" within ZOOM or SKYPE and then managed in detail from Solus audio settings.

So, all's well that ends well.